Suits as to advowsons and presen tations. Pleas of debt. Suits men and clerks as to determine whether because ought to be tried in the secular All disputes concerning advowsons and presentations to livings, whether between laymen, or clerks, or laymen and clerks, were to be dealt with and terminated in the king's court (cap. i.). The king's court should have jurisdiction over all pleas of debt, whether involving a question of good faith (of which the Church claimed exclusive cognizance) or not (cap. xv.). In disputes between laymen and clerks as to land, the chief between lay justice should decide, by the recognition of twelve lawful men, whether it was held by feudal or eleemosynary tenure (frankalmoign), and should refer the suit accordingly, unless both parties agreed on the same judge, to the lay or ecclesiastical tribunal (cap. ix.). land. Trials of laymen for spiritual offences. Laymen tried in the bishop's court were to have the benefit of common law rules of evidence. If no one should be willing, or dare, to appear as accuser against a powerful delinquent, the sheriff, at the request of the bishop, 1 'Non debent accusari nisi per certos et legales accusatores et testes.' should impanel and swear twelve lawful men of the vicinage to give truc evidence (cap. vi.). 2. tenants-in officers of No tenant-in-chief of the King or officer of his house- Excommunihold should be excommunicated, nor his lands put under cation of interdict, without the previous consent of the King, or, in chief and his absence from the kingdom, of his justiciar (cap. vii.). the king's On the same principle, tenants of any of the king's cities, household. castles, boroughs, or demesne manors, refusing to appear when cited by the archdeacon or bishop to answer for any wrong falling within his lawful jurisdiction, might be placed under interdict, but not excommunicated until application had first been made for the intervention of the king's chief local officer (cap. x.). 3: The custody of vacant archbishoprics, bishoprics, King to have abbeys, and priories of royal foundation, should be in the king's hand, and their revenues paid to him. custody of vacant sees, etc. Election of a new incumbent should take place, in obe- Mode of election to dience to the king's writ, by the chief clergy of the church, bishoprics assembled in the king's chapel, with the assent of the King, andabbacies. and with the advice of such beneficed clergymen as the King might summon for the purpose. Before consecration, the incumbent elect should do Homage and fealty of homage and fealty to the King as his liege lord, of life, incumbent limb, and earthly honour, saving the rights of his order elect. (cap. xii.). Archbishops, bishops, and all the beneficed clergy of the Baronial kingdom, holding of the King in capite, should answer for duties of the prelates and their baronies to the king's justices and officers, and follow other clergy holding in and observe all royal rights and customs; and, like the rest capite." of the barons, ought to take part in the judgments of the king's court, except in cases involving loss of life or limb. (cap. xi.). Clergy not No archbishop, bishop, or beneficed clergyman should to quit the quit the realm without licence from the King. Those who realm withwere permitted to leave, should give pledge, if required, not king's to contrive any hurt to the King or kingdom during their licence. absence. out the 4. Appeals ought to proceed from the archdeacon to Ecclesiasti cal appeals not to go further than the arch bishop with out the king's con sent. Ordination of villeins. the bishop, and from the bishop to the archbishop. If the archbishop failed to do justice, resort should be had, in the last instance, to the King, so that by his order the controversy might be terminated in the archbishop's court and not proceed further (ic. to the Pope), without the King's assent (cap. viii.). Lastly, the sons of villeins (rusticorum) were not to be admitted to orders without the assent of the lord on whose land they were born (cap. xvi.).1 This restriction on the ordination of villeins brings out the democratic element which, in a certain way, the Church of the Middle Ages possessed. Not that the medieval church was really democratic, for its system of government culminated in the papacy, and the papacy had become the key-stone of a great arch of despotism. But it was only through the portals of the Church that the low-born and landless man, however great his intellectual ability, could hope to attain to dignity and power. The intention of the King and barons, in this article of the Constitutions of Clarendon, probably went no further than to protect the legal property which every feudal lord had in the services. of his villeins. But its practical effect was undoubtedly still further to depress the lowest class of the population. A similar prohibition is contained in the Assize of Clarendon, issued by Henry in 1166; and more than two hundred years afterwards, in the fifteenth year of Richard II., we find the Commons House of Parliament petitioning that villeins might not be allowed to put their children to school in order to advance them by the Church, and this for the honour of the freemen of the kingdom.' Under Richard II. it is not so much the feudal and proprietary as the antidemocratic and caste feeling which is manifested. RICHARD I The reign of RICHARD I. belongs not so much to the 1189-1199. history of England as to the history of Christendom. He See the Latin Text of the Constitutions in Lyttleton's Life of Henry II., iv. 182-185, and in Select Chart. 