History of the English People, Volume II | Page 9

from the king

and which force could wrest back again. France was telling more and
more on English opinion; and the claim which the French kings were
advancing to a divine and absolute power gave a sanction in Henry's
mind to the claim of absolute authority which was still maintained by
his favourite advisers in the royal council. Above all he clung to the
alliance with the Papacy. Henry was personally devout; and his
devotion only bound him the more firmly to his father's system of
friendship with Rome. Gratitude and self-interest alike bound him to
the Papal See. Rome had saved him from ruin as a child; its legate had
set the crown on his head; its threats and excommunications had foiled
Lewis and built up again a royal party. Above all it was Rome which
could alone free him from his oath to the Charter, and which could
alone defend him if like his father he had to front the baronage in arms.
[Sidenote: England and Rome]
His temper was now to influence the whole system of government. In
1227 Henry declared himself of age; and though Hubert still remained
Justiciar every year saw him more powerless in his struggle with the
tendencies of the king. The death of Stephen Langton in 1228 was a yet
heavier blow to English freedom. In persuading Rome to withdraw her
Legate the Primate had averted a conflict between the national desire
for self-government and the Papal claims of overlordship. But his death
gave the signal for a more serious struggle, for it was in the oppression
of the Church of England by the Popes through the reign of Henry that
the little rift first opened which was destined to widen into the gulf that
parted the one from the other at the Reformation. In the mediæval
theory of the Papacy, as Innocent and his successors held it,
Christendom, as a spiritual realm of which the Popes were the head,
took the feudal form of the secular realms which lay within its pale.
The Pope was its sovereign, the Bishops were his barons, and the
clergy were his under vassals. As the king demanded aids and subsidies
in case of need from his liegemen, so in the theory of Rome might the
head of the Church demand aid in need from the priesthood. And at this
moment the need of the Popes was sore. Rome had plunged into her
desperate conflict with the Emperor, Frederick the Second, and was
looking everywhere for the means of recruiting her drained exchequer.

On England she believed herself to have more than a spiritual claim for
support. She regarded the kingdom as a vassal kingdom, and as bound
to aid its overlord. It was only by the promise of a heavy subsidy that
Henry in 1229 could buy the Papal confirmation of Langton's successor.
But the baronage was of other mind than Henry as to this claim of
overlordship, and the demand of an aid to Rome from the laity was at
once rejected by them. Her spiritual claim over the allegiance of the
clergy however remained to fall back upon, and the clergy were in the
Pope's hand. Gregory the Ninth had already claimed for the Papal See a
right of nomination to some prebends in each cathedral church; he now
demanded a tithe of all the moveables of the priesthood, and a threat of
excommunication silenced their murmurs. Exaction followed exaction
as the needs of the Papal treasury grew greater. The very rights of lay
patrons were set aside, and under the name of "reserves" presentations
to English benefices were sold in the Papal market, while Italian clergy
were quartered on the best livings of the Church.
[Sidenote: Fall of Hubert de Burgh]
The general indignation at last found vent in a wide conspiracy. In
1231 letters from "the whole body of those who prefer to die rather
than be ruined by the Romans" were scattered over the kingdom by
armed men; tithes gathered for the Pope or the foreign priests were
seized and given to the poor; the Papal collectors were beaten and their
bulls trodden under foot. The remonstrances of Rome only made
clearer the national character of the movement; but as enquiry went on
the hand of the Justiciar himself was seen to have been at work.
Sheriffs had stood idly by while violence was done; royal letters had
been shown by the rioters as approving their acts; and the Pope openly
laid the charge of the outbreak on the secret connivance of Hubert de
Burgh. No charge could have been more fatal to Hubert in the mind of
the king. But he was already in full collision with the Justiciar on other
grounds. Henry was eager to vindicate his right to the