_CLERICAL PRETENSIONS._
STEPHEN AND THE ENGLISH CHURCH--ARCHBISHOP THEOBALD AND HENRY OF
WINCHESTER--THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR--THE SCUTAGE OF TOULOUSE--THOMAS THE
ARCHBISHOP--CLERICAL IMMUNITY--THE ARCHBISHOP IN EXILE--HIS
MARTYRDOM--HENRY'S GENERAL RELATIONS TO THE CHURCH--CONQUEST OF
IRELAND--RICHARD'S CRUSADE--LONGCHAMP--ARCHBISHOP HUBERT
WALTER--CHARACTER OF THE CLERGY.
[Sidenote: Stephen's accession, 1135.]
Under the Norman dynasty the natural results of the Conqueror's
ecclesiastical policy were controlled by the power of the Crown. Appeals
to Rome were almost unknown; the principles which the Conqueror had laid
down as defining the relations between the Crown and the papacy were
maintained, and the establishment of ecclesiastical courts had not as yet
proved mischievous; for in all serious cases the criminous clerk, after
having been degraded by the spiritual judge, was handed over to the
secular authority. Under a weak king, and then during a period of anarchy,
the Church became invested with extraordinary power; her relations with
Rome were increased, and new privileges were asserted which became
dangerous to civil order. The weakness in Stephen's title was a moral
one, for he and the nobles of the kingdom were pledged by oath to Matilda.
His right then depended on a question that especially concerned the
Church; and though he had received civil election, Archbishop William
hesitated to crown him. His scruples were overcome, and the approval of
the Church was secured by Henry, bishop of Winchester, Stephen's brother.
Stephen was crowned, after swearing to maintain the liberty of the Church,
and put forth a charter promising good government in general terms. The
next year, at Oxford, the bishops swore fealty to him "as long as he
should maintain the liberty and discipline of the Church," a ceremony that
may be described as a separate election by the Church, dependent on the
king's conduct towards her. Stephen, who had received a letter of
congratulation from Innocent II., now put forth a charter in which he
recited his claims. As king by the grace of God, elected by the clergy and
people, hallowed by William, archbishop and legate, and "confirmed by
Innocent, pontiff of the Holy Roman See," he promised that he would avoid
simony, and that the persons and property of clerks should be under the
jurisdiction of their bishops. Thus, in order to strengthen his position,
he not only gave prominence to the assent of the Church, but even cited
the approval of the Pope, as though it conferred some special validity on
the national election. This was, under the circumstances, the natural
result of Duke William's petition that Rome would sanction his invasion,
and justified Hildebrand's policy in espousing his cause.
[Sidenote: The Battle of the Standard, 1138.]
For a while the Church remained faithful to Stephen. The
statesmen-bishops, Roger, the justiciar, and his nephews, the bishop of
Ely, the treasurer, and the bishop of Lincoln, together with Bishop
Roger's son, also called Roger, the chancellor, continued to carry on the
administration. In the north a Scottish invasion was checked by the energy
of the aged Archbishop Thurstan, who from his sick-bed stirred the
Yorkshire men to meet the invaders. He was represented in the camp by his
suffragan, the bishop of the Orkneys. The standard of the English army
bore aloft the Host, and the figures of the patron saints of the three
great Yorkshire churches, and the "Battle of the Standard," in which the
Yorkshire men were completely victorious, had something of the character
of a Holy War, in which the archbishop acted, as of old, as the natural
head of the northern people.
[Sidenote: Stephen's quarrel with the Church.]
The mischievous results of the appointment of Archbishop William as legate
were apparent at his death; for Innocent granted a legatine commission,
not to his successor, Theobald, but to Henry of Winchester. The authority
of the see of Canterbury was thus grievously diminished, and the
archbishop was made second to a resident representative of the Pope, one
of his own suffragans. The abasement of Canterbury naturally drew the
Church into greater dependence on Rome, and appeals, which had hitherto
been almost unknown, became of constant occurrence. Equally unlike the
justiciar, Roger of Salisbury, who devoted himself to secular
administration and ambitions, and the churchmen who, full of the new
fervour of the Cistercian movement, sought to raise the spiritual dignity
of the Church, Henry of Winchester used his vast powers to exalt her
temporal greatness. His jealousy for the privileges of the clergy brought
him into collision with the king, who now by an act of extreme folly
provoked a quarrel with the clerical order. Stephen suspected the loyalty
of the bishop of Salisbury and his house, and caused him and the bishop of
Lincoln to be arrested at Oxford. They were powerful lords and had reared
several mighty castles. These they were forced to surrender by threats and
ill-treatment. Stephen acted with the violence of a weak man; he had
already lost the obedience of the barons, and the people must have learnt
that his promises were not to be relied on; now he ensured his fall by
offending the clergy. The legate summoned him to appear before a synod at
Winchester, and the king of England actually appeared by his counsellor,
Alberic de Vere, who made his defence. When he refused to restore the
bishops' castles there was some talk of laying the case before the Pope.
