The most important articles may be conveniently arranged in five groups: clerks 1. All clerks accused of any crime were to be summoned Trial of in the first instance before the King's justices, who should accused of determine whether the cause ought to be tried in the secular crime. or spiritual court. In the event of the cause being remitted to the spiritual court, a lay officer should be appointed by the King's justices to watch the proceedings; and the accused, if found guilty, should not be protected by the Church (cap. iii.). All matters pertaining to the King's court should be terminated there; but causes which appeared to fall within the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts should be sent thither to be dealt with (cap. vii.). The distinction between the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions introduced by William the Conqueror was thus maintained.1 But the King's court was first to decide the fact whether or not the accused was entitled to be tried in the spiritual court; the latter court then decided the fact of the guilt or innocence of such accused persons as were remitted to it; and the King's court sentenced and punished. the guilty. All disputes concerning advowsons and presentations to Suits as to livings, whether between laymen, or clerks, or laymen and advowsons and presenclerks, were to be dealt with and terminated in the King's tations. court (cap. i.). debt. The King's court should have jurisdiction over all pleas Pleas of of debt, whether involving a question of good faith (of which the Church claimed exclusive cognisance) or not (cap. xv.). men and In disputes between laymen and clerks as to land, the chief Suits justice should decide, by the recognition of twelve lawful between laymen, whether it was held by feudal or eleemosynary tenure clerks as to (frankalmoign), and should refer the suit accordingly, unless land. 1 [Pearson, Hist. Eng. Early and Middle Ages, 1867, i. 495, remarks that 'when William I. and Lanfranc concurred in a policy which dissolved the old union of the two bodies politic (Church and State) they had unavoidably placed them in a condition of suppressed antagonism.'-ED.] Trials of laymen for spiritual offences. Excommunication of tenants-inchief and officers of the King's household. King to have custody of vacant sees, etc. Mode of election to bishoprics and abbacies. Homage and fealty of incumbent elect. both parties agreed on the same judge, to the lay or ecclesiastical tribunal (cap. ix.). Laymen tried in the bishop's court were to have the benefit of common law rules of evidence.1 If no one should be willing, or dare, to appear as accuser against a powerful delinquent, the sheriff, at the request of the bishop, should impanel and swear twelve lawful men of the vicinage to give true evidence (cap. vi.). 2. No tenant-in-chief of the King or officer of his household should be excommunicated, nor his lands put under interdict, without the previous consent of the King, or, in his absence from the kingdom, of his justiciar (cap. vii.). On the same principle, tenants of any of the King's cities, castles, boroughs, or demesne manors, refusing to appear when cited by the archdeacon or bishop to answer for any wrong falling within his lawful jurisdiction, might be placed under interdict, but not excommunicated until application had first been made for the intervention of the King's chief local officer (cap. x.). 3. The custody of vacant archbishoprics, bishoprics, abbeys, and priories of royal foundation, should be in the King's hand, and their revenues paid to him. Election of a new incumbent should take place, in obedience to the King's writ, by the chief clergy of the church, assembled in the King's chapel, with the assent of the King, and with the advice of such beneficed clergymen as the King might summon for the purpose. Before consecration, the incumbent elect should do homage and fealty to the King as his liege lord, of life, limb, and earthly honour, saving the rights of his order (cap. xii.). Archbishops, bishops, and all the beneficed clergy of the 1 Laici non debent accusari nisi per certos et legales accusatores et testes. [c. vi.] 2 [It is difficult to see what object was gained to the State by the distinction in cap. x., interdict and excommunication being equally ecclesiastical censures. That which struck the greater number, and among them probably the more innocent, viz., interdict, is allowed, while the King's personal sense of dignity is saved by the prohibition of the personal censure of excommunication of the tenants of Royal cities and manors.-ED.] duties of the kingdom, holding of the King in capite, should answer for Baronial their baronies to the King's justices and officers, and follow prelates and and observe all royal rights and customs; and, like the rest other clergy holding in of the barons, ought to take part in the judgments of the capite. King's court, except in cases involving loss of life or limb. (cap. xi.). No archbishop, bishop, or beneficed clergyman should Clergy not to quit the quit the realm without licence from the King. Those who realm withwere permitted to leave, should give pledge, if required, not out the King's to contrive any hurt to the King or kingdom during their licence. absence. cal appeals not to go the arch 4. Appeals ought to proceed from the archdeacon to Ecclesiastithe bishop, and from the bishop to the archbishop. If the archbishop failed to do justice, resort should be had, in further than the last instance, to the King, so that by his order the con- bishop withtroversy might be terminated in the archbishop's court and out the not proceed further (ie. to the Pope), without