The spiritual jurisdiction for which churchmen contended so jealously had altogether failed to preserve discipline. The secularization of the clergy rendered this failure specially disastrous; for a clerk, who had laid aside everything clerical except the tonsure, and had perhaps concealed that, if accused of any crime, however grave, was immediately claimed by his order, and was only amenable to a law that was powerless to inflict an adequate punishment for the worst offences. Nor were clerical offenders rare, for the number of those in orders of one kind or another was very large. Many of them had little to do, their duties merely consisting in the performance of anniversary services, and so, being idle, they were prone to self-indulgence and mischief. Several of the archbishops of Canterbury endeavoured, as we have seen, to restore discipline, but the spiritual courts were corrupt, and their efforts were of little avail. Yet, while the laity saw discipline utterly broken down, they found the spiritual courts strong enough to oppress them with heavy fees, especially in testamentary cases, and in various other ways, and the cost and vexation entailed by ecclesiastical processes were a constant source of irritation. At the same time, high as the pretensions of the clergy were, there can be no doubt that the clerical standard was lowered by the pestilence. Many benefices were suddenly vacated, and there were few to fill them. The ranks of the clergy must have been recruited with men of inferior education, and it was by them that the vacant cures were supplied. Some efforts were made to remedy the ignorance of those who should have been the teachers of the people. Islip’s foundation at Oxford has already been noticed; it was soon to be followed by the more magnificent foundations of William of Wykeham. Meanwhile, in the north, the most backward part of the kingdom, Archbishop Thoresby, a prelate of noble character, laboured to bring about a better state of things. He constantly visited different parts of his diocese, teaching, and correcting abuses, and in order that his people might know the elements of Christianity, he published a kind of catechism in two versions, one in Latin for the clergy, whose ignorance and carelessness he severely reprehended, and the other in English verse for the laity.
Discontent at the condition of the Church grew bitter as the people at large felt the burden of a war that had ceased to be glorious, and the general decline in prosperity aggravated the religious disaffection. Men saw with anger that, while the nation groaned under heavy taxation, the greater ecclesiastics held all the richest offices in the State as well as in the Church, and that, large as their revenues were, the country was misgoverned and the war mismanaged. Attack on the clerical ministers and the wealthy clergy, 1371.An anti-clerical party arose, and an attack was made on ecclesiastical ministers and the wealthier churchmen. When the Prince of Wales returned from Aquitaine, in January 1371, fresh supplies were demanded of parliament. In reply, the lay estates presented a petition complaining that the government had too long been in the hands of the clergy, who could not be called to account, and requesting that the king would consider that laymen were fit to be employed in offices of state. In consequence of this petition, the chancellor, William of Wykeham, and the treasurer, the bishop of Exeter, resigned, and their places were taken by laymen. An attempt of the monastic orders to claim exemption from the payment of subsidies led to some bitter words concerning the wealth of the greater churchmen. A lord compared the Church to an owl that was unfledged until each bird gave it a feather to deck itself with; suddenly, he said, a hawk appeared, and the birds demanded back their feathers in order that they might escape. The owl refused; so they stripped him, and flew away in safety, leaving him in worse plight than he was before. Even so, he continued, in this dangerous war ought we to take back from the wealthy clergy the temporalities which belong to us and to the realm, and defend the realm with these our own goods rather than by increased taxation. The clergy took the hint, and promised the Prince of Wales in convocation to grant £50,000, a sum to which even those whose endowments had hitherto escaped on account of their smallness were obliged to contribute. John of Gaunt returned the next year, and probably took the lead of the anti-clerical party, in opposition to the Prince of Wales, who upheld William of Wykeham. Although this year an attack was made in parliament on the lawyers, the abuses of the Church did not escape. Petitions were presented requesting that the king would confiscate the revenues of foreign beneficed clergy who did not live in the kingdom—this was refused; that bishops’ officials should demand less exorbitant fees in testamentary cases—in this matter the bishops were ordered to find a remedy; and that the benefices of clergy who lived in open concubinage should, if the bishop neglected to act, become ipso facto void, and that the Crown should present—to this no answer was returned.
