Definition
The Arches Court is a historic English ecclesiastical appellate tribunal belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It functions as a court of appeal for ecclesiastical causes arising within the Province of Canterbury, hearing appeals from the decisions of diocesan consistory courts and other inferior ecclesiastical tribunals within that province. The presiding judge bears the title Dean of the Arches.
The court takes its name from its original venue: the church of Saint Mary-le-Bow (Sancta Maria de Arcubus) in London, so called because its steeple was raised upon pillars constructed in an arch formation. The court was later relocated to the hall of the College of Civil Law (Doctors' Commons) before Doctors' Commons was dissolved in the nineteenth century. Following ecclesiastical law reforms, the Arches Court has continued to operate in a modernized form, with jurisdiction substantially reorganized by the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963.
Why It Matters in Research
The Arches Court is rarely encountered in American legal research, but it surfaces regularly in two contexts: historical materials addressing English ecclesiastical law and early American legal writing that borrowed ecclesiastical procedure and terminology. Colonial American courts occasionally exercised quasi-ecclesiastical jurisdiction over probate, marriage, and moral discipline that mirrored Canterbury Province practice, and understanding the Arches Court helps situate those institutional parallels.
Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century English sources will encounter the Arches Court as the primary appellate authority on questions of church discipline, clerical fitness, marriage validity, and testamentary matters before probate and matrimonial jurisdiction transferred to civil courts in 1857. After that transfer, the court's jurisdiction narrowed sharply. A source citing Arches Court authority in matrimonial or probate matters is almost certainly pre-1858; applying such authority to modern questions requires careful attention to this jurisdictional break.
The Dean of the Arches also holds the related office of Master of the Faculties, connecting the Arches Court to the Faculty Office and the granting of special licenses (including marriage licenses issued outside the ordinary banns procedure). This dual-office structure creates cross-referencing complexity in older texts: a ruling or practice attributed to the Dean may appear in records of either office.
American legal dictionaries through the early twentieth century retained the Arches Court entry as a matter of completeness in covering English legal institutions, not because the court had direct American application. Researchers should treat those dictionary entries as background orientation rather than operative authority.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) provides substantively identical entries, confirming the court's identity, its Canterbury appellate jurisdiction, its judge's title, and its physical origin at Saint Mary-le-Bow. Both editions note that the court was "until recently" held at the College of Civil Law — a reference to Doctors' Commons, dissolved in the 1860s — without specifying what came after, leaving a gap that neither edition resolves. Bouvier's Law Dictionary offers no independent definition, redirecting the reader to "Court of Arches" without elaboration, which confirms that the two names were used interchangeably but provides no additional content.
None of the shelf sources address the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963 or the court's contemporary structure, which is expected given their publication dates. Researchers seeking the modern form of the court's jurisdiction must go beyond dictionary sources to the Measure itself and subsequent Canons of the Church of England. The historical dictionaries are reliable as far as they reach — identifying the court, its appellate character, its provincial scope, and its physical and titular history — but should not be treated as describing the court's present powers.
Jurisdictional Note
The Arches Court is exclusively an English institution within the Church of England's Province of Canterbury. It has no counterpart in American law. Scottish, Irish, and Welsh ecclesiastical structures operate under separate frameworks; the Province of York has its own parallel appellate court, the Chancery Court of York, presided over by the Auditor.