_VASSALAGE._
THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE CROWN--CORONATION OF
JOHN--QUARREL BETWEEN JOHN AND THE POPE--THE INTERDICT--VASSALAGE OF
ENGLAND--THE GREAT CHARTER--PAPAL TUTELAGE OF HENRY III.--TAXATION OF
SPIRITUALITIES--PAPAL OPPRESSION--EDMUND RICH, ARCHBISHOP--ROBERT
GROSSETESTE, BISHOP OF LINCOLN--ALIENATION FROM ROME--CIVIL
WAR--INCREASE OF CLERICAL PRETENSIONS--THE CANON LAW.
[Sidenote: Alliance between the Church and the Crown.]
For nearly a century and a half after the Norman Conquest the Church was
in alliance with the Crown. For, though Anselm and Thomas withstood the
royal power when it threatened to overthrow the liberty and privileges of
the Church, and Theobald, Thomas, and Hugh of Lincoln each opposed demands
that seemed to them contrary to right, the bishops generally were staunch
supporters of the Crown, and their alliance helped the king to triumph
over the baronage. This was for the good of the nation at large; for the
orderly though stern despotism of the king was a source of prosperity to
the country, while feudal anarchy entailed general misery and ruin. The
strength of the Crown, and its general alliance with the bishops, enabled
it to preserve an independent attitude towards Rome, and this secured the
Church from papal oppression. Indeed, it was to Rome that churchmen looked
for help when the law of conscience to which they adhered was in danger of
being trodden down by royal power. As long as the king and the Pope had
separate interests the Church was tolerably secure from wrong. In the
present chapter we shall see how the alliance between the Church and the
Crown was broken by the tyranny of John; how the Church, though she gained
her rights, was not content with a selfish victory, and placed herself in
the forefront of the battle for national liberty; how the Crown stooped to
become the vassal of Rome; and how, throughout the larger part of the long
reign of Henry III., the alliance thus formed between the Pope and the
king caused the Church to be ground between the upper and nether
millstones of royal and papal oppression.
[Sidenote: Coronation of John, 1199.]
While the accession of John was strictly in accordance with constitutional
usage, it brought the elective character of the monarchy into special
prominence; and Archbishop Hubert, at the coronation, while declaring him
qualified for election, asserted the freedom of the people's choice, and
made a special appeal to John to observe the oath which he had taken. It
seems as though, like Dunstan when he crowned AEthelred, he foresaw the
consequences of his act, and strove, as the representative of the English
Church and people, to impress on the new king the duty he owed to both.
Hubert accepted the chancellorship, which was held to be beneath his
dignity as archbishop; he used his power to restrain the king from evil,
and the hatred that John bore to his memory proves that his death, which
took place in 1205, was a national calamity.
[Sidenote: Quarrel between John and Innocent III., 1205.]
Before Hubert was buried the younger monks of Christ Church met by night,
and without waiting for the king's leave, elected their sub-prior,
Reginald, archbishop, and sent him to Rome for confirmation, bidding him
tell no one of his new honour. Nevertheless, as soon as he landed in
Flanders he gave out that he was archbishop-elect. The king was angry with
the convent, for he wished to nominate John de Gray, bishop of Norwich,
one of his ministers; the suffragan bishops complained that they had been
allowed no share in the election, and the elder and younger monks were
opposed to each other. John caused the convent to elect the bishop of
Norwich, and gave him the temporalities, and all the parties appealed to
Innocent III. After considerable delay--for delays were profitable to the
papal court--Innocent declared that the right of election belonged solely
to the monks, and that the suffragan bishops had no claim to share in it.
He annulled the election of Reginald as altogether illegal, and that of
Bishop John, because it was made before the other was declared void; and
then, on the ground that the church of Canterbury should no longer be left
desolate, commanded the monks, whom John had sent over to uphold his
cause, to elect Stephen Langton, an Englishman, and a cardinal of high
position and character. John had given the monks full powers, for he
thought that he could trust them, and after a little pressure they yielded
to the Pope's command. Innocent wrote to John bidding him receive
Stephen. The king answered angrily that he would not do so, that he knew
nothing of Stephen save that he had lived among his enemies, that Rome got
more out of England than any country on this side the Alps, but that he
would narrow the road thither, and that he had plenty of learned prelates
in his dominions, and was in no need of sending to a foreigner for
judgments. Innocent, who had already shown that he was determined to
maintain his authority, as the Vicar of Christ, to judge the kings of the
earth, was not to be frightened, and consecrated Stephen Langton. The king
turned out the monks of Christ Church, seized the property of the house,
and remained obstinate. Meanwhile he quarrelled with the Northern
metropolitan also. Many heavy taxes had been laid upon the country, and
his brother, Archbishop Geoffrey, refused to allow a new subsidy, demanded
from clergy and laity alike, to be levied in his province, and
excommunicated the collectors; he appealed to Innocent, but was forced to
leave the kingdom, and died abroad.
