unfavourable to the designs of the earlier Lollards, whether we regard their sincere and pious wish for religious reform, or whether we look at their less prudent and justifiable schemes for political change.

That any motives of mere worldly policy were the chief causes of the erection of our cathedrals, I would not venture to insinuate. But the storm of Lollardy was heralded by many premonitory signs, that must have occasioned deep anxiety to all thoughtful and influential persons responsible for the wellbeing of the commonwealth. And when I have endeavoured to realise the concern with which the more sagacious ecclesiastics must have watched the growth amongst the humble people of opinions antagonistic to their order, I am disposedwhilst attributing the development of Gothic architecture to religious enthusiasm and delight in art-to believe that the wiser of those energetic Churchmen, who were the chief controllers of medieval society, saw with satisfaction that the architectural labours, which redounded to the glory of the Church, tended also to promote material prosperity and contentment with existing institutions in the numerous population of artificers, that had been called into existence by the enormous demand for their particular industries.

CHAPTER IV.

Το

CLERICAL PREPONDERANCE.

O make a fair estimate of the clerical preponderance in this period of our history the student should endeavour to realise the proportion borne by the numbers of the entire ecclesiastical order to the rest of the population. The best authority on the statistics of medieval society in this country is of opinion, that the whole population of England and Wales in the fourteenth century cannot have exceeded two and a half millions; and of this number he computes that the monks, nuns, and secular priests, amounted to between thirty and forty thousand. If we take the smaller of these numbers, and add to it the clerical men in orders lower than the priestly degree, who, in respect of those inferior orders, were ranked with the clerks, we cannot be guilty of exaggeration in calculating that the ecclesiastical persons were at least forty thousand; that is to say, that for every 62.5 of laity the nation possessed one ecclesiastical person.

This strong army of ecclesiastics comprised bishops, having control over the parochial clergy of their dioceses, and through their courts exercising a stringent authority, usually beneficial but often extremely vexatious, over the domestic life and personal property of the laity; abbots, who, within the jurisdictions of their abbeys, were invested with all the temporal powers accorded to bishops, though, unless they were of the episcopal order, they were precluded from performing the peculiarly episcopal offices of ordination, consecration, and confirmation; bishops in partibus-a class of episcopal personages, who, having received ordination in foreign parts, found employment

* Mr. Thorold Rogers.

in acting for bishops absent from their dioceses, and in discharging the functions of episcopacy within the jurisdictions of the monastic societies, who were amenable only to the chiefs of their orders, and, through them, to the Pope; the inferior monks, or regular clergy,' who, as monks, were not under the discipline of the national bishops; the mendicant friars,* whose influence, when full allowance has been made for the blinding animosity of their chief accusers, must have been most prejudicial to ecclesiastical discipline and social order; the various kinds of beneficed parochial clergy, such as rectors, vicars, and all other persons, who are now styled in common parlance "incumbents,' and who in old time were generally known as 'curates,' from their having cures of souls; and the numerous body of unbeneficed secular clergy, who officiated as the assistants of resident, or as the deputies of non-resident incumbents, or who gained a mean subsistence by the performance in the parish churches of daily masses said for the behoof of particular individuals. Nor, in this enumeration of the more important species of the ecclesiastical order, must sight be lost of those colleges of canons or secular priests who were attached to the diocesan cathedrals, and who-as members of collegiate establishments, designed and governed very much after the fashion of monasteries-bore considerable resemblance to the regular clergy, from whom, however, they differed in two most important respects their freedom from the regula of every monastic order, and their subjection to episcopal discipline. We must remember also the religious inmates of the nunneries.

