n. At home and abroad the
Roman See was too useful for the king to come to any actual breach with it.
However much Edward might echo the bold words of his Parliament, he shrank
from an open contest which would have added the Papacy to his many foes,
and which would at the same time have robbed him of his most effective
means of wresting aids from the English clergy by private arrangement with
the Roman court. Rome indeed was brought to waive its alleged right of
appointing foreigners to English livings. But a compromise was arranged
between the Pope and the Crown in which both united in the spoliation and
enslavement of the Church. The voice of chapters, of monks, of
ecclesiastical patrons, went henceforth for nothing in the election of
bishops or abbots or the nomination to livings in the gift of churchmen.
The Crown recommended those whom it chose to the Pope, and the Pope
nominated them to see or cure of souls. The treasuries of both King and
Pope profited by the arrangement; but we can hardly wonder that after a
betrayal such as this the clergy placed little trust in statutes or royal
protection, and bowed humbly before the claims of Rome.

[Sidenote: Its Worldliness]

But what weakened the clergy most was their severance from the general
sympathies of the nation, their selfishness, and the worldliness of their
temper. Immense as their wealth was, they bore as little as they could of
the common burthens of the realm. They were still resolute to assert their
exemption from the common justice of the land, though the mild punishments
of the bishops' courts carried as little dismay as ever into the mass of
disorderly clerks. But privileged as they thus held themselves against all
interference from the lay world without them, they carried on a ceaseless
interference with the affairs of this lay world through their control over
wills, contracts and divorces. No figure was better known or more hated
than the summoner who enforced the jurisdiction and levied the dues of
their courts. By their directly religious offices they penetrated into the
very heart of the social life about them. But powerful as they were, their
moral authority was fast passing away. The wealthier churchmen with their
curled hair and hanging sleeves aped the costume of the knightly society
from which they were drawn and to which they still really belonged. We see
the general impression of their worldliness in Chaucer's pictures of the
hunting monk an