Page:Church and State under the Tudors.djvu/48

 The reign of Edward III. is remarkable in many ways in connection with the history of the Church. It was, from the causes already specified, a time of the deepest depression of the papal power; and there were especial causes, as we have seen, why greater hostility should be felt towards it in England than elsewhere. We might therefore expect to find it of very slight account in England. Yet even now, the facts with which we meet are hardly of a kind to justify such an expectation. Throughout the reign the bishops were almost all appointed by papal provision, and though in the latter half of the reign several laws were enacted intended to act in restraint of the Pope's power, yet, as we shall shortly see, the King himself was the first to infringe them.

The period at which we are now arrived is one of very great importance in the history of the Church in England. From the middle of Edward III.'s reign to the close of his successor's, a space of about sixty years, was the time when the papal power in England was subject to more depression and opposition than at any other period between the Conquest and the Reformation. It saw by far the greater part of that long series of antipapal legislation which looked so formidable but effected so little, until, long after it had fallen practically out of use, and was almost forgotten, Henry VIII. suddenly revived it to suit his own purposes, and Chapuys wrote of it to his master that it was a 'law no person in England can understand, and its interpretation lies solely in the King's head, who amplifies it and declares it at his pleasure, making it apply to any case he pleases.' It witnessed also the rise of Wycliffe and the Lollards, that premature birth of