Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/651

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 637 Henry's statutes upon legal procedure, while he was chan- cellor. In the struggle that went on between the warring jurisdictions of courts ecclesiastical and secular courts, he boldly espoused the clerical side. The Chief Justiciar be- fore Glanville, Richard Lucy, drew up the constitutions of Clarendon, which defined the jurisdiction of the king's courts over priests, and brought on the struggle between Henry II. and Becket. Lucy was twice excommunicated by Becket, but he does not appear to have been seriously affected; yet, singularly enough, at the end of his life, he founded an abbey and assuming the cowl of a monk retired to the cloister and passed his remaining years in the works of piety. The King, astute lawyer that he was, fought the Arch- bishop with the very best weapons. The chronicler records that Henry II. kept in his pay a gang of " bellowing leg- ists " (ecclesiastical lawyers) whom he " turned loose " when- ever he was displeased at an Episcopal election. In his con- troversy with Becket, Henry used the expert clerks, John of Oxford, Richard of Ilchester, and Geoffrey Ridel. John received as his reward the see of Norwich, Geoffrey was made bishop of Ely. Both of them, priests though they were, admirably served their royal client. They repre- sented the King upon appeals to the Pope. Becket used a weapon against them that would hardly be in the power of a modern chancellor. Both lawyers and judges were excom- municated by the sainted archbishop. But the curse of Heaven and the reprobation of the faithful did not avail. At last, the murder of Becket ended the controversy, and while the victory remained with the King, it gave to Becket the peculiar honor of being one of the only two English chancellors who are numbered as saints in the canon of the church. When the Conqueror took the bishop out of the county court and established church tribunals for ecclesiastics (a step which was taken at the demand of the priests), it could not have been foreseen what a tremendous influence this regu- lation would exert upon the history of English law. Yet the struggle which soon began between these warring jurisdic-