By these gifts and legacies the Church grew more and more wealthy. But this generous gift to the Church did not altogether find favour with the kings or other feudal overlords of the givers, because every such gift to the Church meant a diminution of the taxes payable to the lord. Such feudal taxes were those paid at a vassal's death, on the succession of a new heir—but the Church did not die; or on marriage—but the Church did not marry. Lands of which the owners died without leaving an heir lapsed back to the Crown, which was looked on as having originally given the lands to the tenant on a feudal tenure, or tenancy—but the lands of the Church never thus lapsed.
In order to put a check on this, Edward I. found it easy to persuade his Parliament to pass an Act to prevent such giving of land to the Church unless leave were first obtained from the Crown. The Act was called the Statute of Mortmain, or of The Dead Hand, probably because land given to the Church passed into a hand that was dead so far as any giving of fees to a feudal lord was concerned. The Crown might, or it might not, grant the leave requested. The persuasion of the Parliament to pass the measure was easy, because most of the influential members of the Parliament suffered in the same way as the king. Their vassals, as well as his, might leave or give land to the Church, and so diminish their fees.
Wycliffe and Huss
Thus king and barons stood together in this particular, against the Church, and all through our story we find a certain difference in this respect between England and the rest of Europe. In England we find that the king, the nobles, and the commons were generally ready to stand together to resist the power claimed by the Pope, representing the Church. They might, and they did, constantly fight amongst themselves, but on the whole they were very ready to unite on this one point, and to resist Rome. The great teacher and preacher Wycliffe gave the Crown all the assistance of his eloquence in denouncing the greed of the Church for civil power and great possessions. Just as we look on Dante, the Italian, as a forerunner of the new birth in learning, so we may regard our Wycliffe as forerunner of the great Reformation in the Church. A great preacher in Bohemia, John Huss, preached the doctrines of Wycliffe and gained far more followers than he; and after Huss, Luther, the greatest of all the reformers, carried the work to its conclusion in the seventeenth century.
The Hussites of Bohemia became a large and formidable armed force. In our country it is likely that a revolt of the people of the eastern counties, led by Wat Tyler, was in some part inspired by the teachings of Wycliffe. Questioning the authority of the head of the Government would easily follow from questioning the authority of the head of the Church. But partly by a very gallant show of courage by the young king, Richard II., and partly by the valour of the citizens of London, under the Mayor, the rebels were overcome and crushed.
This spirit, however, in which Wycliffe and his followers, the Lollards, disputed the authority of the Pope, found favour with the Government for a short while only, and then the Lollards were hunted down and burnt as heretics. In Southern Germany, it inspired the Hussites a little later. But it made no way in France. We have to remember that at the very beginning of the fourteenth century the Pope fled from Rome and came to live, with his court, at Avignon, and this fact, that the Pope lived, and lived for many years, in a French city, had the effect of drawing the Pope and the King of France closely together. A further effect of this was that, all through the weary years of almost incessant war between France and England, the favour of the Church was with France rather than with England, and it was a favour which had much value.
CHAPTER XXI
ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND BURGUNDY
After the Hundred Years' War had been in progress less than a quarter of a century, it seemed as if Edward III. had won all that he could possibly claim—peace and sovereignty over all the outlying parts of his dominion at home, and over more than he had set out to gain on the Continent. But the war was renewed by the action of Edward's vassal lords in France, only nine years later, and before his death, which happened in 1377, scarce a possession on the Continent was left to England except the city of Calais and a narrow strip of coast south of Bordeaux, in Guienne. Even at sea the French fleet, now aided by the Spanish since the interference by the Black Prince with the affairs of Spain—see [p. 180]—was completely victorious and made raids on the south coast of England. At the end of the fourteenth century it was on the terms that England should hold these fragments, and these only, of her once great territory on the Continent, that a treaty was made with France by Richard II., Edward's successor on the English throne.