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 a.s.sumed name and addressed to the "n.o.ble 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 doc.u.ment 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.
[Sidenote: 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 pet.i.tion 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 doc.u.ment 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 pa.s.sed, 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 a.s.sent was given, and the "articles" became a statute.
By these articles the rules laid down in the writ "Circ.u.mspecte 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.
[Sidenote: 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 embarra.s.sments 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 Provencal, 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 a.s.sent, for Burghersh was under the canonical age.
[Sidenote: 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 emba.s.sy 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.
[Sidenote: The Battle of Myton, 1319.]
[Sidenote: The Sherburn Parliament, 1321.]
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 p.r.o.nounced. 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 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 a.s.sociation 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 pet.i.tioned for a cessation of hostile movements, and for concord in the next parliament, so that, by G.o.d"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 const.i.tutional 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.
[Sidenote: 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 "praemunientes" 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 pet.i.tion of the clergy touching spiritual matters received the royal a.s.sent, it was with that a.s.sent 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 "praemunientes" clause, and it is by their own act, by their preference for taxing themselves in their own a.s.sembly, 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 pa.s.s 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.
CHAPTER IX.
_THE PAPACY AND THE PARLIAMENT._
ECCLESIASTICAL CHARACTER OF THE REIGN--ARCHBISHOPS AND THEIR ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION--PROVISIONS--STATUTE OF PROVISORS--OF PRaeMUNIRE--REFUSAL OF TRIBUTE--RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE STATE--CAUSES OF DISCONTENT AT THE CONDITION OF THE CHURCH--ATTACK ON CLERICAL MINISTERS AND THE WEALTHY CLERGY--CONCORDAT WITH THE PAPACY--THE GOOD PARLIAMENT--CONCLUSION.
[Sidenote: Character of the period.]
The fifty years of the reign of Edward III. are of special importance in the history of our Church; for they witnessed the restriction of papal authority by parliament, and the rise of a spirit of discontent at evils which existed in the National Church. From the time of John"s submission the Popes had constantly treated England as a never-failing treasury, and had diverted the revenues of the Church to their own purposes. The breach between the papacy and the Crown in the reign of Edward I. had been followed by the expression of the national sense of injury in the parliament of Carlisle. The war with France caused the anti-papal feeling to grow and bring forth fruit. It was intolerable that the wealth of the country should go to enrich its enemies, and that French Popes should exercise jurisdiction here in defiance of the will of the king and to the subversion of the common law. The victories of England find their ecclesiastical significance in the legislation against papal oppression, in the statutes of Provisors and Praemunire. Within the Church several causes combined to give rise to an anti-clerical feeling. While the nation suffered severely from the expenses of the war, the Church was rich, and might, so men thought, well be forced to bear a larger share of the general burdens than the clergy were willing to lay upon themselves. The bishops filled all the chief administrative offices, and enjoyed their revenues in addition to the wealth of their sees. The inferior clergy were as a rule careless and ignorant. The Church, though it jealously watched over its rights of jurisdiction, found itself powerless to enforce needful discipline on the clergy, while the abuses of the ecclesiastical courts were a continual source of irritation to the laity. An attempt was made to debar the prelates from political offices, and an attack on the wealth of the Church was threatened. Then came the papal Schism, and new ideas were openly expressed concerning the papacy itself, the position and rights of the clergy, and the relations between Church and State. With these ideas we have nothing to do here. But as we follow the ecclesiastical history of the reign we shall see how the way was prepared for them; how it was that Wyclif, a strenuous upholder of the rights of the National Church, was led to form a spiritual conception of the Church Universal, to declare that a Pope who was not Christ-like was Antichrist, and to teach that it would be well for the Church to strip herself of her endowments and to become independent of the State; why it was that the bulwarks already raised against papal interference were strengthened, and why for a season there were from time to time evidences of a spirit of revolt against the ecclesiastical system. It will perhaps be convenient to divide the Church history of the reign into two unequal parts at the return of the Prince of Wales and the meeting of the anti-clerical parliament in 1371, and after some notices of the archbishops and their ecclesiastical administration down to the consecration of Whittlesey in 1368, to take a survey of the relations, first, between the papacy and England, and, secondly, between the National Church and the State during that period, and to end with some account of the anti-clerical movement of the last years of the reign.
[Sidenote: Simon Mepeham, archbishop of Canterbury, 1328-1333.]
On the death of Reynolds in 1327, the Canterbury chapter elected Simon Mepeham, and at Queen Isabella"s request, and after receiving a gift from the convent, John XXII. confirmed the election. Mepeham was a scholar and a theologian. He held councils, published canons, and did what he could to rule well. Conscious of the necessity of reform, he set about a provincial visitation, and fined and excommunicated the bishop of Rochester for non-residence, neglect of duty, and laxity of government. When he came to Exeter, Bishop Grandison, who built a large part of the cathedral there, refused to receive him, and drew up his men under arms to oppose his entrance. Grandison, who claimed a papal exemption from metropolitan visitation, appealed to the Pope, and the king ordered the archbishop to desist from his attempt. This seems to have brought his efforts for reformation, which excited much ill-will among his suffragans, to a premature end. He was involved in a quarrel with the monks of St.
