When the barons formed a league against the king’s favourites, the Despensers, in 1321, they were joined by Burghersh, who followed his kinsman Badlesmere, by Orlton, and John of Drokensford, bishop of Bath. The victory of Boroughbridge gave the king supreme power, and he caused Orlton to be arrested, and charged with treason before the peers. Orlton declared that his metropolitan was, under the Pope, his immediate judge, and refused to plead without the consent of the archbishop and his suffragans. The primate and his suffragans then rose and prayed the king to have mercy on the bishop. Edward refused, and they then pleaded the privilege of the Church, and claimed him as a clerk. He was accordingly delivered over to the custody of the archbishop. Nevertheless the king caused a jury to try him in his absence, and obtained a verdict against him. But the archbishop would not give him up. Edward sent to Avignon to complain of the conduct of the three bishops who had sided with the barons against him, and requested the Pope to deprive them of their English sees. He did not turn his victory to good account. In 1325 two of the bishops who had obtained their sees from the Pope against the king’s will, John Stratford of Winchester and William Ayermin of Norwich, while on an embassy to France, entered into a plot against the Despensers. By their advice the queen was sent into France, and there Mortimer joined her. The king in vain urged her to return, and the bishops, at his request, sent a letter to the same effect. She came back at last with an armed force, and Orlton, Burghersh, and Ayermin raised money for her from their fellow-bishops. When she came to Oxford, Orlton expounded the reason of her rebellion to the university in a sermon, taking as his text the words, “Caput meum doleo” (2 Kings iv. 19). Reynolds and some of the bishops remained for a while in London, trying to quiet matters. While they were there, Bishop Stapleton of Exeter, who had been one of the king’s ministers, and remained faithful to him, was slain by the citizens. His murder caused them to flee, and Stratford, and at last Reynolds, joined the queen’s party. The king was now a prisoner, and Reynolds, who owed everything to his favour, Stratford, whom he had forgiven and trusted in spite of his having deceived him, and Orlton, his avowed enemy, took active part in his deposition.

Meanwhile the province of York had been exposed to the ravages of the Scots. Edward prevailed on John XXII. to command a truce and send over legates with authority to excommunicate Bruce. The legates’ envoys were robbed and ill-treated, and the sentence was accordingly pronounced. It had no effect on the war, and in 1318 the Scots broke into Yorkshire. They made a savage raid, and did much damage to churches and ecclesiastical property. Ripon paid them £1000 for its safety. A new archbishop, William Melton, had lately been consecrated. He had served the king and his father well, and Edward, after some trouble, had obtained the Pope’s confirmation for him. He was made one of the wardens of the marches, and at once arrayed his tenants for military service. There was little help to be obtained from the king, and when the Scots came down the next year most of the fighting men of the north had been called away to Edward’s army at Berwick. Melton, however, raised what local force he could, and led a large and undisciplined host to meet the Scottish army at Myton. The archbishop’s army was routed, and so many clerks were slain in the battle that it was called the “chapter of Myton.” The absence of any united and vigorous action for the defence of the country was largely due to the disloyalty and selfishness of Thomas, earl of Lancaster. The Sherburn Parliament, 1321.The earl was powerful in Yorkshire, and after making a league for mutual support with the lords of the north, he summoned a meeting of the estates at Sherburn, near Pomfret, in 1321. To this northern parliament he called the archbishop and prelates of the province, and Melton and the clergy obeyed his summons, evidently with the hope of making peace. Lancaster’s parliament met in the parish church, and after the schedule of grievances and the lords’ bond of association had been read, the earl bade the prelates consult apart, and give him their answer; for all was done as though in a legal and national parliament. The clergy debated in the rectory, and sent a reply in to the earl that was wise and worthy of their profession. They petitioned for a cessation of hostile movements, and for concord in the next parliament, so that, by God’s favour, parliament might find remedies for the grievances expressed in the articles. In other words, they exhorted the earl to abandon his isolated position, and seek the good of the country by peaceful and constitutional means. Their answer was received graciously, but their advice was not followed. The archbishop took no part in the disloyal conduct of the majority of the bishops; he and his suffragan of Carlisle, and two bishops of the southern province, protested against the deposition of Edward II., and he abstained from attending the coronation of the young king.