This he forbade, and yet appealed to Rome himself. At last he appeared
before the legate stripped of his royal robes, and humbly received his
censure "for having stretched out his hand against the Lord's anointed
ones." Nevertheless the Church was alienated from him, and after his
defeat at Lincoln the legate held another council at Winchester, and
announced as its result that the majority of the clergy, "to whom the
right of electing a prince chiefly belonged," had decided to transfer
their allegiance to the Empress. The legate found that Matilda had little
respect for the rights of the Church, and after a while turned against
her. The result of these rapid changes was to destroy the unity of the
clerical party.
[Sidenote: The dispute about the archbishopric of York.]
Hitherto Archbishop Theobald had generally followed the legate's lead, and
had played a secondary part in the affairs of the Church. In 1141,
however, a cause of difference arose between them. The York chapter
elected Stephen's nephew, William, to succeed Archbishop Thurstan. A
minority of the chapter declared that simony and undue influence had been
practised, and Theobald took their part, while Henry consecrated his
nephew in spite of him. Anxious to put his power beyond the reach of
fortune, the bishop of Winchester petitioned the Pope to make his see a
third archbishopric. His request was refused, and his legatine commission
expired in 1143, with the death of Innocent, the Pope who had granted it.
Chief among the opponents of the new archbishop of York were the
Cistercian abbeys of the north; and Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, the head
of the order, who was the guiding spirit of the papacy at this time, threw
all his weight on their side. He disapproved of the diminution of the
rights of Canterbury, and held that, in securing the see of York for their
nephew, Stephen and Henry were injuring the Church to serve their own
ends. Eugenius III. accordingly gave the legatine commission to Theobald.
Enraged at the opposition offered to Archbishop William by Henry Murdac,
abbot of Fountains, his partizans sacked and burnt the abbey. As an answer
to this outrage, Eugenius deprived William, and Murdac was elected
archbishop by his authority, and received consecration from him. Stephen
and Henry made a fatal mistake in matching themselves against the papacy,
with Bernard and the whole Cistercian order at its back. They did not
yield without a further struggle. Stephen forbade Theobald to attend the
Pope's Council at Rheims in 1148. In spite of this prohibition he went to
Rheims. Stephen banished him and seized his temporalities, until an
interdict was laid upon the royal lands, and he was forced to be
reconciled to him. Murdac made his position good at York. His rival,
William, outlived him, was re-elected, and died a month after he had
received the pall. During his retirement he led a holy and humble life,
and after his death became the special saint of his church. Stephen had
one more quarrel with Archbishop Theobald. He desired to have his son
Eustace, an evil and violent man, crowned as his successor. This was
forbidden by the Pope, and the primate and his suffragans refused the
king's request. He tried to frighten them by shutting them in the house
where they were consulting. The archbishop escaped across the Thames in a
boat, and went abroad, and the king again seized the temporalities of the
see.
[Sidenote: Theobald, Archbishop, 1139-1161.]
[Sidenote: Study of civil law.]
Unlike Henry of Winchester, Theobald was guided by the new ideas which
were born of the Cistercian revival. While desire for the secular
greatness of the Church, her splendour and her wealth, led Henry to scheme
and change sides according as he found Stephen or the Empress acting
against her interests, Theobald sought a higher power for her, and
attached himself to Bernard, who ruled Christendom by his sanctity and his
intellectual gifts. Theobald's household was the home of a little society
of men of like mind with himself. One of them was a young clerk of London,
named Thomas, who soon became his chief adviser; another was John of
Salisbury, who held a new office, that of the archbishop's secretary, or,
as he would be called now, his chancellor; for Theobald saw that the
archdeacons were by no means trustworthy officers, and appointed a
secretary to control the administration of ecclesiastical law. This was a
matter in which he took a deep interest, and the frequent appeals that
were now made to Rome gave it a special importance. In 1149 he brought
over from Italy a doctor named Vacarius, and set him to give lectures at
Oxford on the civil law, which supplied the method of procedure in
ecclesiastical cases. In the next reign the study of the canon law, which
was first systematized by Gratian of Bologna, was introduced into England,
and then the clergy had a code as well as a method of procedure of their
own. Stephen sent Vacarius out of the country, probably because he hated
new things; but the study of the civil law could not be stopped so easily.
With aims and interests such as these, Theobald had no desire to see the
anarchy which is generally called Stephen's reign prolonged. How terrible
in some parts that anarchy was, when men "said openly that Christ and His
saints slept," need not be described here. Some of the bishops rode to war
and behaved like lay barons; others were held back by fear from censuring
the ungodly. Nevertheless the Church still exhibited a pattern of order,
and strove to restore peace to the kingdom. Although Theobald entered into
no schemes for dethroning Stephen, he was fully convinced of the
importance of securing the succession for Henry of Anjou. His counsellor,
Thomas, now archdeacon of Canterbury, was urgent on the same side, and
they were at last joined in their efforts after peace by Henry of
Winchester. The chief obstacle was removed by the death of Eustace, and
the Treaty of Wallingford soon followed. Henry II. owed his throne in no
small degree to the support of the clergy.
