CHAPTER III.

PROGRESS OF GRIEVANCES UNDER THE NORMAN PRINCES.—PAPAL INTERFERENCE.—LEGATES.—COLLISION OF ROMAN AND ENGLISH FORMS OF LAW.—INCONVENIENCES ATTENDING IT.

It has been already observed that the distance of England from Italy, which had helped to deliver our borders from the political tyranny of imperial Rome, served also to protect the liberties of our church from the spiritual thraldom of papal Rome. The inhabitants of this island, entirely cut off from the rest of the world, were happily abandoned to their own devices. They were themselves the best judges of their own wants, and of the institutions which were suited to their own habits and circumstances; and though some time might elapse whilst they were thus groping out their way, which might have been saved by accepting foreign guidance, and though some rude traces of their slow and tentative progress towards their end might even afterwards appear in the results of their labours, still it was most desirable in the establishment of a church that it should gradually adapt itself in its growth and formation to the wants, the wishes, and the actual condition of the country. The least of all seeds was then most likely to become the greatest of trees, when it was left to thrive alone (occulto velut arbor ævo); when its roots were quietly suffered to feel for the soil that fed them best, and its branches to stretch out their arms towards the quarter of the heavens which proved the most genial. The spirit of Christianity itself, at its first appearance, invited this forbearance on the part of those amongst whom it came, not meddlingbodily with the civil or political rights of the nations it visited, and leaving their laws and forms of government, in their letter at least, just what it found them.

