to remind the citizens of their duties. From the church stile or in the market-place they summoned men to the king's muster, or called them to their place in the town's ship or barge; or if danger from an enemy threatened, warned the citizens "to have harness carried to the proper places," or "to have cattle or hogs out of the fields." They exhorted the people "to leave dice-playing," "to cease ball-playing, and to take to bows"; to shut the shops at service time; "to have water at men's doors" for fear of fire. The crier "called" any proclamation of the king in the public places of the town; he declared deeds of pardon granted to any criminal or proclaimed that some poor wretch who had taken sanctuary in the church had abjured the kingdom and was to be allowed to depart safely through the streets. Perhaps the "cry" was made that a prisoner had been thrown into the town jail on suspicion, and accusers were called to appear if they had any charge to bring against him; or it was announced that the will of a deceased townsman was about to be proved in the courthouse, if there were any who desired to raise objections; or there was proclamation that a burghe had offended against the laws of the community and was degraded from the freedom of the town, or perhaps banished forever from its territory. At other times players and minstrels would pass through the market-place and streets "crying the banns" of their plays. The merchant, the apprentice, the journeyman, the shopkeeper, gathered in the same crowd to hear the crier who recorded every incident in the town life or brought tidings of coming change. News was open, public, without distinction of persons.

Where the claims of local life were so exacting and so overpowering we can scarcely wonder if the burgher took little thought for matters that lay beyond his "parish." But within the narrow limits of the town dominions his experience was rich and varied. While townsmen were forced at every turn to discover and justify the limits of their privileges, or while controversies raged among them as to how the government of the community should be carried on, there was no lack of political teaching; and all questions "touching the great commonalty of the city" for whose liberties they had fought and whose constitution they had shaped, stirred loyal citizens to a genuine patriotism. Traders too, intent on the development of their business, were deeply concerned in all the questions that affected commerce, the securing of communications, the opening of new roads for trade, or the organization of labor. In such matters activity could never sleep; for the towns

anticipated modern nations in the faith that the advantage of one community must be the detriment of another, and competition and commercial jealousy ran high. Never perhaps in English history was local feeling so strong. Public virtue was summed up in an ardent municipal zeal, as lively among the "Imperial Cocitizens" of New Sarum as among the "Great Clothing" of bigger boroughs. In those days, indeed, busy provincials but dimly conscious of national policy found in the confusion of court politics and the distraction of its intrigues, or in the feuds of a divided and bewildered administration, no true call to national service and no popular leader to quicken their sympathies.

Civil wars which swept over the country at the bidding of a factious group of nobles or of a vain and unscrupulous kingmaker left, and justly left, the towns supremely indifferent to any question save that of how to make the best terms for themselves from the winning side, or to use the disasters of warring lords so as to extend their own privileges. Meanwhile in the intense effort called out by the new industrial and commercial conditions and the reorganization of social life which they demanded, it was inevitable that there should grow up in the boroughs the temper of men absorbed in a critical struggle for ends which however important were still personal, local, limited, purely materiala temper inspired by private interest and with its essential narrowness untouched by the finer conceptions through which a great patriotism is nourished. Such a temper, if it brought at first great rewards, brought its own penalties at last, when the towns, self-dependent, unused to confederation for public purposes, destitute of the generous spirit of national regard, and by their ignorance and narrow outlook left helpless in presence of the revolutions that were to usher in the modern world, saw the government of their trade and the ordering of their constitutions taken from them, and their councils degraded by the later royal despotism into the instruments and support of tyranny.

CHAPTER IV

THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES

No student of mediæval history can neglect the Church both as an institutional expression of the religious life of the age and as a body of men occupying a position of great power by means of their possessions, their learning, and their spiritual authority. The hierarchy of the Church in England, its cardinal doctrines, its claims over the moral and secular life of man, its contests with the kings for power, its relations with the See of Rome these and many more problems of fundamental importance confront the student who would understand the forces at work in mediæval society. In the language of Professor Maitland, the Church of Christendom "was a wonderful system. The whole of Western Europe was subject to the jurisdiction of one tribunal of last resort, the Roman curia. Appeals were encouraged by all manner of means, appeals at almost every stage of almost every proceeding. But the pope was far more than the president of a court of appeal. Very frequently the courts Christian which did justice in England were acting under his supervision and carrying out his written instructions. A very large part and by far the most permanently important part of the ecclesiastical litigation that went on in the country came before English prelates who were sitting not as judges ordinary, but as mere delegates of the pope, commissioned to hear and determine this or that particular case. Bracton, indeed, treats the pope as the ordinary judge of every Englishman in spiritual things, and the only ordinary judge whose powers are unlimited." For the various features of the English medieval Church as an institution, every student must turn to the weighty pages of Dr. Stubbs, whose profound