[Sidenote: Thomas the Chancellor.]
[Sidenote: Taxation of ecclesiastical knights' fees.]
The young king chose for his chancellor Thomas, the archdeacon, to whose
good offices he was much indebted. Thomas's father, Gilbert Becket, a
wealthy trader, had been port-reeve of London. Thomas was sent to school
at Merton priory, and was taken away from the school there while still
young because his parents suffered serious losses. Nevertheless he was
able to study at Paris, and after his return to England was often the
companion of a rich noble named Richer de l'Aigle, who took him out
hunting and hawking. As his father was now badly off, he became clerk to a
merchant, whose name in English was Eightpenny, and after a while was
introduced to the archbishop, entered his household, and soon became his
most trusted adviser. He took orders, and received many rich preferments.
As chancellor, he held one of the most important offices in the kingdom,
and his duties brought him into constant companionship with the king, who
treated him as an intimate friend. He was diligent in his secular work;
he loved magnificence, and lived with grace and splendour. No chancellor
had been so great a man before. He probably had a large share in the
reorganization of the administrative machinery. One change was certainly
due to him--the commutation of military service for a money payment. A
step in this direction was made in 1156, when Henry laid a tax called
scutage on Church lands held by knight's service. Theobald objected to
this imposition, but his objections were fruitless. Three years later,
when the king was undertaking a war in Toulouse, the chancellor advised
him to take money from all who owed him military service, instead of
calling upon them to go to the war. The general importance of this measure
does not belong to our subject; the scutage of Toulouse concerns us here
simply because it was levied on church-lands. It excited far more
indignation among the clergy than the earlier tax, because they saw that
it was the beginning of a system, not an isolated expedient. The
chancellor was held to have done the Church a grievous injury, and even
his friends traced his later troubles to his sin against her.
[Sidenote: Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, 1162-1170.]
When, in 1162, Henry bade his chancellor accept the primacy, he hoped to
find him a powerful ally in carrying out the reforms he contemplated.
Thomas assented unwillingly, for he was resolved, if he took the office,
to maintain the claims of the Church to the utmost, and he knew that this
would bring him into collision with the king. Although his life had been
pure, it had not been clerical, and he had not even taken priest's orders
when he was elected archbishop. He now entered on a new life. Everything
that was then held becoming in a churchman and an archbishop he practised
to the utmost. With the whole-heartedness with which he had thrown himself
into his work as chancellor, he now, in a post that must have been less
congenial to his nature, set himself to live up to the highest ideal then
current of what an archbishop ought to be as regards both life and policy.
He had enemies, for some were jealous of him, and some were honestly
scandalized at his appointment. Ever regardless of the fear or favour of
men, he added to their number by prosecuting the rights of his see to
lands that had been alienated from it. In acting thus, his conduct, though
perhaps injudicious, certainly became his office. His position as the head
of the nation first brought him into opposition to the Crown. Henry wished
that a certain tax, probably a survival of the Danegeld, which was paid to
the sheriffs, should be brought into the royal revenue. The archbishop
objected, no doubt because he thought that this would revive the old tax.
"Saving your pleasure, lord king, we will not give it as revenue; but if
the sheriffs and officers of the counties do their duty by us, we will
never refuse it them by way of aid." The king was wroth. "By the eyes of
God!" he cried, "it shall be given as revenue, and entered in the king's
books; and you ought not to oppose me, for I am not oppressing any man of
yours against your will." The archbishop answered, "By the eyes you have
sworn by, my lord king, it shall not be levied from any of my lands, and
from the lands of the Church not a penny!" He seems to have carried his
point, and thus the first successful opposition to the will of the Crown
in a financial matter proceeded from the Church of England. Nor was the
archbishop slack in asserting the spiritual rights of his office; for he
excommunicated one of the king's tenants-in-chief, and when Henry bade him
absolve him, answered that it was not the king's business to say who
should be bound and who unbound. In this matter the king demanded no more
than the observance of one of the Conqueror's rules; the archbishop
asserted no more than one of the eternal rights of the Church, which she
had now become strong enough to claim.
[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical discipline.]
A greater conflict between the claims of the Crown and of the Church was
at hand. The Conqueror had strengthened himself by increasing the power of
the clergy; Henry could only establish the strong and orderly government
he aimed at by lessening it. We have seen how rapidly clerical influence
had grown during the anarchy owing to the suspension of the royal
authority, the multiplication of appeals, the attention paid by Theobald
to ecclesiastical law, and other causes. Clergy guilty of secular offences
were tried solely by ecclesiastical courts; and as the spiritual judges,
after inflicting an ecclesiastical penalty, refused to give up the
clerical offender to a secular court, many gross crimes met with wholly
inadequate punishments. For the number of persons in orders of different
degrees was very large, and all alike claimed immunity from civil
jurisdiction; and it is evident, though this was a matter of less
consequence, that all offences against the clergy were also claimed as
belonging to the province of the ecclesiastical courts.