During the reign of Edward II. the clergy showed their unwillingness to attend parliament, and their decided preference for voting their grants in convocation. When, for example, they were summoned to the parliament in which the work of the Ordainers was published in 1311, they sent no proctors. Before the meeting in the autumn the king wrote to the archbishops, calling on them to urge the attendance of the clergy. Winchelsey objected to the writ, and the king issued another, promising that if it contained any cause of offence it should be remedied. Again, in 1314 Edward ordered the archbishops to summon the convocations of their provinces to treat about an aid. The clergy, however, declared that this was an infringement of the rights of the Church, and departed without further discussion. Before the next parliament, besides the regular writ with the “præmunientes” clause, he sent a special letter to the archbishops, urging them to press the attendance of the clergy; and this double summons was thenceforth sent regularly until 1340. Nevertheless in 1318 the clerical estate in parliament refused to make a grant without convocation. When the matter was referred to the convocation of Canterbury, the answer was returned that the grant must depend on the Pope’s consent, and a messenger was sent to Avignon to obtain it. The position of the clerical estate in Parliament was peculiar, for it is certain that its consent was not necessary to legislation. At the same time, when, as in 1316, a petition of the clergy touching spiritual matters received the royal assent, it was with that assent accepted as a statute. In convocation the action of the clergy was perfectly free; they made what grant they would without lay interference, though they had no means of appropriating the supplies they voted. While they withdrew as far as possible from parliament, they did not do so altogether, and in critical times their attendance was specially insisted on, in order that the consent of parliament might be general. Even at the present day they are summoned to every parliament by the “præmunientes” clause, and it is by their own act, by their preference for taxing themselves in their own assembly, that they have lost the right of obeying the summons. Convocations were summoned by the archbishops for other purposes besides taxation, and the ordinary legislative business of the Church was carried on in them. When a convocation met for self-taxation, it did so in consequence of a royal request for money, though it was summoned, as on other occasions, by the archbishop, not by the king. As the king made a like request to the lay estates at the same time, it naturally came to pass that convocation and parliament met about the same date. Nevertheless it would be easy to give many instances which show that meetings of convocation for purposes of taxation were not necessarily concurrent with, nor in any way dependent upon, the parliamentary session, as they became at a later period.

CHAPTER IX.

The fifty years of the reign of Edward III. are of special importance in the history of our Church; for they witnessed the restriction of papal authority by parliament, and the rise of a spirit of discontent at evils which existed in the National Church. From the time of John’s submission the Popes had constantly treated England as a never-failing treasury, and had diverted the revenues of the Church to their own purposes. The breach between the papacy and the Crown in the reign of Edward I. had been followed by the expression of the national sense of injury in the parliament of Carlisle. The war with France caused the anti-papal feeling to grow and bring forth fruit. It was intolerable that the wealth of the country should go to enrich its enemies, and that French Popes should exercise jurisdiction here in defiance of the will of the king and to the subversion of the common law. The victories of England find their ecclesiastical significance in the legislation against papal oppression, in the statutes of Provisors and Præmunire. Within the Church several causes combined to give rise to an anti-clerical feeling. While the nation suffered severely from the expenses of the war, the Church was rich, and might, so men thought, well be forced to bear a larger share of the general burdens than the clergy were willing to lay upon themselves. The bishops filled all the chief administrative offices, and enjoyed their revenues in addition to the wealth of their sees. The inferior clergy were as a rule careless and ignorant. The Church, though it jealously watched over its rights of jurisdiction, found itself powerless to enforce needful discipline on the clergy, while the abuses of the ecclesiastical courts were a continual source of irritation to the laity. An attempt was made to debar the prelates from political offices, and an attack on the wealth of the Church was threatened. Then came the papal Schism, and new ideas were openly expressed concerning the papacy itself, the position and rights of the clergy, and the relations between Church and State. With these ideas we have nothing to do here. But as we follow the ecclesiastical history of the reign we shall see how the way was prepared for them; how it was that Wyclif, a strenuous upholder of the rights of the National Church, was led to form a spiritual conception of the Church Universal, to declare that a Pope who was not Christ-like was Antichrist, and to teach that it would be well for the Church to strip herself of her endowments and to become independent of the State; why it was that the bulwarks already raised against papal interference were strengthened, and why for a season there were from time to time evidences of a spirit of revolt against the ecclesiastical system. It will perhaps be convenient to divide the Church history of the reign into two unequal parts at the return of the Prince of Wales and the meeting of the anti-clerical parliament in 1371, and after some notices of the archbishops and their ecclesiastical administration down to the consecration of Whittlesey in 1368, to take a survey of the relations, first, between the papacy and England, and, secondly, between the National Church and the State during that period, and to end with some account of the anti-clerical movement of the last years of the reign.

