Norfolk, loving their wives better than their bishops, and refusing to suffer man to separate what God had joined, the king at last took the affair into his own hand, and allowed the priests to keep their wives by parting with their money, and thus paying for what was already their own *.

When Stephen seized the crown, and enflamed the whole kingdom with the contests between him and the empress Maud, the clergy, with courtly facility, treated their oaths of allegiance, says Fuller, "as seamen treat their compass, saying them backwards and forwards t." Whole ages were spent with the fierce and haughty conflicts of the prelates; sometimes with each other, and sometimes with their king. Ecclesiastics had now claimed an exemption from civil jurisdiction, and a right of appealing to Rome in all their affairs. Henry was at one time informed, that, since his accession, a hundred murders had been committed by men in holy orders, who all escaped the death which they deserved‡.

* John de Crema, an Italian legate, deputed by his holiness to frighten the English clergy out of their wits, and their wives, after making a furious harangue against the indecency of an ecclesiastic rising from the bed of his wife to consecrate the sacred host, was caught the same night in the embraces of a harlot. This afforded a fiue triumph for those who disliked his mission, and a striking illustration of the propriety with which the sacred Scriptures have united the commendation of marriage, and the prohibition of whoredom. 66 Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled, but whoremongers, and adulterers God will judge,”

+ Fuller, b. III. p. 23.

The primate of all England complains, in a letter, that a very learned priest had been murdered at Winchester, by a man and his wife, who do not deny the fact; but the murderer, who is going away to Rome, makes no doubt that by prostituting his wife, who is a very handsome woman, he shall not only obtain absolution, but be well paid for his journey. Warner, vol. II. p. 393.

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But while Henry, with much justice, opposed this exemption of priests from the jurisdiction of the laws, the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket, became the hero of his order, and filled, not only England, but all Europe, with his fame. From an obsequious courtier, he suddenly became a stern, mortified priest, armed with all the haughty sanctity of the times; and by a long course of stubborn distress, and insolent prosperity, he so embittered the life of his prince, that Henry, in a passion, exclaimed, "have I none that will rid me of this insolent priest?" Some courtiers, eager to gratify their master's revenge, stabbed him at the altar of Canterbury cathedral. Although the king declared himself innocent of all serious intentions against the prelate's life, it is probable, the vengeance was to him like the prophetic roll, sweet in the mouth, but bitter in the belly. He was compel d to ndure severe mortifications, and at last to do penance for the crime of which he had sworn himself innocent, by yielding his bare back to be scourged by the monks. Becket dying for the rights of the clergy, was canonized, performed wondrous cures on those who visited his sepulchre, and drew incalculable treasures to his shrine; so that it was said, "to Becket was offered much, to Mary little, to Jesus nothing*."

t

The crusade, or the expedition to Palestine, to recover the Holy Land from the hands of the Mahometans, was the folly of the day, in which Richard Cœur de Lion, with vast multitudes of his subjects embarked.

Amidst all this superstition we have to record, that in the year one thousand one hundred and sixty, some * Mosheim, 402.

real Christians sought in Britain, an asylum from the persecutions of Germany. But, alas! they found only a premature grave. Regarding them as contemptible heretics, the writers of these times record their history in a way so cursory and confused, that it is difficult to ascertain facts. It is however confessed, that the leader of these refugees, whose name was Gerrard, was neither ignorant nor illiterate, though we are told his followers were; because forsooth they made no other reply to the cavils of their enemies, than "we believe as we are taught by the word of God." A council was called by Henry, to meet at Oxford, in order to try these thirty heretics, who were not likely to meet with either mercy or justice from an assembly of haughty prelates. They were condemned; branded on the forehead; publicly whipped out of the town; and, being turned into the fields, in the depth of winter, when all were forbidden to relieve them, they perished. Even their enemies allow that they behaved with great calmness and moderation; and when the inhuman sentence was executed upon them, they sang, "blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and persecute you." Warner justly observes, that "their conduct was worthy of the best and most righteous cause, and would incline one to think favourably of their doctrine *." They were most probably our first martyrs to pure religion, and the duty of separating from a corrupt communion. Some historians call them Publicans, others Vaudois, and Waldenses. They were, doubtless, a branch of those confessors, whom Henry, at the request of the king of France, persecuted on the continent, as well as in our isle.

*Warner Ecc. Hist. vol. I. 349; Petrie's Ecc. Hist. 329; Gillie's, 31, 32.

Our limits forbid us to turn aside to the history of these fathers of the reformation; but we may observe, that the ancient Britons, together with the Scots and Irish, being deluged with the general corruption, and the established church, every where become an apostate harlot, it was now both the duty and the inclination of real Christians to come out from Babylon; so that we must, in future, look for the disciples of Christ among those who are branded as heretics. The popish writers affirm, that the Waldenses were found in England and Scotland; and Wickliffe, together with John Huss and Jerome of Prague, are mentioned as their followers. Indeed the doctrines which the Waldenses are accused of teaching in England, during this century, so exactly correspond with those which Wickliffe afterwards more successfully diffused, that there is no doubt of his having learned from this school.

The thirteenth century commences with the reign of John, who was all that a king ought not to be. He involved himself in disputes, both with the clergy and barons, which ended in his entire defeat. For the crime of the monarch, in refusing to allow the pope's nomination of Langton to the see of Canterbury, the whole kingdom was laid under an interdict, by which the churches were sealed up; the ceremonies, on which the salvation of men was then supposed to depend, were intermitted; the lover could not complete his wishes by holy matrimony; and the bodies of the dead were not only denied interment in consecrated ground, but were thrown into ditches, or on the highways, to the annoyance of the living. The king himself was afterwards excommunicated

from the holy mother-church; and at last, his kingdom was given to Philip of France. John, destitute of internal resources, and of able counsellers, who could have taught him to defeat the pope's artifices, at length submitted in a strain, which shows that tyrants are dastards. The pope's legate, after trampling upon the money which John payed him, and keeping the king's crown and sceptre in his possession five days, restored them to him, who knew not how to wear them, and reconciled his majesty to the church*.

Were we writing a history of learning, we should feel ourselves bound to give a distinguished place to the name of Roger Bacon, a Franciscan monk, who cultivated experimental philosophy with so much success, that his cotemporaries deemed him a magician, for which imaginary crime, he was long immured in prison.

Robert Grosteste, or Greathead, bishop of Lincoln, narrowly escaped a similar fate. The popes were now pursuing a scheme for draining the kingdom of its money, and securing all its lucrative benefices to Italians. The bishops were charged, at one time, to provide for a hundred of these hungry foreigners; and now Innocent IVth commanded Greathead to give the first vacant canon's place to a boy, who was nephew to his holiness. But the hardy prelate wrote to the pope," that if we except the sins of Lucifer and antichrist, there can be no greater crime than to deprive the souls of men of the spiritual aid of their pastors, by conferring the benefices on persons incapable of of performing the duties." This so enflamed the unhallowed passions of his holiness, that he swore *Fuller, book III. 51.