I.

The ties with France were close ones; those with Rome were no less so. William had come to England, politically as the heir of the Anglo-Saxon kings, and with regard to ecclesiastical affairs as the Pope's chosen, blessed by the head of Christianity. In both respects, notwithstanding storms and struggles, the tradition thus started was continued under his successors.

At no period of the history of England was the union with Rome closer, and at no time, not even in the Augustan Age of English literature was there a larger infusion of Latin ideas. The final consequence of Henry II.'s quarrel with Thomas Becket was a still more complete submission of this prince to the Roman See. John Lackland's fruitless attempts to reach absolute power resulted in the gift of his domains to St. Peter and the oath of fealty sworn by him as vassal of the Pope: "We, John, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy, earl of Anjou, ... Wishing to humiliate ourselves for Him who humiliated Himself for us even unto death ... freely offer and concede to God and to our lord Pope Innocent and his Catholic successors, all the kingdom of England and all the kingdom of Ireland for the remission of our sins,"[220] May 15, 1213.

From the day after Hastings the Church is seen establishing herself on firm basis in the country; she receives as many, and even more domains than the companions of the Conqueror. In the county of Dorset, for instance, it appears from Domesday that "the Church with her vassals and dependents enjoyed more than a third of the whole county, and that her patrimony was greater than that of all the Barons and greater feudalists combined."[221]

The religious foundations are innumerable, especially at the beginning; they decrease as the time of the Renaissance draws nearer. Four hundred and eighteen are counted from William Rufus to John, a period of one hundred years; one hundred and thirty-nine during the three following reigns: a hundred and eight years; twenty-three in the fourteenth century, and only three in the fifteenth.[222]

This number of monasteries necessitated considerable intercourse with Rome; many of the monks, often the abbots, were Italian or French; they had suits in the court of Rome, they laid before the Pope at Rome, and later at Avignon, their spiritual and temporal difficulties; the most important abbeys were "exempt," that is to say, under the direct jurisdiction of the Pope without passing through the local episcopal authority. This was the case with St. Augustine of Canterbury, St. Albans, St. Edmund's, Waltham, Evesham, Westminster, &c. The clergy of England had its eyes constantly turned Romewards.

This clergy was very numerous; in the thirteenth century its ranks were swelled by the arrival of the mendicant friars: Franciscans and Dominicans, the latter representing more especially doctrine, and the former practice. The Dominicans expound dogmas, fight heresy, and furnish the papacy with its Grand Inquisitors[223]; the Franciscans do charitable works, nurse lepers and wretches in the suburbs of the towns. All science that does not tend to the practice of charity is forbidden them: "Charles the Emperor," said St. Francis, "Roland and Oliver, all the paladins and men mighty in battle, have pursued the infidels to death, and won their memorable victories at the cost of much toil and labour. The holy martyrs died fighting for the faith of Christ. But there are in our time, people who by the mere telling of their deeds, seek honour and glory among men. There are also some among you who like better to preach on the virtues of the saints than to imitate their labours.... When thou shalt have a psalter so shalt thou wish for a breviary, and when thou shalt have a breviary, thou shalt sit in a chair like a great prelate, and say to thy brother: 'Brother, fetch me my breviary.'"[224]

Thirty-two years after their first coming there were in England twelve hundred and forty-two Franciscans, with forty-nine convents, divided into seven custodies: London, York, Cambridge, Bristol, Oxford, Newcastle, Worcester.[225] "Your Holiness must know," writes Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, to Pope Gregory IX., "that the friars illuminate the whole country by the light of their preaching and teaching. Intercourse with these holy men propagates scorn of the world and voluntary poverty.... Oh! could your Holiness see how piously and humbly the people hasten to hear from them the word of life, to confess their sins, and learn the rules of good conduct!..."[226] Such was the beginning; what followed was far from resembling it. The point to be remembered is another tie with Rome, represented by these new Orders: even the troubles that their disorders gave rise to later, their quarrels with the secular clergy, the monks and the University, the constant appeals to the Pope that were a result of these disputes, the obstinacy with which they endeavoured to form a Church within the Church, all tended to increase and multiply the relations between Rome and England.

The English clergy was not only numerous and largely endowed; it was also very influential, and played a considerable part in the policy of the State. When the Parliament was constituted the clergy occupied many seats, the king's ministers were usually churchmen; the high Chancellor was a prelate.

The action of the Latin Church made itself also felt on the nation by means of ecclesiastical tribunals, the powers of which were considerable; all that concerned clerks, or related to faith and beliefs, to tithes, to deeds and contracts having a moral character, wills for instance, came within the jurisdiction of the religious magistrate. This justice interfered in the private life of the citizens; it had an inquisitorial character; it wanted to know if good order reigned in households, if the husband was faithful and the wife virtuous; it cited adulterers to its bar and chastised them. Summoners (Chaucer's somnours) played the part of spies and public accusers; they kept themselves well informed on these different matters, were constantly on the watch, pried into houses, collected and were supposed to verify evil reports, and summoned before the ecclesiastical court those whom Jane's or Gilote's beauty had turned from the path of conjugal fidelity. It may be readily imagined that such an institution afforded full scope for abuses; it could hardly have been otherwise unless all the summoners had been saints, which they were not; some among them were known to compound with the guilty for money, to call the innocent before the judge in order to gratify personal spite.[227] Their misdeeds were well known but not easy to prove; so that Chaucer's satires did more to ruin the institution than all the petitions to Parliament. These summoners were also in their own way, mean as that was, representatives of the Latin country, of the spiritual power of Rome; they knew it, and made the best of the stray Latin words that had lodged in their memory; they used them as their shibboleth.

