Bishops appointed by provision.
Throughout the whole reign elections by capitular bodies were constantly set at nought. Sometimes the Pope appointed to a bishopric on the king’s recommendation, and sometimes in spite of his wishes. From the time of Stephen Langton onwards, the Popes had so often interfered with the appointment to the primacy, either, as in the case of Peckham, acting in opposition to the Crown, or, as in that of Winchelsey, in unison with it, that their claim was now tacitly admitted. As regards suffragan bishoprics, their interference was often exercised owing either to the death of a bishop at Rome, or to appeals. Besides, it seems to have been laid down in this reign that the right of appointing to a see vacant by translation belonged to the Pope, who alone had the power to sanction the divorce between a bishop and his diocese. The embarrassments of Edward II. encouraged a still greater encroachment on the rights of the Church and of the Crown; and Clement simply appointed bishops by reservation and provision, declaring that he had during the lifetime of the last bishop reserved the appointment for himself, and that as a vacancy had occurred, he had found a fit man, and provided him accordingly. In some cases the bishop thus provided had been nominated by the Crown and elected by the chapter; in others the wishes of both were set aside out of the fulness of the Pope’s power.
The bishops of this reign were as a body, though with some exceptions, worldly and self-seeking. On the death of Winchelsey, in 1313, the monks of Christ Church chose a new archbishop of high repute for learning and character. At the king’s request, Clement set aside their election and appointed Edward’s old tutor, Walter Reynolds, bishop of Worcester, the son of a baker, and a man in all respects unworthy of such an office. Before he came to the throne Edward had found him useful to him, and when he became king he made him treasurer and chancellor. During the troubles of the reign, Reynolds adhered to the king until he began to suspect that it was no longer his interest to do so. An election made by the chapter of Durham was set aside by John XXII., who provided Lewis Beaumont, an ignorant man, and lame in both his feet, so that it was said in England, that the Pope would never have appointed him if he had seen him. Beaumont, however, was a connexion of Edward’s queen, Isabella; and John, who was a Provençal, was willing to do anything to oblige the French court. The same year the Pope disregarded both the choice of the chapter of Hereford and the earnest request of the king, and appointed Adam Orlton to the see. Utterly unscrupulous, and at once bold and subtle, Orlton was the worst of all the bad bishops of his time. About two years later, Edward tried to obtain the appointment of Henry Burghersh, the nephew of Lord Badlesmere, who was at that time useful to him, to the see of Winchester. Pope John reserved the see, and appointed an Italian. However, in 1320, the Lincoln chapter elected Burghersh in order to please the king; and Badlesmere, who was then at Avignon, is said to have spent a vast sum of the king’s money in procuring the papal assent, for Burghersh was under the canonical age.
The Bishops and secular politics.
When the barons formed a league against the king’s favourites, the Despensers, in 1321, they were joined by Burghersh, who followed his kinsman Badlesmere, by Orlton, and John of Drokensford, bishop of Bath. The victory of Boroughbridge gave the king supreme power, and he caused Orlton to be arrested, and charged with treason before the peers. Orlton declared that his metropolitan was, under the Pope, his immediate judge, and refused to plead without the consent of the archbishop and his suffragans. The primate and his suffragans then rose and prayed the king to have mercy on the bishop. Edward refused, and they then pleaded the privilege of the Church, and claimed him as a clerk. He was accordingly delivered over to the custody of the archbishop. Nevertheless the king caused a jury to try him in his absence, and obtained a verdict against him. But the archbishop would not give him up. Edward sent to Avignon to complain of the conduct of the three bishops who had sided with the barons against him, and requested the Pope to deprive them of their English sees. He did not turn his victory to good account. In 1325 two of the bishops who had obtained their sees from the Pope against the king’s will, John Stratford of Winchester and William Ayermin of Norwich, while on an embassy to France, entered into a plot against the Despensers. By their advice the queen was sent into France, and there Mortimer joined her. The king in vain urged her to return, and the bishops, at his request, sent a letter to the same effect. She came back at last with an armed force, and Orlton, Burghersh, and Ayermin raised money for her from their fellow-bishops. When she came to Oxford, Orlton expounded the reason of her rebellion to the university in a sermon, taking as his text the words, “Caput meum doleo” (2 Kings iv. 19). Reynolds and some of the bishops remained for a while in London, trying to quiet matters. While they were there, Bishop Stapleton of Exeter, who had been one of the king’s ministers, and remained faithful to him, was slain by the citizens. His murder caused them to flee, and Stratford, and at last Reynolds, joined the queen’s party. The king was now a prisoner, and Reynolds, who owed everything to his favour, Stratford, whom he had forgiven and trusted in spite of his having deceived him, and Orlton, his avowed enemy, took active part in his deposition.
