The English Church in the Middle Ages Part 6

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 n.o.ble 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 const.i.tutional development. Just as at first she taught the State how to attain unity, so now she afforded it an example of organization and progress.

CHAPTER VII.

_Va.s.sALAGE._

THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE CROWN--CORONATION OF JOHN--QUARREL BETWEEN JOHN AND THE POPE--THE INTERDICT--Va.s.sALAGE 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 att.i.tude 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 va.s.sal 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 const.i.tutional usage, it brought the elective character of the monarchy into special prominence; and Archbishop Hubert, at the coronation, while declaring him qualified for election, a.s.serted 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 chancellors.h.i.+p, 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 a.s.sociate 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 ma.s.sive 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 va.s.sal.]

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 lords.h.i.+p of Ireland. Thus the king of England declared himself the Pope's va.s.sal, 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 n.o.bles 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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.sent 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 a.s.sembling 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 cla.s.ses, 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 a.s.sume, 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 va.s.sal, and, at John's request, annulled the Charter and p.r.o.nounced 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 a.s.sume the crown. When the archbishop reached Rome his suspension was confirmed by the Pope, and excommunication was p.r.o.nounced against the barons by name and against the Londoners. This sentence greatly embarra.s.sed 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 10,000 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 va.s.sal, 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 grat.i.tude 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 t.i.the and for King Richard's ransom, these were occasions of a special character, and the taxation of spiritualities, or t.i.thes 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 pet.i.tions 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 Yorks.h.i.+re 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 quas.h.i.+ng 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 heads.h.i.+p 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 const.i.tutions 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 n.o.blest 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 cla.s.s, 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 s.h.i.+ning; 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 t.i.the 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 a.s.sembled 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 G.o.d and the reverence of my lord the Pope, give me a safe-conduct!" the legate prayed. "The devil give you a safe-conduct to h.e.l.l, 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 n.o.ble-minded churchmen, and especially by the friars, who, though they proved themselves the friends of const.i.tutional 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 a.s.sembly 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 h.e.l.l;" 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 "va.s.sal," 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 p.r.o.nounced 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.