on English soil since the death of Mary, honest, impetuous, wrongheaded Englishmen have repeated the blunders and sins of the old persecutors. Every political party in the state still has its blind and furious partisans who call truth falsehood whenever it comes from an adversary's lips; who honestly believe every baseless calumny that has been levelled at an opponent's character or doctrine; and who, mistaking prejudice for knowledge, and private passion for public spirit, credit themselves with philanthropy and patriotism, when they are doing their utmost to make the world worse, or hinder it from growing better.

PART III.-CLERICAL WOMEN.

CHAPTER I.

CLERICAL WIVES IN PRE-ELIZABETHAN TIMES.

THE limits prescribed for this survey of ecclesiastical persons and usages preclude us from taking into consideration the nature and functions of the deaconesses of the early Christian churches; but I avail myself of this opportunity to refer general readers, who wish for information concerning the female diaconate of ancient times, to a learned and thoughtful little book which came from Mr. John Malcolm Ludlow's pen some four or five years since.*

So much also has already been said in this volume about the services rendered by the medieval nuns, as instructors of children and ministrants of Christian benevolence, and as promoters of religious enthusiasm, that I may be excused for not lingering longer over the fascinating story of their modes of life, which, I have been at pains to show, bore a greater similitude to the social usages of the secular women of their times, and were less marked by romantic eccentricity, than their poetical admirers in the present century are disposed to fancy.

Nor is there any need for me to repeat my former remarks

*Woman's Work in the Church. Historical Notes on Deaconesses and Sisterhoods.' By John Malcolm Ludlow. Strahan.

on the peculiar, and in many respects painful experiences of the Englishwomen who, wives in the opinion of the old common law, but dishonoured women according to the canons of the Church, were bound in wedlock, that endowed their offspring with legitimacy, to priests whose domestic condition was deemed abominable by the regular clergy, and, though enjoying an indefinite and indescribable social sanction, was regarded with considerable disapprobation by the majority of the laity. Of the proportion which these concubinary priests bore to the celibate clergy it is impossible at the present date to form an estimate, or even to make a conjecture; but though a minority, a decidedly small minority, throughout the interval betwixt Anselm's death and the later years of Chaucer's England, they were unquestionably numerous enough to form a distinct and conspicuous feature of clerical life. Their numbers doubtless varied, and were subject to sudden fluctuations in the various parts of the kingdom, in accordance with the variations of episcopal opinion, and the irregularities of episcopal zeal. A bishop, whose private history disposed him to think lightly of the canons prohibiting priests from marriage, would refrain from harrassing his concubinaries so long as they were quiet and in all other respects inoffensive men. The sentiments and temper of such a prelate would, of course, give a stimulus to sacerdotal marriage in his diocese, and would also draw within its boundaries numerous concubinary priests from other dioceses where stringent and vexatious measures were taken to enforce the requirements of Papal authority by divorcing the concubinaries from their wives. But the constant recurrences of synodal decrees against the married clergy, the repeated (and vainly reiterated) orders for their discovery, and the disturbances that were continually arising from futile attempts to render celibacy universal throughout the clerical order, show that the canons were, in this particular, disobeyed by an important percentage of the secular priests.

Of the almost countless incidents, alternately pathetic and laughable, which attended the long conflict between the celibates and the concubinaries from the tenth to the fourteenth century, none were more dramatic and affecting than those which dis

tinguished Anselm's futile warfare* against the priests whose domestic affections found a harsh and extortionate patron in Henry the First who, whilst Anselm was pursuing his ambitious designs at the Papal court, permitted the priests, whom the primate had separated from their wives, to resume their old domestic consolations on paying a sum of money into the royal exchequer. The more affluent of the married curates availed themselves of his majesty's prudent concession with thankfulness; but there were many of the divorced clergy who, wishing to recover their wives, were unable to indulge themselves in so costly a luxury. Wereupon two hundred of these needy and affectionate creatures, clothed in their albes and priestly vestments, walked barefoot in procession to the king's palace, and forcing their way into the queen's presence implored her, with an abundance of tears and lamentations, by her womanly tenderness and wifely love, to intercede for them with her husband, and procure his permission that they might regain possession of their dames without payment. But though the queen was grievously afflicted by their miserable plight, she could give them nothing more efficacious than compassionate words, and durst not attempt to move the king in their behalf. From an early year to the close of his reign Henry appears to have pursued this policy to his married ecclesiastics, save during times when he was not strong enough to oppose the authorities of the church with respect to so delicate a department of priestly discipline. Under the primacy of William de Curbeilio, having summoned a council in London, Henry obtained from the spirituality jurisdiction over the offences of ordained offenders against the canonical laws relating to celibacy; and no sooner

*The conflict elicited the following verses, together with other like satirical effusions:

'O, male viventes, versus audite sequentes,
Uxores vestras, quas odit summa potestas,

Linquite propter eum, tenuit qui morte trophæum,

Quod si non facitis, inferna claustra petitis.
Christi sponsa jubet, ne Presbyter ille ministret,
Qui tenet uxorem, Domini quia perdit amorem !
Contradicentem fore dicimus insipientem ;
Hæc non ex rancore loquor, potius sed amore.'

had he obtained this power, than he invited the divorced priests to buy back their wives. It is probable that his course of action in this particular originated the ancient notion that Englishmen might sell their wives. Since buyers cannot exist without sellers, and the thing bought by one person must be sold by another, when the rumour ran through Christendom, that clerical wives could be bought in London, it followed as a corollary that clerical wives were sold there; and if clerical wives, the rarest of all wives, were articles of commerce in the English capital, it also followed that a brisk trade was done on the banks of the Thames in wives of the commoner sorts.

The persecution of Lollardy tended in various ways to diminish the number of the married clergy, almost to the point of extinction. By combining the great majority of lay persons in every section of society to crush the misbelievers, the excitements of that movement brought almost the entire mass of the people into cordial cooperation with the church, and resulted in an uprecedented extension of the papal power in every part of the country. The married clergy were consequently deprived of that large measure of social toleration and sanction which their domestic relations had hitherto enjoyed. But a matter of still greater effect upon the position of the married priesthood was the comparative union amongst the clergy,-a union, qualified with servile obsequiousness to the Bishop of Rome, which resulted from the operations against heretics. In the confusion of the moment, and in the absence of a legal or theological definition of Lollardy, any kind of resistance to the canons was liable to be construed as the crime for which offenders might be burnt under the statute Ex Officio. The Wycliffian reformers were for the most part opposed to the celibacy of the priesthood. Indeed Wycliffe's heterodoxy with respect to marriage had not stopt short of asserting the lawfulness of wedlock between brothers and sisters. A married priest was in imminent peril of being regarded as a Lollard priest; and in their detestation of Lollardy and its miscreants, the populace conceived a violent abhorrence of concubinary priests, an abhorrence which maintained its place in popular sentiment long after the politico-religious agitators had been utterly exterminated, and which, surviving the Reformation, was cherished by a large number of Protestants