Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/743

 Pohmie AV/] yuiy, I go-] _Nitt)iber ^ %^t mciitan Mwtatital §Scrinr MORTMAIX IX MEDIE^'AL TiOROUGHS THE Middle Asjes were replete with conflicts between church and state. Besides those of national importance, like the great struggles of the Emperor Henry IV. with Gregory VII. and Henry II. with Becket, which have evoked many learned disquisi- tions, there were frec[uent dissensions in the boroughs or cities of England and the Continent between clergy and laymen, to which historians have devoted little attention. These local conflicts arc worthy of careful study, not only because they are concerned with questions of vital interest to the municipalities, but also because they exerted some influence upon national legislation and helped to prepare the way for the reformation of the church in the sixteenth century ; for the fiscal and jurisdictional barriers of the church were assailed and broken down by the burgesses long before Luther assailed its doctrines. Such conflicts were inevitable because the estate of a bishop or abbot within the town formed what was called in England a " soke ", a privileged district with its own independent jurisdiction and its own laws or customs, a sort of state within the municipal state, a sanctuary from which the town bailififs and tax-collectors were excluded ; and within the walls of a town there might be several sokes of this sort.^ Most frequently the dissensions between the rival authorities were caused by the sokemen's claim of exemption from the payment of burghal taxes and by their refusal to recognize the competence of the municipal courts over offences or cases in which they were concerned. The town authorities wished to assert ' Within the limits of the corporate author in i8j5 about fifteen precincts exempted from Com. Report, 1S35. p. 31. AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XII. — 48. 733 jf Canterbury there were still jurisdiction. Municipal Corp.