On the death of Reynolds in 1327, the Canterbury chapter elected Simon Mepeham, and at Queen Isabella’s request, and after receiving a gift from the convent, John XXII. confirmed the election. Mepeham was a scholar and a theologian. He held councils, published canons, and did what he could to rule well. Conscious of the necessity of reform, he set about a provincial visitation, and fined and excommunicated the bishop of Rochester for non-residence, neglect of duty, and laxity of government. When he came to Exeter, Bishop Grandison, who built a large part of the cathedral there, refused to receive him, and drew up his men under arms to oppose his entrance. Grandison, who claimed a papal exemption from metropolitan visitation, appealed to the Pope, and the king ordered the archbishop to desist from his attempt. This seems to have brought his efforts for reformation, which excited much ill-will among his suffragans, to a premature end. He was involved in a quarrel with the monks of St. Augustine’s, who also resisted his authority. They appealed to the Pope, and Mepeham, who refused to give way, died under excommunication.

John Stratford, bishop of Winchester, of whom we have heard before, was at the king’s instance elected to succeed him, and the Pope provided him, not in virtue of the postulation of the chapter, but “of his own motion.” Although the chapter of Winchester elected, and the king recommended, the prior of Worcester as Stratford’s successor, Orlton, who happened to be at Avignon, was, on the recommendation of Philip of France, provided by the Pope to the vacant see. The king was indignant, and called on Orlton to answer for thus procuring the papal brief against his will, but let the matter drop. Edward’s ministers were mostly churchmen, and for about eleven years after the fall of Mortimer, Stratford, or his brother, the bishop of Chichester, generally held the office of chancellor, and exerted themselves to raise money for the French war. For some years Edward made no progress in the war, and was generally unsuccessful except at sea. Stratford, who belonged to the old Lancastrian party, disapproved of the constant waste of money, and recommended peace. Money on which the king reckoned was not forthcoming, and in 1340, excited probably by the misrepresentations of the court party, and especially by Bishops Burghersh and Orlton, he returned suddenly to England, turned Stratford’s brother, the chancellor, and other ministers out of office, and imprisoned some of his judges and other officers. His controversy with the king.Stratford was summoned to appear at court, but retired to Canterbury, and there preached some sermons, the character of which may be judged by the text of one of them: “He was not moved with the presence of any prince, neither could any bring him into subjection” (Ecclus. xlviii. 12). He further excommunicated all who offered violence to clerks or accused them falsely to the king. Edward replied by putting forth a pamphlet containing his complaints against the archbishop. In this pamphlet, which is called the famosus libellus, he charged Stratford with being the cause of his want of success by keeping him short of funds in order to gain profit for himself, and added several accusations which were mere abuse. Although Orlton denied it, this discreditable document was probably drawn up by him. Stratford answered it point by point, and complained that the king was condemning him, one of the chief peers of the realm, without trial. Edward carried on this paper war with another weak letter, and wrote to Benedict XII., complaining of the archbishop, and hinting that he wished the Pope to suspend him. When parliament met in the spring of 1341, various attempts were made to prevent the archbishop from taking his seat, and the king began proceedings against him in the Exchequer. Stratford persisted in appearing in parliament, and offered to plead before his peers. The lords thereupon declared that no peer should be brought to trial except before his peers in parliament. Edward found it advisable to be reconciled to the archbishop, and the struggle ended. The archbishop’s persistence thus led to the establishment of the most important privilege of the peerage, and the result of the controversy illustrates the constitutional position of bishops as of equal dignity with the temporal lords. A lay chancellor, 1340.Meanwhile the king appointed Sir Robert Bourchier chancellor, the first layman who ever held that office. After a little time, however, the office was again held by clerks.

Stratford desired good government, and the clergy under his rule on one occasion joined the other estates in demanding redress of grievances, asking, for their part, that the charters should be confirmed, as well as that their own privileges of jurisdiction should be better observed: yet he made no real effort to secure constitutional liberty. His constitutions.Although more of a statesman than an archbishop, he was fully alive to the evils arising from the oppressions of the ecclesiastical officials and the secular lives of the clergy, and held two councils, in which he regulated the officials’ fees, forbade bishops and archdeacons, when on a visitation, to quarter a large retinue on the clergy, ordered that archdeacons should not make a gain of commutations for corporal penance, and that clerks who concealed their tonsure, had long curled hair, and imitated the dress of laymen by wearing knives, long shoes, and furred cloaks, should be suspended.