[Sidenote: Constitutions of Clarendon, 1164.]
At a great council, held at Westminster in 1163, Henry asked if the
bishops would obey the "customs of his grandfather," if they would agree
that clerks convicted of secular crimes should, after degradation, be
punished as laymen. The primate declared that clerks were not subject to
the jurisdiction of an earthly king, and would only agree that a clerk
already degraded should for another offence be punished by a lay judge.
Henry asked the bishops if they would obey the "customs," and their reply,
"Saving our order," was virtually a refusal. At a later interview he
persuaded Archbishop Thomas to promise obedience to the customs
unreservedly. He then summoned a council at Clarendon, and there, under
strong pressure, the primate and his suffragans took the required pledge.
The council then proceeded to inquire what the customs were, and a body of
rules was drawn up called the "Constitutions of Clarendon." By these
Constitutions all cases touching advowsons and presentations were to be
tried in the king's court. The convicted clerk was no longer to be
protected by the Church. Appeals from the archbishop were to be heard by
the king, and were not to be carried further without his leave. Bishops
and all who held of the Crown as by barony were to take part in the
proceedings of the king's court until it came to sentence touching life or
limb. Elections to bishoprics and royal abbeys were to be made by the
higher clergy of the church in the king's chapel and with his assent, and
the elect was to do homage and fealty to the king as his liege lord before
he was consecrated. And the son of a villein was not to be ordained
without his lord's leave. When the primate heard the Constitutions he
refused to set his seal to them, declared he would not assent to them as
long as he had breath in his body, and suspended himself from his sacred
office until he had received the Pope's absolution from his hasty promise.
The Constitutions, which were founded on the relations existing between
the Church and the State in the reign of Henry I., were an attempt to
bring matters back to a stage which had now been passed, to define
relations that had hitherto been continually changing, and to establish a
system which, however generally excellent, was contrary to the spirit of
the age.
[Sidenote: Council of Northampton.]
Archbishop Thomas twice tried to flee to the Pope, and failed through
stress of weather or because the sailors were afraid of the king's anger.
In October he was summoned to appear before the king's council at
Northampton, and there an effort was made to crush him by multiplied
suits. At last the king demanded an account of all the sums that had
passed through his hands during his chancellorship, though he had already
received a quittance. At Westminster and at Clarendon the bishops had
sided, though timidly, with their primate, for the nature of the dispute
forced them to do so. Now, when the whole business was reduced to a
personal attack upon him, they sided with the king, just as their
predecessors had done when Rufus attacked Anselm and Henry disputed with
him. For though the pretensions of the Church limited the power of the
Crown, and though Anselm and Becket each in his own day struggled for
those pretensions, the bishops as a body were always on the king's side,
for he had given them their office either because they had served him
well, or because he expected them to be useful to himself. Accordingly
Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, a churchman of considerable worldly
wisdom, who held that a quarrel with the king would injure the interests
of the Church, advised the archbishop to submit to Henry, and other
bishops said much the same. Thomas forbade them to sit in judgment on him,
and appealed from his lay judges to the Pope. Before long he escaped from
England, sorely against the king's will, and went to Pope Alexander III.
at Sens, who at once condemned the Constitutions.
[Sidenote: The archbishop in exile.]
Alexander III. was in exile in France, for his rival, Victor, who was
upheld by the Emperor Frederic I., was powerful in Italy, and he naturally
held that it was more important to secure his own position than to uphold
the English primate. He could not afford to offend Henry, lest he should
take the side of the Emperor and his schismatical Pope. Accordingly he
bade the archbishop keep silence for a while; and as Thomas did not think
it seemly to stay in the dominions of Lewis of France, who was at enmity
with Henry, he took up his abode in the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, in
Burgundy. When Victor died, in 1165, the Emperor set up another Pope, and
made alliance with Henry, who was, perhaps, only saved from actively
espousing the cause of the imperialist antipope by the wisdom of his
justiciar, the earl of Leicester. Indeed, the ambassador he sent to the
Emperor's council at Wuerzburg renounced the Pope in his master's name and
promised that Henry would help Frederic's antipope. That year, however,
Alexander returned to Rome, and felt himself strong enough to send the
exiled primate a legatine commission. In virtue of this commission, Thomas
in 1166 went to Vezelay, and there, in the abbey church, in the presence
of a large congregation, excommunicated all the king's party, both clergy
and laymen. He had heard that Henry was ill, and therefore did not
excommunicate him. Nevertheless, with a voice choked with tears, he
threatened him by name with a like sentence. In return, Henry so
frightened the Cistercians that Thomas was virtually forced to leave
Pontigny. This retaliation was as foolish as it was tyrannical; for the
archbishop took shelter in France, and so gave Lewis a fresh means of
annoying the English king. The details of the quarrel are intricate and
somewhat wearisome. None of those concerned acted with dignity. Henry
weakened his own position by appealing to the Pope to judge between him
and one of his own subjects; he assented to the Pope's decrees when they
were in his own favour, and resisted them when they were against him.
