CHAPTER XIX.

POPERY AT ITS HEIGHT. PRIVILEGED MONASTERIES. BEG

GING FRIARS.

CORRUPTIONS.

PERSECUTIONS.

Here is my throne: bid kings come bow to it.

SHAKSPEARE.

EADERS who have followed us thus far will have seen that the first and great cause of the success of the pope was the ill government of the Norman kings, who destroyed the old free parliament of the Saxons, and, while they professed to keep the ancient laws, took away the old courts in which justice was administered, and made the last appeal to be to judges who would lose their office, if they once resisted the pleasure of the sovereign.

The same oppressions which drove the barons to make league against king John, drove the Church, in earlier reigns, to form a closer union with the pope, against sovereigns, who broke their oath, and, regardless of human law or divine right, used their power only to plunder and destroy. The favour of the people attended these struggles for liberty: and in these days the only portion of society which preserved their property in peace were the members of those religious houses, which charity had reared and placed under the protection of the Church.

Still, however, the power of the pope would never have been established, if the kings themselves had not at last found it more for their own advantage to make agreement with the Roman pontiff than to continue at variance with him. The Church of England had

now become, with the vast number of religious houses founded since the Conquest, very rich; and there was enough both for pope and king to turn to a means of spoil. It was naturally the growth of those disordered times. The great men, who had been guilty of so many deeds of rapine and cruelty in the reign of Rufus and of Stephen, were sometimes struck by the remorse of conscience, and stood forth, like the extortioner Zacchæus, to give half of their goods to the poor. A wise government, guided by free councils, would have interfered sooner to put a check to this, lest it should encourage too many to eat the bread of idleness, living on the alms of the monasteries, when they were able to profit the state by honest industry. As it was, it went on without a check from the reign of the Conqueror to that of Edward I.-more than two hundred years; till about one-fifth of the land of the kingdom was in the possession of the monasteries.1 At this period, king John having set the first example, the kings began to make that sort of agreement with the pope, which lasted about three hundred years longer, exercising such rights as the pope allowed over the Church, and dividing with him the taxes which were laid upon the Church's inheritance. The more able kings, as Edward I. and Henry VII., kept the pope's share low; but in the time of weak kings, as Henry III., or those who had no good title, as Henry IV., the abuses of this usurpation were multiplied. The sum annually paid for Peter-pence had been restored by William Rufus; but nothing more was sent out of

1 H. Wharton, Remarks on Burnet, p. 40. Bp. Burnet says, "the best part of the soil of the kingdom was in such ill hands." Pref. pt. ii. p. xii. If he means the best-cultivated part, this is true; for the monks took much better care of their lands than the Norman barons. If he means that they had more than half the soil, it is one of the foolish tales which this credulous writer was much too ready to believe.

the country till king John had opened the road to all kinds of exaction.

The lesson to be learnt from this surrender of the liberties of Church and State, is one which every Englishman may read in the causes in which it began. HAD THE SOVEREIGNS LEFT THE CHURCH

HER FREEDOM, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO PO

PERY. There can be no revival of popery in England, while the Church is free: but if wicked governors seize on the Church's goods, destroy her bishoprics, or give them to false teachers and unworthy men-attempt, as the apostate Julian did, to deprive her of the power of educating her own children, and if the people love to have it so,-it can only end in the exaltation of some power, which will defile the altar and cast down the throne. Let the Church be secured by the state in those rights which the law of Christ has given her-let her be free, as other institutions are free, enjoying her property under the protection of equal laws,-and the state and nation that so protect her, in her freedom will secure their

own.

There were many other causes which helped on the encroachments of the pope, besides this chief and greatest one. There were many ways in which his authority was brought in, secretly at first and unsuspected, till it was too late to apply a remedy. It was begun and fostered within the Church itself by introducing the Dissenting Principle. The different orders of monks, canons, and friars, were all, in fact, so many sects, each collecting a body of partisans of their own, and withdrawing themselves from the control of the bishop. No doubt the bishops appointed by the Norman kings were often of such a character, that it was difficult for the monks to live at peace under them; so that there were faults on both sides. But the love of power on the part of the great ab

bots urged them on the more eagerly in that ruinous course, which was the occasion of their great overthrow in Henry VIII.'s time. The first abbey which was exempted from the jurisdiction of the bishop was Battle Abbey, founded by the Conqueror, and privileged in this extraordinary manner by his charter. From this example others were led either to purchase the same privilege at Rome, or, what was in these bad times no uncommon thing, to forge old charters pretending to give their abbeys such privileges at some period before the Conquest. Thus the popes began to establish an interest for themselves by a means which they have ever since employed (through the begging friars, when the monks were not obedient, and when the begging friars were become unserviceable, by the Jesuits), by setting up dissenting societies to oppose the rightful authority of the bishops.

The first order which seems to have attempted to gain this exemption was the order of Cluniac monks; but before the time of Gregory VII. it was not so easy to find bishops willing to allow it. At a council of French bishops held at Ause, near Lyons, a.d. 1025, it was resolved that the privilege granted to the Cluniacs, taking them out of the jurisdiction of their bishops, was not valid; for it was not according to the old laws of the Church, and particularly it was contrary to the fourth canon of the council of Chalcedon, one of the early councils whose authority is acknowledged in every Christian Church.2 These

2 See Mr. Palmer's Ecclesiastical History, chap. vii. p. 70. The canon runs thus: "It is decreed, that no man shall any where build or establish a monastery or house of prayer without the consent of the bishop of the city or province; and that the monks in each city or province shall be subject to the bishop, and love peace and quietness, and apply themselves to fasting and prayer, in those places in which they have renounced the world." A.D. 451.

H H

monks, however, did not lose sight of the advantage to be gained to their sect by it; and when it was once established, the abbot of Clugny became a powerful head of a large body of dissenters in Christendom. Though their houses in England were few, their property was large: they had the great tithes of many livings settled upon them; and being chiefly foreigners, they had no interest in leaving a fair portion to the English parish-priest. The pope found them very useful allies in England and other places.

The old Benedictine abbeys, founded by Dunstan's friends, were induced often to seek this privilege, by the trouble which the Norman bishops gave them. As long as the bishops were monks of their own order, the monks and they, in the cathedral towns, agreed well enough; but when they came to be secular priests, or canons, or of any other order, they were often at variance: for the bishop in the cathedral city, according to Dunstan's plan, was to be abbot of his own monastery; but when this could no longer be, there was to be a division of the revenues; and this occasioned disputes. There was sad work at Canterbury in Richard I.'s time or just before, when Baldwin, an Englishman, born at Exeter, and of the Cistercian order, was made archbishop of Canterbury. He tried in every way he could to destroy the exemption of the abbot and monks of St. Augustine's, but the popes Urban III. and Clement III. effectually prevented him. This prelate was in great esteem with the clergy who were not monks; and, as he afterwards accompanied Richard on his crusade, was the means of doing some good in restraining the disorders and relieving the wants of the English soldiery. He is one of the first bishops after the Conquest who is mentioned as having been a preacher; the majority of them being still Normans, who could not speak English, as William de Longchamp, bishop