Meanwhile William Zouche, archbishop of York, was engaged in the defence of his province. In October 1345, while Edward was absent in France, David of Scotland led a large army into the bishopric of Durham, wasting the country as he advanced. Archbishop William and the lords Nevill and Percy raised a force, in which, along with knights and men-at-arms, were many of the northern clergy, the archbishop in person leading one of the divisions. The English gained a signal victory at Nevill’s Cross; the Scottish king was taken prisoner, and the “chapter of Myton” was amply avenged.

On Stratford’s death in 1348 the monks of Christ Church, thinking to please the king, and doubtless also to found a precedent, elected Edward’s chaplain, Thomas Bradwardine, without waiting for the congé d’elire. Bradwardine, the Doctor Profundus, as he was called, a famous philosopher and theologian, was the champion of the Augustinian doctrine of predestination against the Scotists. He had accompanied the king in his victorious campaigns against France, and had been employed by him to treat of peace. Edward, though he was willing enough that he should be archbishop, would not allow the chapter to act independently, and so caused Clement VI. to provide his chancellor, John Ufford, who was an aged man. The pestilence now reached England, and Ufford died of it before he was consecrated. Thomas Bradwardine, archbishop of Canterbury, 1349.Bradwardine was then raised to the archbishopric by the common action of the king, the chapter, and the Pope; for after the English victories Clement was ready to oblige Edward, declaring that “if the king of England asked a bishopric for an ass he could not refuse him.” His subservience to Edward displeased the cardinals, and at the consecration feast of the great English doctor at Avignon one of them sent into the hall a buffoon mounted on an ass, with a petition that the Pope would make him archbishop of Canterbury. A week after Bradwardine came to England he too died of the pestilence, which both now and in its later outbreaks fell as heavily on the clergy as on the laity, carrying off four bishops in a single year.

Simon Islip, Bradwardine’s successor, endeavoured to remedy ecclesiastical abuses. He founded Canterbury Hall at Oxford, to enable the clergy to receive a better education, and published some excellent constitutions in convocation. Clerical offenders claimed by the Church from the secular courts, and committed to the custody of the bishops, were often kept in comfort; they sometimes escaped from their prisons, and sometimes were released without good cause. This was no longer to be; and imprisonment was to be made a real punishment. The archbishop also decreed that chaplains who were engaged to perform commemorative masses should, if required, be bound to do parochial work at a fixed stipend of one mark beyond their ordinary pay, which he fixed at five marks. A long-standing dispute between the sees of Canterbury and York as to the right of the northern metropolitan to carry his cross erect in the southern province was at last settled by an agreement between Islip and John Thoresby, archbishop of York. When the king and the parliament checked the papal aggressions Islip abstained from interference; for, while he could not quarrel with the papacy, he would not uphold it against the will of the nation. While, however, he was prudent and moderate in temper, he did not shrink from speaking plainly on behalf of good government, and wrote a strong remonstrance to the king about the oppression of the people by the royal purveyors. Simon Langham, 1366-1368.On Islip’s death Simon Langham, bishop of Ely, was raised to the primacy. He was chancellor when he was translated, but did not hold the office long afterwards. By the command of Pope Urban V. he instituted an inquiry into cases of plurality, and found that some clerks held as many as twenty benefices by provisions, with license to add to their number. After he had held the archbishopric two years, Urban made him a cardinal. The king was displeased at this, and seized his temporalities. William Whittlesey, archbishop, 1368-1374.Langham resigned the see and went to Avignon, and was succeeded at Canterbury by his kinsman, William Whittlesey, who took little part in the affairs either of Church or State, for he soon fell into ill health.