Thomas was violent, and multiplied excommunications. Several efforts were
made to bring about a reconciliation between him and Henry, and a meeting
took place between them at Montmirail in 1169. The archbishop, however,
would not be content with anything less than a complete surrender on the
king's part, and the conference ended fruitlessly. Alexander sometimes
upheld, and sometimes thwarted Thomas, just as his own interests dictated,
and pursued a course that seemed to the stout-hearted archbishop mean and
pusillanimous. "In the Roman court," he indignantly wrote, "Barabbas
escapes and Christ is put to death." Lewis simply used the quarrel to his
own advantage, and supported the archbishop just as he supported the lords
of Henry's vassal states against him.
[Sidenote: The archbishop's martyrdom, 1170.]
A new phase of the dispute arose from Henry's wish to have his eldest son
crowned. The archbishop of Canterbury alone had the right to perform the
ceremony; and when Thomas insisted on this right he was not contending for
an empty honour; for coronation was held to be necessary to kingship, and
it was the archbishop's duty to receive a pledge of good government from
the king he crowned. Alexander first agreed to allow Roger of York to
crown the young king, and, later, sent to prohibit him from doing so.
Henry prevented the prohibition from being brought into England, and Roger
performed the ceremony. Lewis now threatened war, and the Pope's advisers
urged him to vindicate the rights of Canterbury. Henry was thus driven to
a reconciliation, and Thomas returned to his see. He at once suspended the
bishops who had taken part in the coronation, renewed the excommunications
he had already pronounced against some of them, and excommunicated some of
his personal enemies who had annoyed him by violent and brutal acts. The
consciousness that he was endangering his own life had no weight with him,
for he constantly anticipated and even aspired to martyrdom. When the
king, who was still in Normandy, heard of his proceedings he was furiously
angry, and thoughtlessly exclaimed to his courtiers, "Of the cowards who
eat my bread, is there none that will rid me of this troublesome priest?"
Moved by these hasty words, four knights crossed the Channel, proceeded to
Canterbury, and after insulting the archbishop in his palace, broke into
the church where the monks had compelled him to take shelter. One bade him
flee, for else he was a dead man. "I welcome death," he said, "for God and
for the liberty of the Church." They tried to lay hands on him, and then
the feelings of his younger days, long kept down by self-mortification,
asserted themselves. He struggled with the armed men, and threw one to the
ground. He cried to another not to dare to touch him, and called him by a
foul name. The knights shouted, "Strike! strike!" Then he commended his
"soul and the Church's cause to God, to St. Denys of France, to St.
Elphege and all the Saints." His murderers attacked him with their swords,
and he died with holy words upon his lips. He fell a martyr to the
privileges or "liberty" of the Church. That these privileges were not
really beneficial to her is not to the purpose. Men and causes are to be
judged by the standard of their own age, and neither then nor for
centuries later did any doubt that he laid down his life for the cause of
God and His Church.
[Sidenote: Henry's bishops.]
The murder of the archbishop seemed likely to ruin the king. Miracles were
worked at the tomb of the martyr, and he was at once accepted as a saint.
Although his murder did not cause the revolt that followed it, the
disorganization it produced made revolt opportune. The only bishop
concerned in this movement was Hugh Puiset of Durham, a crafty and
powerful prelate, who had some underhand dealings with the Scots, and
whose castles were in consequence seized by the king. Henry renounced the
Constitutions, promised not to hinder appeals, and submitted to a
scourging from the monks of Christ Church. Yet the Church lost much; for
the quarrel put an end to the effort to attain to a higher ecclesiastical
standard that had been made by Theobald and the clerks of his household,
and a fresh wave of secularity swept over the Church. This was largely due
to Henry's policy. He kept sees vacant and took their revenues. "Is it not
better," he would say, "that the money should be spent on the necessary
affairs of the kingdom than on the luxuries of bishops? For the bishops of
our time are not like what bishops used to be; they are careless and
slothful about their office, and embrace the world with all their arms."
He might have made bishops of another stamp, but when, after his
absolution, six vacant sees were filled up, he took care that they should
go to men who belonged to his own party. Lincoln he gave to his natural
son, Geoffrey, who was then a mere lad. The Pope ordered that his
consecration should be deferred; yet he held the see, though he was not
even a priest, for eight years, until Alexander III. commanded him either
to take episcopal orders or to give it up. Then he gave it up, became
chancellor, and on his father's death was elected to York. Towards the end
of his reign Henry insisted on the election of a bishop of nobler
character to the see of Lincoln. This was Hugh of Avalon, the bravest and
noblest churchman of his day, whom the king had brought over from Burgundy
to govern the little monastery he had founded at Witham, and whom, to his
honour, he liked and reverenced. The Lincoln chapter would have preferred
a more worldly bishop, and elected several ministers of state and
courtiers, one after another. Henry would have none of them; he would not,
he said, "for the future, give a bishopric to any one for favour, or
relationship, or counsel, or begging, or buying, but only to those whom
the Lord should choose for Himself." Canterbury remained vacant for five
years after the death of Archbishop Thomas, for some difficulties arose
about the election. At last Richard, prior of Dover, was elected. The
young King Henry, a worthless man and a rebellious son, affected to be
scandalized at his father's interference in episcopal elections, and
declared that he managed matters by saying, "I charge you to hold a free
election, yet I forbid you to elect any one but my clerk Richard." The
archbishop was an easy-going man, and did not please Becket's party.
