more violent treatment
on this sharp refusal, grounded on such dangerous principles. Instead
of applying to the pope for a relaxation of his bull, he resolved
immediately to employ the power in his hands; and he told the
ecclesiastics that, since they refused to support the civil government,
they were unworthy to receive any benefit from it; and he would
accordingly put them out of the protection of the laws. This vigorous
measure was immediately carried into execution.[**] Orders were issued
to the judges to receive no cause brought before them by the clergy; to
hear and decide all causes in which they were defendants; to do every
man justice against them; to do them justice against nobody.[***] The
ecclesiastics soon found themselves in the most miserable situation
imaginable. They could not remain in their own houses or convents for
want of subsistence; if they went abroad in quest of maintenance, they
were dismounted, robbed of their horses and clothes, abused by every
ruffian, and no redress could be obtained by them for the most violent
injury. The primate himself was attacked on the highway, was stripped
of his equipage and furniture, and was at last reduced to board himself
with a single servant in the house of a country clergyman.[****]
The king, meanwhile, remained an indifferent spectator of all these
violences: and without employing his officers in committing any
immediate injury on the priests, which might have appeared invidious and
oppressive, he took ample vengeance on them for their obstinate refusal
of his demands. Though the archbishop issued a general sentence of
excommunication against all who attacked the persons or property
of ecclesiastics, it was not regarded; while Edward enjoyed the
satisfaction of seeing the people become the voluntary instruments of
his justice against them, and inure themselves to throw off that
respect for the sacred order by which they had so long been overawed and
governed.

* Walsing. p. 65. Heming. vol. i. p. 51.

** Walsing. p. 69. Heming. vol. i. p. 107.

*** M. West. p. 429.

**** Heming. vol. i. p. 109.

The spirits of the clergy were at last broken by this harsh treatment.
Besides that the whole province of York, which lay nearest the danger
that still hung over them from the Scots, voluntarily, from the first,
voted a fifth of their movables, the bishops of Salisbury, Ely, and some
others, made a composition for the secular clergy within