of God, is now
converted to an evil end, by permission whereof there groweth great scandal
to the people." To provide against a continuance of these abuses, it was
enacted that no "religious" persons should, under any pretence or form,
send out of the kingdom any kind of tax, rent, or tallage; and that "priors
aliens" should not presume to assess any payment, charge, or other burden
whatever upon houses within the realm.[451]

The language of this act was studiously guarded. The pope was not alluded
to; the specific methods by which the extortion was practised were not
explained; the tax upon presentations to benefices, either having not yet
distinguished itself beyond other impositions, or the government trusting
that a measure of this general kind might answer the desired end. Lucrative
encroachments, however, do not yield so easily to treatment; nearly fifty
years after it became necessary to re-enact the same statute; and while
recapitulating the provisions of it, the parliament found it desirable to
point out more specifically the intention with which it was passed.

The popes in the interval had absorbed in their turn from the heads of the
religious orders, the privileges which by them had been extorted from the
affiliated societies. Each English benefice had become the fountain of a
rivulet which flowed into the Roman exchequer, or a property to be
distributed as the private patronage of the Roman bishop: and the English
parliament for the first time found itself in collision with the Father of
Christendom.

"The pope," says the fourth of the twenty-fifth of Edward III.,
"accroaching to himself the signories of the benefices within the realm of
England, doth give and grant the same to aliens which did never dwell in
England, and to cardinals which could not dwell here, and to others as well
aliens as denizens, whereby manifold inconveniences have ensued." "Not
regarding" the statute of Edward I., he had also continued to present to
bishopricks, abbeys, priories, and other valuable preferments: money in
large quantities was carried out of the realm from the proceeds of these
offices, and it was necessary to insist emphatically that the papal
nominations should cease. They were made in violation of the law, and were
conducted with simony so flagrant that English benefices were sold in the
papal courts to any person who would pay for them, whether an Englishman or
a stranger. It was therefore decreed that the elec