wards from his succéssor king John; and seemingly indeed conferred on the chapters belonging to each see; but by means of the frequent appeals to Rome, through the intricacy of the laws which regulated canonical elections, was eventually vested in the pope. And, to sum up this head with a transaction most unparalleled and astonishing in it's kind, pope Innocent III. had at length the effrontery to demand, and king John had the meanness to consent to, a resignation of his crown to the pope, whereby England was to become for ever St. Peter's patrimony; and the dastardly monarch reaccepted his sceptre from the hands of the papal legate, to hold as the vasal of the holy see, at the annual rent of a thousand marks. (4) admission. On the other hand, the popes contended that the ring and crosier were the emblems of spiritual jurisdiction, with which laymen had no right to interfere. Henry yielded the ring and crosier, but insisted that bishops should do fealty and homage before a grant of the temporalties, which was conceded. It might seem that the church gained substantially little by this compromise; and so Dr. Lingard asserts; but, in truth, the advantage gained was very important, for before the grant of the ring and crosier, the new bishop's consecration could not be complete ; and, therefore, the power of withholding it operated as a veto in an early stage of the election; whereas when the vacancy was actually filled up, it became a more difficult and less gracious thing to refuse the temporalties. With regard to the right of nomination, which the author calls "that antient prerogative of the crown," however antient a prerogative, and antient it undoubtedly was, it was itself, nevertheless, an infringement of the original constitution of the church, according to which bishopricks were filled by the election of the clergy and laity of the respective dioceses. But the diocesan clergy had first excluded the laity, and then had been themselves excluded by the cathedral, and in some instances conventual, chapters; and when bishopricks became endowed with large temporal possessions and power, it seemed but a necessary consequence that the crown should have a control over the manner of filling them. Long usage had legalized, what reason had first introduced. See Lingard, Hist. ii. 169. Hallam, Midd. Ages. cap. 7. (4) The dispute between John and Innocent III. was owing to the exercise of another power assumed by the papal court; that of not merely deciding cases of contested elections, but of filling up the place vacated by the irregularity of the election or unfitness of the elected. The monks of Christ Church at Canterbury, without asking the royal licence, or waiting for the concurrence of the provincial bishops, had elected Reginald their sub-prior archbishop; then a part of them, with the usual licence and concurrence, elected John de Gray, bishop of Norwich. Innocent decided that the right of election was in the monks, but that their choice was in17 formal; ANOTHER engine set on foot, or at least greatly improved, by the court of Rome, was a master-piece of papal policy. Not content with the ample provision of tithes, which the law of the land had given to the parochial clergy, they endeavoured to grasp at the lands and inheritances of the kingdom, and (had not the legislature withstood them) would by this time have probably been masters of every foot of ground in the kingdom. To this end they introduced the monks of the Benedictine and other rules, men of sour and austere religion, separated from the world and it's concerns by a vow of perpetual celibacy, yet fascinating the minds of the people by pretences to extraordinary sanctity, while all their aim was to aggrandize the power and extend the influence of their grand superior the pope. And as, in those times of civil tumult, great rapines and violence were daily committed by overgrown lords and their adherents, they were taught to believe, that founding a monastery a little before their deaths would atone for a life of incontinence, disorder, and bloodshed. Hence innumerable abbeys and religious houses were built within a century after the conquest, and endowed, not [109] only with the tithes of parishes which were ravished from the secular clergy, but also with lands, manors, lordships, and extensive baronies. And the doctrine inculcated was, that whatever was so given to, or purchased by, the monks and friars, was consecrated to God himself; and that to alienate or take it away was no less than the sin of sacrilege. I MIGHT here have enlarged upon other contrivances, which will occur to the recollection of the reader, set on foot by the court of Rome, for effecting an entire exemption of it's clergy from any intercourse with the civil magistrate; such as the separation of the ecclesiastical court from the temporal; the appointment of it's judges by merely spiritual formal; and that the bishop of Norwich's election was void, because made before Reginald's had been formally annulled; and thereupon he appointed Stephen Langton, an English clergyman at Rome. John refused to recognise him, upon which his kingdom was first interdicted, and after four years he himself deposed. See Lingard (Hist. iii. 22—42.), who enters into some curious reasoning, and states some curious facts to establish that the surrender of John was not so disgraceful an act as it has been commonly considered. authority without any interposition from the crown; the exclusive jurisdiction it claimed over all ecclesiastical persons and causes; and the privilegium clericale, or benefit of clergy, which delivered all clerks from any trial or punishment except before their own tribunal. But the history and progress of ecclesiastical courts, as well as of purchases in mortmain', have already been fully discussed in the preceding volumes: and we shall have an opportunity of examining at large the nature of the privilegium clericale in the progress of the present book. And therefore I shall only observe at