The English Church in the Middle Ages

by William Hunt

In spite of the threatening attitude of the malcontent lords, Edward could not refuse to fulfil his engagements to his allies. He raised supplies and a force by means which, though unconstitutional, were justified by necessity, was reconciled to the archbishop, and took a solemn leave of his people from a platform in front of Westminster Hall, telling them that he knew that he had not reigned as well as he ought, but that all the money that had been taken from them had been spent in their defence, and requesting them, if he did not return from Flanders, to crown his son Edward. Winchelsey wept at the king’s words, and all the people shouted assent. Nevertheless, the barons remained rebellious, demanded that the king should confirm the Great Charter and the Forest Charter, and presented a petition of grievances. Nor was the ecclesiastical matter settled, though the clergy offered to ask the Pope’s leave to make a grant. Before Edward left he taxed the temporalities of the clergy, for he evidently suspected them of acting with the malcontents. Soon after he had set sail, the barons came up armed to a council at London, which was attended by the bishops, though not by the inferior clergy. Winchelsey seems to have presided at this council; and apparently by his advice the young Edward, whom his father had left as regent, was required to confirm the charters with certain additions. He assented, and sent the charters to his father, who confirmed them along with the new articles. These articles may be said to have declared it illegal for the Crown to levy any taxes or imposts, save those anciently pertaining to it, without the consent of parliament.

In November the ecclesiastical dispute was brought to an end. Early in the year Boniface, to satisfy Philip of France, declared that he did not forbid the clergy to contribute to national defence or to make voluntary grants; and Winchelsey took advantage of a Scottish invasion to recommend the clergy to tax themselves. The dispute had been independent of the rebellious behaviour of the Constable and Marshal, who had taken advantage of it to put pressure on the king. Winchelsey’s conduct with regard to the proceedings of the earls seems to prove that he had an enlightened desire for constitutional freedom; and the Church in his person again appeared, as she had appeared so often before, as the assertor of national rights. Nor did the Church fail to gain much by the issue of the ecclesiastical dispute. The victory lay with the Crown; the national character of the Church was established, and it was saved from the danger of sinking into a handmaid of Rome, which would probably have come to pass if the papacy and the Crown had remained at one. From henceforth the Church generally found the State ready to protect her liberties from papal invasion.

Winchelsey’s policy of opposition.

After Edward’s return fresh demands were made upon him, and a long struggle ensued between him and the parliament on the subject of disafforestation, or the reduction of the royal forests to their ancient boundaries. Winchelsey evidently continued in opposition, partly with the view of increasing the papal authority by embarrassing the king. His desire to uphold the Pope’s authority led him at last to commit the fatal error of opposing a cause of national concern. Edward’s claim to the crown of Scotland was alternately admitted and rejected by the Scottish lords, who submitted to him when he overawed them by appearing in Scotland at the head of his forces, and rebelled when he returned to England. Finding themselves unable to resist him, they appealed to Boniface to help them. Accordingly, in 1299, Boniface published a bull asserting that the kingdom of Scotland was a fief of the Holy See, and ordering Edward to submit his claim to the decision of Rome. On receiving this bull Winchelsey journeyed to Galloway, where Edward then was, and in August 1300 appeared before him, in company with a papal envoy, presented the bull, and added, it is said, an exhortation of his own on the duty of obedience and the happiness of those who were as the people of Jerusalem and as Mount Zion. “By God’s blood!” shouted the indignant king, “I will not hold my peace for Zion, nor keep silence for Jerusalem, but will defend my right that is known to all the world with all my might.” The archbishop was bidden to inform the Pope that the king would send him an answer after he had consulted with his lords, for “it was the custom of England that in matters touching the state of the realm all those who were affected by the business should be consulted.”

Acting on this principle, Edward, early the next year, laid the bull before his barons at a parliament held at Lincoln, and bade them proceed in the matter. Accordingly they wrote to the Pope, on behalf of themselves and the whole community of the realm, briefly informing him that the feudal superiority over Scotland belonged to the English Crown; that the kings of England ought not to answer before any judge, ecclesiastical or secular, concerning their rights in that kingdom; that they had determined that their king should not answer concerning them or any other of his temporal rights before the Pope, or accept his judgment, or send proctors to his court; and that, even if he were willing to obey the bull, they would not allow him to do so. This letter was signed by the lay baronage only, not by the bishops. At this parliament the barons requested the king to dismiss his treasurer, Walter Langton, bishop of Lichfield, and presented certain petitions for reform. Most of these petitions were granted, and among them the demand for disafforestation; the last, that the goods of the clergy should not be taxed against the will of the Pope, evidently bears witness to the terms of the alliance between Winchelsey and the barons. This article was rejected by the king, who thus further separated the baronial from the clerical interest. Nor did he dismiss Langton, who was soon afterwards suspended from his bishopric on charges of adultery, simony, homicide, and dealings with the devil; he was acquitted by the Pope, and probably owed his suspension to Winchelsey’s enmity.

Clement V., 1305-1316.

