Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/71

 The spirit of the nation, then, continued to be roused. Some men were bold enough to defy the Pope. The Bishops of London and Worcester refused to pay him his demands. A consultation was held by the prelates in London on the matter of giving the first-fruits of their Sees to Rome, and after they had carefully deliberated upon the matter, says a contemporary writer, "Bishop Fulk, of London, said, with a long drawn sigh, 'Rather than willingly subject our great Church to slavery, wrong, and intolerable oppression, I will lose my head.' On seeing his determination, Bishop Walter, of Worcester, loudly exclaimed, 'And I will be hung, rather than see Holy Church so ruined.'"

In considering the national movement against the imposition of the Pope, we must mention another champion of the people's cause—Robert Grosseteste, the Bishop of Lincoln. He had occasion to go to Rome to consult the Pope on some difficulties at home. While there his eyes were opened to the grave harm Rome was doing to the Church of England. When he found that money was needed before he could receive advice, he called out in the presence of the Pope, "O money, money, what power thou hast, especially in the Court of Rome." This led him to resist with all his will the Roman claims on England when he returned home. "From 1247 he waged a ceaseless war against the attempts of the Pope to tax the English clergy on behalf of the private needs of the Roman See, and to provide for foreign ecclesiastics by conferring on them English offices and benefices, of which, in many cases, the duties were beyond their powers or