131-134. Rot. Parl. 15 Rich. II. 294; Hallam, Mid. Ages, iii. 181. was the 'creation and impersonation of his own age,'1 and occupied the central place in the history of his times. taxation. money. With the exception of about four months immediately An absentee following his coronation, and the two months which he king. spent in England in 1194 after his release from captivity, Richard was absent from his kingdom during the whole ten years of his reign. By birth, education, and sympathies essentially a foreigner, he seems to have regarded England merely as an appanage to his continental possessions, and a profitable source of revenue. It was the strong administrative system established under his father, by which the power of the Crown was so largely augmented, that rendered it possible for Richard thus to govern as an absentee king. To support his expedition to Palestine, to pay his Excessive ransom from captivity, and to carry on his wars in France, every known source of taxation was exhausted. Public Ways of offices and dignities were openly sold to the highest raising bidder; the demesne lands of the crown were first sold and then, after a time, forcibly resumed; all the feudal dues, including the recently introduced scutage, were rigorously exacted; the old Danegeld, under the thin disguise of a 'carucage,' was revived in a more stringent form; not only land, but personal property, which had for the first time been subjected to taxation in the Saladin tithe granted to Henry II. in 1188, was laid under a heavy impost; the gold and silver of the churches were seized; and the Cistercian monks compelled to compound for all their wool. These systematic and oppressive exactions appear to have been borne by the nation with remarkable patience. The rising of the populace of London, under Popular William-with-the-Beard, 'quidam legis peritus,' was not so much a resistance to taxation as to its unjust assessment, with-theBeard, or because the rich citizens sparing their own purses, willed Fitz-Osbert. 1 Stubbs, Itinerarium Ricardi Primi, Rolls Series. Et omnia erant ei venalia, scilicet potestates. dominationes, comitatus, vicecomitatus, castella, villae, praedia, et cetera iis similia.' -Bened. Abb. ii. 90. For the various modes of taxation see Kog. Hoveden, iii. 210, 240, A.E. 1193; Select Chart. 243, 244, 246. William Constitu that the poor should pay the whole.' tional opposition proceeded from the clergy. sition of the clergy. The only real oppoIn 1198 the regular clergy refused to pay the carucage, or tax of five shillings imposed on each carucate (or hundred acres) of land. The King immediately issued a proclamation directing that on the one hand no layman should be liable to make satisfaction for an injury committed against a clerk, and, on the other, that every clerk injuring a layman should be forthwith compelled to give redress. This amounted to virtual outlawry, and the monastic clergy were forced to submit. A more important and successful stand was made in the same year by the Bishops Hugh of Lincoln and Herbert of Salisbury. In a council of the barons, summoned at Oxford by the justiciar Archbishop Hubert Walter, to consider the king's demand for an aid of three hundred knights, cach to receive three shillings a day, and to serve with him for a year against Philip of France, the two bishops alone had the courage to refuse; alleging that the lands of their sees. were liable for military service within the kingdom only and not abroad." The opposition was successful; the king's demand was withdrawn; and shortly afterwards the justiciar resigned.' 1 Rog. Hoveden, iv. 5, A.D. 1196. Eodem anno orta est dissensio inter cives Londoniarum. Frequentius enim solito propter regis captionem et alia accidentia imponebantur eis auxilia non modica, et divites propriis parcentes marsupiis volebant ut pauperes solverent universa. Quod cum quidam legis peritus, videlicit Willelmus cum barba, filius Osberti, videret, zelo justitiae et aequitatis accensus factus est pauperum advocatus, volens quod unusquisque tam dives quam pauper secundum mobilia et facultates suas daret ad universa civitatis negotia.' The talliage was assessed as a poll-tax equally on all the citizens rich and poor. Fitz-Osbert wished it to be assessed in proportion to the property of each citizen. 13 Rog. Hoveden, iv. 66; Select Chart. 250. 3 Scio equidem,' said St. Hugh of Lincoln, ad militare servitium domino regi, sed in hac terra solummodo, exhibendum, Lincolniensem ecclesiam teneri ; extra metas vero Angliae nil tale ab ea deberi. Unde mihi consultius arbitror ad natale solum repedare, et eremum more solito incolere, quam hic pontificatum gerere et ecclesiam mihi commissam, antiquas immunitates perdendo, insolitis angariis subjugare.'-Vita Magna S. Hugonis, p. 248; Select Chart. 247. : + This event is a landmark of constitutional history for the second time a constitutional opposition to a royal demand for morey is made, and made successfully. It would perhaps be too great an anticipation of modern usages to suppose that the resignation of the minister was caused by his defeat.' Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 509. "The first case of any opposition to the king's |