present, that notwithstanding this plan of pontifical power was so deeply laid, and so indefatigably pursued by the unwearied politics of the court of Rome through a long succession of ages; notwithstanding it was polished and improved by the united endeavours of a body of men, who engrossed all the learning of Europe for centuries together; notwithstanding it was firmly and resolutely executed by persons the best calculated for establishing tyranny and despotism, being fired with a bigoted enthusiasm, (which prevailed not only among the weak and simple, but even among those of the best natural and acquired endowments,) unconnected with their fellow-subjects, and totally indifferent what might befal that posterity to which they bore no endearing relation : yet it vanished into nothing, when the eyes of the people were a [110] little enlightened, and they set themselves with vigour to op pose it. So vain and ridiculous is the attempt to live in society, without acknowledging the obligations which it lays us under; and to affect an entire independence of that civil state, which protects us in all our rights, and gives us every other liberty, that only excepted of despising the laws of the community. HAVING thus, in some degree, endeavoured to trace out the original and subsequent progress of the papal usurpations in England, let us now return to the statutes of praemunire, which were framed to encounter this overgrown yet increasing evil. King Edward I., a wise and magnanimous prince, set himself in earnest to shake off this servile yoke. He would not suffer his bishops to attend a general council, till they had • See Vol. III. pag.61. f See Vol. II. pag. 268. & Dav. 83., G. sworn not to receive the papal benediction. He made light of all papal bulles and processes: attacking Scotland in defiance of one: and seizing the temporalties of his clergy, who under pretence of another refused to pay a tax imposed by parliament. (5) He strengthened the statutes of mortmain; thereby closing the great gulph, in which all the lands of the kingdom were in danger of being swallowed. And, one of his subjects having obtained a bulle of excommunication against another, he ordered him to be executed as a traitor, according to the antient law". (6) And in the thirty-fifth year of his reign was made the first statute against papal provisions, being, according to sir Edward Coke', the foundation of all the subsequent statutes of praemunire, which we rank as an offence immediately against the king, because every encouragement of the papal power is a diminution of the authority of the crown. In the weak reign of Edward the second the pope again endeavoured to encroach, but the parliament manfully withstood him; and it was one of the principal articles charged against that unhappy prince, that he had given allowance to the bulles of the see of Rome. But Edward the third was of a temper extremely different: and to remedy these inconveniences first by gentle means, he and his nobility wrote an [ 111 ] expostulation to the pope; but receiving a menacing and contemptuous answer, withal acquainting him, that the emperor, (who a few years before at the diet of Nuremberg, A. D. 1323, had established a law against provisions *,) and h Bro. Abr. tit. Corone. 115. Treason, 14. 5 Rep. p. 1. fol. 12. 30 Ass. 19. i 2 Inst. 583. * Mód. Un. Hist. xxix.293. (5) At this time the clergy taxed themselves; it was not, therefore, for refusing to pay a tax imposed by parliament, in which they would have been fully justified, but for procuring a bulle, by which the clergy of all Christian countries were forbidden to grant to laymen the revenues of their benefices, without leave of the holy see, and under the protection of it refusing the king a fifth, that he issued a proclamation of outlawry against them, and took possession of all their lay fees, goods, and chattels. Lingard, Hist. iii. 340. (6) But because that lawe had not of long time beene put in execution, the chancellor and treasurer kneeled before the king, and obtained grace for him, so as he was onely banished out of the realme. Davis, 95. and the placita referred to in Brooke. also the king of France, had lately submitted to the holy see; the king replied, that if both the emperor and the French king should take the pope's part, he was ready to give battle to them both, in defence of the liberties of the crown. Hereupon more sharp and penal laws were devised against provisors', which enact severally, that the court of Rome shall not present or collate to any bishoprick or living in England; and that whoever disturbs any patron in the presentation to a living by virtue of a papal provision, such provisor shall pay fine and ransom to the king at his will, and be imprisoned till he renounces such provision; and the same punishment is inflicted on such as cite the king, or any of his subjects, to answer in the court of Rome. And when the holy see resented these proceedings, and pope Urban V. attempted to revive the vasalage and annual rent to which king John had subjected his kingdom, it was unanimously agreed by all the estates of the realm in parliament assembled, 40 Edw. III., that king John's donation was null and void, being without the concurrence of parliament, and contrary to his coronation oath and all the temporal nobility and commons engaged, that if the pope should endeavour by process or otherwise to maintain these usurpations, they would resist and withstand him with all their power m. In the reign of Richard the second, it was found necessary to sharpen and strengthen these laws, and therefore it was enacted by statutes 3 Ric. II. c. 3. and 7 Ric. II. c. 12. first, that no alien should be capable of letting his benefice to farm; in order to compel such as had crept in, at least to reside on their preferments: and, afterwards, that no alien should be [112] capable to be presented to any ecclesiastical preferment, under the penalty of the statutes of provisors. By the sta- m Seld, in Flet. 10. 4. |