from villages to towns, as on the continent; the see of Sherborne,
for example, was removed to Old Sarum, and that of Selsey to
Chichester, and many churches statelier than of old were built
in the Norman style which the Confessor had already adopted
for his church at Westminster. In another council priests and
deacons were thenceforward forbidden to marry. William and
Lanfranc also worked on Hildebrandine lines in separating
ecclesiastical from civil administration. Ecclesiastical affairs
were regulated in church councils held at the same time as the
king’s councils. Bishops and archdeacons were no longer to
exercise their spiritual jurisdiction in secular courts, as had been
the custom, but in ecclesiastical courts and according to canon
law. The king, however, ruled church as well as state; Gregory
granted him control over episcopal elections, he invested bishops
with the crozier and they held their temporalities of him, and
he allowed no councils to meet and no business to be done without
his licence. Gregory claimed homage from him; but while the
king promised the payment of Peter’s pence and such obedience
as his English predecessors had rendered, he refused homage;
he allowed no papal letters to enter the kingdom without his
leave, and when an anti-pope was set up, he and Lanfranc
treated the question as to which pope should be acknowledged
in England as one to be decided by the crown. The Conquest
brought the church into closer connexion with Rome and gave
it a share in the religious and intellectual life of the continent;
it stimulated and purified English monasticism, and it led to
the organization of the church as a body with legislative and
administrative powers distinct from those of the state. The
relations established by the Conqueror between the crown, the
church and the pope, its head and supreme judge, worked well
as long as the king and the primate were agreed, but were so
complex that trouble necessarily arose when they disagreed.
William Rufus tried to feudalize the church, to bring its officers
and lands under feudal law; he kept bishoprics and abbacies
vacant and confiscated their revenues. He quarrelled with
Anselm (q.v.) who succeeded Lanfranc. Anselm while at Rome
heard the investiture of prelates by laymen denounced, and he
maintained the papal decree against Henry I. Bishops were
vassals of the king, holding lands of him, as well as officers of the
church. How were they to be appointed? Who should invest
them with the symbols of their office? To whom was their
homage due? (see Investiture). These questions which
agitated western Europe were settled as regards England by a
compromise: Henry surrendered investiture and kept the right
to homage. The substantial gain lay with the crown, for, while
elections were theoretically free, the king retained his power
over them. Though Henry in some degree checked the exercise
of papal authority in England, appeals to Rome without his
sanction were frequent towards the end of his reign. Stephen
obtained the recognition of his title from Innocent II., and was
upheld by the church until he violently attacked three bishops
who had been Henry’s ministers. The clergy then transferred
their allegiance to Matilda. His later quarrel with the papacy,
then under the influence of St Bernard, added to his embarrassments
and strengthened the Angevin cause.
During Stephen’s reign the church grew more powerful than
was for the good either of the state or itself. Its courts encroached
on the sphere of the lay courts, and further
claimed exclusive criminal jurisdiction over all clerks
The
Angevin
kings.
whether in holy or minor orders, with the result
that criminous clerks, though degraded by a spiritual
court, escaped temporal punishment. Henry II., finding
ecclesiastical privileges an obstacle to administrative reform,
demanded that the bishops should agree to observe the ancient
customs of the realm. These customs were, he asserted, expressed
in certain constitutions to which he required their assent at a
council at Clarendon in 1164. In spirit they generally maintained
the rights of the crown as they existed under the Conqueror.
One provided that clerks convicted of temporal crime in a
spiritual court and degraded should be sentenced by a lay court
and punished as laymen. Archbishop Becket (see Becket)
agreed, repented and refused his assent. The king tried to ruin
him by unjust demands; he appealed to Rome and fled to France.
A long quarrel ensued, and in 1170 Henry was forced to be
reconciled to Becket. The archbishop’s murder consequent on
the king’s hasty words shocked Christendom, and Henry did
penance publicly. By agreement with the pope he renounced
the Constitutions, but the encroachments of the church courts
were slightly checked, and the king’s decisive influence on
episcopal elections and some other advantages were secured.
The church in Wales had become one with the English Church
by the voluntary submission of its bishops to the see of Canterbury
in 1192 and later. The Irish Church remained distinct,
though the conquest of Ireland, which was sanctioned by the
English pope Adrian IV. (Nicholas Breakspear), brought it into
the same relations with the crown as the English Church and into
conformity with it. Under the guidance of ecclesiastics employed
as royal ministers, the church supported the crown until, in
1206, Innocent III. refused to confirm the election of a bishop
nominated by King John to Canterbury; and representatives
of the monks of Christ Church, in whom lay the right of election,
being at his court, the pope bade them elect Stephen Langton
whom he consecrated as archbishop. John refused to receive
Langton and seized the estates of Christ Church. Innocent
laid England under an interdict in 1208; the king confiscated
the property of the clergy, banished bishops and kept sees
vacant. Papal envoys excommunicated him and declared him
deposed in 1211. Surrounded by enemies, he made his peace
with the pope in 1213, swore fealty to him before his envoy,
acknowledged that he held his kingdom of the Roman see, and
promised a yearly tribute for England and Ireland. Finally he
surrendered his crown to a legate and received it back from him.
The banished clergy returned and an agreement was made as to
their losses. Langton guided the barons in their demands on
the king which were expressed in Magna Carta. The first clause
provided, as charters of Henry I. and Stephen had already
provided, that the English Church should be “free,” adding that
it should have freedom of election, which John had promised
in 1214. As John’s suzerain, Innocent annulled the charter,
suspended Langton, and excommunicated the barons in arms
against the king. On John’s death, Gualo, legate of Honorius
III., with the help of the earl marshal, secured the throne for
Henry III., and he and his successor Pandulf, as representatives
of the young king’s suzerain, largely directed English affairs
until 1221, when Pandulf’s departure restored Langton to his
rightful position as head in England of the church. Reforms
in discipline and clerical work were inculcated by provincial
legislation, and two legates, Otho in 1237 and Ottoboni in 1268,
promulgated in councils constitutions which were a fundamental
part of the canon law in England. Religious life was quickened
by the coming of the friars (see Friars). Parochial organization
was strengthened by the institution of vicars in benefices held
by religious bodies, which was regulated and enforced by the
bishops. It was a time of intellectual activity, in character
rather cosmopolitan than national. English clerks studied
philosophy and theology at Paris or law at Bologna; some
remained abroad and were famous as scholars, others like
Archbishops Langton, and Edmund Rich, and Bishop Grosseteste
returned to be rulers of the church, and others like Roger
Bacon to continue their studies in England. The schools of
Oxford, however, had already attained repute, and Cambridge
began to be known as a place of study. The spirit of the age
found expression in art, and English Gothic architecture, though
originally, like the learning of the time, imported from France,
took a line of its own and reached its climax at this period.
Henry’s gratitude for the benefits which in his early years he
received from Rome was shown later in subservience to papal
demands. Gregory IX., and still more Innocent IV., sorely in
need of money to prosecute their struggle with the imperial
house, laid grievous taxes on the English clergy, supported the
king in making heavy demands upon them, and violated the
rights of patrons by appointing to benefices by “provisions”
often in favour of foreigners. Churchmen, and prominently
Grosseteste, the learned and holy bishop of Lincoln, while