When John of Gaunt came back from his unsuccessful campaign in 1373 his influence in parliament was lessened. Nevertheless a petition was presented against the encroachments of the clerical courts. A strong remonstrance was also made on the subject of reservations and provisions and on the withdrawal of money from the country by foreign ecclesiastics. Concordat with the Pope.To this the king replied that he had already sent an embassy to the Pope to represent these grievances, probably in consequence of the petition of the year before, and the matter was referred to a conference about to be held at Bruges. When the king’s demand for a tenth was laid before convocation by Archbishop Whittlesey, the clergy declared that they were undone by the exactions of the Pope and the king, and that they could better help the king “if the intolerable yoke of the Pope were taken from their necks;” and Courtenay, bishop of Hereford, protested that he would not consent to the grant unless some remedy were devised for these evils. The tenth was, however, granted, and all looked for what the negotiations at Bruges would bring forth. Conference at Bruges, 1374-1375.To this conference, which met the following year, Edward sent the bishop of Bangor, Dr. John Wyclif, and others, as his representatives to arrange a concordat with Gregory XI. The immediate results, which were declared in 1375, were unsatisfactory, for they were merely temporary in their application. However, in 1377, the king’s jubilee year, Edward announced that the Pope had promised that he would abstain from reservations; that he would not provide to any bishopric until sufficient time had elapsed for him to hear the result of the capitular election; that he would respect the elective rights of other capitular bodies; that he would diminish the number of foreign ecclesiastics; that though he would not give up his claim to first-fruits, which were still held to be an innovation, he would see that they did not press too heavily on the clergy; and that he would be moderate in issuing expectatives and provisions.
The Good Parliament, 1376.
No parliament met from 1373 until the Good Parliament of 1376. In this parliament the party of reform was upheld by the Prince of Wales and the bishop of Winchester. The Prince of Wales died during the session of the parliament, and left the leaders of the party exposed to the vengeance of John of Gaunt. A series of accusations was brought against Wykeham, his temporalities were seized, and he was forbidden to come near the court. Accordingly, he did not come up to the convocation of 1377, and Simon Sudbury, the archbishop of Canterbury, refused to specially request his attendance. His opposition was overruled by Courtenay, now bishop of London, who dwelt on the injustice that had been done Wykeham by the Crown, and urged the clergy to make no grant until he joined them. Wykeham came up to convocation, and the king promised to redress his wrongs. And here, at the point at which the quarrel assumes a new phase, when the clergy were about to aim a blow at their enemy, John of Gaunt, by attacking his ally, John Wyclif, at the opening of strife between Lollardy and the Church, and at the beginning of a new era in the relations between Rome and the English and other national Churches, brought about by the papal Schism, this narrative reaches its appointed limit.
Summary, 601-1066.
601-664.
Each period of the history we have been studying has some special characteristics, and it may be convenient to sum them up briefly. The partial failure of the Kentish mission and the break-down of Gregory’s scheme of government left the English Church in a disorganized condition, and Rome had to win a second victory to save it from Celtic customs and separation from the rest of Christendom. The hero of that victory was Wilfrith, its token the restoration of the see of York. A new period opens with the work of Theodore, and extends from the victory of the Roman party at Whitby to the end of the greatness of the Northumbrian Church, and the establishment of the sovereignty of Wessex. 663-829.The diocesan scheme of Theodore succeeded, and is the basis of our present arrangement. His attempt to bring the whole Church under the rule of a single metropolitan failed, for the northern Church was for a season more advanced than the rest of the land in religion and culture; and its failure is marked by the restoration of the see of York to metropolitan rank. From the first the Church was national in character, independent of the rise and fall of the petty kingdoms into which the land was divided, and it became a powerful agent in the accomplishment of national unity. Nor was it by any means a handmaid of Rome, for the attempt of Wilfrith to regain his position by invoking the papal authority met with derision and defeat. From the first, too, the Church and the civil power worked in complete harmony, and when national unity was attained, the Church bore its own share in every department of the polity it had done so much to create. For a moment, indeed, its work in teaching the lesson of union was threatened by the baleful predominance of Mercia; for the foundation of the Mercian archiepiscopate was an attempt to make the Church minister to the greatness of a single kingdom; its failure saved her from degradation, and probably saved the nation from prolonged division. By Archbishop Ceolnoth’s alliance with Ecgberht, the Church adopted the interests of the line of kings under whom the unity of the nation was accomplished.
829-988.
While the invasion of the Northmen completed the ruin of the northern church, Alfred and his son imparted new vigour to the life of the southern province, and their work was carried further forward by the great churchmen whose names are connected with the monastic revival of the tenth century. This period of recovery may be said to close with the death of Dunstan. Although the relations between England and Rome became more intimate under the immediate successors of Ecgberht, and especially under Alfred, the work of restoration was not due to direct Roman influence; it was effected mainly through intercourse with France, Flanders, and Germany. Throughout the period the unity of action of the Church and State is strongly marked; separate conciliar action became rare, and both spiritual and secular affairs were administered by statesmen-bishops. 988-1066.During the first part of the eleventh century this union became even more intimate, greatly to the loss of the Church; for the bishops were absorbed in worldly matters and party strife. Freedom from Roman interference and a long course of independent and purely national life, however good in themselves, proved dangerous, for the Church had not yet attained any widespread culture.