Neither he nor the bishops caused the king any trouble during the
remainder of his reign.
[Sidenote: His general relations to the Church.]
Although the Constitutions of Clarendon were nominally abandoned, they had
considerable effect on the future relations between Church and State, and
indeed determined their development. Even in Henry's reign the privileges
which Archbishop Thomas had claimed for the Church were slightly
curtailed. With the papal sanction, clerks were made amenable to the
forest laws; for what business had they to hunt? And the murderers of
clerks were given up to the civil courts; for the claim of the Church to
punish them was reduced to an absurdity when it sheltered Becket's
murderers from justice, and they were simply punished by such penalties as
the Pope, the supreme spiritual judge, could inflict. As Henry caused the
lands of the Church, which had hitherto escaped taxation, to bear their
share of scutage, so when, for the first time, he introduced a tax on
movables the clergy were taxed equally with the laity. This tax, called
the Saladine tenth, was granted the king by a great council, and the
property both of clerks and laymen was assessed by a jury.
[Sidenote: Legates.]
After Becket's death Henry took care to keep on good terms with Rome. At
his request a legate named Hugh visited this country, partly, at least, to
settle a new dispute between Canterbury and York, and from him the king
obtained leave to bring the clergy under the forest laws. So far had the
martyrdom of St. Thomas injured the independence of the kingdom that even
a matter of domestic law was submitted to the papal judgment. Hugh's
mission was not successful. At a council held at Westminster in 1176,
Roger of York tried to squeeze himself into a more honourable seat than
the archbishop of Canterbury. This led to a disturbance in which sticks
and fists were freely used. Hugh ran about the chapel in terror, and
finding "that he had no authority in England," soon went his way. A few
months later Henry showed that, in spite of his late humiliation, he was
not prepared to be the Pope's humble servant; for when another legate
landed on his way to Scotland, he sent two bishops, who asked him "by
whose authority he dared to enter his kingdom without his leave," and
exacted a promise from him that he would do nothing here without his will.
[Sidenote: Heresy.]
Early in the reign we find the spiritual and the secular power acting
together in a case that was wholly new to Englishmen. Some thirty
German-speaking heretics, probably natives of Flanders, landed here, and
made one disciple--a woman. No Christian heretics had ever appeared in
England before. Henry summoned a council of bishops to meet at Oxford in
1166; the heretics were found guilty, and were handed over to the
"Catholic king." They were condemned to be branded, flogged out of the
city, and then to be shunned by all men. Left without food or shelter in
the midst of winter, they soon perished. The special action taken with
regard to these heretics illustrates the uncertainty of the law as to the
punishment of heresy. Here as elsewhere the Church kept itself free from
the pollution of blood, and handed the heretic over to the secular power.
Although in the reign of John a clerk who apostatized to Judaism was burnt
at Oxford, burning for heresy had no place in the common law of England,
except such as was given it by writers of law-books, who were under the
influence of the Roman jurisprudence. England was generally free from
heresy until the time of Wyclif; the papal Inquisition, though used to
some extent for the suppression of the Templars, was not introduced into
the kingdom, and the subject of heresy and its punishment is of no
practical importance until the appearance of the Lollards.
[Sidenote: Conquest of Ireland.]
While the Scottish bishops were, as we have seen, released by the Pope
from dependence on the see of York, the influence of the Church of England
was extended both in Ireland and Wales. The Church in Ireland seems to
have done little to civilize the people: it had lost the early glories of
its missionary days, while it retained its lack of order and its inability
to rule itself or others. Almost to the eve of the Conquest it had no
archbishops, and had a crowd of bishops without a regular diocesan system.
These and other irregularities caused some of the bishops of the Ostmen's
towns to seek consecration from Lanfranc and Anselm. St. Bernard and
Eugenius III. tried hard to introduce some order into the Church, and
their efforts were seconded by the Irish bishop, Malachi. Four sees were
raised to metropolitan rank, and some steps were taken towards
establishing an orderly system. Still, much remained to be done, and
Hadrian IV. (Nicolas Brakespear), the only English Pope, willingly
sanctioned Henry's proposal to invade Ireland, and in 1155 sent him the
bull "Laudabiliter," bidding him conquer the land for the increase of the
Church, together with a ring conveying investiture of the country. He did
this in virtue of the forged donation of Constantine, which purported to
put all islands under the lordship of the Pope. Hadrian's answer to
Henry's request was, therefore, a repetition of the answer that Alexander
II. made to the request of William. Both Popes alike sanctioned the
invasion of a Christian land by a foreign enemy in order to spread the
power of the Roman Church. Henry did not take advantage of Hadrian's bull
until after the death of Becket. Ireland was conquered by private
adventurers, and it only remained for him to receive its submission. He
held the land by the Pope's gift, and he was not unmindful of the benefit
he had received, for he called together a synod at Cashel, which passed
decrees bringing the Church of Ireland into conformity with the Roman
order. By far the larger part of the country, however, was virtually
unaffected by the Conquest, and equally unaffected by the Council of
Cashel. Nor did it become thoroughly papal until Henry VIII. quarrelled
with the papacy. Then he disowned the Roman suzerainty by causing himself
to be proclaimed king of Ireland, and the papacy appeared as the champion
of a country which it had given over to foreign invasion. Unfortunately
the bishops that Ireland received from the English kings were often mere
ministerial officials, and sometimes little better than the fierce lords
of the English Pale.