[Sidenote: Interdict, 1208-1213.]
When every attempt to persuade John to receive the archbishop had failed,
the Pope bade the bishops of London, Ely, and Worcester lay the kingdom
under an interdict. No church bells might be rung, no service sung save in
low tones, no sacraments administered save confession and the sacrament
for the dying, and the dead were buried in unconsecrated ground like dogs,
without prayer or priest. In answer, John confiscated all the goods of the
clergy and sealed up their barns; the women who lived with them as their
wives (_focariae_) were seized, and they were forced to ransom them, and
were ill-used and robbed of their horses as they rode on the highways by
the king's men. Several bishops fled the kingdom. This state of things
went on for about four years. It was not an unprosperous time with John;
he got a great deal of money out of the revenues of the Church and out of
the Jews, and made some successful expeditions. At last, in 1212, the Pope
published his sentence of special excommunication against him, and
absolved his subjects from their allegiance. Men began to say that it was
not well to associate with an excommunicated king; and for words like
these the archdeacon of Norwich, one of John's fiscal officers, was put to
death, partly by starvation, and partly by being weighed down by a massive
cloak of lead. Philip II. of France was charged by the Pope to carry out
the sentence of deposition, and threatened to invade England.
[Sidenote: John becomes the Pope's vassal.]
John now found himself in evil case. Wherever he turned there was, or
seemed to be, danger; the Welsh rose in rebellion, and word was brought
him that his barons, many of whom he had deeply injured, were conspiring
against him. Besides, he was much frightened by the prophecy of a certain
hermit of Wakefield, who in 1212 declared that on the next Ascension Day
he would no longer be king, a prophecy that was repeated from mouth to
mouth all through the land. He now gave way entirely; he agreed to receive
the archbishop, and to recompense the exiled prelates and the Canterbury
monks. On 15th May, 1213, he made submission to the Pope in the person of
his legate, a sub-deacon named Pandulf, placed his crown in Pandulf's
hands at Dover, did liege homage on receiving it again, and promised the
payment of a yearly tribute of 1000 marks for the kingdom of England and
the lordship of Ireland. Thus the king of England declared himself the
Pope's vassal, and it became the interest of the Pope to uphold his
authority. The ecclesiastical difficulty was over, and the victory lay
with the Church. Nevertheless the Church, in the person of the primate,
now dared to strive against both Pope and king for the liberties of the
nation.
[Sidenote: The primate and the barons.]
The barons, who had stood by quietly while John plundered the Church, felt
that it was time to take measures to check his tyranny, for they were
disgusted at his pusillanimous submission to the Pope. At a council held
at St. Alban's, the justiciar, Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, spoke of the oath the
king had taken at his absolution to govern well, and referred to the
charter of Henry I. as a standard of good government. He died soon after,
and Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, a Poitevin, whom John chose as
his successor, was no friend to English freedom. The archbishop then came
to the front; he held a council of clergy and nobles at St. Paul's, and
produced Henry's charter, which seems to have been lost, and had it read
before them. The barons were exceeding glad when they heard it, and all
took an oath before him that they would fight to the death for the
liberties it contained. He promised that he would help them, and so they
made a league together. John turned for help to his liege lord, sent a
large sum to the Pope, begging him to "confound" the archbishop and
excommunicate the barons, and renewed his submission to the papal legate,
Nicolas of Tusculum. This Nicolas filled up the many ecclesiastical
offices that had fallen vacant during the interdict without regard to the
rights of patrons or electors, ordained unfit men, and set at nought the
authority of the bishops. They appealed to Innocent, but no good came of
it. Meanwhile the northern barons maintained an attitude of opposition to
the king, and refused to take part in his war with Philip of France.
