CH. 2. the measure of her offences, that she might fall only when time had laid bare the root of her degeneracy, and that faith and manners might be changed together. The history of the time is too imperfect to justify a positive conclusion. It is possible, however, that the success of the revolution effected by Henry IV. was due in part to a reaction in the church's favour; and it is certain that this prince, if he did not owe his crown to the support of the church, determined to conciliate it. He confirmed the Statutes of Provisors,* but he allowed them to sink into disuse. He forbade the further mooting of the confiscation project; and to him is due the first permission of the bishops to send heretics to Leanings of the stake. If English tradition is to be trusted, of Lancas- the clergy still felt insecure; and the French wars the church. of Henry V. are said to have been undertaken, as the House ter towards we all know from Shakspeare, at the persuasion of Archbishop Chichele, who desired to distract his attention from reverting to dangerous subjects. Whether this be true or not, no prince of the house of Lancaster betrayed a wish to renew the quarrel with the church. The battle of Agincourt, the conquest and re-conquest of France, called off the attention of the people; while the rise of the Lollards, and the intrusion of speculative questions, the agitation of which has ever been the chief aversion of English statesmen, Lull in the contributed to change the current; and the reforming spirit must have lulled before the outbreak reforming spirit. of the wars of the Roses, or one of the two CH. 2. parties in so desperate a struggle would have scarcely failed to have availed themselves of it. Edward IV. is said to have been lenient towards heresy; but his toleration, if it was more than imaginary, was tacit only; he never ventured to avow it. It is more likely that in the inveterate frenzy of those years men had no leisure to remember that heresy existed. The clergy were thus left undisturbed to go The clergy their own course to its natural end. are left un of their The storm disturbed. had passed over them without breaking; and they did not dream that it would again gather. The The trials immunity which they enjoyed from the general position. sufferings of the civil war contributed to deceive them; and without anxiety for the consequences, and forgetting the significant warning which they had received, they sank steadily into that condition which is inevitable from the constitution of human nature, among men without faith, wealthy, powerful, and luxuriously fed, yet condemned to celibacy, and cut off from the common duties and common pleasures of ordinary life. On the return of a settled government, they were startled for a moment in their security; the conduct of some among them had become so unbearable, that even Henry VII., who inherited the Lancastrian sympathies, was compelled to notice it; and the following brief act was passed by his first parliament, proving by the very terms in which it is couched the existing nature of church discipline. For the more sure and likely reformation,' it Complaints runs, of priests, clerks, and religious men, cul- irregula of clerical rities. Сн. CH. 2. pable, or by their demerits openly noised of incontinent living in their bodies, contrary to their order, be it enacted, ordained, and established, that it be lawful to all archbishops and bishops, and other ordinaries having episcopal jurisdiction, to punish and chastise such religious men, being within the bounds of their jurisdiction, as shall be convict before them, by lawful proof, of adultery, fornication, incest, or other fleshly incontinency, by committing them to ward and prison, there to remain for such time as shall be thought convenient for the quality of their trespasses. * Previous to the passing of this act, therefore, the bishops, who had power to arrest laymen on suspicion of heresy, and detain them in prison untried,† had no power to imprison priests, even though convicted of adultery or incest. The legislature were supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Cardinal Morton procured authority from the pope to visit the religious houses, the abominations of which had become notorious; ‡ and in a provincial synod held on the 24th of February, 1486, he laid the condition of the secular clergy before the assembled prelates. Many priests, it was stated, spent their time in hawking or hunting, in lounging at taverns, in the + 2 Hen. IV. cap. 15. 1 Hen. VII. cap. 4. Among | Petition of the Clergy of the the miscellaneous publications Diocese of Bangor, vol. iii. of of the Record Commission, there this work, p. 372, note. is a complaint presented during this reign, by the gentlemen and the farmers of Carnarvonshire, accusing the clergy of systematic seduction of their wives and daughters; and see a MORTON'S Register, MS. Lambeth. See vol. ii. cap. 10, of the second edition of this work for the results of Morton's investigation. They wore dissolute enjoyment of the world. * MORTON'S Register; and see WILKINS's Concilia, vol. iii. pp. 618-621. + Quibus Dominus intimavit qualis infamia super illos in dictâ civitate crescit quod complures eorundem tabernas pandoxatorias, sive caupones indies exerceant ibidem expectando fere per totum diem. Quare Dominus consuluit et monuit eosdem quod in posterum talia dimittant, et quod dimittant suos longos crines et induantur togis non per totum apertis. The expression is remarkable. They were not to dwell on the offences of their brethren coram laicis qui semper clericis sunt infesti.-WILKINS, vol. iii. p. 618. § Johannes permissione divinâ Cantuar. episcop. totius Angliæ primas cum in præsenti convocatione pie et salubriter consideratum fuit quod nonnulli sacerdotes et alii clerici ejusdem nostræ provinciæ in sacris ordi- Desiring, therefore, to find Сн. 2. Сн. 2. But the passes off. apparently recover Yet this little cloud again disappeared. Henry VII. sat too insecurely on his throne to venture cloud on a resolute reform, even if his feelings had inclined him towards it, which they did not. Morton durst not resolutely grapple with the evil. He rebuked and remonstrated; but punishment would have caused a public scandal. He would not invite the inspection of the laity into a disease which, without their assistance, he had not the strength to encounter; and his incipient reformation died away ineffectually in words. The The clergy church, to outward appearance, stood more se The obnoxious statutes of the curely than ever. Plantagenets were in abeyance, their very existence, as it seemed, was forgotten; and Thomas à Becket never desired more absolute independence for the ecclesiastical order than Archbishop Warham found established when he succeeded to the primacy. He, too, ventured to repeat the experiment of his predecessor. In 1511 he attempted a second visitation of the monasteries, and again exhorted a reform; but his efforts were even slighter than Morton's, and in their results equally without fruit. The maintenance of his order in its political supremacy was of greater moment to him than its moral purity: a decent their power. lest the blood of those committed zonâ aut marcipio deaurato vel auri ornatum habente. Incedent etiam omnes et singuli presbyteri et clerici ejusdem nostræ Ne aliquis sacerdos vel clericus provinciæ coronas et tonsuras in sacris ordinibus constitutus gerentes aures patentes ostentogam gerat nisi clausam a parte dendo juxta canonicas sanctiones. anteriori et non totaliter apertam-WILKINS, vol. iii. p. 619. neque utatur ense nec sicâ nec |