[(26)] See Norman Conquest, iii. 317.
[(27)] It should be remembered that the clerical immunities which were claimed in this age were by no means confined to those whom we should now call clergymen, but that they also took in that large class of persons who held smaller ecclesiastical offices without being what we should call in holy orders. The Church also claimed jurisdiction in the causes of widows and orphans, and in various cases where questions of perjury, breach of faith, and the like were concerned. Thus John Bishop of Poitiers writes to Archbishop Thomas (Giles, Sanctus Thomas, vi. 238) complaining that the King’s officers had forbidden him to hear the causes of widows and orphans, and also to hear causes in matters of usury: “prohibentes ne ad querelas viduarum vel orphanorum vel clericorum aliquem parochianorum meorum in causam trahere præsumerem super quacumque possessione immobili, donec ministeriales regis, vel dominorum ad quorum feudum res controversiæ pertineret, in facienda justitia eis defecissent. Deinde ne super accusatione fœnoris quemquam audirem.” This gives a special force to the acclamations with which Thomas was greeted on his return as “the father of the orphans and the judge of the widows:” “Videres mox pauperum turbam quæ convenerat in occursum, hos succinctos ut prævenirent et patrem suum applicantem exciperent, et benedictionem præriperent, alios vero humi se humiliter prosternentes, ejulantes hos, plorantes illos præ gaudio, et omnes conclamantes, Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini, pater orphanorum et judex viduarum! et pauperes quidem sic.” Herbert of Bosham, Giles, Sanctus Thomas, vii. 315, cf. 148. See more in Historical Essays, 99.
[(28)] On the cruel punishments inflicted in the King’s courts Herbert of Bosham is very emphatic in more than one passage. He pleads (vii. 101) as a merit of the Bishops’ courts that in them no mutilations were inflicted. Men were punished there “absque omni mutilatione vel deformatione membrorum.” But he by no means claims freedom from mutilation as a mere clerical privilege; he distinctly condemns it in any case. “Adeo etiam quod ordinis privilegium excludat cauterium: quam tamen pœnam communiter inter homines etiam jus forense damnat: ne videlicet in homine Dei imago deformetur.” (vii. 105.) A most curious story illustrative of the barbarous jurisprudence of the time will be found in Benedict’s Miracula Sancti Thomæ, 184.
[(29)] One of the Constitutions of Clarendon forbade villains to be ordained without the consent of their lords. “Filii rusticorum non debent ordinari absque assensu domini de cujus terra nati dignoscuntur” (Stubbs, Select Charters, 134). On the principles of feudal law nothing can be said against this, as the lord had a property in his villain which he would lose by the villain’s ordination. The prohibition is noticed in some remarkable lines of the earliest biographer of Thomas, Garnier of Pont-Sainte-Maxence (La Vie de Saint Thomas le Martyr, Paris, 1859, p. 89), where he strongly asserts the equality of gentleman and villain before God:—
“Fils à vilains ne fust en nul liu ordenez
Sanz l’otrei sun seigneur de cui terre il fu nez.
Et deus à sun servise nus a tuz apelez!
Mielz valt filz à vilain qui est preux e senez,
Que ne feit gentilz hum failliz et debutez.”
Thomas himself was not the son of a villain, but his birth was such that the King could sneer at him as “plebeius quidam clericus.”