Moreover, the barons of Poitou would not follow him, his army was defeated
at Bouvines, and he came back to England in the autumn of 1214 utterly
discredited. During his absence the compensation he had promised had been
paid to the bishops and the interdict had been removed, so that his peace
with Rome was now firmly secured. On the other hand, the barons,
considering that the peace which the king had made with Philip left them
exposed to his vengeance, entered into a fresh bond of confederation.
Accordingly John endeavoured, with some skill, to divide his enemies, and
above all to persuade Stephen Langton to desert the common cause. He
issued a charter granting full freedom of election to the Church. When a
bishopric or abbacy fell vacant the royal license to elect was to be
granted without delay; and if this was not done, the chapter might proceed
to make a canonical election without it, and the royal assent was not to
be refused unless a sufficient reason could be proved. This was no small
boon, for the system of holding elections in the royal court or chapel put
the choice of the chapters virtually under the king's control; and as the
king received the revenues of vacant bishoprics, it was his interest to
prolong the period of vacancy by delays and objections. Nevertheless the
archbishop was not to be won over.
[Sidenote: The Great Charter, 1215.]
A list of demands, based on the charter of Henry I., and evidently the
result of the conferences between the archbishop and the barons, was
presented to the king. He asked for time, for he dared not refuse flatly,
and pretended that he only wanted to uphold his dignity by appearing to
yield of his own will. The archbishop arranged a truce, which John only
employed in endeavours to strengthen himself. Stephen Langton therefore
gave his full sanction to the assembling of the barons in arms at Stamford
in Easter week, 1215, immediately after the conclusion of the truce. John
was forced to yield to their demands, and the terms of peace between him
and his people form the Great Charter, to which he set his seal at
Runnymead on 15th June. On that memorable day the archbishop and several
bishops stood by the king as his counsellors, for they had not withdrawn
themselves from him, and took no part in the warlike proceedings of the
baronial party. Two of them, Peter, the bishop of Winchester, and Walter
de Gray, bishop of Worcester, the nephew of John de Gray, for whom the
king had tried to gain the primacy, and, like him, one of John's
ministers, were decidedly on his side. But the bishops, with Stephen
Langton at their head, were as a body in accord with the nation at large
in its successful struggle to compel the king to grant this acknowledgment
of national liberties. Like the charter of Henry I., the Great Charter
opens with the declaration that the "English Church should be free," and
should enjoy its full rights and liberties; and it refers to the special
charter on this subject granted the year before. It provides for the
rights of all classes, for it bound the barons to extend the same
liberties to their tenants that they had obtained from the king; and this
and other clauses of general importance are, it is safe to assume, in part
at least to be attributed to the influence of the bishops, who thus appear
as the champions of the people in the struggle for common rights.
[Sidenote: Annulled by the Pope.]
Innocent came to the help of his vassal, and, at John's request, annulled
the Charter and pronounced sentence of excommunication against the barons.
Peter des Roches and Pandulf were sent to the archbishop to order him to
publish this sentence, and on his refusal suspended him. Stephen thereupon
left the kingdom and went to Rome. His absence was a great loss to the
national party, for the barons held him in awe, and he kept them together.
After he left they no longer acted with the same wisdom, unity, or
national feeling as before, and a large section joined in inviting Lewis,
the eldest son of the French king, to assume the crown. When the
archbishop reached Rome his suspension was confirmed by the Pope, and
excommunication was pronounced against the barons by name and against the
Londoners. This sentence greatly embarrassed the baronial party, though in
London it was openly set at nought. The relations between the Pope and the
king were fraught with mischief to the Church as well as to the national
cause. Besides depriving her of the presence of the primate, Innocent and
John combined to confer the see of Norwich on Pandulf, a third-rate papal
emissary, who was not even consecrated bishop until about seven years
after he had begun to draw the revenues of the bishopric, and never
resided in, perhaps never visited, his diocese. And they set at nought the
rights of the church of York, which had been left without the presence of
an archbishop ever since Geoffrey's departure in 1207. The chapter
received leave to elect in 1215, and chose Simon Langton, the brother of
the archbishop of Canterbury. John urged the Pope not to confirm the
election of the brother of a man who was, he said, his "public enemy," and
Innocent accordingly forced the representatives of the chapter to
recommend the king's friend, Walter, bishop of Worcester, who received the
pall, after binding himself to pay no less than L10,000 to the Roman court
for his office. Greatly to the Pope's chagrin, he was unable to prevent
Lewis from invading England; and although his legate, Gualo,
excommunicated the invader, the king's party dwindled. The tidings of
Innocent's death were received in England with joy; he had done all he
could to sacrifice the liberties of the nation and the welfare of the
Church to the aggrandizement of the papacy, and it was generally believed
that his successor, Honorius III., would not follow in his steps. In a
few weeks his vassal, John, likewise died.
