submit to John de Crema, who came here as legate a latere, and within a while was wholly divested of it, and it was conferred on Henry, bishop of Winchester. And who could object to such an honour done to the king's brother? It was very agreeable to Henry's inclinations. For he had requested the pope to erect his see into an archbishopric; and the monks of Winchester thought their bishop had a right to primacy, because Birinus their first bishop came as a missionary immediately from Rome, as Augustine did to Canterbury. But the pope, though he would not consent to make Henry a primate, yet he did that which made him more than a primate: for by giving him the legateship, he for the present set him above Canterbury, and made all the bishops in England subject to him. But he soon eclipsed him, by sending Alberic to act as legate a latere, and Henry's legateship expired this very year, 1143, together with Pope Innocent II. from whom he had received it. For Archbishop Theobald prevailed with Pope Lucius †, successor to Innocent, not to renew the legatine commission to Henry. And some time after he who had introduced the practice of appeals to Rome, was forced to go thither to answer an appeal made against him by his own monks, for purloining their treasury, and diminishing their great cross, which had weighed five hundred marks of silver and thirty of gold. Thus popes, under pretence of doing honour to English bishops, did really humble and mortify them. And the bishops, by accepting of his insidious honours, did in truth expose themselves and enslave the Church. Theobald was also the pope's legate, but he lived to see his primacy greatly diminished: for the Church of Ireland, which had acknowledged him and his predecessors as their metropolitan, had four primates created in the year 1152 or 3, by Pope Eugenius III ["Qy. John de Cremona was sent legate from the pope A.D. 1125 (or 1126 according to this A.) This is the first time that character was ever received in England. After the breaking up of the council which this legate then held at Westminster, W. Corboyl went to Rome to remonstrate against putting a foreign legate on the English. The pope conferred upon him the same title, and A.D. 1127 he held a council at Westminster both as legate and archbishop. The third legate and the second foreigner received as such was Alberic, bishop of Ostia, who held a council here 1138. The fourth legate was Henry, bishop of Winchester, whose commission was given him by Innocent II., 1139. Mr. Johnson, therefore, seems to be mistaken in making John de Crema legate here after Abp. Corboyl, and Alberic after Henry, bishop of Winchester." MS. note, Wrangham. Mr. Johnson's statement must also be referred to England after the Conquest; as legates and legatine canons were received at Cealchythe A D. 785. See vol. i. of this work, pp. 264, sqq.] [MS. note, Wrangham substitutes Celestine II. for Lucius.] A.D. MCLXIV. PREFACE. ARTICLES OF CLARENDON. AFTER Theobald had sat twenty-two years, Thomas Becket, King Henry the Second's chancellor, was elected by the monks of Christ Church, and accepted, and declared by the bishops of the province. This was done in a kind of parliamentary assembly, 1161. In the year 1163 he and four of his suffragans, with four abbots, by the king's leave went to the synod of Tours, (to which also Thurstan of York sent his abbot of Fountain,) where Pope Alexander the Third, and seventeen of his cardinals were personally present: the archbishop came home soothed with the favours of the pope (who gave him a chair at his own right hand) and warmed with a speech made by Arnulph, bishop of Lysieux, in behalf of the liberties of the Church; from this time forward would not pay that submission to the civil courts which he had done before. Hereupon the king calls all the archbishops and bishops to Westminster, and the main point proposed to them was, whether they would observe the ancient customs of the kingdom, or rather the customs used in the time of the king's grandfather, King Henry the First, (for they were called avitæ consuetudines,) [and] they promised to do it, saving their order. This did not satisfy the king, whose indignation they feared; therefore Becket goes to him at Woodstock, and promised he would comply without adding any such salvo: the king required that this promise should solemnly be made before all the great men of the kingdom, and therefore called an assembly of them to Clarendon : there the archbishops and bishops did accordingly swear to observe these customs. But when afterwards these customs were drawn in the following form, and they were required to set their seals to them, the archbishop absolutely and finally refused it, and retired beyond sea, and found protection in France and Italy, and from thence fulminated his anathemas against the king and his adherents, and raised a violent storm in the English Church; for which his monks of Canterbury and all his kindred were most cruelly treated, and he himself, soon after that was over, perished in the calm. The principal cause of all these commotions, were