There was comparatively little direct taxation of the clergy by the Popes during this reign, though first-fruits were still demanded, and the frequency with which promotions were effected by provision probably led to a growing compliance with the demand. At the same time, the Church was wronged in a more mischievous manner by the Popes’ usurpation of patronage. English bishoprics, dignities, and cures were conferred without regard to the fitness of the person promoted, and simply as a matter of policy, or a means of providing for the friends and advisers of the Pope. The first decided check that was administered to this abuse arose from the war with France; for it was felt to be intolerable that the wealth of the country should be handed over to the French cardinals and other members of the papal court at Avignon. During the early years of the reign little resistance was offered to the system of appointment by provision, though two sees, Exeter and Bath, which had been reserved, were filled up by the joint action of the Crown and the chapters. Reservations and provisions.The abuse grew rapidly, until, in 1343, Clement VI. declared that he had reserved benefices, not including bishoprics, as they fell vacant, to the annual value of 2000 marks for two cardinals, who sent their agents to England to carry out their claims. These agents were ordered to depart, on pain of imprisonment, and a complaint was made to the Crown by the lay estates in parliament that the richest benefices in the country were bestowed by the Pope on foreigners, who never came near it, or contributed to its burdens, and who abstracted the wealth of England to the prejudice of the king and his kingdom, and, above all, of the souls of his subjects. The bishops did not dare to join in this complaint, and wished to withdraw, but the king made them stay during the proceedings. In answer to this complaint, a royal ordinance was published that any one who brought bulls or reservations into the kingdom should be imprisoned. Resisted by the king and parliament.Moreover, the king wrote a letter to the Pope representing that provisions led to the promotion of unfit persons, who did not understand the language of the country or reside on their benefices, and that they robbed patrons and chapters of their rights, and removed cases of patronage from the royal to the papal courts. A vigorous letter of remonstrance was also sent by the parliament by the hands of John of Shoreditch, a famous lawyer, who presented it to the Pope in the presence of the cardinals. Clement was angry, and declared he had only provided two foreigners. “Holy Father,” John replied, “you have provided the Cardinal of Perigord to the deanery of York, and the king and all the nobles of England know him to be a capital enemy of the king and kingdom.” High words passed; the cardinals left the court in some confusion, and John departed from Avignon in haste, lest mischief should befall him.

These remonstrances had little effect, and at last, in 1351, the statute of Provisors was enacted, on the petition of the lords temporal and the commons. By this statute any collation made by the Pope was to escheat to the Crown, and any person acting in virtue of a reservation or provision was, after conviction, to be imprisoned until he had paid such fine as the king might inflict, and had made compensation to the party aggrieved. To this statute the bishops, who were, of course, hampered by their position as regards the Pope, did not assent. Its immediate effect was rather to strengthen the hold of the king upon the Church than to increase its liberty. Edward connived at its evasion whenever it suited him to do so, and infringed the rights of patrons by a writ called “Quare impedit,” while the concurrence of the Popes, who took care to keep on good terms with the victorious king, enabled him to do much as he liked. The Popes, moreover, still continued to provide to sees vacant by translation, and accordingly multiplied translations to the hurt of the Church. It was found necessary to re-enact the penalties of the statute fourteen years later, and, as we shall see, fresh efforts were made against the abuse towards the end of the reign.

The system of provisions increased the number of appeals to Rome, and matters that were determinable at common law were carried to the Pope’s court, much to the inconvenience of the parties concerned, and to the profit of the papal officers. Statute of Præmunire, 1353.In 1353 a check was given to the appellate jurisdiction of the curia by the Statute of Præmunire, which, without verbal reference to the Pope, made it punishable with imprisonment and forfeiture to draw one of the king’s subjects out of the kingdom to answer in a foreign court, the offender being compelled to appear by a writ beginning “Præmunire facias.” This statute was re-enacted in 1365, with distinct mention of the Roman court; the prelates protesting, evidently for form’s sake, that they would assent to nothing that was injurious to the Church. Although the Pope still granted dispensations from the canon law, and his jurisdiction might still be invoked in cases for which no remedy was provided at common law, papal interference in legal matters of importance now became rare. New statutes of Provisors and Præmunire were promulgated in the next reign.

The victories of Edward and the Prince of Wales rendered the Popes powerless to resent anti-papal legislation. France was no longer able to protect them at Avignon. During their residence in that city the papacy had become French, and had consequently in a large measure lost its hold upon England. Repudiation of vassalage, 1366.Urban V. unwisely provoked a declaration that bore witness to this decline of influence. He wrote to Edward demanding the arrears of the tribute promised by John, and threatened to cite the king if he neglected payment. Edward laid the demand before the parliament that met in May 1366, and requested the advice of the estates. The prelates, speaking for themselves, asked for a day for deliberation. The next day the three estates separately and unanimously declared that John had no power to bring his realm and people under such subjection, and repudiated the vassalage and tribute that the Pope demanded. For a short time Edward stopped even the payment of Peter’s pence.