[Sidenote: Papal tutelage of Henry III.]
Honorius was a wise and careful guardian to the young king, Henry III.,
and his legate, Gualo, upheld the government of the earl-marshal; the
Great Charter was twice reissued, the French were got rid of, and peace
was restored. On the other hand, Gualo dealt hardly with the bishops and
clergy of the baronial party. He deprived many of the clergy of their
benefices and gave them to his own friends; and he compelled the bishops
to pay large sums to the Roman court, and to give him considerable gifts
also, that they might be allowed to retain their sees. He was succeeded by
Pandulf. Stephen Langton had now returned, and was helping Hubert de Burgh
to give a thoroughly national character to the administration. The
presence of a Roman legate, which had certainly done much, during the
early years of the reign, to forward the well-being of the kingdom, became
needless. Pandulf was overbearing, and thwarted the archbishop and Hubert.
Accordingly the archbishop, who himself had a legatine commission, went to
Rome, and obtained a promise from the Pope that no other legate should be
appointed as long as he lived, and Pandulf soon afterwards left England.
The position of these legates was extraordinary. They controlled the
ordinary course of government, directed foreign politics, and continually
brought the spiritual power of the papacy to bear on the affairs of the
country. Through them their master acted as the guardian of the young king
and the suzerain of the kingdom. It is to the credit of Honorius that he
willingly brought to a close the period of the tutelage of Henry and of
the government of England by foreign legates. From this date the legatine
authority of the archbishops of Canterbury was always recognized at Rome,
though legates _a latere_ were still sent over to England from time to
time on special errands.
Henry owed much to the Pope's care, and the gratitude he consequently felt
towards the Roman see brought evil on the Church and nation. He became a
tool in the hands of successive Popes, who used the wealth of the country
for their own purposes. Ecclesiastical preferments were lavishly conferred
on Italian adventurers, who were ignorant of the language of the people,
and utterly unfit to be their spiritual guides; and the clergy were
heavily taxed, sometimes for the Pope's immediate use, and sometimes, by
his authority, for the use of the king, though the money thus raised often
found its way into the papal treasury. Resistance was difficult, partly
because it was widely held that the Pope, as the spiritual father of
Christendom, had a right to the goods of the Church, and partly because,
even when the king was angry at the papal demands, the bishops dared not
reckon on his support, for his heart was of wax, and never bore the same
impression long.
[Sidenote: Taxation of Spiritualities.]
The demands made on the clergy in this reign have an important bearing on
the history of the Church. Although the movables of the clergy had been
taxed for the Saladine tithe and for King Richard's ransom, these were
occasions of a special character, and the taxation of spiritualities, or
tithes and ings, for national purposes cannot be said to have begun until
the Crown and the papacy had become allies. When the Popes demanded money
of the clergy for their own use, they did so on the pretext of needing it
for the crusades, an object which had an overwhelming claim on
Christendom; when they authorized the king to ask for tenths, they acted
as protectors of the kingdom. These demands were considered in
convocation, and were not granted without the discussion of grievances and
petitions for redress. And as the levying of scutage on episcopal lands
was an evidence of the right of the bishops to have an equal share with
the barons in the deliberations of the great council, so the taxation of
clerical movables brought about the secular work of convocation. An
example was thus set for the guidance of the future parliament, and the
clergy were prepared to take their place as one of the estates of the
realm. The payment of tenths to the Pope, while nominally dependent on the
consent of the clergy, was virtually compulsory, and was constantly
demanded from the middle of this reign. The king did not care to quarrel
with the papacy on the matter, and sometimes obtained the papal authority
to demand them for his own use.
[Sidenote: Papal oppression.]