the King's sent. assent (cap. viii.). King's con 5. Lastly, the sons of villeins (rusticorum) were not to be Ordination admitted to orders without the assent of the lord on whose of villeins. land they were born (cap. xvi.).1 This restriction on the ordination of villeins brings out the democratic element which, in a certain way, the Church of the Middle Ages possessed. Not that the medieval church was really democratic, for its system of government culminated in the Papacy, and the Papacy had become the key-stone of a great arch of despotism. But it was only through the portals of the Church that the low-born and landless man, however great his intellectual ability, could hope to attain to dignity and power. The intention of the King and barons, in this article of the Constitutions of Clarendon, probably went no further than to protect the legal property which every feudal lord had in the services. of his villeins. But its practical effect was undoubtedly still further to depress the lowest class of the population. A 1 See the Latin Text of the Constitutions in Lyttelton's Life of Henry II., iv. 182-185, and in Select Chart. 131-134. RICHARDI. 1189-1199. An absentee king. Excessive taxation. Ways of raising money. similar prohibition is contained in the Assize of Clarendon, issued by Henry in 1166; and more than two hundred years afterwards, in the fifteenth year of Richard II., we find the Commons House of Parliament petitioning that villeins might not be allowed to put their children to school in order to advance them by the Church, and this for the honour of the freemen of the kingdom.' Under Richard II. it is not so much the feudal and proprietary as the antidemocratic and caste feeling which is manifested.1 The reign of RICHARD I. belongs not so much to the history of England as to the history of Christendom. He was the 'creation and impersonation of his own age,' 2 and occupied the central place in the history of his times. With the exception of about four months immediately following his coronation, and the two months which he spent in England in 1194 after his release from captivity, Richard was absent from his kingdom during the whole ten years of his reign. By birth, education, and sympathies essentially a foreigner, he seems to have regarded England merely as an appanage to his continental possessions, and a profitable source of revenue. It was the strong administrative system established under his father, by which the power of the Crown was so largely augmented, that rendered it possible for Richard thus to govern as an absentee king. To support his expedition to Palestine, to pay his ransom from captivity, and to carry on his wars in France, every known source of taxation was exhausted. Public offices and dignities were openly sold to the highest bidder; the demesne lands of the Crown were first sold and then, after a time, forcibly resumed; all the feudal dues, including the recently introduced scutage, were rigor 1 Rot. Parl. 15 Rich. II. 294; Hallam, Middle Ages, iii. 181. [Pearson, Hist. Eng. Early and Middle Ages, i. 499, argues strongly against c. xvi. as 'shutting out the poor from their one refuge upon earth.' M. Esmein, Rev. Gén. du Droit, 1885, p. 301, seq., cites the canons of the Council of Orléans, 538, against the ordination of serfs not previously freed. An earlier Council of Orleans, 511, convoked by Clovis, had decreed that a Bishop ordaining serfs without the consent of their lord should pay him an indemnity, but that the serfs so ordained should remain ordained. Guizot, Civ. en France, iii. 305.—ED.] 2 Stubbs, Itinerarium Ricardi Primi, Rolls Series [Int. xi.]. ously exacted; the old Danegeld, under the thin disguise of a 'carucage,' was revived in a more stringent form; not only land, but personal property, which had for the first time been subjected to taxation in the Saladin tithe granted to Henry II. in 1188, was laid under a heavy impost; the gold and silver of the churches were seized; and the Cistercian monks compelled to compound for all their wool.1 These systematic and oppressive exactions appear to have been borne by the nation with remarkable patience. The rising of the populace of London, under Popular William with the Beard, 'quidam legis peritus,' was not so William rising under much a resistance to taxation as to its unjust assessment, with the Beard, or because the rich citizens 'sparing their own purses, willed Fitz-Osbert. that the poor should pay the whole.' The only real oppo- Constitutional oppo sition proceeded from the clergy. In 1198 the regular sition of the clergy refused to pay the carucage, or tax of five shillings clergy. Et omnia erant ei venalia, scilicet potestates, dominationes, comitatus, vicecomitatus, castella, viliae, praedia, et cetera iis similia. Bened. Abb. ii. 90. For the various modes of taxation see Rog. Hoveden, iii. 210, 240, A.D. 1193-4; Select Chart. 243, 244, 246. 2 Rog. Hoveden, iv. 5, A.D. 1196. Eodem anno orta est dissensio inter cives Londoniarum. Frequentius enim solito propter regis captionem et alia accidentia imponebantur eis auxilia non modica, et divites propriis parcentes marsupiis volebant ut pauperes solverent universa. Quod cum quidam legis peritus, videlicet Willelmus cum barba, filius Osberti, videret, zelo justitiae et aequitatis accensus factus est pauperum advocatus, volens quod unusquisque tam dives quam pauper secundum mobilia et facultates suas daret ad universa civitatis negotia.' The talliage was assessed as a poll-tax equally on all the citi zens rich and poor. Fitz-Osbert wished it to be assessed in proportion to the property of each citizen. 3 Rog. Hoveden, iv. 66; Select Chart. 250. H |