[Sidenote: The English Church in Wales.]
In Wales, Henry used the Church for political ends, and ruled the country
by means of its Norman bishops. The consequence of this policy was, that
the bishops were worldly and greedy men, and were hated by the natives,
the clergy were ignorant and debased, and the people resisted the claims
of the Church. Gerald de Barri, archdeacon of Brecknock, a young man of a
noble Norman house, though on his mother's side of the blood-royal of
Wales, was appointed by Archbishop Richard as his commissioner to reform
the abuses of the Church. He was brave and energetic, very learned and
very witty, and most of his books, and especially his "Topography of
Ireland" and his "Ecclesiastical Jewel," are delightful reading. While
effecting many reforms in the Welsh Church, he seems to have excited the
clergy to attempt to gain metropolitan rank for the see of St. David's.
This would have been wholly contrary to Henry's policy, for it would have
given the Welsh a national leader, and he refused their request. Gerald
spent many years of his life, partly in the pursuit of this object, and
partly in trying to procure his confirmation as bishop of St. David's. He
was twice elected to the bishopric, once in the reign of Henry, and again
at the accession of John; he laid his case before Innocent III., and
engaged in a long suit at the papal court. St. David's, however, never
became a metropolitan see, and he never became its bishop.
[Sidenote: Richard's crusade.]
Among the causes that magnified the papal power here and elsewhere must be
reckoned the crusades. The Pope alone could release from their vow those
who had taken the cross; he became, in a certain sense, the director of
the military force of Christendom, and he gained a new claim to interfere
in the mutual relations of states. England took little part in the first
two crusades, though in Stephen's time our seaport towns joined in a naval
crusade of burghers and seamen, who took Lisbon from the Moors. In 1185
the patriarch of Jerusalem urged Henry to come to the help of the Holy
city. Two or three barons went to the war, and the king thought of going
in person, for he was the head of the Angevin house, to which the kings
of Jerusalem belonged. He did not do so, for the same reason which, it is
alleged, kept the Confessor from making his proposed pilgrimage. A great
council, evidently mainly ecclesiastical in character, reminded him of his
coronation oath, and told him that it was his duty to stay and look after
the interests of his own kingdom. Two years later Christendom was startled
by the news of the fall of Jerusalem. Henry, his son Richard, and many
nobles took the cross, and Archbishop Baldwin, accompanied by Gerald de
Barri, preached the crusade in Wales, and gained a vast number of
recruits. Henry died before he could perform his vow, and Richard
immediately began to prepare for his expedition. It was important alike
for the good of the kingdom and for his own success that he should decide
who should go with him, and accordingly he obtained leave from Clement
III. to dispense with crusading vows for money. Before he sailed he sold
all the lands, jurisdictions, and offices he could find purchasers for.
[Sidenote: William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, 1189-1197.]
Richard left the administration in the hands of churchmen, and all through
his reign the affairs of the kingdom were managed by bishops. William
Longchamp, bishop of Ely, bought the chancellorship; Hugh of Puiset, the
justiciarship, and the earldom of Northumberland; and Richard, bishop of
London, was treasurer. William Longchamp was a man of low birth, lame and
insignificant in person, haughty in manner, of overweening ambition, and
careless of the rights of others, active, able, and faithful to his
master. Hugh of Puiset, who came of a noble house, was stately and
gracious, wary, and full of secular affairs--a rich and powerful
prince-bishop. The two ministers soon quarrelled. Bishop William proved
the stronger, and put Hugh under arrest. "By the life of my lord," he
said, "you shall not go hence till you give me hostages for the surrender
of your castles; for I am not a bishop arresting a bishop, but a
chancellor arresting his rival." He received a legatine commission, and
became sole justiciar. He used his power arrogantly, and so enabled John,
the king's brother, to assume the position of a defender of the rights of
others. His fall was brought about by an act of violence. Geoffrey, the
elect of York, who had met with much opposition from his chapter and from
the bishop of Durham, had at last been consecrated in France by the Pope's
orders. He now returned to England, in spite, it is said, of having
promised the king that he would not do so. An attempt was made to arrest
him when he landed at Dover, and he fled to the priory church for refuge.
The soldiers of the constable of the castle, the chancellor's
brother-in-law, dragged him out of the church by his feet and arms, and he
was imprisoned in the castle. There was great indignation at this act.