Among the evils that the Popes brought upon the Church at this period,
none were so serious as those that proceeded from their interference with
the rights of patronage. This was ordinarily effected by "provisions" or
simple announcements that the Pope had provided a person, named or
unnamed, for a vacant benefice. The light in which English benefices were
regarded at Rome was shown as early as 1226, when Honorius sent a demand,
not indeed confined to England, that two prebends in every cathedral
church should be made over to the papacy. This demand was rejected by the
bishops. While Honorius and his legates did not watch over the young king
for nought, the relations between England and the papacy entered on a new
and darker phase with the accession of Gregory IX.; for he used this
country to supply him with money for his war with the Emperor Frederic II.
Moreover, the death of Stephen Langton in 1228 deprived the Church and
nation of one of the ablest champions of national rights. Stephen, the
papal collector--there was now always an officer of this kind resident in
England--roused general indignation by his conduct. He had brought over
with him a tribe of usurers, and fear of papal censure drove men to have
recourse to them; so the collector and the money-lenders played into one
another's hands. The rights of patrons were set aside, and many livings
were held by Italians, who never came near them, and farmed them out to
others. The wrath of the people broke forth in 1332. A secret league was
formed under the direction of a Yorkshire knight, named Robert Twenge, who
called himself William Wither. Letters were sent to the bishops and
chapters warning them against obeying provisions; and bands of armed
knights, with masks on their faces, burst open the granaries of the
Italian clerks, distributed their corn among the people, and robbed and
beat the foreigners on the highways. Hubert de Burgh, the chief justiciar,
was said to have been concerned in the movement, and the accusation
hastened his fall. Still, the Pope saw that it was advisable to give way,
and sent letters confirming the rights of private patrons. On the death of
Stephen Langton the Pope took a further step towards the enslavement of
the English Church by treating the course taken by Innocent III. with
reference to Langton's election as a precedent for future action. At the
request of the king, who offered Gregory the bribe of a tenth on all
movables throughout his kingdom, he set aside the choice of the chapter
and nominated Richard Grant to the archbishopric.
[Sidenote: Edmund Rich, archbishop, 1234-1240.]
[Sidenote: Council of Merton, 1236.]
When Richard died in 1234, Gregory confirmed this precedent by quashing
three successive elections of the chapter, and compelling the monks to
accept Edmund Rich. Edmund had been famous as a teacher at Oxford; he was
pious, and had considerable political talent. He saw with indignation the
overwhelming influence exercised by the Poitevin and other foreign
favourites of the king, against which the bishops as a body were steadily
working. He at once took the headship of the national party, and though
the Pope favoured the foreigners, compelled the king by a threat of
excommunication to dismiss Peter des Roches and his adherents.
Nevertheless no permanent reform was effected, and the king's marriage was
followed by a fresh influx of foreigners, many of whom were provided for
at the expense of the Church. Appeals to Rome were multiplied, and efforts
were made to displace the common law for the canon law. These efforts
caused much displeasure; and when it was proposed at the Council of Merton
to bring the law of legitimacy into conformity with the law of Rome, the
barons answered, "We will not suffer the laws of England to be changed."
The archbishop's authority was weakened by the arrival of the legate Otho,
who, in 1237, held a council at London, in which he caused a large body of
constitutions to be accepted. Fresh demands were made by Gregory both for
money and patronage, and against these the archbishop and clergy protested
in vain, for the Pope was upheld by the king. Nevertheless Henry now and
then grew restive under the papal yoke, for he knew that he and his
kingdom were being ruined, and once, when an unusually large demand was
made upon him, told the legate, with oaths and bitter words, that he was
sorry he had ever allowed him to land in his kingdom. Edmund found himself
set at nought by the legate, thwarted by the king and the Pope, and
utterly unable to check the evils by which the Church was oppressed. His
troubles reached a climax in 1240, when Gregory, in order to bind the
Roman citizens to his side, determined to distribute the benefices of
England among their sons and nephews, and ordered the archbishop and two
of the bishops to provide benefices for as many as three hundred Roman
ecclesiastics. Edmund left the kingdom in despair, and died the same year,
and Henry procured the election of Boniface of Savoy, the queen's uncle, a
man of worldly mind and small ability, who, though not without some sense
of duty, was chiefly guided by his own interests.
[Sidenote: Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, 1235-1253.]