The Battle of Myton, 1319.
Meanwhile the province of York had been exposed to the ravages of the Scots. Edward prevailed on John XXII. to command a truce and send over legates with authority to excommunicate Bruce. The legates’ envoys were robbed and ill-treated, and the sentence was accordingly pronounced. It had no effect on the war, and in 1318 the Scots broke into Yorkshire. They made a savage raid, and did much damage to churches and ecclesiastical property. Ripon paid them £1000 for its safety. A new archbishop, William Melton, had lately been consecrated. He had served the king and his father well, and Edward, after some trouble, had obtained the Pope’s confirmation for him. He was made one of the wardens of the marches, and at once arrayed his tenants for military service. There was little help to be obtained from the king, and when the Scots came down the next year most of the fighting men of the north had been called away to Edward’s army at Berwick. Melton, however, raised what local force he could, and led a large and undisciplined host to meet the Scottish army at Myton. The archbishop’s army was routed, and so many clerks were slain in the battle that it was called the “chapter of Myton.” The absence of any united and vigorous action for the defence of the country was largely due to the disloyalty and selfishness of Thomas, earl of Lancaster. The Sherburn Parliament, 1321.The earl was powerful in Yorkshire, and after making a league for mutual support with the lords of the north, he summoned a meeting of the estates at Sherburn, near Pomfret, in 1321. To this northern parliament he called the archbishop and prelates of the province, and Melton and the clergy obeyed his summons, evidently with the hope of making peace. Lancaster’s parliament met in the parish church, and after the schedule of grievances and the lords’ bond of association had been read, the earl bade the prelates consult apart, and give him their answer; for all was done as though in a legal and national parliament. The clergy debated in the rectory, and sent a reply in to the earl that was wise and worthy of their profession. They petitioned for a cessation of hostile movements, and for concord in the next parliament, so that, by God’s favour, parliament might find remedies for the grievances expressed in the articles. In other words, they exhorted the earl to abandon his isolated position, and seek the good of the country by peaceful and constitutional means. Their answer was received graciously, but their advice was not followed. The archbishop took no part in the disloyal conduct of the majority of the bishops; he and his suffragan of Carlisle, and two bishops of the southern province, protested against the deposition of Edward II., and he abstained from attending the coronation of the young king.
Parliament and convocation.
During the reign of Edward II. the clergy showed their unwillingness to attend parliament, and their decided preference for voting their grants in convocation. When, for example, they were summoned to the parliament in which the work of the Ordainers was published in 1311, they sent no proctors. Before the meeting in the autumn the king wrote to the archbishops, calling on them to urge the attendance of the clergy. Winchelsey objected to the writ, and the king issued another, promising that if it contained any cause of offence it should be remedied. Again, in 1314 Edward ordered the archbishops to summon the convocations of their provinces to treat about an aid. The clergy, however, declared that this was an infringement of the rights of the Church, and departed without further discussion. Before the next parliament, besides the regular writ with the “præmunientes” clause, he sent a special letter to the archbishops, urging them to press the attendance of the clergy; and this double summons was thenceforth sent regularly until 1340. Nevertheless in 1318 the clerical estate in parliament refused to make a grant without convocation. When the matter was referred to the convocation of Canterbury, the answer was returned that the grant must depend on the Pope’s consent, and a messenger was sent to Avignon to obtain it. The position of the clerical estate in Parliament was peculiar, for it is certain that its consent was not necessary to legislation. At the same time, when, as in 1316, a petition of the clergy touching spiritual matters received the royal assent, it was with that assent accepted as a statute. In convocation the action of the clergy was perfectly free; they made what grant they would without lay interference, though they had no means of appropriating the supplies they voted. While they withdrew as far as possible from parliament, they did not do so altogether, and in critical times their attendance was specially insisted on, in order that the consent of parliament might be general. Even at the present day they are summoned to every parliament by the “præmunientes” clause, and it is by their own act, by their preference for taxing themselves in their own assembly, that they have lost the right of obeying the summons. Convocations were summoned by the archbishops for other purposes besides taxation, and the ordinary legislative business of the Church was carried on in them. When a convocation met for self-taxation, it did so in consequence of a royal request for money, though it was summoned, as on other occasions, by the archbishop, not by the king. As the king made a like request to the lay estates at the same time, it naturally came to pass that convocation and parliament met about the same date. Nevertheless it would be easy to give many instances which show that meetings of convocation for purposes of taxation were not necessarily concurrent with, nor in any way dependent upon, the parliamentary session, as they became at a later period.