petual war,--the only
spots where peace and law and justice spoke in protest against the chaos
of the world. But England was, in comparison with the rest of the western
world, a country of peace and law. There the Church was less powerful
against the State because the State had never handed over its duty of
maintaining justice and law and right to the exclusive guardianship of the
Church. None the less it was a formidable matter to rouse the hostility of
a body which included not only all the religious world, but all the
educated classes, and penetrated even to the despised villeinage and the
poor freemen whose sons pressed into its lower ranks. The Church with
which Henry had to deal was no longer the same that the Conqueror had
easily bent to his will. It had received its training and felt its
strength in political action; it had developed a close corporate spirit;
it had an admirable organization; it possessed the most advanced as well
as the most merciful legal system of the age. Its courts had strong claims
to popular regard. Their punishments were more merciful than the savage
sentences of the lay courts; and they held out great advantages to the
rich, since the penances they inflicted could be commuted for money.
Their system of law, moreover, was far in advance of the barbarous rules
of customary law; and they were backed by all the authority of the Roman
Curia and of the religious feeling of the day.

Henry had, however, peculiar advantages in the contest. He was master of
a disciplined body of ministers and servants, in whom he could confidently
trust. He was sure, in this matter at least, of the support of the lay
baronage, who had long arrears of jealousy to make up against their
hereditary opponents the clergy, and who were not likely now to forget
that no party in the Church had ever made common cause with the feudal
lords. He could count on the obedience of the secular clergy. In France
or Germany the bishops were members of the great houses, and as powerful
local rulers wielded a vast feudal authority. In England their position
was very different. They were drawn from the staff of the king's chapel,
and had their whole training in the administration of the court; and they
formed an official nobility who were charged, in common with the secular
nobility, with the conduct of the general business of the realm. They were
appointed to their places by the king for services done to him, and as
instruments of his