The noblest figure in the history of the Church at this period is that of
Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, and master of all sciences, as
Roger Bacon declared him to be. He was also a man of action; his life was
holy and his courage invincible. He was a warm friend of the mendicant
friars, the Franciscans and Dominicans, who were established in England in
the early part of this reign. The work of these Orders, which will be
described in another volume of this series, produced a vast effect on the
Church, not merely by moving the laity of every class, especially in
towns, to repentance and confession, and by imparting new life to Oxford,
but also by stirring up the clergy to efforts after better things. A new
light was shining; and children of the light, such as was Robert
Grosseteste, were glad to walk in it, while even others were conscious
that it would be well to prevent men perceiving that they loved darkness.
Grosseteste was anxious for the reformation of his diocese, the largest
and most populous in England, and was active in the work of visitation.
His canons refused his visitation, and he had a long suit with them, which
established the right of bishops to visit their chapters. He endeavoured
to enforce celibacy on his clergy, for clerical marriages seem to have
been common, and ordered them to prevent excessive drinking and feasting,
the practice of sports and plays in churches and churchyards, and all
private marriages. He took part in a movement from which the Church still
reaps benefit, the erection of vicarages, setting apart in rectories
subject to monastic appropriation a sufficient portion of land and tithe
for the perpetual and independent endowment of the vicarage. The king
sometimes yielded to his influence; but Henry never remained long under
one influence, especially if it was for good. Grosseteste always acted
under a strong sense of spiritual responsibility; he held that the Pope,
when he was in need, had a right to the goods of the clergy, and did not
shrink from carrying out his demands. Nor did he raise any objection to
the appointment of papal nominees to English benefices on the ground of
their foreign birth, or even their ignorance of English. If, however, they
were unfit for their duties, either spiritually or canonically, his
reverence for the Pope did not blind him, and he refused to present them.
Nor did he ever hesitate to resist the king's unrighteous oppression of
the Church. Henry's demands on both clergy and laity in 1244 brought about
an attempt at combined resistance by the bishops and barons. He met the
resistance of the clergy by producing letters from the Pope, Innocent IV.,
bidding them support his "dearest son." Some of the clergy and laity alike
wavered. "Let us not be divided from the common counsel," Grosseteste
said, "for it is written, If we are divided we shall all straightway
perish." Unfortunately the two orders had not yet learnt the necessity of
standing by each other, and the alliance failed.
[Sidenote: Extortion and remonstrance.]
Innocent IV. made at least as large demands on England as Gregory had
done, and treated her with more cynical insolence. His envoy, Martin, was
like him, and at last goaded the long-suffering nation to violence. Fulk
Fitz-Warin came to him with the short message, "Leave England, and begone
forthwith." "Who bids me? Did any one send you?" asked the legate. Fulk
told him that he was sent by the baronage assembled in arms at a
tournament, and warned him that if he delayed to depart till the third day
he and all his "would be cut to pieces." The trembling legate complained
to the king. Henry, however, told him that he could not restrain his
barons. "For the love of God and the reverence of my lord the Pope, give
me a safe-conduct!" the legate prayed. "The devil give you a safe-conduct
to hell, and all through it!" was the answer of the perplexed and petulant
king. A strong remonstrance, in the form of a letter from the people of
England, was read by the English representatives at the Council of Lyons,
in which it was stated that Italian ecclesiastics drew over 60,000 marks a
year from the country. For a while Henry, who was thoroughly alarmed at
the state of affairs, wished to check the drain of money to Rome, and
wrote to Grosseteste complaining that the bishops had undertaken to
collect a tallage which the Pope had laid on the clergy. Grosseteste
replied that they were bound to obey their spiritual father and mother
(the Pope and the Church) then in exile and suffering persecution, for the
papal court was still in exile at Lyons. This view was taken by many
noble-minded churchmen, and especially by the friars, who, though they
proved themselves the friends of constitutional freedom, strongly
maintained the duty of supporting the Popes in their struggle with the
Empire.
[Sidenote: Robert Grosseteste's letter to Innocent IV., 1253.]
Henry soon returned to his old relations with the Pope, and matters went
from bad to worse. A grant of the tenths of spiritualities was made him
by Innocent in 1252. His proctors appeared before an assembly of bishops,
and without asking them to allow the tax, proposed its immediate
collection. The bishop of Lincoln rose in anger. "What is this, by our
Lady?" he said. "You are taking matters for granted. Do you suppose that
we will consent to this cursed tax? Let us never bow the knee to Baal."
