tribute payable by England to the Holy See.' At this same time it was thought well by the English king to obtain the pope's confirmation of the terms of the dower, promised to the queen by the king, which was accorded on his petition.2 The chance survival of some of Cardinal Ottoboni's letters, written during his stay in England, have helped to show his zeal and untiring energy in the cause of peace and in the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline. His task was difficult; but he had no desire to show himself over-harsh, or to require more than was necessary to reconcile those, who in fighting against the king, had brought upon themselves the censures and excommunications of the Church. He writes with pride at being called upon to bring order into a country, the Church of which possessed such a glorious past as that of England could show. The nation is "like a well-beloved inheritance, which the Lord had abundantly enriched with a fullness of faith, with a knowledge of the truth, with an absence of error, with reverence for holy things and with a fervent love for the beauty of God's house." To those who pleaded that in what they had done their only intention was to force the king to keep the "Provisions of Oxford," which he had sworn to do, the cardinal-legate replied, that these had been condemned by the pope, and to defend them was to claim "to know better than the Apostolic See." With the beginning of 1267 Cardinal Ottoboni sent out letters to the various collectors of the ecclesiastical tenth granted for three years by the pope to the king, directing them to send the money forthwith to the diocesan. What was expected from this collection appears in a letter 1 Reg. Clem. IV, i. Nos. 321, 324, 340, 786. 2 Ibid., No. 329. written, under the date of 6th February, 1266, by the legate to the new archbishop of York, Walter Giffard, formerly bishop of Wells, who had been presented to the pope, on the refusal of St. Bonaventure to accept the dignity. In this letter Ottoboni says that, out of the ecclesiastical tenth the pope wishes 2,000 marks to be paid to Richard of Germany; and also, that the arrears of the annual tribute should be paid to the papal collector Sinicius.' In the year 1268 the general state of the country allowed the legate to turn his special attention to the Church. Early in April he preached the crusade in St. Paul's, London. The pope had told him to release King Henry from his crusading oath, taken long before but never yet carried into effect, on condition that Prince Edward went in his place;2 and the prince took the oath subsequently at Northampton, in June.3 At St. Paul's assembly, amongst others to bind themselves by the crusading vow was Thibaud, archdeacon of Liége, who had come to England with Ottoboni, and who afterwards was raised to the papacy, as Gregory X, when actually with Prince Edward on his expedition to the Holy Land.* Peace and quiet was even yet not fully restored in the land, for some of the malcontents endeavoured to prevent provisions being supplied to the legate; and disturbances took place in various parts of the city of London. Ottoboni took refuge in the Tower, and thence published an excommunication against the disturbers of the peace, and placed an interdict on the London churches. This appears to have had the desired effect; for although in one of his letters the cardinal complains that the English do not pay proper heed to ecclesiastical censures, the troubles were certainly drawing to an end. 1 Letters from the Northern Registers, 7. 3 Ann. Mon. iv., No. 217. 2 Reg. Clem. IV, ii. No. 609. 4 Flores Hist., iii. 14. On 21st April, 1268, and the two following days, the legate held a council in London at which he promulgated his celebrated "Constitutions," which became the canonical foundation of subsequent English Church government. Some of the clergy present endeavoured to raise a protest against the action of the cardinal; but the rest of those present refused to back it, and it was withdrawn.' The "Constitutions" consist of fifty-three sections, or chapters, and they cover the ground of the whole clerical life and practice, and include several chapters dealing specially with the case of religious men and women. About this same time Ottoboni had summoned the Scotch bishops to meet him in the North of England, in order to discuss with him the state of the Church and to receive from him constitutions, somewhat similar to those he had imposed on the English Church. Two bishops only responded to his summons, and some others sent proctors, but they refused to accept from him any statutes, claiming that this had never before been attempted in the history of the Scotch Church.2 The stay of the legate in England was now drawing to a close. Clement IV had need of his services elsewhere, and preparations for his departure were being made early in July, 1268. On the 7th of that month he addressed a letter to the prelates of the province of York, in which he expatiated on his work in trying to pacify England. It had been agreed that those whose estates had been confiscated at the conclusion of the struggle, should be able to redeem the forfeited lands by periodical payments, and many had asked the clergy to help them in this matter by loans. To this the legate agreed, and gave his permission for the clergy to act in this way, in the last of his letters now 1 Barth. Cotton, Hist. Anglic., 143. 2 Wilkins, Concilia, ii. 19. extant. He left England, according to the chronicle of Wykes, on 28th July, 1268, having accomplished a great deal of the work he had been sent to do.' Before his return to the Curia, Clement IV died on 29th November, his successor not being enthroned for two years. 2 The rest of the long reign of Henry III presents few features of interest from the ecclesiastical point of view, and may be very briefly considered. The movement headed by Simon de Montfort was undoubtedly popular; and with many people he was regarded not only as a national hero, but, in spite of the condemnation of the Roman authorities, as a saint. The moderation in dealing with the remnants of de Montfort's party, inculcated upon the young Prince Edward by the legate, had as much as anything to say to the entire collapse of the rising, since henceforth Edward held the ascendency in his father's councils and, although the king had been liberated and the rebellion put down mainly through his exertions and those of the earl of Gloucester, both the prince and the earl had previously been known as favouring the party of reform. Henry III himself, as a modern historian has put it, “never fell back into his old ways," and there was not the same necessity for the constant appeals and counter appeals to the authority of the Holy See, which characterises the first half century of this reign. Moreover the papal throne was vacant for a while; and when, on 1st September, 1271, Gregory X, in the person of Thibaud, the archdeacon of Liége, was elected whilst still in the Holy Land with Prince Edward, the king had settled down to a peaceful old age, and in the midst of the infirmities of the closing days of his life we hear nothing more of the mis-government of his early years. The new pope, Gregory X, was known in England, as already pointed out, and letters of congratulation were sent to him from English churchmen. Walter Giffard, archbishop of York, in his communication expresses the national reverence for the occupant of the Chair of Peter. "The House of the Lord," he says, "is divinely founded on the stone of help, upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, that is, upon the holy Roman Catholic Church, which has the first place, not alone by virtue of synodical laws, but by the gospel declaration of the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ; and in St. Peter and his successors has ever had the character of holy teaching and stability. As from the trunk of the tree life rises to the branches, as health flows through each member from the head, upon which the whole body depends, as the streams spring from the fountains, as the rays proceed from the sun, so all the Churches, which the Christian religion has founded throughout the world, owe all to the greatness of the Apostolic See. Hence it is that the English Church, which is the more devoted to the Apostolic See, because it recognises the benefits it has so many times received from it, inconsolably afflicted by the long vacancy, has uttered sighs more deep than others and more earnestly besought the Lord, that, looking with eyes of pity upon His Church, He would no longer leave the bark of Peter and the net of the supreme fisherman to the mercy of the rising storms, but provide it and the whole Christian people with a proper ruler." Thus, after expressing the pleasure with which the world has heard of the election lately made, the archbishop concludes: "I submit and commit to your lordship, O Holy Father! myself, though the least of men, still the spiritual offshoot of the Roman Church, and all that the same 11 Kings, vii. 12. EE |