ARREST OF KING RICHARD. (See p. [482.])

[[See larger version]]

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

Power of the Church—Ecclesiastical Legislation—Rapacity of the Papacy—Resistance of the Clergy—The Bull "Clericis Laicos"—Contests between the Civil and Ecclesiastical Power—The Scottish Church—Literature, Science, and Art—State of Learning—The Nominalists and Realists—Medicine—The Universities—Men of Learning and Science—Roger Bacon and his Contemporaries—Historians—Growth of the English Language—Poetry—Architecture—The Early Decorated Style and its Characteristics—Domestic Buildings—Sculpture and Painting—Music—Commerce, Coinage, and Shipping—Manners, Customs, Dress, and Diversions.

Between the reign of John and the termination of that of Richard II. a striking change had taken place in the power of the Church in England. From the zenith of that marvellous dominion over the kingdoms of this world, such as no church or religion had yet exercised in the annals of mankind, it had begun sensibly to wane. From that extraordinary spectacle when, at Courcy, on the Loire, in 1162, the two greatest kings of Christendom, those of England and France, were seen holding the stirrups of the servant of servants, Alexander III., and leading his horse by the reins, to the day when John, just half a century afterwards, laid the crown of this fair empire at the feet of the Pope, "and became a servant unto tribute," everything had seemed to root the Papacy deeper into the heart of the world. Kings, nobles, and people bowed down to it, and received its foot on their necks with profound humility, only occasionally evincing a slight wincing under its exactions. At that period the Church of Rome had reached the summit of its glory; but before the era at which we have now arrived, it had received a stern warning that its days in England were numbered as the established hierarchy. So long as the people were kept ignorant of the Bible, the opposition of king or peer mattered little to it; but the people withdrew their allegiance, and it fell rapidly.

The Pope, who strenuously supported John against his barons, was equally friendly to his infant son, Henry III. Archbishop Langton, now in the ascendant, held a synod at Oxford in 1222, in which fifty canons were passed, some of which let in a curious light on the internal condition of the Church. The twenty-eighth canon forbids the keeping of concubines by the clergy openly in their houses, or visiting them openly, as they did, to the great scandal of religion. In 1237 a council was held at London by Otho, the Papal legate, in which were passed what were afterwards known as the "Constitutions of Otho." The fifteenth and sixteenth canons of this constitution were aimed at the same practices, and at clandestine marriages of the priests, which were declared to be very common.