Early in the reign the Pope granted the king a clerical tenth for four years, and later, during the French war, the clergy taxed themselves heavily. All attempt to induce them to make their grants in parliament was discontinued, and they settled the amount of their contribution in their provincial convocations. In convocation they legislated without interference on spiritual matters, including those which concerned their jurisdiction. Parliament, however, did not allow them to enact anything that should bind the laity without its consent. Accordingly, when Stratford published a constitution on the right to the tithe of underwood, a petition was the next year presented by the commons, praying that the Crown would not grant any petition of the clergy that might prejudice the laity without examination; for, though the clergy legislated on the process for recovery of tithes, parliament claimed to determine their incidence. This distinction found its counterpart in jurisdiction; for the common law courts decided questions of right to tithes, while the spiritual courts enforced payment. In matters affecting temporal interests, parliament legislated for the Church. This legislation was during this period generally of a favourable character, and was founded on petitions from the clergy. Parliament, for example, declared by statute that the temporalities of bishops were not to be seized except according to the law of the land and after judgment, and that during a vacancy they were to be carefully and honestly administered. Again, as the pestilence raised the price of clerical as well as of all other labour, parliament in 1362 represented that chaplains had become scarce and dear, and prayed that they might be compelled to work for lower pay than they were in the habit of receiving. The king ordered the bishops to find a remedy; and they reported Islip’s constitution, which was thus turned into a parliamentary statute, a kind of “Statute of Labourers” for the unbeneficed clergy. Jurisdiction.Disputes still went on as to rights of jurisdiction, and in 1344, after the grant of a clerical tenth, it was enacted, with the assent of the lay estates, that the ecclesiastical courts should not be subject to unfair interference either by writs of prohibition or by inquiry by secular judges; the whole statute forming a kind of reading of “Circumspecte agatis” in the clerical interest.

Nevertheless the nation regarded the condition of the Church with growing discontent. The papal interference with the rights of patrons, besides grievously wronging the bishops and chapters, irritated the people at large, for they saw ecclesiastical offices and revenues held by foreigners who never set foot in England, and were in many cases their enemies. Of this perhaps enough has been said. Non-residence.Non-residence and plurality, however, were not confined to foreigners. All the great offices of State were, as a rule, held by bishops and other dignified clergy, who neglected their ecclesiastical for their civil duties; and the inferior clergy followed their example, and engaged in secular employments of all kinds. Non-residence was increased by the pestilence. Much land fell out of cultivation, and so ceased to yield tithes, and parsons left their parishes whenever they could obtain some profitable work to do elsewhere. So the poet of Piers Ploughman records how—

Parsons and parisshe preestes
That hire parisshes weren povere
To have a licence and leve
And syngen ther for symonie;

Somme serven the kyng
In cheker and in chauncelrie
Of wardes and of wardmotes
And somme serven as servauntz
And in stede of stywardes

Pleyned hem to the bisshope,
Sith the pestilence tyme,
At London to dwelle,
For silver is swete.

And his silver tellen
Chalangan his dettes
Weyves and streyves.
Lordes and ladies,
Sitten and demen.

In the absence of the parish priests, or while they were immersed in worldly affairs, the churches fell into decay, and the people were neglected. Secular employments.Wyclif tells us that secular employment was the only road to ecclesiastical preferment. “Lords,” he says, “wolen not present a clerk able of kunning of God’s law, but a kitchen clerk, or a peny clerk, or wise in building castles or worldly doing, though he kunne not reade wel his sauter.” Clergy such as these held a vast number of preferments, for the Pope readily granted dispensations for plurality. William of Wykeham, the king’s architect, afterwards bishop of Winchester, held at one time, while Keeper of the Privy Seal, the archdeaconry of Lincoln and eleven prebends in various churches.

