Visatatorial Power

Visatatorial Power is the authority possessed by the visitor of a corporate body or ecclesiastical society. "Every corporation, whether lay or ecclesiastical, is visitable by some superior; and every spiritual person, being a corporation sole, is visitable by the ordinary. There is, however, in our ecclesiastical polity, an exception to this rule, for, by composition, the archbishop of Canterbury never visits the bishop of London. During a visitation all inferior jurisdictions are inhibited from exercising jurisdiction but this right, from the inconvenience attending the exercise of it, is usually conceded; so that the exercise of jurisdiction in the inferior court is continued notwithstanding."