The king tried in vain to frighten some of the bishops by threatening them
separately. The next year he obtained a grant, and in return confirmed the
Great Charter and the Forest Charter. Special solemnity was given to this
act by the bishops. Excommunication was pronounced against all who broke
the charters, and when it had been read they dashed the candles which they
carried to the ground, saying, "So let those who incur this sentence be
quenched and stink in hell;" while the king swore to observe the charters
"as a man, a Christian, a knight, a king crowned and anointed." Robert
Grosseteste died soon after this ceremony, lamenting with his latest
breath the oppressions of the Church, and declaring that her deliverance
would only be effected by the sword. Shortly before his death he showed
how greatly his feelings had been changed towards the papacy by the
troubles that it had brought upon England. Innocent ordered him to induct
one of his nephews into a prebendal stall at Lincoln, adding a clause by
which the Popes used to override all law--_Non obstante_, any privilege of
the church notwithstanding. He refused in a letter in which he speaks
plainly of the Pope's conduct, saying that it was not apostolic, and
reminding him that there was no sin so hateful to the Lord Jesus Christ as
that men should take the milk and the wool of Christ's sheep and betray
the flock. When Innocent heard this letter read, he declared that the
bishop was a "deaf old dotard," and that his "vassal," the king, ought to
imprison him. Here, however, the cardinals interfered, and told the Pope
that that might not be, for the bishop was better and holier than any of
them, a great philosopher and scholar.
[Sidenote: The English Church alienated from papacy.]
[Sidenote: Death of Sewal de Bovil, archbishop of York, 1258.]
Matters were brought to a crisis by the offer of the crown of Sicily to
Henry for his younger son, Edmund, first made by Innocent IV., and
confirmed by his successor, Alexander IV., in the hope of using the wealth
of England to crush Conrad, and afterwards Manfred, the sons of Frederic
II. Henry greedily swallowed the bait, and incurred an enormous debt to
the Pope for the war in Apulia. By the advice of Peter, the Provencal
bishop of Hereford, he tried to satisfy the Pope by the shameful trick of
attaching the seals of the bishops, without their knowledge, to blank
bonds, to be filled up as the Pope chose. Alexander IV. treated the
English Church as insolently as his predecessor. Soon after the
appointment of an Englishman to the deanery of York in 1256, an Italian
cardinal appeared in the church, and was installed as dean by his
companions; he had been "provided" by the Pope. The archbishop, Sewal de
Bovil, had been a pupil of Edmund of Canterbury, by that time canonized,
and was a friend of the famous Oxford Franciscan, Adam Marsh. He
successfully resisted the intrusion. His courage brought excommunication
on him and an interdict on his church, and he died broken-hearted, after
sending a letter to the Pope bidding him remember that the Lord's charge
to Peter was to "feed His sheep, not shear them or devour them." In 1256,
Alexander's envoy, Rustand, pressed the bishops for a tenth for three
years for the Sicilian scheme. Fulk, bishop of London, declared that he
would sooner lose his head; and Walter of Cantelupe, bishop of Worcester,
that he would sooner be hanged. Henry, as his wont was, abused Fulk, and
threatened that the Pope should deprive him. "Let them take away my mitre,
I shall still keep my helmet," was the bishop's answer. The clergy
remonstrated against the envoy's proposal in their diocesan synods, and,
thanks to the opposition offered by the lay barons, the Pope and the king
were defeated. The reverence which Englishmen formerly had for the Roman
Church had now disappeared, and bitter and contemptuous feelings had taken
its place. The venality of the papal court and the wrongs of the Church
were the favourite themes of the ballad-singer; and English monks loved to
tell of visions which represented Innocent as dying struck by the spear of
the glorified bishop of Lincoln, and of the sentence pronounced against
him by the Eternal Judge on the accusation of the Church he had persecuted
and degraded.
[Sidenote: The Church and the Barons' War.]
