custom and prescription being generally received as decisive in the matter. The right of patronage was determined in the king's courts. In each of these departments, however, some concert with the ecclesiastical courts was indispensable; many issues of fact were referred by the royal tribunals to the court Christian to be decided there, and the interlacing, so to speak, of the two jurisdictions was the occasion of many disputes both on general principle and in particular causes. These disputes, notwithstanding the legislative activity of the kings and the general good understanding which subsisted between them and the prelates, were not during the Middle Ages authoritatively and finally decided. It is enough for our present purpose to state generally the tendency to draw all causes which in any way concerned landed property into the royal courts, and to prevent all attempts at a rival jurisdiction. In criminal suits the position of the clergy was more defensible. The secular courts were bound to assist the spiritual courts in obtaining redress and vindication for clergymen who were injured by laymen; in cases in which the clerk himself was accused, the clerical immunity from trial by the secular judge was freely recognized. If the ordinary claimed the incriminated clerk, the secular court surrendered him for ecclesiastical trial: the accused might claim the benefit of clergy either before trial or after conviction in the lay court; and it was not until the fifteenth century that any very definite regulation of this dangerous immunity was arrived at. We have seen the importance which the jurisdiction over criminous clerks assumed in the first quarrel between Becket and Henry II. It was with the utmost reluctance that the clergy admitted the decision of the legate Hugo Pierleoni, that the king might arrest and punish clerical offenders against the forest law. The ordinary, moved by a sense of justice or by a natural dislike to acknowledge the clerical character of a criminal, would not probably, except in times of political excitement, interfere to save the convicted clerk; and in many cases the process of retributive justice was too rapid to allow of his interposition. It is not a little curious, however, to find that Henry IV, at the time of his closest alliance with Arundel, did not hesitate to threaten archbishops and bishops with condign punishment for treason; that on one famous occasion he carried the threat into execution; and that the hanging of the mendicant friars, who spread treason in the earlier years of his reign, was a summary proceeding which would have endangered the throne of a weak king even in less tumultuous times. Into the legal minutiæ of these points we are not called on to enter: as to their social and constitutional bearing, it is enough to remark that, although, in times when class jealousies are strong, clerical immunities are in theory, but in theory only, a safeguard of society, their uniform tendency is to keep alive the class jealousies; they are among the remedies which perpetuate the evils which they imperfectly counteract. In quiet times such immunities are unnecessary; in unquiet times they are disregarded. Of the temporal causes which were subject to the cognizance of ecclesiastical courts the chief were matrimonial and testamentary suits, and actions for the recovery of ecclesiastical payments, tithes, and customary fees. The whole jurisdiction in questions of marriage was, owing to the sacramental character ascribed to the ordinance of matrimony, throughout Christendom a spiritual jurisdiction. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction in testamentary matters and the administration of the goods of persons dying intestate, was peculiar to England and the sister kingdoms, and had its origin, it would appear, in times soon after the Conquest. In Anglo-Saxon times there seems to have been no distinct recognition of the ecclesiastical character of these causes, and even if there had been they would have been tried in the shire-moot. Probate of wills is also in many cases a privilege of manorial courts, which have nothing ecclesiastical in their composition, and represent the more ancient moots in which no doubt the wills of the Anglo-Saxons were published. As however the testamentary jurisdiction was regarded by Glanville as an undisputed right of the church courts, the date of its commencement cannot be put later than the reign of Henry I, and it may possibly be as old as the separation of lay and spiritual courts. The "subtraction of tithe" and refusal to pay ecclesiastical fees and perquisites were likewise punished by spiritual censures which the secular power undertook to enforce. As all these departments closely bordered upon the domain of the temporal courts, some concert between the two was indispensable; and there were many points on which the certificate of the spiritual court was the only evidence on which the temporal court could act; in questions of legitimacy, regularity of marriage, the full possession of holy orders, and the fact of institution to livings, the assistance of the spiritual court enabled the temporal courts to complete their proceedings in suits touching the title to property, dower, and