sions of the see, excepting those which were held immediately of Rome."1 The continental quarrel upon the subject of investitures which was thus settled by the concordat of Worms was fought out in England between Anselm and Henry I. Anselm and Under the influence of the decrees of the Lateran Council Henry I. (1099) Anselm felt obliged to refuse to do homage to Henry, or to consecrate the bishops whom Henry had invested according to the ancient custom. After years of serious controversy a compromise was reached in 1107 wherein it was agreed that the king should give up the right of investiture by the ring and staff, — symbols of spiritual jurisdiction, — and should accept in lieu thereof from the bishop a promise of fealty and homage before he should receive the temporalities of his office. It was further agreed that the election of bishops should be vested in the chapters of the cathedral churches, subject to the royal right of license or nomination.2 This right of canonical election, which was confirmed by Stephen at his accession,3 was recognized in turn by Henry II. and Richard I., and finally by John in a charter issued to the church a short time before the granting of the Great Charter itself.4 An archbishop, even after his election by the cathedral Rome and chapter, and after the reception of the temporalities from the pallium. the king as feudal lord, could not consider himself fully inducted into office until his right had finally been confirmed by the see of Rome. The right of the papacy to a voice or influence in episcopal appointments was first asserted in the case of archbishops, who in early times were expected to make a journey to Rome for the purpose of being invested with the pallium, the emblem of metropolitan power, without which no archbishop could safely venture to perform the highest functions of his office.5 Upon the receipt of the pallium the metropolitan took an oath of obedience to the pope, with tions. whom he entered into the closest relations. Not until the thirteenth century was the papal influence brought to bear directly upon appointments to suffragan sees. This influence Appeals to was chiefly asserted through the medium of appeals to the the papal court in dis- papal court in disputed elections, which constantly arose, not puted elec- only out of disputes between the clergy themselves, but out of the attempts upon the part of the crown to force upon the chapters the selection of royal nominees. In such cases, prior to the famous controversy which followed the death of Archbishop Hubert Walter, the popes had contented themselves with rejecting unfit candidates, and with passing upon the canonical validity of elections.1 Upon the death of Hubert a controversy as to the future incumbent of Canterbury was brought on between John and Innocent III., which led to the assertion upon the part of the papacy of claims of a far more aggressive character. The bearings of this famous controversy will be considered hereafter. John and Summary. The causes have now been briefly reviewed which brought about in England after the Conquest the establishment of the clergy as a distinct and privileged "body completely organized, with a minutely constituted and regular hierarchy, possessing the right of legislating for itself and taxing itself, having its recognized assemblies, judicature, and executive, and although not as a legal corporation holding common property, yet composed of a great number of persons each of whom possesses corporate property by a title which is either conferred by ecclesiastical authority or is not to be acquired without ecclesiastical consent. Such an organization entitles the clergy to the name of a 'communitas,' although it does not complete the legal idea of a corporation proper."2 The principle of cohesion which thus united the church as a spiritual organization grew out of that universal corporate spirit which was everywhere animating the clergy of Western Christendom. The force of that corporate spirit was organized and strengthened by the growth of the canon law, in which the expanding claims of the clergy were distinctly defined, and by the application of that system by the clergy themselves, in their own courts and councils, to the maintenance and 1 See Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. iii. pp. 303-305. 2 Stubbs, Const. History, vol. iii. p. 290. advancement of the rights and privileges of their order. Thus organized and equipped for action, the clergy entered as one of the leading constitutional factors into the prolonged struggle for the charters. In that struggle, as we shall see hereafter, while the clergy as a body were intent upon the assertion of their special rights and immunities, foremost among which was the right to tax themselves in their own councils, they were at the same time animated by a broad spirit of generous patriotism. Throughout the struggle of the nation against the crown, in the corporate person of the church, English freedom found a stern and resolute defender. "The historians of the age, all of them churchmen, most of them monks, are all but unanimous on the popular side. Prelates like the Primate Stephen, like Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln and Walter Cantelupe of Worcester, were foremost in the good cause; the two latter were among the closest friends and counsellors of the patriot earl," Simon of Montfort. 