The Church and the Barons’ War.

The evil and wasteful administration of the king led the barons, in 1258, to place a direct check on the executive, and force Henry to accept the Provisions of Oxford. Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, the greatest of the baronial party, had been an intimate friend of Grosseteste, who had consoled and striven to help him in a time of trouble, while Adam Marsh had been his spiritual adviser. Simon was anxious for the welfare of the Church; and the patriotic party among the bishops and the clergy as a body clung steadfastly to him to the last. The national cause, which was already weakened by disunion, received a severe blow in 1261, when the Pope absolved the king from his promises, and annulled the Provisions of Oxford. Two years later the civil war began. After doing all he could to make peace, Walter of Cantelupe threw in his lot with Earl Simon. Before the battle of Lewes, he and Henry, bishop of London, brought to the king the terms offered by the baronial leaders; and when they were rejected, Bishop Walter absolved the barons’ soldiers, and exhorted them to quit themselves manfully in the fight. The alliance between the Church and Simon de Montfort is manifest in the legislation that followed the earl’s victory: the sphere of ecclesiastical jurisdiction was enlarged, and three bishops were appointed to inquire into grievances. Guido, the legate of Urban, was refused admission into England; he excommunicated the barons, ordered Walter of Cantelupe and other bishops to meet him in France, and sent them back to publish the sentence in England. Their papers were seized and destroyed, probably not against their will, by the people of the Cinque Ports. The next year, when the earl found himself in the power of his foes at Evesham, the aged bishop of Worcester again shrived his host before the battle. After the defeat and death of Simon, Clement IV., the Guido who had been Urban’s legate, sent Ottoboni over to England as legate. Ottoboni suspended the five bishops who had upheld the cause of freedom; the bishop of Worcester died the next year, and the others journeyed to Rome, and there purchased their reconciliation. He also did what he could to bring the rebellion to an end by ecclesiastical censures. Peace was completely restored in 1267; the king’s elder son, Edward, went on a crusade to Syria, and the Church and the country had a period of rest.

To speak only of the ecclesiastical consequences of the Barons’ War, it may be said in a great measure to have reversed the policy of Innocent III., in that it did much towards freeing England from vassalage to the papacy; for the Popes were no longer able to enforce their claim to interfere as suzerains in her affairs. Further, it taught Edward the importance of adopting a national policy, of giving each order in the kingdom a definite place in the constitution, and thus strengthening the national character of the Church; while it also showed him that if he would rule the Church and make its wealth available for his own purposes, he would gain nothing by seeking papal help, and should rather enlist the services of churchmen as his ministers.

Higher idea of the clerical office.

The magnificent pontificate of Innocent III. did not fail to affect the spirit of the English Church and its relations towards the State; it naturally led to a higher idea of the dignity of the clerical office. Partly from this cause, and partly owing to the religious revival effected by the friars, the feeling gathered strength that it was sinful for ecclesiastics to hold secular posts, a point for which Grosseteste contended with much earnestness. With the growth of the papal power there grew up also a desire among the clergy to liberate the administration of ecclesiastical law from the control of secular courts, and the spirit of Innocent may be discerned in Grosseteste’s argument, that it was sinful for secular judges to determine whether cases belonged to an ecclesiastical or a secular tribunal. The study of the civil and canon laws was eagerly pursued; it was stimulated by the influence of the large number of foreign ecclesiastics, and even common lawyers found in it a scientific basis for their own law. Rival systems of law.Clerical jurists were naturally aggressive, and the party devoted to the increase of clerical dignity and power strove to displace the national by the foreign system. The nation at large, hating the foreigners who preyed upon the country, was strongly opposed to the introduction of foreign law, and this opposition prompted the reply of the barons to the proposal made at Merton in 1236, when an attempt was made to change the law of England, which was, on the point in question, held by Grosseteste and the clergy generally to be sinful, and to bring it into accordance with the law of Rome. And the same feeling had led, not long before, to the compulsory closing of the schools of civil and canon law in London. On the other hand, the authority of these laws was upheld by the policy of Gregory IX. A code of papal decrees was compiled with his sanction, and he was anxious to procure its acceptance throughout Latin Christendom. What may almost be described as a corresponding step was taken in England by the publication of a series of constitutions which formed the foundation of our national canon law—the constitutions of Stephen Langton, of the legates Otho and Ottoboni, of Boniface of Savoy, and other archbishops. In some of these a considerable advance in the pretensions of the clergy is evident. The work of Edward I. in assigning the clerical estate its place in the scheme of national government, in forcing it to bear its own (often an unduly large) share in the national burdens, and in limiting and defining the area of clerical jurisdiction and lawful pretensions so as to prevent them from trenching on the national system, will form the main subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CHURCH AND THE NATION.

CHARACTER OF THE REIGN OF EDWARD I.—ARCHBISHOP PECKHAM—STATUTE OF MORTMAIN—CONQUEST OF WALES—CIRCUMSPECTE AGATIS—EXPULSION OF THE JEWS—CLERICAL TAXATION AND REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT—BREACH BETWEEN THE CROWN AND THE PAPACY—CONFIRMATION OF THE CHARTERS—ARCHBISHOP WINCHELSEY AND THE RIGHTS OF THE CROWN—THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT AND PAPAL EXACTIONS—CHURCH AND STATE DURING THE REIGN OF EDWARD II.—PAPAL PROVISIONS TO BISHOPRICS—THE BISHOPS AND SECULAR POLITICS—THE PROVINCE OF YORK—PARLIAMENT AND CONVOCATION.