ld even read; consequently the clergy alone were proper for
public affairs. They were the statesmen, they were the lawyers; from
them were often taken the bailiffs of the seigneurial courts, sometimes
the sheriffs of counties, and almost constantly the justiciaries of the
kingdom.[78] The Norman kings, always jealous of their order, were
always forced to employ them. In abbeys the law was studied; abbeys were
the palladiums of the public liberty by the custody of the royal
charters and most of the records. Thus, necessary to the great by their
knowledge, venerable to the poor by their hospitality, dreadful to all
by the power of excommunication, the character of the clergy was exalted
above everything in the state; and it could no more be otherwise in
those days than it is possible it should be so in ours.

William the Conqueror made it one principal point of his politics to
reduce the clergy; but all the steps he took in it were not equally well
calculated to answer this intention. When he subjected the Church lands
to military service, the clergy complained bitterly, as it lessened
their revenue: but I imagine it did not lessen their power in
proportion; for by this regulation they came, like other great lords, to
have their military vassals, who owed them homage and fealty: and this
rather increased their consideration amongst so martial a people. The
kings who succeeded him, though they also aimed at reducing the
ecclesiastical power, never pursued their scheme on a great or
legislative principle. They seemed rather desirous of enriching
themselves by the abuses in the Church than earnest to correct them. One
day they plundered and the next day they founded monasteries, as their
rapaciousness or their scruples chanced to predominate; so that every
attempt of that kind, having rather the air of tyranny than reformation,
could never be heartily approved or seconded by the body of the people.

The bishops must always be considered in the double capacity of clerks
and barons. Their courts, therefore, had a double jurisdiction: over the
clergy and laity of their diocese for the cognizance of crimes against
ecclesiastical law, and over the vassals of their barony as lords
paramount. But these two departments, so different in their nature, they
frequently confounded, by making use of the spiritual weapon of
excommunication to enforce the judgments of both; and this sentence,
cutting off the party from the common society