Augustine"s, who also resisted his authority. They appealed to the Pope, and Mepeham, who refused to give way, died under excommunication.
[Sidenote: John Stratford, archbishop of Canterbury, 1333-1348.]
[Sidenote: His controversy with the king.]
[Sidenote: A lay chancellor, 1340.]
John Stratford, bishop of Winchester, of whom we have heard before, was at the king"s instance elected to succeed him, and the Pope provided him, not in virtue of the postulation of the chapter, but "of his own motion."
Although the chapter of Winchester elected, and the king recommended, the prior of Worcester as Stratford"s successor, Orlton, who happened to be at Avignon, was, on the recommendation of Philip of France, provided by the Pope to the vacant see. The king was indignant, and called on Orlton to answer for thus procuring the papal brief against his will, but let the matter drop. Edward"s ministers were mostly churchmen, and for about eleven years after the fall of Mortimer, Stratford, or his brother, the bishop of Chichester, generally held the office of chancellor, and exerted themselves to raise money for the French war. For some years Edward made no progress in the war, and was generally unsuccessful except at sea.
Stratford, who belonged to the old Lancastrian party, disapproved of the constant waste of money, and recommended peace. Money on which the king reckoned was not forthcoming, and in 1340, excited probably by the misrepresentations of the court party, and especially by Bishops Burghersh and Orlton, he returned suddenly to England, turned Stratford"s brother, the chancellor, and other ministers out of office, and imprisoned some of his judges and other officers. Stratford was summoned to appear at court, but retired to Canterbury, and there preached some sermons, the character of which may be judged by the text of one of them: "He was not moved with the presence of any prince, neither could any bring him into subjection" (Ecclus. xlviii. 12). He further excommunicated all who offered violence to clerks or accused them falsely to the king. Edward replied by putting forth a pamphlet containing his complaints against the archbishop. In this pamphlet, which is called the _famosus libellus_, he charged Stratford with being the cause of his want of success by keeping him short of funds in order to gain profit for himself, and added several accusations which were mere abuse. Although Orlton denied it, this discreditable doc.u.ment was probably drawn up by him. Stratford answered it point by point, and complained that the king was condemning him, one of the chief peers of the realm, without trial. Edward carried on this paper war with another weak letter, and wrote to Benedict XII., complaining of the archbishop, and hinting that he wished the Pope to suspend him. When parliament met in the spring of 1341, various attempts were made to prevent the archbishop from taking his seat, and the king began proceedings against him in the Exchequer. Stratford persisted in appearing in parliament, and offered to plead before his peers. The lords thereupon declared that no peer should be brought to trial except before his peers in parliament. Edward found it advisable to be reconciled to the archbishop, and the struggle ended. The archbishop"s persistence thus led to the establishment of the most important privilege of the peerage, and the result of the controversy ill.u.s.trates the const.i.tutional position of bishops as of equal dignity with the temporal lords. Meanwhile the king appointed Sir Robert Bourchier chancellor, the first layman who ever held that office. After a little time, however, the office was again held by clerks.
[Sidenote: His const.i.tutions.]
Stratford desired good government, and the clergy under his rule on one occasion joined the other estates in demanding redress of grievances, asking, for their part, that the charters should be confirmed, as well as that their own privileges of jurisdiction should be better observed: yet he made no real effort to secure const.i.tutional liberty. Although more of a statesman than an archbishop, he was fully alive to the evils arising from the oppressions of the ecclesiastical officials and the secular lives of the clergy, and held two councils, in which he regulated the officials"
fees, forbade bishops and archdeacons, when on a visitation, to quarter a large retinue on the clergy, ordered that archdeacons should not make a gain of commutations for corporal penance, and that clerks who concealed their tonsure, had long curled hair, and imitated the dress of laymen by wearing knives, long shoes, and furred cloaks, should be suspended.
[Sidenote: Battle of Nevill"s Cross, 18th October 1345.]
Meanwhile William Zouche, archbishop of York, was engaged in the defence of his province. In October 1345, while Edward was absent in France, David of Scotland led a large army into the bishopric of Durham, wasting the country as he advanced. Archbishop William and the lords Nevill and Percy raised a force, in which, along with knights and men-at-arms, were many of the northern clergy, the archbishop in person leading one of the divisions. The English gained a signal victory at Nevill"s Cross; the Scottish king was taken prisoner, and the "chapter of Myton" was amply avenged.
[Sidenote: John of Ufford, archbishop-elect of Canterbury, 1348.]
[Sidenote: Thomas Bradwardine, archbishop of Canterbury, 1349.]
On Stratford"s death in 1348 the monks of Christ Church, thinking to please the king, and doubtless also to found a precedent, elected Edward"s chaplain, Thomas Bradwardine, without waiting for the _conge d"elire_.
