DEGRADATION, in our law books called disgradation and deposition, the act of depriving or stripping a person for ever of a dignity or degree of honour, and taking away the title, badge, and privileges thereof.

The degradation of a peer, a priest, a knight, a gentleman, an officer, or such like person, is performed with different ceremonies. That which anciently obtained in degrading a person from his nobility is very curious. It was practised in the time of Francis I. upon Captain Fangel, who had in a cowardly manner given up Fontarabia, of which he was governor. On this occasion, twenty or thirty cavaliers, without blemish or reproach, were assembled; before whom the gentleman was accused of treason and breach of faith by a king-at-arms. Two scaffolds were erected; the one for the judges, heralds, and pursuivants, and the other for the guilty cavalier, who was armed at all points, and his shield placed on a stake before him, reversed with the point upwards. There also assisted twelve priests in surplices, who sung the vigils of the dead. At the close of each psalm they made a pause, during which the officers of arms stripped the condemned of some piece of his armour, beginning with the helmet, and proceeding thus till he was quite disarmed, which being done, they broke his shield in three pieces with a hammer. Then the king-at-arms emptied a bason of hot water on the criminal’s head, and the judges, putting on mourning habits, went to the church. This being done, the degraded was drawn from off the scaffold with a rope tied under his arm-pits, laid on a bier, and covered with mortuary clothes, the priest singing some of the prayers for the dead, and then he was delivered to the civil judge and the executioner of justice.

For a more domestic instance, Sir Andrew Harcla, earl of Carlisle, being attainted and convicted of treason, by the 18th Edward II. coram rege, after judgment had been pronounced on him, his sword was broken over his head, and his spurs hewn off his heels; Sir Anthony Lucy, the judge, saying to him, “Andrew, now thou art no knight, but a knave.” By statute 13th Car. II. William Lord Monson, Sir Henry Mildmay, and others, were degraded from all titles of honour, dignities, and pre-eminences, and prohibited to bear or use the title of lord, knight, esquire, or gentleman, or any coat of arms, for ever afterwards. It has been maintained that the king may degrade a peer; but it appears from modern authorities that he cannot be degraded but by act of parliament.

As to ecclesiastics, we have an instance of degradation before condemnation to death, in the eighth century, at Constantinople. It is in the person of the patriarch Constantine, whom Constantine Copronymus caused to be [7:7:678]executed. He was made to ascend the ambo, when the patriarch Nicetas sent some of his bishops to strip him of the pallium, and to anathematize him; then they made him go out of the church backwards.

But we have a much later instance in our own history. When Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, was degraded by order of Queen Mary, they dressed him in episcopal robes, made only of canvass, put the mitre on his head, and the pastoral staff' in his hand, and in this attire showed him to the people; and this being done, they stripped him again piece by piece. Subsequently they did not stand so much on the ceremony of degradation in order to the putting of a priest to death, by reason of the delays and difficulties which it would occasion. Pope Boniface pronounced that six bishops were required to degrade a priest; but the difficulty of assembling so many bishops rendered the punishment frequently impracticable. In England, a priest, after being delivered to his ordinary, if he* cannot purge himself of the crime with which he is charged, his gown and other robes are stripped over his ears by the common hangman, by which he is declared divested of his orders.

It has been decided, however, that degradation does not efface the priestly character. Degradation seems only to differ from deposition in a few ignominious ceremonies which custom has added thereto. Accordingly, in the business of Arnoul, archbishop of Rheims, sentenced in the council of Orleans in 991, it was deliberated what form they should follow in the deposition; whether that of the canons, that is, simple deposition; or that of custom, namely, degradation. And it was declared that he should surrender the ring, pastoral staff, and pallium, but that his robes should not be torn off. In effect, the canons prescribe no more than a mere reading of the sentence. It is the rest, therefore, added thereto by custom, namely, the stripping off the ornaments, and the tearing the pontifical vestments, that properly constitutes degradation.

Degradation, in Painting, expresses the lessening the appearance of distant objects in a landscape, in the same manner as they would appear to an eye placed at that distance from them.