time repealed the prohibition against carrying appeals to Rome, and opened a door to numerous abuses which must be referred to in the sequel. In this place it is particularly to be observed that Innocent III. who now regarded England as a fief of the Holy See, and John as his sworn servant and vassal, took upon himself to annul the Great Charter and to excommunicate the members of the National Council by whom it had been enacted; thus undisguisedly, and with every form of sovereign authority with which the act could be clothed, repealing a solemn statute of the realm, and claiming secular power within the kingdom, overriding all law, and equally inconsistent with the existence of either civil or religious liberty.*

§. 8. Struggle between Canonism and Prerogative.

The Constitutions of Clarendon fairly represent the state of the royal prerogative in ecclesiastical matters down to the date of Magna Charta. But that great document of liberties was extorted from King

* The provision in §. 50 of the Great Charter was, it is believed, made expressly to prevent any impediment to resorting to Rome in order to enter appeals in ecclesiastical causes. See Twysden, p. 33. The bull against the Barons declares that England is a fief of the Holy See; that the Barons have no right to give away the rights of the crown without the assent of the feudal lord; they were therefore rebels: wherefore as he "whom God had appointed over nations and kingdoms to pluck up and to destroy, to build and to plant, he annulled what they had done, &c."

John by an unhappy alliance with Rome, an alliance which began and ended in the degradation of the crown, and a vast extension of the Papal influence in ecclesiastical affairs.

But all this time the law of the land fortunately remained untouched, though its practice was in a great degree obscured by the prevalence of Canonism, introduced by the Romanizing clergy. Whenever any abuse became intolerable, the law, imprinted in the hearts and memories of the people, was at hand to strengthen remonstrance by argument, and to encounter the presumption that any length of practice can legalize an abuse.

The first malpractice which drew on it the attention of the crown and people of England was that of appeals to Rome. The envoys of Henry III. to the Council of Lyons in 1245, presented a spirited remonstrance to Pope Innocent IV. upon the grievance of appeals, and at the same time invoked the law of the land against the admission of Papal legates into the kingdom without the king's licence. No one, they declared, was liable or ought by law to be dragged out of the kingdom to answer to a foreign judge for his conduct at home. This remonstrance, however, produced no adequate remedy. Little improvement in the practice took place until Edward I. in his renewal of the Great Charter, omitted the clause by which the subject was allowed to go beyond seas without the consent of the king; thus reviving the law as it stood under the Constitutions of Clarendon. Thenceforward no one could arbitrarily withdraw his cause from the cognizance

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of the king's courts, or that of the ordinary spiritual tribunals, without the express licence of the crown; and all who thus far presumed might be compelled to sue out a pardon for the offence.

But this abuse dwindled into insignificance when compared with others brought upon the people by the state of spiritual thraldom into which they had been plunged by the combined influence of ignorance, oppression, and tyranny. The systematic efforts to reduce the Church and clergy of England to the level of subserviency to which the kingdom had fallen under the government of John, ended in the transfer of all the richest benefices, including archbishoprics, bishoprics, and abbeys, into the absolute disposal of the Pope. The process by which this consummation was accomplished is remarkable for its illegal and surreptitious character.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, as Primate of England, enjoyed by law the completest exemption from all foreign control. But the Popes availing themselves of the respectful homage paid to them, as the senior bishops of Christendom, received every such act of reverential attachment, as an acknowledgment of spiritual supremacy. The primates of England had in this way kept up an intercourse of mutual advice and affection, almost from the first establishment of Christianity in the island. The account against them for all this ran up at Rome to a fearful amount; and as soon as the Conquest had smoothed the path, payment was demanded to the uttermost farthing. Though it was not very easy at once to recover the whole debt,

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yet the two Hildebrandine archbishops Lanfranc and Anselm, lent them no inconsiderable assistance in bearding the crown, and building up a strong canonist party among the clergy of England. A beginning was made with the monasteries. Lanfranc procured the exemption of many of the greater conventual bodies from episcopal control. ambition of these bodies had always been to be their own ordinaries; they preferred a distant master to one on the spot; and for that consideration sold themselves without reservation to Rome. By this means the Pope obtained a numerous and able body of adherents, always acting under the consciousness of inability to maintain their long coveted exemptions without his aid.

Innocent III., to whom the largest strides towards the accomplishment of the entire Papal scheme may be attributed, had managed to effect the transfer of the election of the Archbishop primate, from the bishops of the province to the monks and canons of the convent of St. Augustine attached to the Metropolitan Church. The same process gradually threw the episcopal elections throughout both provinces, into the hands of the canons regular of the cathedral churches. The Hildebrandine scheme was beginning to fructify in an accession of power and wealth to Rome. The freedom of election, for which Gregory VII. had fought with infinite resolution and pertinacity, was by this device effectually overthrown; the king was divested of his customary right of nomination to vacant sees and abbeys, but without restoring it to the bishops,

clergy, and commonalty of provinces and dioceses, to whom, by the common law of the Church, it belonged. The regulars upon whom that right had now devolved were devoted canonists, the humblest class of dependants upon Rome; and soon were themselves made to drink deeply of the bitter cup they had administered to the bishops. The Popes, after a brief pause, began to set aside all forms of election, ex concesso plenitudinis ecclesiastica potestatis," and to grant out in various ways all the richest benefices in the kingdom to favourites and dependants.*

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But the chain which was to fetter the Church of England to the footstool of the Papacy, was not yet deemed strong enough to break the neck of resistance among the headstrong population of Britain. The invention of the Pallium, a very ancient symbol of the metropolitan dignity was made subservient to that purpose. The nature and significance of this ornament must come under consideration hereafter, in connection with the principal subject of this discourse. It is sufficient to observe in this place that it was holden by the Canonists that without it there can be no valid exercise of the archiepiscopal powers. The pallium, though originally regarded as a simple testimonial of spiritual regard and affection from the first bishop of the Christian

* See Bulla Greg. IX. ap. Matth. Paris, Ed. Watts, p. 299, 300. It is said by Matth. Paris that during the three years, that Otho, the legate of Gregory IX. sojourned in England, he bestowed more than 300 ecclesiastical benefices.