The spiritual jurisdiction for which churchmen contended so jealously had altogether failed to preserve discipline. The secularization of the clergy rendered this failure specially disastrous; for a clerk, who had laid aside everything clerical except the tonsure, and had perhaps concealed that, if accused of any crime, however grave, was immediately claimed by his order, and was only amenable to a law that was powerless to inflict an adequate punishment for the worst offences. Nor were clerical offenders rare, for the number of those in orders of one kind or another was very large. Many of them had little to do, their duties merely consisting in the performance of anniversary services, and so, being idle, they were prone to self-indulgence and mischief. Several of the archbishops of Canterbury endeavoured, as we have seen, to restore discipline, but the spiritual courts were corrupt, and their efforts were of little avail. Yet, while the laity saw discipline utterly broken down, they found the spiritual courts strong enough to oppress them with heavy fees, especially in testamentary cases, and in various other ways, and the cost and vexation entailed by ecclesiastical processes were a constant source of irritation. At the same time, high as the pretensions of the clergy were, there can be no doubt that the clerical standard was lowered by the pestilence. Many benefices were suddenly vacated, and there were few to fill them. The ranks of the clergy must have been recruited with men of inferior education, and it was by them that the vacant cures were supplied. Some efforts were made to remedy the ignorance of those who should have been the teachers of the people. Islip’s foundation at Oxford has already been noticed; it was soon to be followed by the more magnificent foundations of William of Wykeham. Meanwhile, in the north, the most backward part of the kingdom, Archbishop Thoresby, a prelate of noble character, laboured to bring about a better state of things. He constantly visited different parts of his diocese, teaching, and correcting abuses, and in order that his people might know the elements of Christianity, he published a kind of catechism in two versions, one in Latin for the clergy, whose ignorance and carelessness he severely reprehended, and the other in English verse for the laity.

Discontent at the condition of the Church grew bitter as the people at large felt the burden of a war that had ceased to be glorious, and the general decline in prosperity aggravated the religious disaffection. Men saw with anger that, while the nation groaned under heavy taxation, the greater ecclesiastics held all the richest offices in the State as well as in the Church, and that, large as their revenues were, the country was misgoverned and the war mismanaged. Attack on the clerical ministers and the wealthy clergy, 1371.An anti-clerical party arose, and an attack was made on ecclesiastical ministers and the wealthier churchmen. When the Prince of Wales returned from Aquitaine, in January 1371, fresh supplies were demanded of parliament. In reply, the lay estates presented a petition complaining that the government had too long been in the hands of the clergy, who could not be called to account, and requesting that the king would consider that laymen were fit to be employed in offices of state. In consequence of this petition, the chancellor, William of Wykeham, and the treasurer, the bishop of Exeter, resigned, and their places were taken by laymen. An attempt of the monastic orders to claim exemption from the payment of subsidies led to some bitter words concerning the wealth of the greater churchmen. A lord compared the Church to an owl that was unfledged until each bird gave it a feather to deck itself with; suddenly, he said, a hawk appeared, and the birds demanded back their feathers in order that they might escape. The owl refused; so they stripped him, and flew away in safety, leaving him in worse plight than he was before. Even so, he continued, in this dangerous war ought we to take back from the wealthy clergy the temporalities which belong to us and to the realm, and defend the realm with these our own goods rather than by increased taxation. The clergy took the hint, and promised the Prince of Wales in convocation to grant £50,000, a sum to which even those whose endowments had hitherto escaped on account of their smallness were obliged to contribute. John of Gaunt returned the next year, and probably took the lead of the anti-clerical party, in opposition to the Prince of Wales, who upheld William of Wykeham. Although this year an attack was made in parliament on the lawyers, the abuses of the Church did not escape. Petitions were presented requesting that the king would confiscate the revenues of foreign beneficed clergy who did not live in the kingdom—this was refused; that bishops’ officials should demand less exorbitant fees in testamentary cases—in this matter the bishops were ordered to find a remedy; and that the benefices of clergy who lived in open concubinage should, if the bishop neglected to act, become ipso facto void, and that the Crown should present—to this no answer was returned.

When John of Gaunt came back from his unsuccessful campaign in 1373 his influence in parliament was lessened. Nevertheless a petition was presented against the encroachments of the clerical courts. A strong remonstrance was also made on the subject of reservations and provisions and on the withdrawal of money from the country by foreign ecclesiastics. Concordat with the Pope.To this the king replied that he had already sent an embassy to the Pope to represent these grievances, probably in consequence of the petition of the year before, and the matter was referred to a conference about to be held at Bruges. When the king’s demand for a tenth was laid before convocation by Archbishop Whittlesey, the clergy declared that they were undone by the exactions of the Pope and the king, and that they could better help the king “if the intolerable yoke of the Pope were taken from their necks;” and Courtenay, bishop of Hereford, protested that he would not consent to the grant unless some remedy were devised for these evils. The tenth was, however, granted, and all looked for what the negotiations at Bruges would bring forth. Conference at Bruges, 1374-1375.To this conference, which met the following year, Edward sent the bishop of Bangor, Dr. John Wyclif, and others, as his representatives to arrange a concordat with Gregory XI. The immediate results, which were declared in 1375, were unsatisfactory, for they were merely temporary in their application. However, in 1377, the king’s jubilee year, Edward announced that the Pope had promised that he would abstain from reservations; that he would not provide to any bishopric until sufficient time had elapsed for him to hear the result of the capitular election; that he would respect the elective rights of other capitular bodies; that he would diminish the number of foreign ecclesiastics; that though he would not give up his claim to first-fruits, which were still held to be an innovation, he would see that they did not press too heavily on the clergy; and that he would be moderate in issuing expectatives and provisions.

