Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/470

456 regular, with all their goods and chattels, and retain them till they had further orders from him." He gave orders to all the judges, also, "to do every man justice against the clergy, but to do them justice against no man."

This was a state of things which they had never expected; no monarch had ever dreamt of, or had dared to attempt such a measure. It came like a thunder-clap upon the clergy. They found themselves insulted, abused, and plundered on all sides. The archbishop himself, the author of all this mischief, was stripped of everything, and on the very verge of starvation, and was glad to submit and pay his fifth to recover the rest of his property.

The power of the Popedom had thus been brought into collision with the royal prerogative and the issue was such as was most damaging to the Papal prestige all over the world. But Winchelsey, having regained his possessions, was too indignant to remain quiet. He held a second synod at Merton, and denounced the utmost terrors of the Church against all sacrilegious invaders of the Church property, and would not rest till Edward obtained his suspension from the next Pope, Clement, and expelled him the kingdom.

Those contests betwixt the civil and ecclesiastical power in England continued through the whole period we are reviewing, that is, from 1307 to 1399, or from the commencement of the reign of Edward II. to the end of that of Richard II. To increase the influence of Rome there had arrived two new orders of friars, the Franciscan and Dominican, in the reign of Henry III. The Franciscans appeared in England in 1216, and the Dominicans in 1217. Before their arrival the country swarmed with monks, but these were styled mendicant friars, as devoted to a species of holy beggary. But, in 1311, in the early part of the reign of Edward II., the Church suffered a great defeat by the overthrow and annihilation of the famous military order of Knights Templars. To prevent the Pope thrusting foreigners into the English prelacies and benefices, Edward III. passed a second statute of provisors, and followed it by the statute of premunire, ordering the confiscation of the property and the imprisonment of the person of every one who should carry any pleas out of the kingdom, as well as of the procurators of such person; and this was again renewed in 1392 with additional severity by Richard II., including all who brought into the kingdom any Papal bull, excommunication, or anything of the kind.

Eight years prior to this Wyclifie died. His doctrines were rapidly spreading; the reformers, under the name of Lollards, were becoming numerous; the Papal hierarchy was proportionally alarmed, and Arundel,



the Archbishop of York, became their most active enemy. But before he could mature his designs against them, he was involved in the prosecution of the adherents of the Duke of Gloucester for procuring a commission to control the king, for which his brother, the Earl of Arundel, was beheaded, and he himself banished. The dawn of the Reformation already reddened in the east, but the day was yet far off.

During the fourteenth century, the leading men of the Church in Scotland distinguished themselves rather in the patriotic defence of their country against the English, than in theological matters. Amongst the most distinguished of these were Lambeton, of St. Andrews, Wishart, of Glasgow; Landells, who was Bishop of St. Andrews from 1311 to 1035, forty-four years; and Dr.