;[*] and they still retained the choice, without quitting the
convent, either of a married or a single life.[**]

[* Osberne in Anglia Sacra, tom. ii. p. 91.]

[** See Wharton's notes to Anglia Sacra, tom. ii.
p. 91. Gervase, p 1645. Chron. Wint. MS. apud Spel. Concil.
p. 434.] The Pope, having cast his eye on the monks as the
basis of his authority, was determined to reduce them under
strict rules of obedience, to procure them the credit of
sanctity by an appearance of the most rigid mortification,
and to break off all their other ties which might interfere
with his spiritual policy. Under pretence, therefore, of
reforming abuses which were in some degree unavoidable in
the ancient establishments, he had already spread over the
southern countries of Europe the severe laws of the monastic
life, and began to form attempts towards a like innovation
in England. The favorable opportunity offered itself, (and
it was greedily seized,) arising from the weak superstition
of Edred, and the violent, impetuous character of Dunstan.
As the bishops and parochial clergy lived apart with their
families, and were more connected with the world, the hopes
of success with them were fainter, and the pretence for
making them renounce marriage was much less plausible.

But a mistaken piety had produced in Italy a new species of monks,
called Benedictines; who, carrying farther the plan sible principles of
mortification, secluded themselves entirely from the world, renounced
all claim to liberty, and made a merit of the most inviolable chastity.
These practices and principles, which superstition at first engendered,
were greedily embraced and promoted by the policy of the court of Rome.
The Roman pontiff, who was making every day great advances towards an
absolute sovereignty over the ecclesiastics, perceived that the celibacy
of the clergy alone could break off entirely their connection with the
civil power, and, depriving them of every other object of ambition,
engage them to promote, with unceasing industry, the grandeur of their
own order. He was sensible that so long as the monks were indulged
in marriage, and were permitted to rear families, they never could be
subjected to strict discipline, or reduced to that slavery, under their
superiors, which was requisite to procure to the mandates, issued from
Rome, a ready and zealous obedienc