Thus in England the church and state for a long time grew up together, the pope occasionally interfering, though generally on invitation, and scarcely ever in a manner to disturb the harmony of the system. In Saxon times, we find the prelate and the king friends and fellow-workers together—the one teaching the people, the other taking an interest in his office, and making provision for its permanent continuance. The same good understanding which subsisted between the bishop and the sovereign, subsisted also between the priest and the noble: here, again, the one communicated a knowledge of God’s laws to the inhabitants of the manor, the other encouraged the good work, and secured a similar benefit to his estate for ever by a fixed endowment; for in those days there was a belief that the foundations of a state were best laid in religion, and that persons were better subjects and better citizens in proportion as they were better men. Did difficulties present themselves in questions ecclesiastical; were obstacles to be removed, or improvements to be made, or observances to be enforced, the nation had that within itself which usually supplied the remedy. Matters were transacted within the four seas. Civil interpositions,e. g.whether of the king or the great council, protected the persons and estates of the clergy, determined the union or dissolution of dioceses, directed the recovery of tithes; defined and punished sacrilege, prescribed and limited the right of sanctuary, insisted upon the observance of the Sabbath, and fined for the contempt of it.[87]Were the laws to be administered? Stillthere was the same intimate union maintained between clerical and secular interests. The bishop or his deputy (themissus episcopi) presided with the alderman in the county court, with the cent-grave in the hundred, with the town-reeve in the borough, with the steward of the manor in each parish; and judicial decisions which thus proceeded from the temporal and spiritual authorities combined were received with a respect which neither party could have secured for them, if acting alone.[88]Meanwhile all collision of church and state was avoided, and a wholesome sympathy sprung up between them as they mutually shed an influence on each other. William, however, was jealous of the clergy, and it must be confessed that Dunstan had not done much to make them find favour in the eyes of a high-spirited monarch. Accordingly, a measure which he had already adopted in his Norman dominions he extended to England, and separated the civil and ecclesiastical courts. The remote consequences of this innovation were the reverse of what was intended; but its direct effect was to withdraw considerable power from the hands of the bishop; to diminish his income by the fines which fell to his share; and to withhold from him the opportunity of appearing to advantage before the people, who could not fail of drawing a comparison between him and the secular judges who sat with him; between the man of learning and the men of arms.[89]It was not till the end of the reign of Henry I. that the change began to make itself felt. Now, however, the clergy, no longer supported by the crown in the same degree as before, nor making common cause with the nobles, were unable to uphold the independence of the national church against the pope, who was waxing stronger everyday; for he was even then no indifferent spectator of the affairs of nations, but was still on the watch ready to profit by the mistakes of others. Already he had made several unsuccessful attempts on the liberties of England. The case of Bishop Wilfrid was briefly alluded to in the first chapter. He was ejected from his see by Ecgfrid, king of Northumbria; he carried his complaints to Rome; it was the judgment of Pope Agatho in council that he had been unjustly deprived. After a while he returned to England and resumed his episcopal functions; but it was atthe requestof King Aldfrid, who had in the mean time succeeded Ecgfrid. This proves something; but the sequel of the story proves more. Wilfrid offends again—is again deprived; again appeals to Rome; and presents himself together with his accusers before Pope John, the successor of Agatho. Once more the decision is in favour of the bishop; and the pope on this occasion writes to the two kings, Ethelred and Aldfrid, to reinstall him in his see, from which it was his opinion, he had been unlawfully expelled. Ethelred (who had now abdicated in favour of Cœnred and had retired to a monastery) stood his friend, and advised compliance with the wishes of the pope; butAldfrid scorned to receive him[90], and if we are to believe the bishop’s biographer, expressed in no very measured terms his contempt for papal rescripts.[91]But it cost him dear, his death following shortly after, which Bede insinuates was a judgment upon him for this act of contumacy.[92]This was about the year 704. Again, there exists a letter addressed to Pope Leo III. by the bishops and clergy of England, protesting against the necessity of their metropolitan spending his labour in travelling to Rome for the pall, or his money in purchasingit, when the early records of the church went to prove that some archbishops had not received it at all, and that none had bought it at a price; happy times, they add, in which the apostolic see did not expose itself to the reproach which St. Peter cast on Simon, “Thy money perish with thee.”[93]This was about the year 798. The pope, therefore, was ready to rush in with the first opportunity, and at length, one presented itself. William requested the assistance of Rome to remodel the English church after the great Norman revolution; his request, we may be sure, was readily complied with. Certain cardinal priests are despatched, who endeavour to approximate Rome and Canterbury, by preaching on behalf of the pope, the pall, personal homage to the apostolic see, and the right of investiture to bishoprics; and though efforts are made to saddle upon England a permanent representative of the pope, under the title of Legate (a name perhaps derived from the military officer whom the Roman emperors used to send out to govern a province), this latter proposal is for the present abortive. In some of the other measures they appear to have sped better; for we may observe that on the demise of each archbishop successively (with few exceptions) there now occurs a memorandum of a vacancy in the see of twelve months or more, during which it is reasonable to suppose that the metropolitan elect was making application to Rome personally, or by proxy, for confirmation of his appointment and peaceable possession of the mitre.[94]Sometimes this interval is protracted to several years, the right of investiture being in such cases most likely a bone of contention between the king and the pope, and the subject not admitting of a more speedy adjustment. Indeed, this was a question of great intricacy; one, in which the most dispassionatelookers on must have found it difficult to strike a balance between the evil and the good. If, on the one hand, the pope was permitted to present to the sees and abbeys of England, he would fill the country, perhaps with foreigners, certainly with creatures of his own, and then what was to become of the independence of the national church? On the other hand, if the king presented, rapacious as the early Norman monarchs were, he might make a profit of his privilege, put up the sacred offices to auction, as King Rufus actually did;[95]or retain in his own hands, as that same tyrant was found to have done at the day of his death, an archbishopric of Canterbury, the bishoprics of Winchester and Salisbury, together with a dozen good abbeys, and then what was to become of the very existence of the national church?[96]It was probably these latter considerations that induced Archbishop Anselm, a sincere friend and well-wisher, as it should seem, to his church, to throw it more effectually into the hands of the pope, by procuring from him an injunction that no prelate, abbot or priest, should receive investiture of any dignity ecclesiastical whatsoever from a layman. King Henry, perhaps unwilling to risk a rupture at one and the same time with his church at home, with a strong faction of his nobles who supported it, and gave evidence of their intention to do so with spirit by the oath they subsequently imposed upon Stephen[97], and with the papal power now grown formidable, gave way, and granted to the cathedrals and collegiate churches of his realm license to elect any of their own body into abbey or bishopric, thereby waiving a right which by an act of usurpation the kings had assumed sincethe conquest, of conferring mitres and monasteries on whom they would.[98]Thusthe authority of the Saxon synod, in which the bishops and clergy combined with the king for ecclesiastical elections, was in some measure restored, and though certainly less independent and absolute than formerly,[99]it was something that it had again a voice: at present, it should appear, that the theory of ecclesiastical appointments was this, the chapters elected, the king approved, the pope confirmed the choice.[100]But there were here too many parties having too many conflicting interests to admit of perpetual harmony. Accordingly the struggle begins; and now the pope has his right of investiture; and now the king cripples it by suspending the temporalities of the see during its vacancy, and leaving his holiness nothing to present unto but the bare episcopal office;[101]and now he accepts the king’s candidate to the rejection of him whom the chapter had unanimously chosen;[102]and now again he seems to take upon himself the sole responsibility of the appointment on the principle that “my name is Leo.”[103]On the whole, the strife issued out as it was natural it should, in the despot; the pope prevailed; his legate (for by the end of the reign of Henry I. a legate had established a right of road into England) was ever upon the watch; and the opposition of the national clergy, which was considerable, to the advances of this active emissary, was taken off by identifying the legate with the Archbishop of Canterbury himself. This was a masterstroke of policy; it at once removed the leader of the insurgents, and grafting the unfounded pretensions of the legate on the acknowledged rights of the archbishop, made him in his latter character the best of stalking horses for papal encroachments. When the high spirit of the clergy wouldhave tempted them to resist him in one capacity, their sense of what was due to him in his other capacity kept them in check; to abstract the legate from the metropolitan was impossible; the functions of the two were in constant conflict; and it must have been felt that there was a drag on the church which was pulling it in pieces. He, however, as the pope’s representative, continued to convene provincial synods and preside in them; to exercise all manner of jurisdiction; to withdraw from the cognisance of parliament ecclesiastical grievances; to interfere with the diocesan courts, and excite the just jealousy of the bishops by supplanting them in some of their most ancient and indisputable rights. Questions touching the probate of wills, administrations, appeals, visitations, and the like, afforded but too much opportunity for collision, and the church was scandalised by a contest, rather for the fees than for the faith.[104]Thus did the establishment suffer both from within and from without: from within, by the decay of all discipline; from without, by the forfeiture of all respect.

