822 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
English priest in the time of Adrian IV. named his daughter Hadriana, a reminder to the pope that he himself was the son of a priest.1 Some relief was attempted by the intro duction of the Augustinian rule, requiring priests to live to gether ; but it was adopted in the single English cathedral of Carlisle and in a few Scotch cathedrals. The records of the courts leave no doubt of the coarse vice which prevailed in clerical groups. Even after the twelfth century, many of the bishops were married or had semi-legitimated families. According to Matthew Paris, Grosseteste was on the point of resigning his see on account of the low morals of his clergy.
The attempt to introduce the law of Gratian into Eng land was never wholly successful. Archbishop Arundel might declare that "in all cases the canons and laws were authoritative which proceeded from the porter of eternal life and death, who sits in the seat of God Himself, and to whom God has committed the laws of the divine realm."2 But the barons, as at the parliament of Merton, 1236, resisted the foreign claim. William the Conqueror provided for eccle siastical courts, under the charge of bishops and archdeacons, which took the place of the hundred court.
Suits, however, touching the temporalities of the clergy were tried in the secular courts,3 as were also offences against the forestry laws and the laws of hunting. But all matters pertaining to wills and to marriage were reserved for the clerical court. These provisions gave the Church vast power. It was inevitable, however, that there should be a clash of jurisdiction, and, in fact, endless disputes arose in the settlement of matters pertaining to advowsons, tithes, and other such cases. The relative leniency of the penal ties meted out to clerics led many to enter at least the lower orders, and enroll themselves as clerks who never had any idea of performing clerical functions.
The more important acts pertaining to the Church in England in this period were, in addition to William's man-
1 John of Salisbury, Ep. 27, Migne, 199. 18. 2 See Maitland, p. 18.
8 Stubbs, I. 306 sq., III. 353 sqq.
§ 129. TWO ENGLISH BISHOPS. 823
dates for dividing the civil and church courts, the canons of the council of London, 1108, the Clarendon Constitutions, 1164, John's brief surrendering his kingdom, 1213, the Con stitutions of Otho, 1237, and the Mortmain Act of 1279. The Mortmain Act, which was one of the most important English parliamentary acts of the Middle Ages, forbade the alienation of lands to the Church so as to exempt them from the payment of taxation to the state.
§ 129. Two English Bishops.
For HUGH OF LINCOLN : The magna vita, by his chaplain, ADAM, ed. by Dimock, Lond., 1864; — a metrical Life, ed. by Dimock, Lond., 1860. — G. G. PERRY: St. Hugh of Avalon, Lond., 1879. — H. THURSTON (Roin. Cath.): St. Hugh of Lincoln, Lond., 1898, transl. from the French, with copious additions. — J. A. FROUDE : A Bishop of the Twelfth Century, in Short Studies on Great Subjects, 2d series, pp. 54-86.
For GROSSETESTE : His Epistolce, ed. by Luard, Lond., 1861 ; Monumenta Franc., ed. by Brewer. — M. PARIS, Luard's ed. — Lives of Grosseteste, by PEGGE, Lond., 1793. — LECHLER, in his Life of Wiclif, transl. by Lorimer, pp. 20-40. — G. G. PERRY, Lond., 1871. — FELTEN, Freib., 1887. — F. S. STEVENSON, Lond., 1899. —M. CREIGHTON: in Hist. Lectt.and Addresses, Lond., 1903. — C. BIGG, in Wayside Sketches in Eccles. Hist., Lond., 1906. — Diet, of Nat1 1 Biog.
Most prominent among the English ecclesiastics of the period, as faithful administrators of their sees, are Hugh and Robert Grosseteste, both bishops of Lincoln.1
Hugh of Lincoln, or Hugh of Avalon, as he is also called, 1 140-1200, was pronounced by Ruskin the most attractive sacerdotal figure known to him in history ; 2 and Froude passed upon him the eulogy that he " was one of the most beautiful spirits ever incarnated in human clay, whose story should be familiar to every English boy."
Born near Grenoble, France, he was taken in his ninth year, on his mother's death, to a convent ; afterwards he entered the Grande Chartreuse, and followed an invitation
1 Stubbs, Const. Hist., IT. 313, in pronouncing the thirteenth century " the golden age of English churchmanship," has reference more particularly to the influence the bishops had upon the formation of the English constitution.
8 Prceterita, III. 1.