The English Church in the Middle Ages

by William Hunt

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 assembling 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 On that memorable day the archbishop and several bishops stood by the king as his counsellors, for they had not withdrawn themselves from him, and took no part in the warlike proceedings of the baronial party.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 classes, 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 assume, 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.

Annulled by the Pope.

Innocent came to the help of his vassal, and, at John’s request, annulled the Charter and pronounced 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 assume the crown. When the archbishop reached Rome his suspension was confirmed by the Pope, and excommunication was pronounced against the barons by name and against the Londoners. This sentence greatly embarrassed 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 vassal, John, likewise died.

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 gratitude 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.

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 tithe and for King Richard’s ransom, these were occasions of a special character, and the taxation of spiritualities, or tithes 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 petitions 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.

Papal oppression.