patronage; and the more ambitious prelates of the thirteenth century claimed the last two departments for the spiritual courts. In this, however, they did not obtain any support from Rome, and at home the claim was disregarded. Besides these chief points, there were other minor suits for wrongs for which the temporal courts afforded no remedy, such as slander in cases where the evil report did not cause material loss to the person slandered: these belonged to the spiritual courts and were punished by spiritual penalties. Besides the jurisdiction in these matters of temporal concern, there was a large field of work for the church courts in disciplinary cases: the cognizance of immorality of different kinds, the correction of which had as its avowed purpose the benefit of the soul of the delinquent. In these trials the courts had their own methods of process derived in great measure from the Roman law, with a whole apparatus of citations, libels, and witnesses, the process of purgation, penance, and, in default of proper satisfaction, excommunication and its resulting penalties enforced by the temporal law. The sentence of excommunication was the ultimate resource of the spiritual courts. If the delinquent held out for forty days after the denunciation of this sentence, the king's court, by writ of significavit or some similar injunction, ordered the sheriff to imprison him until he satisfied the claims of the Church. These proceedings furnished employment for a great machinery of judicature; the archbishops in their prerogative courts, the bishops in their consistories, the archdeacons in some cases, and even the spiritual judges of still smaller districts, exercised jurisdiction in all these matters; in some points, as in probate and administration, coördinately, in others by way of delegation or of review and appeal. . . . The jurisdiction of the spiritual courts over spiritual men embraced all matters concerning the canonical and moral conduct of the clergy: faith, practice, fulfilment of ecclesiastical obligations, and obedience to ecclesiastical superiors. For these questions the courts possessed a complete jurisprudence of their own, regular processes of trial, and prisons in which the convicted offender was kept until he had satisfied the justice of the Church. In these prisons the clerk, convicted of a crime for which if he had been a layman he would have suffered death, endured lifelong captivity; here the clerk convicted of a treason or felony in the secular court, and subsequently handed over to the ordinary, was kept in safe custody. In 1402, when Henry IV confirmed the liberties of the clergy, the archbishop undertook that no clerk convicted of treason, or being a common thief, should be admitted to purgation, and that this should be secured by a constitution to be made by the bishops. These prisons, especially after the alarms consequent on the Lollard movements, were a grievance in the eyes of the laity, who do not seem to have trusted the good faith of the prelates in their treatment of delinquent clergy. The promise of Archbishop Arundel was not fulfilled. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Gneist, History of the English Constitution, chap. xxvi. Capes, History of the English Church in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. Robinson, Readings in European History, Vol. I, chap. xvi. For documents, see Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church History. CHAPTER V JOHN WYCLIFFE AND THE CHURCH THOUGH there were many critics of the abuses in the Church during the Middle Ages, John Wycliffe differed from them in being revolutionary in matters of religious doctrine. He has long been regarded as the precursor of the Reformation in England; but it now seems tolerably certain that his doctrines found no considerable acceptance among the people of England at the opening of the sixteenth century. Indeed, the thoroughness with which his influence was checked is remarkable, especially when his widespread activities, the volume of his writings, and the determination of his followers are taken into consideration. It constitutes an interesting psychological problem just why this was so, in view of the developments a century and a half later. Great light will be thrown upon this problem by studying the conditions of the continental Church which for a time furthered his revolt, and also the causes for the strength of the Church in England at the close of the fourteenth century. 1. Outline of Wycliffe's Life1 Wycliffe was of North English parentage, and was born about 1320 in the Richmond district of Yorkshire. He was sent to Oxford, but when and how is unknown; the attractions of an intellectual life kept him at the University, where he passed through many grades and offices, and took his share both in the teaching and administration of the place. He was once Master of Balliol; he was perhaps Warden of Canterbury Hall. His reputation as a theologian increased gradually, but until he was some fifty years of age it was an Oxford reputation only. It is impossible to say 1 Trevelyan, England in the Age of Wycliffe, pp. 169 ff. By permission of G. M. Trevelyan, Esq., and Messrs. Longmans, Green & Company Publishers. |