Bishops kept seigneurial retinues, built fortresses[228] and lived in them, had their archers and their dogs, hunted, laid siege to towns, made war, and only had recourse to excommunication when all other means of prevailing over their foes had failed. Others among them became saints: both in heaven and on earth they held the first rank. Like the sovereign, they knew, even then, the worth of public opinion; they bought the goodwill of wandering poets, as that of the press was bought in the day of Defoe. The itinerant minstrels were the newspapers of the period; they retailed the news and distributed praise or blame; they acquired over the common people the same influence that "printed matter" has had in more recent times. Hugh de Nunant, bishop of Coventry, accuses William de Longchamp, bishop of Ely, and Chancellor of England, in a letter still extant, of having inspired the verses--one might almost say the articles--that minstrels come from France, and paid by him, told in public places, "in plateis," not without effect, "for already, according to public opinion, no one in the universe was comparable to him."[229]

Nothing gives so vivid an impression of the time that has elapsed, and the transformation in manners that has occurred, as the sight of that religious and warlike tournament of which England was the field under Richard Coeur-de-Lion, and of which the heroes were all prelates, to wit: these same William de Longchamp, bishop of Ely, and Hugh de Nunant, bishop of Coventry; then Hugh de Puiset, bishop of Durham, Geoffrey Plantagenet, archbishop of York, &c.

Hugh de Puiset, a scion of the de Puisets, viscounts of Chartres, grandson of the Conqueror, cousin to King Richard, bishop palatine of Durham, wears the coat of mail, fortifies his castles, storms those of his enemies, builds ships, adds a beautiful "Lady chapel" to his cathedral, and spends the rest of his time in hunting.

William de Longchamp, his great rival, grandson of a Norman peasant, bishop of Ely, Chancellor of England, seizes on Lincoln by force, lives like a prince, has an escort of a thousand horsemen, adds to the fortifications of the Tower of London and stands a siege in it. He is obliged to give himself up to Hugh de Nunant, another bishop; he escapes disguised as a woman; he is recognised, imprisoned in a cellar, and exiled; he then excommunicates his enemies. Fortune smiles on him once more and he is reinstated in his functions.

Geoffrey Plantagenet, a natural son of Henry II., the only child who remained always faithful to the old king, had once thought he would reach the crown, but was obliged to content himself with becoming archbishop of York. As such, he scorned to ally himself either with Longchamp or with Puiset, and made war on both impartially. Longchamp forbids him to leave France; nevertheless Geoffrey lands at Dover, the castle of which was held by Richenda, sister of the Chancellor. He mounts on horseback and gallops towards the priory of St. Martin; Richenda sends after him, and one of the lady's men was putting his hand on the horse's bridle, when our lord the archbishop, shod with iron, gave a violent kick to the enemy's steed, and tore his belly open; the beast reared, and the prelate, freeing himself, reached the priory. There he is under watch for four days, after which he is dragged from the very altar, and taken to the castle of Dover. At last he is liberated, and installed in York; he immediately commences to fight with his own clergy; he enters the cathedral when vespers are half over; he interrupts the service, and begins it over again; the indignant treasurer has the tapers put out, and the archbishop continues his psalm-singing in the dark. He excommunicates his neighbour Hugh de Puiset, who is little concerned by it; he causes the chalices used by the bishop of Durham to be destroyed as profaned.

Hugh de Puiset, who was still riding about, though attacked by the disease that was finally to carry him off, dies full of years in 1195, after a _reign_ of forty-three years. He had had several children by different women: one of them, Henri de Puiset, joined the Crusade; another, Hugh, remained French, and became Chancellor to King Louis VII.[230]

These warlike habits are only attenuated by degrees. In 1323 Edward II. writes to Louis de Beaumont, bishop of Durham, reproaching a noble like him for not defending his bishopric any better against the Scotch than if he were a mutterer of prayers like his predecessor. Command is laid upon bishop Louis to take arms and go and camp on the frontier. In the second half of the same century, Henry le Despencer, bishop of Norwich, hacks the peasants to pieces, during the great rising, and makes war in Flanders for the benefit of one of the two popes.

Side by side with these warriors shine administrators, men of learning, saints, all important and influential personages in their way. Such are, for example, Lanfranc, of Pavia, late abbot of St. Stephen at Caen, who, as archbishop of Canterbury, reorganised the Church of England; Anselm of Aosta, late abbot of Bec, also an archbishop, canonised at the Renaissance, the discoverer of the famous "ontological" proof of the existence of God, a paradoxical proof the inanity of which it was reserved for St. Thomas Aquinas to demonstrate; Gilbert Foliot, a Frenchman, bishop of London, celebrated for his science, a strong supporter of Henry II.; Thomas Becket, of Norman descent, archbishop and saint, whose quarrel with Henry II. divided England, and almost divided Christendom too; Hugh, bishop of Lincoln under the same king, of French origin, and who was also canonised; Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, who contributed as much as any of the barons to the granting of the Great Charter, and presided over the Council of London, in 1218, where it was solemnly confirmed[231]; Robert Grosseteste,[232] famous for his learning and holiness, his theological treatises, his sermons, his commentaries on Boethius and Aristotle, his taste for the divine art of music, which according to him "drives away devils." Warriors or saints, all these leaders of men keep, in their difficulties, their eyes turned towards Rome, and towards the head of the Latin Church.