Classes from
Mhich the
bishops и ere
taken.
Officials
promoted.
Scholars
promoted.
Royal and
noble pre-
lates.
380 Constitutional Histori/. [chap.
monks of the great monasteries ; the great nobles and the king’s
ministers looked on the bishoprics as the provision for their
clerical sons. The villein class, notwithstanding legal and
canonical hindrances, aspired to holy orders as one of the
avenues to liberty1. And this great diffusion of interest must
be set against all general statements of the unpopularity of
the clergy in the later middle ages. There were just com-
plaints of unfair distribution of patronage, and of concentration
of great endowments in few hands; but against class jealousy
there was this strong safeguard : every tradesman or yeoman
might live to see his son promoted to a position of wealth and
power.
Some important generalisations may be drawn from a study
of the episcopal lists from the time of the Conquest downwards :
under the Norman kings the sees were generally occupied by
men of Norman birth, either such as were advanced by Lanfranc
on the ground of learning and piety, or such as combined with
distinguished birth that gift of organisation -which belonged to
the Norman feudalist ; to one class belonged Lanfranc himself
and Anselm, to the other Osmund of Salisbury, who was a
Norman baron but also the reformer of the medieval liturgy,
and AVilliam Giffard the minister of Henry I. As the minis-
terial system advanced, the high places of the church were
made the rewards of official service, and official servants, having
no great patrimonies, cultivated the cathedral foundations as a
provision for their families ; hence arose the clerical caste which
was so strong under Henry I and Stephen. Here and there we
find a scholar like Robert of Melun, or Gilbert the Universal.
Already the great nobles showed their appreciation of the wealth
of the Church; Everard bishop of Norwich was of the house of
Montgomery, Henry of AVinchester was a grandson of the Con-
queror, and the pious Roger of AVorcester, the friend of Becket,
1 The restriction on the liberty of unfree persons to be ordained dates
from very early times, and was intended no doubt to prevent persons
seeking ordination from a worldly motive as well as to save the rights
of the master over his dependents. In the Apostolic Canons it is based
on the latter reason. See Maskell, Mon. Rit. iii. pp. xcvii, xcviii ; and
above, vol. iɪ. p. 507, vol. i. p, 46“ ; Deer. p. ɪ. dɪst. 54; Greg. IX,
lib. i. tit. 18.
XIX.]
381
Promotion.
was a son of Earl Robert of Gloucester. Hugh de Puiset,
bishop of Durham, and S. William, archbishop of York, were
nephews of Stephen. Nor was the example lost upon the later
kings or barons : Henry II gave the archbishopric of York to
his son ; Henry III obtained Canterbury for his wife’s uncle,
and Winchester for his own half-brother ; Fulk Basset, bishop
of London, was a baron both temporal and spiritual. The
noble Cantilupes served their generation as bishops of Hereford
and Worcester. The next age saw the culmination of the Prelates
power of the mendicant orders ; Kilwardby, Peckham, and mendkani
Bradwardine sat at Canterbury ; another avenue to power was
thus open to men of humble birth, and when the short-lived
popularity of the friars was over, the avenue was not closed.
Wykeham, Chichele, and Waynflete rose by other means,
services done in subordinate office, but they amply justified the
system by which they rose, in the great collegiate foundations
by which they hoped to raise the class from which they sprang.
Side by side with them are found more and more men of noble Preponder-
names, Beaumont, Berkeley, Grandison, Charlton, Despenser, names.
Courtenay, Stafford, Beaufort, Neville, Beauchamp, and Bour-
chier, taking a large share, but not the whole, of the great
dignities. Last, a Wydville rises under Edward IV ; and then
under Henry VII a change takes place ; new men are advanced
more frequently, and meritorious service again becomes the Meritorious
chief title to promotion ; the humiliation of the baronage has tι⅛to pro-
perhaps left few noble men capable of such advancement. In mot'on∙
this, as in some other points, medieval life was a race for
wealth ; the poor bishoprics were left to the friars ; scarcely
any great man took a Welsh see except as a stepping-stone to
something better. Still it may fairly be said that during the General
latter centuries a poor and humble origin was no bar to great ofcieri∞ι
preferment ; and the meanest stipendiary priest was not only a lnterest∙
spiritual person, but a member of an order to which the greatest
families of the land, and even the royal house itself, thought it
no humiliation to contribute sons and brothers.
Against this diffusion of influence and interest has to be set
the fact, that it was only on points of the most general and