With respect to the organization of the Church, no changes were made
under the Norman kings. They, however, generally deposed the English
bishops and substituted Normans or foreigners, who, as a class, were
superior in education to the English. William the Conqueror made it
pretty clearly understood that he considered the Church subordinate to
his will, and that in all cases of dispute about temporal matters, he,
and not the Pope, was to decide (S118). During the Norman period
great numbers of monasteries were built.
In one very important respect William the Conqueror greatly increased
the power of the Church by establishing ecclesiastical courts in which
all cases relating to the Church and the clergy were tried by the
bishops according to laws of their own. Persons wearing the dress of
a monk or priest, or those who could manage to spell out a verse of
the Psalms, and so pass for ecclesiastics, would claim the right to be
tried under the Church laws, and, as the punishments which the Church
inflicted were notoriously mild, the consequence was that the majority
of criminals escaped the penalty of their evil doings. So great was
the abuse of this privilege, that, at a later period, Henry II made an
attempt to reform it (S164); but it was not wholly and finally done
away with until the beginning of the nineteenth century.