on the Kings of France, the open and hereditary foes of England; when there were two or even three popes, bidding against one another with as little scruple or decency as so many rival brokers; and when all these things took place at Avignon, close to the borders of what was for years together English territory, it was little wonder if, while the English nation retained its old attachment to the Christian religion, it had lost in a great degree its loyalty to the popes. The wonder is not that it retained so little but that it retained so much—that when, at so apparently auspicious a time, the great Wycliffian anti-sacerdotal movement began, the old beliefs should have shown the vitality which they did show; and this will appear even a greater wonder when we come to examine some of the relations which subsisted between clergy and laity and among the clergy themselves. No sooner, however, did the Council of Constance remove the worst scandals, and Martin V. once more figure as a pope whom it was possible for decent people to respect, than the natural conservative feeling of the nation reasserted itself, and for another hundred years it remained the acknowledged duty of a Christian man, king or not, to 'obey the Pope.'
The history of Archbishop Chicheley, famous as the founder of All Souls College in Oxford, may serve to illustrate some of the above remarks. Chicheley, like so many of the great churchmen of the period, was a lawyer by profession. In this character he was retained by the Pope in 1402, and in reward for his services was nominated by papal provision to a prebend in Salisbury, and to a canonry in the collegiate church of Wilton, whenever they should become vacant, and, as Dean Hook says, 'in direct contravention of the law.'[1] He
- ↑ Hook's Archbishops, vol. v. p. 11.