Bradwardine, the _Doctor Profundus_, as he was called, a famous philosopher and theologian, was the champion of the Augustinian doctrine of predestination against the Scotists. He had accompanied the king in his victorious campaigns against France, and had been employed by him to treat of peace. Edward, though he was willing enough that he should be archbishop, would not allow the chapter to act independently, and so caused Clement VI. to provide his chancellor, John Ufford, who was an aged man. The pestilence now reached England, and Ufford died of it before he was consecrated. Bradwardine was then raised to the archbishopric by the common action of the king, the chapter, and the Pope; for after the English victories Clement was ready to oblige Edward, declaring that "if the king of England asked a bishopric for an a.s.s he could not refuse him." His subservience to Edward displeased the cardinals, and at the consecration feast of the great English doctor at Avignon one of them sent into the hall a buffoon mounted on an a.s.s, with a pet.i.tion that the Pope would make him archbishop of Canterbury. A week after Bradwardine came to England he too died of the pestilence, which both now and in its later outbreaks fell as heavily on the clergy as on the laity, carrying off four bishops in a single year.
[Sidenote: Simon Islip, 1349-1366.]
[Sidenote: Simon Langham, 1366-1368.]
[Sidenote: William Whittlesey, archbishop, 1368-1374.]
Simon Islip, Bradwardine"s successor, endeavoured to remedy ecclesiastical abuses. He founded Canterbury Hall at Oxford, to enable the clergy to receive a better education, and published some excellent const.i.tutions in convocation. Clerical offenders claimed by the Church from the secular courts, and committed to the custody of the bishops, were often kept in comfort; they sometimes escaped from their prisons, and sometimes were released without good cause. This was no longer to be; and imprisonment was to be made a real punishment. The archbishop also decreed that chaplains who were engaged to perform commemorative ma.s.ses should, if required, be bound to do parochial work at a fixed stipend of one mark beyond their ordinary pay, which he fixed at five marks. A long-standing dispute between the sees of Canterbury and York as to the right of the northern metropolitan to carry his cross erect in the southern province was at last settled by an agreement between Islip and John Th.o.r.esby, archbishop of York. When the king and the parliament checked the papal aggressions Islip abstained from interference; for, while he could not quarrel with the papacy, he would not uphold it against the will of the nation. While, however, he was prudent and moderate in temper, he did not shrink from speaking plainly on behalf of good government, and wrote a strong remonstrance to the king about the oppression of the people by the royal purveyors. On Islip"s death Simon Langham, bishop of Ely, was raised to the primacy. He was chancellor when he was translated, but did not hold the office long afterwards. By the command of Pope Urban V. he inst.i.tuted an inquiry into cases of plurality, and found that some clerks held as many as twenty benefices by provisions, with license to add to their number. After he had held the archbishopric two years, Urban made him a cardinal. The king was displeased at this, and seized his temporalities.
Langham resigned the see and went to Avignon, and was succeeded at Canterbury by his kinsman, William Whittlesey, who took little part in the affairs either of Church or State, for he soon fell into ill health.
[Sidenote: The Church and the Papacy, 1327-1371.]
[Sidenote: Reservations and provisions.]
[Sidenote: Resisted by the king and parliament.]
There was comparatively little direct taxation of the clergy by the Popes during this reign, though first-fruits were still demanded, and the frequency with which promotions were effected by provision probably led to a growing compliance with the demand. At the same time, the Church was wronged in a more mischievous manner by the Popes" usurpation of patronage. English bishoprics, dignities, and cures were conferred without regard to the fitness of the person promoted, and simply as a matter of policy, or a means of providing for the friends and advisers of the Pope.
The first decided check that was administered to this abuse arose from the war with France; for it was felt to be intolerable that the wealth of the country should be handed over to the French cardinals and other members of the papal court at Avignon. During the early years of the reign little resistance was offered to the system of appointment by provision, though two sees, Exeter and Bath, which had been reserved, were filled up by the joint action of the Crown and the chapters. The abuse grew rapidly, until, in 1343, Clement VI. declared that he had reserved benefices, not including bishoprics, as they fell vacant, to the annual value of 2000 marks for two cardinals, who sent their agents to England to carry out their claims. These agents were ordered to depart, on pain of imprisonment, and a complaint was made to the Crown by the lay estates in parliament that the richest benefices in the country were bestowed by the Pope on foreigners, who never came near it, or contributed to its burdens, and who abstracted the wealth of England to the prejudice of the king and his kingdom, and, above all, of the souls of his subjects. The bishops did not dare to join in this complaint, and wished to withdraw, but the king made them stay during the proceedings. In answer to this complaint, a royal ordinance was published that any one who brought bulls or reservations into the kingdom should be imprisoned. Moreover, the king wrote a letter to the Pope representing that provisions led to the promotion of unfit persons, who did not understand the language of the country or reside on their benefices, and that they robbed patrons and chapters of their rights, and removed cases of patronage from the royal to the papal courts. A vigorous letter of remonstrance was also sent by the parliament by the hands of John of Sh.o.r.editch, a famous lawyer, who presented it to the Pope in the presence of the cardinals. Clement was angry, and declared he had only provided two foreigners. "Holy Father,"
John replied, "you have provided the Cardinal of Perigord to the deanery of York, and the king and all the n.o.bles of England know him to be a capital enemy of the king and kingdom." High words pa.s.sed; the cardinals left the court in some confusion, and John departed from Avignon in haste, lest mischief should befall him.