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Power to Chief or Under Secretary to order all letters patent, records, &c. to be transmitted from all ecclesiastical courts.
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20. The Chief or Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland may order every person who before the first day of January one thousand eight hundred and seventy-one was judge, registrar, or other officer of any ecclesiastical court in Ireland, or any other person having the custody or possession of or control over any letters patent, records, deeds, processes, acts, proceedings, books, documents, or other instruments or papers relating to marriages or to any matters or causes matrimonial, to transmit the same to the principal registry of the said Court for Matrimonial Causes and Matters, at such times and in such manner and under such regulations as the said Chief or Under Secretary may appoint; and if any such person shall wilfully disobey such order, he shall for the first offence forfeit the sum of one hundred pounds, to be recoverable at the suit of Her Majesty's Attorney General, as a debt under this Act, in any of the superior courts at Dublin, and for the second and subsequent offences the judge of the said Court for Matrimonial Causes and Matters may commit the person so offending to prison for any period not exceeding three calendar months, provided that the warrant of committal be countersigned by the Chief Secretary.
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