1 the baron Having stated the causes which impelled the clergy to Estate of withdraw from the main body of the nation, and to incorpo- age, rate themselves into a spiritual organization which finally takes, for a time at least, its constitutional place as an estate of the realm; or, in other words, having explained how the line was drawn between the clergy and the laity, the more difficult task remains to draw out the causes which led to the division of the laity themselves into the two estates of the baronage and the commons. From the reign of Edward I. down to the present day, the estate of the baronage or peer- identical age has been identical with the house of lords.2 The hered- house of itary and official counsellors of the crown who constitute lords. the upper house of parliament represent in their own persons the entire estate of the baronage, they do not represent a wider noble class or caste of which they themselves are but 1 Freeman, Growth of the Eng. Constitution, p. 112. 2 The Lords' committee conclude, "that from the twenty-third of Edward the First to the fifteenth of Edward the Second, the legislative assemblies of the country appear to have been generally, but not always, constituted nearly in the manner in which the assembly in the twenty-third of Edward the First was constituted; that they at length con- with the a part. The only nobleman known to English law is he who holds the hereditary office of a peer. The right to inherit such an office the law concedes to the peer's eldest son, but it concedes no other rights to his children. The children of a peer- - even the future holder of the peerage himself while the father lives are, in the eyes of the law, commoners and nothing more. The crown may ennoble any one, but the nobility so granted belongs only to that member of the family so ennobled, — to the actual owner of the peerage himself. Distinction In this fact lies the marked distinction between nobility as it has existed in England and nobility as it has existed in those and conti- continental lands in which the privileges of the noble were permitted to extend to all his children and their children forever. The theory that mere nobility of blood conveys political rights or privileges has never been recognized in the English system. As the hereditary peers of the realm, in conjunction with the lords spiritual, whose special status. will hereafter be explained, constituted the entire estate of the baronage, and as the estate of the baronage is identical with the house of lords, it follows that the history of the one is the history of the other. between English nental no bility. The witan survives as of lords. It is a distinctive feature in the political history of the the house English nation that there has never been a time when it has been without a national assembly; the ancient witenagemot has never ceased to exist; it has never lost its corporate identity. Despite the changes of constitution and of name through which it has passed, it still survives in the person of the house of lords. In the language of one of the masters of English history, "the house of lords not only springs out of, it actually is, the ancient witenagemot."2 The fact of this corporate identity can only be grasped through an examination of the process through which the Old-English national assembly was transformed into the feudal councils of the Norman and Angevin reigns; then by a further examination of the process through which, out of these Norman and Angevin councils, was finally developed, by the practice of sum 1 For a full statement of the difference between English and foreign nobility, see Freeman, Growth of the Eng. Constitution, pp. 125-129; Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. ii. pp. 176-178. 2 Freeman, Growth of the Eng. Constitution, p. 91. See, also, Comparative Politics, p. 232. of the mons, the hereditary chamber of the national parliament. An examination has been heretofore made of the history of the witan, whether considered as the supreme council of an heptarchic state, or as the supreme council of the whole English nation when finally united in a single consolidated kingdom.1 After the coming of William the continuity of the old Continuity national assembly went on unbroken; the witan remained as witan. before the national council of the king, and during William's reign it retained much of its earlier character.2 Of the constitution of the witan, either before or after the Conquest we have no direct or formal account, but the highest authorities substantially agree in the conclusion that on all ordinary occasions the witan was a comparatively small gathering of great men, while on extraordinary occasions the assembly was sometimes reinforced by large popular bodies from every part of the kingdom. "According to one view, the assembly was in theory open to every freeman, but in practice only a small class habitually attended. According to the other view, it was in theory confined to a small class, but in practice it was ever and anon thrown open to large classes of men besides its usual members. . . . The practical aspect of the two doctrines is the same."3 But although the witan, under the name of the great council, outlived the Conquest, and although in legal theory it retained all of its old powers, yet the fact remains that the constitution of the assembly underwent a great practical transformation. At the beginning of Wil- Practical liam's reign, those who composed the council that ordinarily mation gathered around the king were a body of Englishmen; by wrought by the end of his reign this body had gradually changed into an quest. assembly of Normans, among whom an Englishman here and there held his place. This change naturally resulted from the character of the Conquest itself. Through William's policy of confiscation and regrant, nearly all of the great estates passed from English to Norman hands; and in the same way all of the great offices in church and state were parcelled out among his followers. The king's thegns thus 1 See above, pp. 147, 148. 2 See above, p. 241. 8 Mr. Freeman thus states the difference, if difference there be, between his own views and those of Bishop Stubbs, as to the constitution of the transfor the Con |