provisionem apostolicam, spreta electione facta de eo" The Pope snapped his fingers at the election by the chapter, but he took care to nominate the same man whom they had elected, and whom the King had recommended, in the case of Islip as well as in that of Bradwardine.
If Clement's bull was arrogantly worded, Edward had himself to thank, for he had actually begged the Pope to override the first election of Bradwardine by a bull of provision. And it may be pointed out by way of parenthesis that if papal provisions had not been profitable to the Crown in more ways than one, and if the Crown had not varied its protests against them by occasionally turning them to account, they might have been abolished out of hand. It suited the King, moreover, to keep in reserve this check upon the power of the English clergy, and we may somewhat question the anxiety of Edward and his friends to dispense altogether with the advantage of a timely resort to Rome. The statute of Provisors was passed by Parliament in the second year of Islip's primacy, and it was followed two years later by the statute of Præmunire. It has already been mentioned that neither statute was immediately effective; provisions and reservations went on, to the scandal of all good churchmen, for generations to come.
Islip came to Canterbury at a critical moment. The ever memorable visitation of the plague in 1349 and the following years—a visitation by which (we are asked to believe) as many as one quarter of the human race was cut off within four years: one half of the population of England in little over a year:
