Summary, 1066-1135.
The conquest of England may be regarded as a papal triumph over a Church and a nation which had stood apart from Roman Christendom and followed their own devices. Both before and after his victory the Conqueror availed himself of the help of Rome. Nevertheless he was strong enough to hold his own even against Gregory VII., and refused to allow the Pope any authority in his kingdom excepting within limits of his own appointment. The Church equally with the nation was conquered, and tasted the bitterness of defeat, but there was no break in the continuity of its life. Each Norman or French bishop who succeeded to the see of an English predecessor looked on himself as an English bishop, and the Church of the conquered people united conquerors and conquered in one English nation. William strengthened the Church as a means of strengthening himself, and his policy of separating the spiritual and secular courts was followed by few signs of coming conflict during the strong rule of the Norman kings.
1139-1205.
The conflict came after a suspension of the royal authority. The immunity of the clergy from secular jurisdiction confronted Henry II. as a dangerous obstacle to the success of his designs for the foundation of a strong and orderly government. His strife with Archbishop Thomas ended in his humiliation, but it left in the Constitutions of Clarendon the groundwork of a system to which the future relations between Church and State made continual and progressive approaches. The Church lost by the dispute; for the energy that might have been devoted to producing a higher clerical standard was frittered in a somewhat ignoble quarrel. Yet it also gained something besides a victory of doubtful benefit. Anselm, in a better cause, had already resisted despotism; and Thomas died for what he believed to be the rights of the Church over which he had been called to rule. Both alike asserted the sacredness of spiritual things. Neither Anselm nor Thomas received any hearty support from Rome; in both cases the action of the Popes appears to have been governed by motives of expediency. Nor was it in the Church’s quarrel alone that churchmen dared to encounter the wrath of kings. Thomas of Canterbury, Hugh of Lincoln, and Geoffrey of York each opposed the undue exercise of the royal power in secular matters, and were the earliest assertors of constitutional rights. At the same time, under both the Norman and the first two Plantagenet kings, the Church at large was on the side of the Crown, and did the nation good service by maintaining its authority against the feudal nobility.
1205-1265.
The quarrel between John and Innocent III. introduces a new period in our history, during which the Church was in opposition to the Crown, and was contending for national liberties against the king and his suzerain, the Pope. Although, as the vassal of Innocent, the king was upheld by all the power that the greatest of the Popes could exert, the Church cast in its lot with the nation, and took a foremost part in winning the Great Charter. It paid dearly for its self-devotion. Innocent had, however, overreached himself, for his attempt to uphold his vassal against the liberties of the country roused a bitter feeling against the papacy; and this feeling was deepened as succeeding Popes took advantage of the weakness of Henry III. to grind down the Church and oppress the country in order to raise funds for their war with the Hohenstaufen house. In the resistance that was at last made to the king’s misgovernment the Church was again foremost in the cause of liberty, while the Pope again upheld his vassal against his people. The barons’ war, however, virtually brought the papal suzerainty to an end.
A decisive blow was given to the power of the Popes in England by the folly of Boniface VIII., who forced Edward I. into hostility, and so made the Crown at one with the people in resisting papal pretensions. Nor were the clergy whole-hearted on the Popes’ side, for they had learned by bitter experience that they would at least gain nothing by the victory of Rome. Almost as soon, then, as the machinery for the expression of the national will was perfected, the king and the nation used it to express their indignation at the usurpations of the papacy. 1272-1307.The reign is further memorable in ecclesiastical history for the king’s work in defining the position of the Church in relation to the State. The policy of making the clergy a parliamentary estate so far failed that they succeeded in withdrawing themselves from parliament and making their grants in convocation, yet the attempt to secure their attendance brought their action in fiscal matters into correspondence with, though not into dependence upon, the action of the other estates of the realm. In matters of jurisdiction, Edward’s rule contained in the writ “Circumspecte agatis” was founded on clear and well-considered principles, and became the groundwork of all future legislation on the subject in mediæval times. In all points the Church was given an ascertained place in the national system, and while the king exacted many heavy taxes from the clergy, and occasionally, when it suited his convenience, made use of the papal authority, he never gave way to any attempt of Pope or archbishop to act as though the clergy had separate interests from the nation at large. For our purpose, the reign of his unhappy son is important mainly as exhibiting how entirely the success of the policy of Edward I. was the result of his personal character. 1307-1327.The weakness of Edward II. gave the Popes a chance of which they did not fail to avail themselves. While wholly under French influence, they did not hesitate to treat the English Church as arrogantly as they had treated it in the days when the papacy was strong. Under Edward I. the chapters virtually lost the power of electing bishops; during the reign of his son the will of the Crown was constantly set at nought, and the introduction of the system of reservation and provision as applied to bishoprics indicates the utter disregard with which the rights both of the Church and the king were treated at Avignon.
1343-1377.
A new and powerful motive for resistance was supplied by the French war of Edward III. Parliament and the Crown were at one in refusing to yield to papal pretensions, and the first statutes of Provisors and Præmunire, though they by no means put a stop to the evils at which they were aimed, at least taught the Popes the necessity of moderation. We leave the Church in the midst of a struggle. Exhausted with the burden of the French war, and disappointed at the change from victory to defeat, the nation was inclined to find fault with existing institutions. The wealth and power of the Church provoked envy; its abuses were regarded with indignation. The earliest phase of the struggle, the attack made in Parliament upon the clerical ministers and the richer clergy, brings this volume to a close. The work and theories of Wyclif and his followers, and the effects of the papal schism on the relations between England and Rome, are reserved for another volume of this series.