The overthrow of Boniface by the French king, Philip IV., involved the failure of his attempt to establish the dominion of the papacy over national churches. Clement V., the next Pope but one, was a Gascon, and settled the papal court at Avignon, where it remained for seventy years, a period called the “Babylonish captivity.” During this period the papal court became a French institution. This caused Englishmen to be very jealous of the Pope’s interference; and when the king was at one with his people the Popes were not allowed to exercise much authority here, and the national character of the Church was effectually defended. Clement was anxious to oblige Edward. As a Gascon noble, and as archbishop of Bordeaux, he had been his subject, and as Pope he was not willing to become the tool of the French king. Edward took advantage of his goodwill. He considered that his people had dealt hardly with him, and had forced him to give up his just rights, and he obtained a bull from the Pope absolving him from the oaths which he had taken. In doing so he simply acted in accordance with the ideas of his time, and this is the one excuse that can be made for him. Nor was he content with thus providing for the repair of his royal dignity; he took vengeance on the man who had done as much as any one to lessen it. Winchelsey suspended.In 1305, when the old baronial opposition had wholly ceased, he accused Winchelsey of having engaged in treason in 1301, and added other causes of complaint against him. Edward submitted the charges against him to the Pope, who suspended him, and summoned him to Rome. He did not return to England until after the king’s death. Although the Pope took the administration of the see of Canterbury into his own hands, the king, of course, seized the temporalities. Clement complained of this; and Edward, in order to ensure the continuance of his triumph over the archbishop, allowed the Pope’s agents to receive the profits arising from them.

While, however, the king and the Pope were thus obliging one another, the papacy had nevertheless lost ground in England. For full eighty years its power here had depended mainly on its alliance with the Crown; and now that Boniface had shown that this power, if unchecked, would destroy the rights of the Crown over the Church, the king was prepared to join with his people in resisting it. Remonstrance of parliament against papal exactions, 1307.Winchelsey’s absence afforded an opportunity. In a parliament held at Carlisle in 1307, statutes were published prohibiting the taxation of English monasteries by their foreign superiors; and while much debate was being held on the oppression of Rome, a letter was found, written under an assumed name and addressed to the “Noble Church of England, now in mire and servitude,” which set forth in terms of bitter sarcasm the evils she suffered from her “pretended father” the Pope. This letter was read before the king, a cardinal-legate who was visiting England to arrange the marriage of the Prince of Wales, and the whole parliament. A document was then drawn up enumerating the encroachments of Rome which were carried out by the papal agents and collectors. These were the appointment of foreigners to English benefices by provisions; the application of monastic revenues to the maintenance of cardinals; the reservation of first-fruits, then a novel claim; the increase in the amount demanded as Peter’s pence, and other oppressions. The cause of complaint with reference to Peter’s pence arose from an attempt of William de Testa, the Pope’s collector, to demand a penny for each household, instead of the fixed sum hitherto paid. The articles were accepted and forwarded to the Pope, and Testa was examined before parliament, and ordered to abstain from further exactions. Edward, however, was hampered by his need of Clement’s co-operation. After the parliament was dissolved, he was persuaded by the cardinal to allow Testa to proceed with the collection of first-fruits; and when the papal agents appeared before the council to answer the charges made against them in parliament, they took up an aggressive position, and complained that they had been hindered in the execution of their duty. Before these matters were brought to a conclusion the king died.

Edward II., 1307-1327.

Immediately on his accession, Edward II. recalled Winchelsey, and imprisoned his father’s minister, Walter Langton. The resistance to papal exactions was renewed in a parliament held at Stamford in 1309, where the king gave his consent to a petition presented by the lay estates for the reformation of civil abuses. At this parliament the barons sent a letter of complaint to the Pope of much the same character as the document drawn up at Carlisle. Clement, by way of answer, complained that his collectors were impeded, that his briefs and citations were not respected, that laymen exercised jurisdiction over spiritual persons, and that the tribute granted by John to the See of Rome had not been paid for some fifteen years. Here the matter seems to have ended, and the chief features of our Church history during this wretched reign are closely connected with the quarrels and general disorganization that prevailed in the kingdom. For a time Winchelsey acted with the king, but Edward’s carelessness and evil government drove him into opposition. While the country at large had much to complain of, the Church had her special grievances. In 1309 the archbishop held a provincial council to decide on proceedings against the Templars; for the king had promised the Pope that the English Church should take part in attacking the Order. At this council gravamina were adopted which show that constant encroachments were made on the sphere of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The next year the archbishop and six of his suffragans were chosen as “Ordainers,” the name given to a commission appointed by a council of magnates, lay and spiritual, to carry out a system of reform. Winchelsey and the bishops of his province pronounced excommunication against all who hindered the ordinances, or revealed the secrets of the Ordainers. First among the objects which the Ordainers swore to promote was the increase of the honour and welfare of the Church; and the interference with the spiritual courts which had been complained of the year before was forbidden by one of their ordinances. As Winchelsey thus joined the party of opposition, the king, in 1312, released Langton, and appointed him treasurer; for, in spite of all that had passed, the old servant of Edward I. upheld the cause of the Crown. The earl of Lancaster, the head of the opposition, seems to have been regarded as favourable to the claims of the Church; for in 1316, when he had virtually obtained the complete control of the kingdom, the estate of the clergy presented, in a parliament held at Lincoln, a series of complaints called “Articuli Cleri.” The royal assent was given, and the “articles” became a statute. By these articles the rules laid down in the writ “Circumspecte agatis” were re-enacted, and various rights and liberties, touching matters of jurisdiction and sanctuary, were acknowledged. Among these, it was allowed that it pertained to a spiritual, and not to any temporal judge, to examine into the fitness of a parson presented to a benefice, and that elections to dignities should be free from lay interference.