proved himself thoroughly useful to the Head of the Church. We have seen in our own day, in the history of Pius IX. and the Vatican Council, how obedient bishops can be to the Pope, even when that obedience appears to be rendered against their own interests and in derogation of their own offices.
The closing years of Edward's reign, and the whole of that of his successor, were a time of intrigue, faction, insurrection, and confusion generally, in which we find the Church involved as well as the State; and they were especially fruitful in those singular changes of alliance between one and another of the contending parties in the State to which I have already referred,
Simon Langham,[1] on his appointment as archbishop, 1366, solemnly renounced all expressions in the Pope's bull which militated against the royal prerogative, or infringed upon the laws lately enacted, viz., of course, the Acts of Provisors. This is a remarkable fact, for on the one hand it affords something very like a precedent for the famous reservation made by Archbishop Cranmer in his oath of obedience to the Pope, which created so much scandal in 1533, though on the present occasion it seems to have passed without remark; and, on the other, it is almost the direct converse of the declaration of John Peckham in Edward I.'s reign, that whatever oaths he might have taken, he should feel himself absolved from them if they interfered with his duty to the Pope.
At a congress held in Bruges in 1374, Pope Gregory XI. undertook to abstain from reservation on condition that the King should so far relax the provisions of the Acts of Provisors as to permit the aliens at that time in possession of benefices in England to retain them.[2] How
