nances, servility to the monks, and an abject and illiberal devotion
[p]. The reverence for the clergy had been carried to such a height,
that, wherever a person appeared in a sacerdotal habit, though on the
high way, the people flocked around him, and, showing him all marks of
profound respect, received every word he uttered as the most sacred
oracle [q]. Even the military virtues, so inherent in all the Saxon
tribes, began to be neglected; and the nobility, preferring the
security and sloth of the cloister to the tumults and glory of war,
valued themselves chiefly on endowing monasteries, of which they
assumed the government [r]. The several kings, too, being extremely
impoverished by continual benefactions to the church to which the
states of their kingdoms had weakly assented, could bestow no rewards
on valour or military services, and retained not even sufficient
influence to support their government [s].
[FN [p] These abuses were common to all the European churches, but the
priests in Italy, Spain, and Gaul made some atonement for them, by
other advantages which they rendered society. For several ages, they
were almost all Romans, or, in other words, the ancient natives, and
they preserved the Roman language and laws, with some remains of the
former civility. But the priests in the Heptarchy, after the first
missionaries, were wholly Saxons, and almost as ignorant and barbarous
as the laity. They contributed, therefore, little to the improvement
of society in knowledge or the arts. [q] Bede, lib 3. cap. 26. [r]
Ibid. lib. 5. cap. 23. Epistola Bedae ad Egbert. [s] Bedae Epist. ad
Egbert.]

Another inconvenience which attended this corrupt species of
Christianity, was the superstitious attachment to Rome, and the
gradual subjection of the kingdom to a foreign jurisdiction. The
Britons, having never acknowledged any subordination to the Roman
pontiff, had conducted all ecclesiastical government by their domestic
synods and councils [t]; but the Saxons, receiving their religion from
Roman monks, were taught at the same time a profound reverence for
that see, and were naturally led to regard it as the capital of their
religion. Pilgrimages to Rome were represented as the most
meritorious acts of devotion. Not only noblemen and ladies of rank
undertook this tedious journey [u], but kings themselves, abdicating
their crowns, sought for a secure passport to heaven at the feet of
the Roman pontiff; new relics