But no adequate conception of the influence and activity of ecclesiastics of this period can be formed by the reader who thinks of them as employed only in the discharge of sacred functions and business directly appertaining to the clerical vocation. In every kind of labour, not actually servile, their hands were

• It is needless to say that the Mendicant Orders, in virtue of their obligations to special orders of peculiar stringency, were, in the exactest sense of the term, Regular Clergy.' But they differed so widely in character, aim, tone, and mode of action, from the older and more truly national organizations of monastic clergy, that it is desirable to speak of them by terms not common to the Mendicants and the Monks. To avoid confusion, the reader must never forget the many points of dissimilarity between the three species of clerical genus- the Monks, the Mendicants, and the Seculars.

engaged. If the king despatched an embassy to a foreign court, he chose its principal members from the clergy, from whom also he selected his confidential advisers on affairs of state. The visitor at the monarch's court found most of its highest offices, and a great majority of its inferior posts, filled by priests. The most powerful of the abbots and the most ambitious of the bishops were the dominant influence in the parliaments; monks and seculars thronged the antechambers and halls of the royal palace. The chancellor was always a supreme churchman, usually an archbishop. In the courts of common law priests occupied the judicial seats, and priests had the leading practices at the bar. When barons or inferior laymen sought special privileges from the Crown, they usually preferred their entreaties through the lips of a sacerdotal courtier; and when, in acknowledgment of favours received, or in politic gratitude for favours hoped for, they made customary offerings to the king's treasury, it was into an ecclesiastic's hands that they paid the timely fees. The business of the ecclesiastical courts-business steadily growing with the encroachments of the Church was all in the hands of ordained practitioners. It was the same in every baron's court and household.* And, not content with engrossing all the most lucrative official business of the kingdom, they bestirred themselves in avocations still more incompatible with modern notions of clerical decorum. If required to do service in camps they donned mail, and distinguished themselves by military prowess. At all times they were seen to thrive as farmers, land-stewards, merchants, pedlars. The best markets in the country were the fairs held in abbey-towns; and, whilst the business and diversions of these gatherings were carried on in the immediate precincts, and even within the very walls of the minsters, monks distinguished themselves amongst the throng of dealers as the keenest, boldest, and most successful traffickers. Nor were the 'canons less sedulous than the regular clergy in the prosecution of purely

Wycliffe, in 'The Office of Curates,' says of a certain section of the parochial clergy of his time, The tenth default is, that they haunt lords' courts, and are occupied in worldly offices, and do not take care of their parishes, although they take more worldly goods with them than Christ and His apostles.'

secular business; and it was observed by envious spectators that whilst the ordained men throve as lawyers and tradesmen. they knew how to invest their accumulations to the best of lawful profit in land and houses.

It is usual with Englishmen of the present time to regard this omnipresence of the clerical order in every department of society as the result of ecclesiastical encroachment upon, and usurpation of, the proper privileges and functions of the laity. Looking upon medieval life with vision coloured by the sentiments, and perhaps the prejudices of the nineteenth century, our historians, scarcely less than their ordinary readers, are too apt to attribute altogether to the ambition and greed of the clergy a state of things that was, at least, partly due to the aspiring spirit and worldly designs of laymen. So far as the position was the result of intrusiveness, a minute's reflection will satisfy most inquirers, that, instead of being confined to one class, the intrusiveness was not less general amongst the laity than amongst the ecclesiastics. If the latter were willing to usurp the influence of the laity for the aggrandizement of themselves or their order, the former were no less eager to assume the

• Concerning the worldly avocations and greed of the secular clergy, the author of The Complaint of the Ploughman' sings::

Other they beene proude, or covetous;
Or they been hard, or hungrie ;
Or they been liberall, or lecherous;

Or else medlers with marchandry;
Or mainteiners of men with mastry;
Or stewards, contours pleadours,
And serve God in ypocrisie.

In the same spirit railing at clerical

Therewith they purchase have lay fee

In londes there hem liketh best; And builde also as brod as a cité,

Both in the east and eke in the west.' lawyers, just as popular satirists lashed

the extortionate lawyers of more recent times, the Ploughman sings:

For who so will prove a testament,

That is not all worthe tenne pound,

He shall pay for the parchement,

The third of the money all round:
Thus the people is raunsound,

They say such part to hem should as

send:

There as they gripen, it goeth to the ground;

God for His mercy it amend!'

Whilst many of the secular clergy thus devoted themselves to the practice of law, to commerce, and to the conduct of worldly affairs, the friars, traversing the country in pairs, were the most energetic and successful-or, as their enemies declared, the most fraudulent and extortionate-pedlars and tallymen' of the period. The writer of the Song against the Friars' (published in Mr. Thomas Wright's 'Political Poems and Songs, accession Edward III. to ac