Hugh of Lincoln at once excommunicated the constable and all who had
abetted him. Churchmen spoke of Geoffrey as a second St. Thomas, and the
lay barons were wroth at the insult put on the son of the late king. All
parties united against the chancellor; he was deposed from his office and
compelled to leave the kingdom.
[Sidenote: Archbishop Hubert, 1193-1205.]
Richard was made prisoner as he was returning from the crusade, and his
brother John raised a revolt against him. The king committed his interests
to Hubert Walter, bishop of Salisbury. Hubert, as dean of York, had been
one of Geoffrey's enemies; he was made bishop by Richard, and accompanied
him to Acre, where, we are told, he was equally distinguished as a
warrior, a commander, and a pastor. Archbishop Baldwin having died at Acre
in 1190, the suffragan bishops and the monks of Christ Church, in
obedience to the king's will, elected Hubert to the archbishopric in 1193,
and shortly afterwards Richard appointed him chief justiciar. A relation
of Ralf Glanville, the famous justiciar of Henry II., Hubert had been
brought up in a good school for statesmanship, and he did credit to his
training. He excommunicated John, took his castles, and ensured his fall
by raising the money for the king's ransom. On Richard's return Hubert
placed the crown on his head at his second coronation at Winchester, and
the king obtained the legatine commission for him. When Richard again left
England, Hubert virtually became viceroy of the kingdom. He triumphed over
his old enemy, Geoffrey, sent judges to York to decide the dispute between
him and his chapter, allowed them to seize the estates of the see, and
upheld the cause of the canons, who obtained a papal judgment against
their archbishop. Geoffrey left England, and remained abroad for the next
five years. During his absence Hubert visited York both as legate and as
justiciar.
[Sidenote: Bishop Hugh of Lincoln opposes an unconstitutional tax, 1198.]
More honourable to Hubert than this almost personal triumph is his
administrative work. Of this it will be sufficient to say here, that he
had constantly to find large sums of money for the king; that he did so as
far as possible by constitutional methods; that in doing so he accustomed
the people to make elections and act by representatives; and that he
preserved internal order and developed the constructive work of Henry II.
Richard's demands for money were heavy, and though Becket had once opposed
Henry on a fiscal question, no constitutional resistance had ever yet been
made to a tax proposed by the Crown. Now, however, the nation was to
receive from the Church its first lesson in the principle that taxes
should only be imposed with the consent of those who have to pay them. At
an assembly held at Oxford in 1198 the archbishop, on the king's behalf,
proposed to the barons and bishops that they should maintain three hundred
knights for a year to serve across the sea. Then Hugh of Lincoln answered,
that though he had come to England as a stranger, he would maintain the
rights of his church, and that though it was bound to do military service
within the kingdom, the king could not claim such service beyond the sea,
and that he would not contribute to a foreign war. Herbert of Salisbury
also spoke to the same effect. Their answers naturally appealed to the
interests of the lay barons, and the demand was refused, greatly to the
king's annoyance.
Hubert's position was not altogether pleasant. The king was always calling
on him to find fresh supplies, and he was harassed by a suit brought
against him at Rome by his chapter about the college he was building at
Lambeth, a subject that belongs to another volume of this series. A
serious trouble had also arisen in 1196. The taxes pressed heavily on the
lower classes, and a revolt was raised in London, where the richer
citizens were accused of throwing the burden of taxation on the poor. The
leader of the discontented citizens was a demagogue named William
Fitz-Osbert, or William Longbeard, as he was commonly called. Hubert tried
to arrest him, but William fled for refuge to the church of St.
Mary-le-Bow. By Hubert's order the church was set on fire, and William was
smoked out, taken, and hanged. The church belonged to the convent of
Christ Church, and the monks, indignant at this breach of sanctuary,
complained to Pope Innocent III., who in 1198, wrote to Richard urging him
to dismiss his minister, and commanding that for the future bishops and
priests should not take part in civil administration. Hubert was therefore
compelled to resign the justiciarship.
Much was lost by the absorption of the clergy in secular matters, and St.
Hugh did not fail to urge the archbishop to attend less to the affairs of
the State and more to those of the Church. The evils that oppressed the
Church, the debased lives of the clergy, who generally lived in
concubinage, the greediness of the archdeacons and other officials, the
worldliness of the bishops, and the venality of the Roman court, are
exposed in the satires which bear the name of "Bishop Golias," and are
attributed to Walter Map, archdeacon of Oxford. In these poems scarcely a
sign appears of any hope of a higher ecclesiastical life; worldliness and
evil are represented as triumphant in Christendom. Yet there were some
churchmen living noble lives, and the power which St. Hugh exercised in
Church and State shows that matters were not past hope. As far as the
State was concerned, the employment of the clergy in secular matters was
no small gain. Besides providing the country with a succession of highly
trained officers, the Church forwarded constitutional development. Just as
at first she taught the State how to attain unity, so now she afforded it
an example of organization and progress.