The evil and wasteful administration of the king led the barons, in 1258,
to place a direct check on the executive, and force Henry to accept the
Provisions of Oxford. Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, the greatest
of the baronial party, had been an intimate friend of Grosseteste, who had
consoled and striven to help him in a time of trouble, while Adam Marsh
had been his spiritual adviser. Simon was anxious for the welfare of the
Church; and the patriotic party among the bishops and the clergy as a body
clung steadfastly to him to the last. The national cause, which was
already weakened by disunion, received a severe blow in 1261, when the
Pope absolved the king from his promises, and annulled the Provisions of
Oxford. Two years later the civil war began. After doing all he could to
make peace, Walter of Cantelupe threw in his lot with Earl Simon. Before
the battle of Lewes, he and Henry, bishop of London, brought to the king
the terms offered by the baronial leaders; and when they were rejected,
Bishop Walter absolved the barons' soldiers, and exhorted them to quit
themselves manfully in the fight. The alliance between the Church and
Simon de Montfort is manifest in the legislation that followed the earl's
victory: the sphere of ecclesiastical jurisdiction was enlarged, and three
bishops were appointed to inquire into grievances. Guido, the legate of
Urban, was refused admission into England; he excommunicated the barons,
ordered Walter of Cantelupe and other bishops to meet him in France, and
sent them back to publish the sentence in England. Their papers were
seized and destroyed, probably not against their will, by the people of
the Cinque Ports. The next year, when the earl found himself in the power
of his foes at Evesham, the aged bishop of Worcester again shrived his
host before the battle. After the defeat and death of Simon, Clement IV.,
the Guido who had been Urban's legate, sent Ottoboni over to England as
legate. Ottoboni suspended the five bishops who had upheld the cause of
freedom; the bishop of Worcester died the next year, and the others
journeyed to Rome, and there purchased their reconciliation. He also did
what he could to bring the rebellion to an end by ecclesiastical censures.
Peace was completely restored in 1267; the king's elder son, Edward, went
on a crusade to Syria, and the Church and the country had a period of
rest.
To speak only of the ecclesiastical consequences of the Barons' War, it
may be said in a great measure to have reversed the policy of Innocent
III., in that it did much towards freeing England from vassalage to the
papacy; for the Popes were no longer able to enforce their claim to
interfere as suzerains in her affairs. Further, it taught Edward the
importance of adopting a national policy, of giving each order in the
kingdom a definite place in the constitution, and thus strengthening the
national character of the Church; while it also showed him that if he
would rule the Church and make its wealth available for his own purposes,
he would gain nothing by seeking papal help, and should rather enlist the
services of churchmen as his ministers.
[Sidenote: Higher idea of the clerical office.]
[Sidenote: Rival systems of law.]
The magnificent pontificate of Innocent III. did not fail to affect the
spirit of the English Church and its relations towards the State; it
naturally led to a higher idea of the dignity of the clerical office.
Partly from this cause, and partly owing to the religious revival effected
by the friars, the feeling gathered strength that it was sinful for
ecclesiastics to hold secular posts, a point for which Grosseteste
contended with much earnestness. With the growth of the papal power there
grew up also a desire among the clergy to liberate the administration of
ecclesiastical law from the control of secular courts, and the spirit of
Innocent may be discerned in Grosseteste's argument, that it was sinful
for secular judges to determine whether cases belonged to an
ecclesiastical or a secular tribunal. The study of the civil and canon
laws was eagerly pursued; it was stimulated by the influence of the large
number of foreign ecclesiastics, and even common lawyers found in it a
scientific basis for their own law. Clerical jurists were naturally
aggressive, and the party devoted to the increase of clerical dignity and
power strove to displace the national by the foreign system. The nation at
large, hating the foreigners who preyed upon the country, was strongly
opposed to the introduction of foreign law, and this opposition prompted
the reply of the barons to the proposal made at Merton in 1236, when an
attempt was made to change the law of England, which was, on the point in
question, held by Grosseteste and the clergy generally to be sinful, and
to bring it into accordance with the law of Rome. And the same feeling had
led, not long before, to the compulsory closing of the schools of civil
and canon law in London. On the other hand, the authority of these laws
was upheld by the policy of Gregory IX. A code of papal decrees was
compiled with his sanction, and he was anxious to procure its acceptance
throughout Latin Christendom. What may almost be described as a
corresponding step was taken in England by the publication of a series of
constitutions which formed the foundation of our national canon law--the
constitutions of Stephen Langton, of the legates Otho and Ottoboni, of
Boniface of Savoy, and other archbishops. In some of these a considerable
advance in the pretensions of the clergy is evident. The work of Edward I.
in assigning the clerical estate its place in the scheme of national
government, in forcing it to bear its own (often an unduly large) share in
the national burdens, and in limiting and defining the area of clerical
jurisdiction and lawful pretensions so as to prevent them from trenching
on the national system, will form the main subject of the next chapter.