historical knowledge and ecclesiastical training peculiarly fitted him for the task of writing on this complicated subject.

§1. The Spirituality of England as an Organization within the State1

In approaching the history of the medieval church, we may regard the spirituality of England, the clergy or clerical estate, as a body completely organized, with a minutely constituted and regulated hierarchy, possessing the right of legislating for itself and taxing itself, having its recognized assemblies, judicature, and executive, and, although not as a legal corporation holding common property, yet composed of a great number of persons each of whom possesses corporate property by a title which is either conferred by ecclesiastical authority, or is not to be acquired without ecclesiastical assent. The spirituality is by itself an estate of the realm; its leading members, the bishops and certain abbots, are likewise members of the estate of baronage; the inferior clergy, if they possess lay property or temporal endowments, are likewise members of the estate of the commons.

The property which is held by individuals as officers and ministers of the spirituality is either temporal property- that is, lands held by ordinary legal services, or spiritual property- that is, tithes and oblations. As an estate of the realm the spirituality recognizes the headship of the king; as a member of the Church Catholic it recognizes, according to the medieval idea, the headship of the pope. Its own chief ministers, the bishops under their two metropolitans and under the primacy of the Church of Canterbury, stand in an immediate relation to both these powers, and the inferior clergy have through the bishops a mediate relation, while as subjects and as Catholic Christians they have also an immediate relation to both king and pope. They recognize the king as supreme in matters temporal, and the pope as supreme in matters spiritual; but there are questions as to the exact limits between the spiritual and the temporal, and most important questions touching the precise relations between the crown and the papacy. In medieval theory the king is a spiritual son of the pope; and the pope may be the king's superior in things spiritual only, or in things spiritual and temporal alike.

Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, Vol. III, chap. xix. By permission of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, Oxford.

§ 2. Temporal Superiority of the Papacy

The temporal superiority of the papacy may be held to depend upon two principles: the first is embodied in the general proposition asserted by Gregory VII and his successors that the pope is supreme over temporal sovereigns; the spiritual power is by its very nature superior to the temporal, and of that spiritual power the pope is on earth the supreme depository. This proposition may be accepted or denied, but it implies a rule equally applicable to all kingdoms. The second principle involves the claim to special superiority over a particular kingdom, such as was at different times made by the popes in reference to England, Scotland, Ireland, Naples, and the empire itself, and turns upon the special circumstances of the countries so claimed. These two principles are in English history of unequal importance: the first, resting upon a dogmatic foundation has, so far as it is recognized at all, a perpetual and semi-religious force; the latter, resting upon legal assumptions and historical acts, has more momentary prominence, but less real significance.

The claim of the pope to receive homage from William the Conqueror, on whatever it was based, was rejected by the king, and both he and William Rufus maintained their right to determine which of the two contending popes was entitled to the obedience of the English Church. Henry II, when he received Ireland as a gift from Adrian IV, never intended to admit that the papal power over all islands inferred from the donation of Constantine could be understood so as to bring England under the direct authority of Rome; nor when, after Becket's murder, he declared his adhesion to the pope, did he contemplate more than a spiritual or religious relation. John's surrender and subsequent homage first created the shadow of a feudal relation, which was respected by Henry III, but repudiated by the Parliaments of Edward I and Edward III, and passed away, leaving scarcely a trace under the later kings. ...

$3. Election of Bishops

Whatever was the precise nature of the papal supremacy, the highest dignity in the hierarchy of the national Church was understood to belong to the Church of Canterbury, of which the archbishop was the head and minister; he was alterius orbis pap;