bots, both in England and Normandy, but with much wisdom and discretion; for he usually called a meeting of bishops, abbots, and other wise counsellors, to enquire of them the persons whom they thought fittest to be entrusted with the government of the Church, for learning, morals, and prudence; and he generally appointed the persons whom they agreed in recommending. Denique illum, quem pro vitæ merito et sapientiæ doctriná, provisio sapientum elegebat, benevolus rex dispensatorem et rectorem episcopatus vel abbatiæ constituebat. Ordericus vitalis. - - Maseres, Excerpta, p. 233. In the fourth year of his reign, A. D. 1070, by the advice of his barons, he chose twelve men from each county to report to him the English laws and customs. In their report, it seems, the duty of the king was thus prescribed: - "It is the duty of a Christian king to be in the place of a father to a Christian nation; and to be, in prudence and tutelary care, as he is styled, The Vicar of Christ; and it behoves him to love Christianity with his whole soul, and to avoid Heathen doctrines, - to venerate and diligently defend the Church of God, and as diligently as possible to pacify and settle his people in the true doctrine; and from this much good will result to him." When he swore to maintain the laws of Edward the Confessor, he declared, "A king, because he is the vicar of the Supreme King, is ordained for this purpose, to rule and defend the kingdom and people of the Lord, and above all the holy Church (See Jewel's Defence of his Apology, p. 522.); and accordingly, when the imperious Hildebrand, or Pope Gregory VII, after he had humbled the Emperor of Germany, and awed the other sovereigns of Europe, required William to swear fealty to the Pope, as holding the crown of England under the papal grant, he peremptorily refused: "I never paid (said he in his letter) nor will I pay you homage; because I neither paid it myself, nor do I find that my predecessors paid it to your predecessors." Knowing his resolute character, Hildebrand thought fit to wave his claim for the present; and so jealous was William of his royal prerogative, that he never would suffer a synod to be held without his own permission; and declared that no archbishop or bishop in his realm should pay any regard to the Pope's mandate. However, by the introduction of the despotic feudal system of the continent, in violation of the common law, whereby the lands of all private proprietors were declared to be holden of the prince; and also by separating the ecclesiastical from the civil jurisdiction, and ordering all causes relating to religion to be tried in the bishop's courts, according to the canon law; contrary to the former usage, whereby the bishop and aldermen, conjointly, in every shire, administered justice to the clergy and laity alike, according to the Saxon laws: he opened a door for the introduction of Romish jurisdiction, which his successors were long unable to shut. The use indeed of the canon law, immediately led to this, by promoting appeals to Rome in doubtful cases, where this law was best understood and expounded. And that such appeals began at this time, we may collect from the act of his son, William Rufus, A. D. 1087, prohibiting all appeals to the Court of Rome, as "unheard of in his realm, and quite contrary to its usages." When Henry I. the youngest son of the Conqueror, was crowned king, A. D. 1100, in prejudice to the claim of his eldest brother Robert; Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and creature of the Pope, taking advantage of his precarious title, extorted from him the nomination to bishoprics,— that ancient prerogative of the crown. Next Stephen, the usurper, in A. D. 1135, after a long contest with the bishops, was forced to submit to an appeal from his authority to the Pope's legate. Until at length, in the precarious reign of king John, that imperious pontiff, Innocent III. imposed upon this pusillanimous prince a voluntary surrender of his crown to Pandulph, the Pope's legate, to be held in future by him as a vassal of the Holy See, at an annual rent of one thousand marks, A. D. 1213. In the reign of Henry III. the parliament held A. D. 1244, objected to the exactions of the legates, alleging the poverty of the kingdom and of the clergy; and observed that the Pope's imposi tions were burdensome to the kingdom; and that if he wanted relief, he ought to apply to a General Council. Edward I., A.D. 1272, a wise and magnanimous prince, was the first who set himself in earnest to shake off this foreign yoke. He would not permit his bishops to attend a General Council till they swore not to receive the papal benediction: he set at nought all the Pope's bulls and processes; attacking Scotland in defiance of the one; and seizing the temporalities of his clergy, who, under pretext of of the other, refused to pay a tax imposed by parliament. He enacted the statute of Mortmain, in the sixth year of his reign, against bequests of ecclesiastical property to the Church; thereby closing the great gulph that threatened to swallow up all the land of the kingdom; and, in the thirty-fifth, was passed the first act against papal provisions, grants, or bulls. And when one of his subjects had obtained a bull of excommunication against another, he ordered him to be executed as a traitor, according to the ancient law. And, with his consent, a letter was written by parliament to Pope Boniface VIII; in which the Lords and Commons declared, that they were bound by oath to observe and defend the liberties, customs, and ancient laws of the realm, and would maintain them with all their power and might; and that they neither did, nor ever would, nor ought, to suffer the king to do any thing to the subversion of the statutes of the kingdom, and to the prejudice of its liberties, customs, and laws.Such was the pious and patriotic spirit which actuated this early Roman Catholic parliament ! In the weak reign of Edward II. the Papal See endeavoured to renew their encroachments, which were manfully resisted by the parliament; and one of the charges on which that unhappy prince was deposed, A. D. 1327, was, That he had given allowance to the bulls of the See of Rome. His son Edward III. treading in the steps of his grandfather, set himself seriously to retrench the papal encroachments. In the seventeenth year of his reign, A. D. 1543, the earls, barons, knights, and burgesses, in full parliament, wrote a letter to Pope Clement VIII. complaining grievously of the collation of ecclesiastical benefices upon foreigners, to the impoverishment of the nation, and the detriment of religion and morals; and praying his Holiness to revoke all such collations and provisions, that fit men of the natives might supply the cures; otherwise, that they would themselves take speedy methods of redress; but receiving a contemptuous and menacing answer, the king and parliament passed the famous statute of Provisors that same year, prohibiting all such provisions and collations within the realm, upon pain of imprisonment or death, to any such person as shall, for the time to come, present, or admit any person or persons so presented by the Pope, to the prejudice of the king's royal prerogative; and accordingly writs |