Grant of the temporalities by the king.
Church lands become fiefs.
Flambard's inferences.
Analogy between lay and ecclesiastical fiefs. new prelate received, by the king's writ, as a grant from the king, the temporal possessions which were attached to the spiritual office.[1] We have seen that this action on the part of the king by no means wholly shut out action either on the part of the local ecclesiastical body or on the part of the great council of the kingdom.[2] But it was from the king personally that the newly chosen or newly nominated prelate received the actual investiture of his office and its temporalities. The temporalities with which he was invested might have their special rights and privileges; but at least they were not exempt from the three burthens which no land could escape, among which was the duty of providing men for military service in case of need.[3] As feudal ideas grew, the inference was easy that lands granted by the king and charged with military service were a fief held of the king by a military tenure. We have seen signs of change in that direction in the days of the Conqueror;[4] in the days of Rufus the doctrine was fully established, and it was pushed to its logical results by the lawyer-like ingenuity of Flambard. If the lands held by a bishop or abbot were a fief held by military tenure, they must be liable to the same accidents as other fiefs of the same kind. When a bishop or abbot died, or otherwise vacated his office, the result was the same as when the lay holder of a fief died without leaving an heir of full age.
- [Footnote: death of Lanfranc under a wrong year, 1097, and adds; "Anselmus abbas
Beccensis, pro sua sanctitate et doctrina non solum in Normannia, sed etiam in Anglia jam celeberrimus, successit in præsulatu. Qui licet a rege Willelmo et principibus terre totiusque ecclesiæ conventu susceptus honorifice fuisset, multas tamen molestias et tribulationes postmodum sub ipso rege passus est pro statu ecclesiæ corrigendo. Nam reges Angliæ hanc injustam legem jam diu tenuerant, ut electos ecclesiæ præsules ipsi per virgam pastoralem ecclesiis investirent."
This is of course written by the lights of Henry the First's reign, as Anselm never objected to the royal investiture in the time of Rufus.]