No parliament met from 1373 until the Good Parliament of 1376. In this parliament the party of reform was upheld by the Prince of Wales and the bishop of Winchester. The Prince of Wales died during the session of the parliament, and left the leaders of the party exposed to the vengeance of John of Gaunt. A series of accusations was brought against Wykeham, his temporalities were seized, and he was forbidden to come near the court. Accordingly, he did not come up to the convocation of 1377, and Simon Sudbury, the archbishop of Canterbury, refused to specially request his attendance. His opposition was overruled by Courtenay, now bishop of London, who dwelt on the injustice that had been done Wykeham by the Crown, and urged the clergy to make no grant until he joined them. Wykeham came up to convocation, and the king promised to redress his wrongs. And here, at the point at which the quarrel assumes a new phase, when the clergy were about to aim a blow at their enemy, John of Gaunt, by attacking his ally, John Wyclif, at the opening of strife between Lollardy and the Church, and at the beginning of a new era in the relations between Rome and the English and other national Churches, brought about by the papal Schism, this narrative reaches its appointed limit.

Each period of the history we have been studying has some special characteristics, and it may be convenient to sum them up briefly. The partial failure of the Kentish mission and the break-down of Gregory’s scheme of government left the English Church in a disorganized condition, and Rome had to win a second victory to save it from Celtic customs and separation from the rest of Christendom. The hero of that victory was Wilfrith, its token the restoration of the see of York. A new period opens with the work of Theodore, and extends from the victory of the Roman party at Whitby to the end of the greatness of the Northumbrian Church, and the establishment of the sovereignty of Wessex. 663-829.The diocesan scheme of Theodore succeeded, and is the basis of our present arrangement. His attempt to bring the whole Church under the rule of a single metropolitan failed, for the northern Church was for a season more advanced than the rest of the land in religion and culture; and its failure is marked by the restoration of the see of York to metropolitan rank. From the first the Church was national in character, independent of the rise and fall of the petty kingdoms into which the land was divided, and it became a powerful agent in the accomplishment of national unity. Nor was it by any means a handmaid of Rome, for the attempt of Wilfrith to regain his position by invoking the papal authority met with derision and defeat. From the first, too, the Church and the civil power worked in complete harmony, and when national unity was attained, the Church bore its own share in every department of the polity it had done so much to create. For a moment, indeed, its work in teaching the lesson of union was threatened by the baleful predominance of Mercia; for the foundation of the Mercian archiepiscopate was an attempt to make the Church minister to the greatness of a single kingdom; its failure saved her from degradation, and probably saved the nation from prolonged division. By Archbishop Ceolnoth’s alliance with Ecgberht, the Church adopted the interests of the line of kings under whom the unity of the nation was accomplished.

While the invasion of the Northmen completed the ruin of the northern church, Alfred and his son imparted new vigour to the life of the southern province, and their work was carried further forward by the great churchmen whose names are connected with the monastic revival of the tenth century. This period of recovery may be said to close with the death of Dunstan. Although the relations between England and Rome became more intimate under the immediate successors of Ecgberht, and especially under Alfred, the work of restoration was not due to direct Roman influence; it was effected mainly through intercourse with France, Flanders, and Germany. Throughout the period the unity of action of the Church and State is strongly marked; separate conciliar action became rare, and both spiritual and secular affairs were administered by statesmen-bishops. 988-1066.During the first part of the eleventh century this union became even more intimate, greatly to the loss of the Church; for the bishops were absorbed in worldly matters and party strife. Freedom from Roman interference and a long course of independent and purely national life, however good in themselves, proved dangerous, for the Church had not yet attained any widespread culture.