814 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
death. In such matters, the king showed an almost equally strong hand. Again and again the pope quashed the elec tions of chapters either upon his own motion or at the king's appeal. Eugenius III. set aside William, canonically chosen archbishop of York. Stephen Langton 1207, Edmund Rich 1234, the Franciscan Kikvardby 1273, Peckham 1279, and Reynolds 1313, all archbishops of Canterbury, were substi tuted for the candidates canonically elected. Bonaventura was substituted for William Langton, elected archbishop of York, 1264. Such cases were constantly recurring. Bishops, already consecrated, were set aside by the pope in virtue of his " fulness of power," as was the case when Richard de Bury, d. 1345, was substituted for Robert Graystanes in the see of Durham.
This violence, done to the rights of the chapters, led to a vast amount of litigation. Almost every bishop had to fight a battle at Rome before he obtained his see. Between 1215-1264 not fewer than thirty cases of contested episcopal elections were carried to Rome. It was a bad day when the pope or the king could not find a dissident minority in a chapter and, through appeals, secure a hearing at Rome and finally a reversal of the chapter's decision. Of the four hun dred and seventy decretals of Alexander III., accepted by Gregory IX., about one hundred and eighty were directed to England.1
The regular appointment to benefices was also invali dated by the pernicious custom of papal reservations which threatened even in this period to include every high office in the English Church. A little later, in 1317, the supreme pontiff reserved for his own appointment the sees of Worces ter, Hereford, Durham, and Rochester; in 1320 Lincoln and Winchester ; in 1322, 1323 Lichfield and Winchester ; 1325 Carlisle and Norwich ; 1327 Worcester, Exeter, and Here ford.2
Another way by which the pope asserted his overlordship
1 Maitland, p. 123 ; Jessopp gives many cases of these appeals.
2 Stubbs, III. 322 sq.
§ 128. CHURCH AND CLERGY IN ENGLAND. 815
in the English Church was the translation of a bishop from one see to another. This, said Matthew Paris (V. 228), " became custom so that one church seemed to be the para mour of the other."
The English clergy and the barons looked upon these practices with disfavor, and, as at the Mad Parliament, 1258, demanded the freedom of capitular elections. The Consti tutions of Clarendon, 1164, clearly expressed the national opposition, but the pope continued to go his own way.
The convents, for the most part, escaped papal interfer ence in the election of their abbots. The reason is to be sought in the support which the orders gave to the pope in his struggle to reduce the episcopate to subjection. Nor did the crown venture to interfere, repelled, no doubt, by the compact organization of the monastic orders, the order rising to the defence of an attacked abbey.
The participation of the English bishops in the House of Lords was based originally upon the tax of scutage. From this followed their equal right to deliberate upon public affairs with the barons. At a time when this body contained less than forty lay peers, it included twenty bishops and twenty-six abbots. Most of the bishops and abbots, it would seem, had houses in London, which had taken the place of Winchester as the centre of national life.1 As the emolu ments of the higher ecclesiastical dignities increased, they were sought and secured by noblemen for their sons and by members of the royal house. Odo, bishop of Bayeux, d. 1097, was the brother of William the Conqueror. Two of Stephen's nephews were made respectively bishop of Dur ham and archbishop of York. Ethelmar, brother of Henry III., received the see of Winchester, 1250,2 and the arch bishopric of Canterbury was provided for Henry's uncle, Boniface. Geoffrey, son of Henry II., was made bishop
1 Fitzstephen, as quoted by Traill, I. 383.
2 The king entered the chapter and forced the election. The pope yielded, but to prove " he had not sown on a barren coast without reaping benefit of harvest, at once made a demand of 5000 marks for a favorite." M. Paris, V. 179 sqq.