Nor was this all. Nothing contributes so much to disgust the public mind with the existing order of things as the faulty administration of justice. Let the people have justice purely, unexpensively, and expeditiously administered, and what chiefly concerns them in the government of a country is obtained. “I crave the law,” is the demand of any stout-hearted nation, and having gained this object, they are at peace. Now the ancient county-court was simple and satisfactory in its practice—it was the natural growth of the soil; suited to the wants of Englishmen, and consecrated by immemorial usage. The judiciary system introduced by the pope, on the other hand, into the diocesan courts, of which rescripts from Rome and (subsequentlywhen the books of the civil law had been discovered) the old Roman jurisprudence were the basis, was tedious, costly, and what was perhaps worse than all, novel.[105]Even of those who had to administer it, there were some who did it reluctantly, strove to evade it, and adopted the trial by jury instead of the subtleties of the Roman law; but these innovations were accounted heretical, and prohibitions were issued against Grosthead, Bishop of Lincoln, and others, who had the courage or temerity to attempt them.[106]Still it was one thing to silence, and another to satisfy. Much inconvenience was felt by the people in consequence of “the law’s delay,” and a proportionate desire was created for a reformation of the system. The rolls of parliament, from Edward III. to Henry VIII., present numerous complaints to the Commons on the difficulties attending the probate of wills; and such there well might be, when, in addition to the parties already mentioned, the bishop and the legate, each of whom asserted his own exclusive right of probate, and referred his cause to the pope, a third party stepped in, under the title oflegatus e latere, or special legate, who in his turn, contested the privileges of thelegatus natus, and urged his own superior claim to the cognisance of all testamentary matters.[107]Nor were the grievances touching property more onerous than those which regarded domestic relationship. The regulations of marriage were intricate and vexatious: whilst it was maintained to be in itself a sacrament, and so indissoluble, the prohibited degrees were studiously multiplied, and thereby a pretence was furnished for a dissolution whenever it should be the pope’s pleasure to pronounce it. Thus did he hold in his hands, and determine by his legate, or by the dean of thearches, the legate’s deputy, the legitimacy of children, and the succession of families, separating those whom no man had a right to put asunder, and giving his sanction to unions which nature and Scripture forbade.

The progress of a cause, slow, of necessity by reason of the forms of the court, and the contradictions of the canons, was still further and more seriously impeded by appeals. By these, episcopal decisions were set at nought; and the more effectually as the court of the arches was invested with the power of suspending the process of the ordinary till the pope’s answer should be received, and often no doubt, till one or both of the litigants would be ready to exclaim with King Henry, whose divorce presents, in its seven years’ details, a splendid example of the grievances under which numbers of his subjects were suffering, with more right on their side—

——“I abhorThis dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome.”

——“I abhor

This dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome.”

It would be a long labour, and one, perhaps of no great interest to the majority of our readers after all, to follow out this branch of our subject in all its extent. Suffice it, however, not to have passed over in silence so fruitful a source of popular discontent as abuses in the administration of the law—abuses which could fail of alienating multitudes from a church with which they were identified. It is not, perhaps, a circumstance less worthy of notice from being often overlooked, and whilst the more obvious evils which clamorously demanded redress are set forth to the full, one which touched men in their property, their affections—which met them in the affairs of “this working-day world” at every turn—is noticed casually, or not at all.

There may be those, indeed, who think that to dwell atso much length on the secondary and more disgraceful causes of the Reformation, is to detract from the character of that great event, and to tarnish its lustre; but they who regard God’s enemies as his instruments will not so account of it. They will see in the course given to those beggarly elements the same superintending hand that wrought the nourishment of Jacob’s household out of the sin of Jacob’s sons; so that whilst they wickedly sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites, God mercifully made it for good, sending him before them, by this means, to preserve them a posterity in the earth, and to save their lives by a great deliverance. They will see in it the same power at work that shaped the cruel decree of Pharaoh for the children to be cast into the river into an easy provision for bringing up Moses in the royal household, and thus fitting him to be the teacher and leader of Israel, by introducing him into all the wisdom of the Egyptians. They will see in it the same that achieved the salvation of the world itself, by Caiphas who declared that it was expedient for one man to die for the people, and by the wretches that cried, “Crucify him! crucify him!”

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