It was soon found that the new relations of the Church of England to the patriarchal authority of the See of Rome, which had been a consequence of the Norman Conquest, had opened the door to a flood of evils which had not been foreseen. We can only enumerate them without going into their history.
The claim of the popes to present to all ecclesiastical benefices was opposed by the king with respect to the rights of the Crown to the nomination to bishoprics and abbacies, and on the part of the nobles and gentry with respect to their patronage; but by partial encroachments the popes did in fact, from time to time, nominate to many bishoprics, and dignities, and to a considerable number of parochial benefices. Curiously enough, the most important of these invasions of the rights of others are the most capable of extenuation. The kings, as we shall presently have occasion to say, at length used their power of practical nomination to bishoprics, not to give the Church the best Churchmen as bishops, but to pay for the services of their ministers of State with the rank and revenues of bishoprics. Their nomination at all was an infringement of the constitutional liberties of the Church, and their use of their power of practical nomination in this way was a grievous wrong. In the reigns of John and Henry III., when the popes took upon themselves to nominate to sees, they were careful to select Churchmen of learning and character, who contrasted favourably in the eyes of the nation with the king’s nominees thus superseded. In the reign of Edward I., the king and the pope played into one another’s hands, the king did not oppose the Papal nomination, but the pope readily nominated men whom the king recommended. Later kings successfully maintained their right of nomination against the popes, but the pious and feeble Henry VI. again yielded to papal encroachments.
The intrusion by the pope of foreigners, chiefly Italians, into English benefices was a great practical grievance while it lasted, i.e. during part of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Bishop Grostete estimated that the revenues of the alien clerks, whom Innocent IV. had planted in England, equalled seventy thousand marks, while the king’s revenue was not more than a third of that sum. This abuse was so unpopular that it provoked a serious resistance. About 1230, a secret association, countenanced, it was said, by men of position, wrote to bishops and chapters, warning them not to encourage these encroachments, and to the monks, who farmed the benefices of the aliens, not to pay them their rent. The tithe barns of the alien rectors were plundered, and the contents sold or given to the poor, and some of the men themselves were seized and put to ransom. In the reign of Richard II. (1379), an Act of Parliament forbade any to farm the benefice of an alien, or to send money out of the realm for such farm, under the penalties of the Statute of Provisors. But the evil was checked by the Acts of Provisors (1350) and Premunire (1353), and these encroachments of the Roman See were extinguished by the end of the fourteenth century.
A great grievance inflicted by the Crown upon the Church was the use of Church patronage for the payment of the political, diplomatic, judicial, and other officers of the civil administration. The result was that a large number of the greatest offices of the Church were served by deputy; the details of diocesan work were done by suffragans, archdeacons performed their duties by officials, rectors by parish chaplains. It was inevitable that the work should be imperfectly done; rank and wealth are attached to Church benefices in order to enhance the dignity and influence of the holders and their power of fulfilling the duties of their office, and a locum tenens, though he were intrinsically as able a man, can never fulfil the place or do the work of the real holder of the office.
It was Henry II. who adopted it as a normal practice, and not without protest. When this king asked Bishop St. Hugh of Lincoln for a prebend for one of his courtiers, the bishop replied: “Ecclesiastical benefices are not for courtiers, but for ecclesiastics. Those who hold them must serve not the palace or the treasury, but the altar. The king has wherewithal to compensate those who work for him and fight his battles. Let him allow those who serve the King of kings to enjoy their fitting remuneration, and not to be deprived of it.” When King Richard, through the Archbishop of Canterbury, desired Bishop Hugh to send him a list of twelve of his canons to be employed in his affairs, Hugh replied that “he had often prohibited his clerks from intermeddling in secular affairs, and he certainly was not going to encourage such a thing now. It was quite enough to have archbishops forgetting their sacred calling.” All the canons had not the courage of their bishop, or were ambitious of court appointments, for some of them went off to the king at Fontevrault without the bishop’s leave; but all were relieved from their difficulty by the king’s death.[332]
A kindred evil was that of pluralities, since the holder of several benefices must needs put a locum tenens into all of them save one, with the disadvantages just mentioned. John Mansel, Henry III.’s chancellor, is said by Matthew Paris to have held the revenues of seven hundred benefices, amounting to four thousand marks.
The popes in the thirteenth century exerted their authority to put an end to the abuse, but met with a strenuous resistance. At the Council of London, 1237, under Otho, when the Canon against pluralists of the recent Lateran Council was proposed to be adopted, Walter de Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester, warned the Legate that the attempt to impose it on the English clergy would be resisted by force by the young men who were bold and daring, and not without the approbation of some of their elders;[333] and the question was postponed. But the popes exercised pressure by refusing to confirm the elections to bishoprics of men who were pluralists, and the Archbishops[334] gave their authority to the cause of reform. In time the evil was lessened; there were fewer benefices held in plurality, and those who held them were required to obtain a dispensation, and to provide in the benefices on which they did not reside proper substitutes with a sufficient provision for themselves, and for the hospitalities and charities of the benefices.