the three books of decrees which Gratian was compiling under the direction of Pope Eugenius the Third, who made Henry of Winchester his legate here, and excommunicated King Stephen for his harsh treatment of Archbishop Theobald. These decrees were afterwards published by that pope, and publicly read in the universities. Theobald sent Thomas Becket, while he was his chaplain, to Bononia, on purpose to be well instructed in this new learning. LATIN. Sir H. Spelman, vol. ii. 63. vol. i. A.D. MCLXIV. ARTICLES OF CLARENDON. This was clearly a Parliamentary Assembly. Ar a council holden at Clarendon in the presence of King Henry the Second, in which John of Oxford, the king's chaplain, presided by order of the king, a recognition was Wilkins, made of the customs and liberties of the king's ancestors (particularly of his grandfather Henry the First) by the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, and great men of the kingdom, and which ought to be observed by reason of the disputes which often happen between the clergy and the justices of the king and of the great men. The articles here follow. It may not be improper to observe, that one half of the inconveniencies which these articles were intended to cure, and of the disputes which now grew between the ecclesiastical and secular powers, took their rise from the separation made by William the Conqueror between the two jurisdictions. 1, 15. For there could be no just objection either from the clergy or laity against trying causes of the right of patronage or of debt in a court where both the bishop and the king's chief officer in the law sat as judges. 3, 9. Clergymen had no reason to decline the temporal court while their ordinary sat there together with the civil judge; nor was there occasion for them to appear in two several courts to answer for the same fact. 5, 6, 10, 13. Ordinaries could have no pretence for accusing men upon hearsay, or for taking security of excommunicates for their future good behaviour, nor want means to bring witnesses to testify against great offenders, or to have any delinquent made to appear before them, while they had the countenance and assistance of the chief civil magistrate under the king to draw all offenders to justice that could be found, and all that could be thought conscious to testify against them. The second complaint took its rise from the new Norman practice of impropriating benefices. By their new tenure, prelates were made liable ["Ex Mat. Paris in ann."] to new secular services unknown to their predecessors, which occasioned the eleventh article. This gave the king a handle rigidly to insist on the homage to be done to him for their temporalties, and to the guardianship of the said temporalties in a vacancy, which caused great mischief to their lands and tenants; and to his overruling the elections, all which are touched in the twelfth article. Other inconveniencies, against which the king endeavoured to guard himself, were appeals to Rome, introduced in the last reign by Henry of Winchester. This he designed to prevent by article the fourth and eighth and in the next place as to ordaining slaves without consent of their lords, this was a corruption of the Norman bishops condemned in all ages of the Church. But as to this point it is but just hinted in the sixteenth article. The protecting the goods of felons and the persons of felonious clergymen (against the first whereof the king declares in the fourteenth article; against the latter he would have made a seventeenth article, if he could have got Becket's consent) were certainly proofs that the bishops were now earnestly contending to make God's house a den of thieves. The seventh article, which exempts courtiers from being excommunicate without the king's consent, shews that this wise prince did not think such bishops as these fit to reform his peers and family. He would never else have protected his servants against the wholesome discipline of primitive pastors. 1. If controversy arise concerning the patronage of churches, either between laymen, or between laymen and clergymen, or between clergymen, let it be tried and determined in the king's court. 2. Churches belonging to the fee of our lord the king cannot be impropriated without his grant. 3. Clergymen being accused of any matter, upon summons from the king's judge, are to come to make answer there to whatever the king's court shall think fit; and likewise to the ecclesiastical, to make answer to whatever shall be there thought fit; but so, that the king's justice may send to the court of holy Church, to see how matters are there carried; and if a clerk be convicted, or confess, the Church ought not any longer to protect him. 4. It is not allowed to archbishops, bishops, and parsons, to depart the kingdom without the king's licence; and if they do, they shall give the king security, if he so pleases, that they will procure no evil to the king or kingdom, in going, returning, or staying. 5. Excommunicates ought not to give security, or to make oath for the remainder, but only to give security and pledge |