originated in the time of the crusades, as a means of
providing a fund for the holy wars. Once established, it had settled into
custom,[349] and was one of the chief resources of the papal revenue. From
England alone, as much as 160,000 pounds had been paid out of the country
in fifty years;[350] and the impost was alike oppressive to individuals and
injurious to the state. Men were appointed to bishopricks frequently at an
advanced age, and dying, as they often did, within two or three years of
their nomination, their elevation had sometimes involved their families and
friends in debt and embarrassment;[351] while the annual export of so much
bullion was a serious evil at a time when the precious metals formed the
only currency, and were so difficult to obtain. Before a quarrel with the
court of Rome had been thought of as a possible contingency, the king had
laboured with the pope to terminate the system by some equitable
composition; and subsequently cessation of payment had been mentioned more
than once in connection with the threats of a separation. The pope had made
light of these threats, believing them to be no more than words; there was
an opportunity, therefore, of proving that the English government was
really in earnest, in a manner which would touch him in a point where he
was naturally sensitive, and would show him at the same time that he could
not wholly count on the attachment even of the clergy themselves. For, in
fact, the church itself was fast disintegrating, and the allegiance even of
the bishops and the secular clergy to Rome had begun to waver: they had a
stronger faith in their own privileges than in the union of Christendom;
and if they could purchase the continuance of the former at the price of a
quarrel with the pope, some among them were not disinclined to venture the
alternative. The Bishop of Rochester held aloof from such tendencies, and
Warham, though he signed the address of the House of Lords to the pope,
regretted the weakness to which he had yielded: but in the other prelates
there was little seriousness of conviction; and the constitution of the
bench had been affected also by the preferment of Gardiner and Edward Lee
to two of the sees made vacant by the death of Wolsey. Both these men had
been active agents in the prosecution of the divorce; and Gardiner,
followed at a distance by the other, had shaped out, as the pope grew more
intractable, the famous notion that the English church