Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/679

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 665 to seek for such an explanation of an absurd law. Green once pronounced judgment against the Bishop of Ely for harboring one of the latter's men who had committed arson and murder. For this judgment the Judge was cited before the Pope, and on his refusal to appear he was excommuni- cated. About this time there was considerable friction between the lawyers, called " gentz de ley," and the church- men, called " gentz de Sainte Eglise." The " gents of law " probably instigated the petition that only laymen should be chosen to hold such offices as chancellor. But in the next Parliament the " gents of Holy Church " retorted by obtain- ing a petition from Parliament praying that henceforth the Parliament a mere convenience for transacting the affairs of their clients, to the neglect of pubhc business, should no longer be eligible as knights of the shire. It is likely that the real ground of hostility to the church was its great possessions. Just as to-day the mass of people look with hatred and envy upon the possessors of great fortunes, so then many people turned to the broad lands of the church for relief against the taxation growing out of the French wars. 6ut the reign of Edward III. produced a ministerial ecclesiastic worthy to rank with Lanfranc, Flambard, Roger of Salisbury, and Robert Burnel. The career of William of Wykeham is one of the glories of the English church. Of humble birth, educated at Winchester, he attracted the atten- tion of the bishop, who employed Wykeham's truly wonderful architectural talents in the improvements of Winchester cathedral. Here he took the clerical tonsure. A httle later he entered the service of the king, and at Windsor, on the site of an old fortress of William the Conqueror, he built the keep and battlemented towers, which are yet the noblest portion of one of the magnificent royal residences of the world. He was rapidly advanced to the bishopric of Win- chester and the chancellorship. His declining years were taken up with the foundation of Winchester School, and with the far greater endowment of his college of St. Mary at Oxford, now called New College. Wykeham's foundation
 * ' gentz de ley," practicing in the king's courts, who made