Double complaint, or Double quarrel, duplex querela, a grievance made known by a clerk or other person, to the archbishop of the province, against the ordinary, for delaying or refusing to do justice in some cause ecclesiastical, as to give sentence, or institute a clerk, as in the celebrated case of Gorham v. Bishop of Exeter, (1850) 19 LJ Ex 376, CP 200, QB 279, in which the plaintiff, a clerk, succeeded on appeal in duplex querela against the defendant for not instituting him on the ground of alleged unorthodox views on Baptism, etc. It is termed a double complaint, because it is most commonly made against both the judge and him at whose suit justice is denied or delayed; and by Canon 95 the period of two months which the bishop had to inquire of the sufficiency of a clerk was abridged to twenty-eight days, before the expiration of which a duplex querela could not be brought.
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