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he stood prepared to die the death of a martyr." Such was the solemn testimony borne to him by his own University of Oxford, when it pleaded for his canonisation.

In the public estimation of England, Grossetête was, in point of fact, a saint. In the following century he appears to have been so regarded by Wiclif, who in numberless passages refers to him under the name of Lincolniensis.53 And there is reason to think that this estimate was one not at all personal to Wiclif himself, but in harmony with the feeling of his countrymen at large. We have the testimony of Thomas Gascoigne, who died in 1457, that Grossetête was commonly spoken of by the people as St. Robert. It was natural, too, that when, at a later period, the whole of western Christendom came to be strongly convinced of the necessity of a "Reformation in Head and Members," the memory of the bold and outspoken Bishop of Lincoln should have flamed up again brightly among the English friends of Church Reform.

At that period an Anglican member of the Council of Constance, the Oxford divine, Henry Abendon, in a speech which he delivered before the Council, 27th October 1415, repeatedly referred as an authority to Dominus Lincolniensis; and on one occasion made express mention of the Memorial to the Pope which is mentioned above. As late as the year 1503, an English monk, Richard of Bardney, sung of Grossetête's life in a copy of Latin distiches, which conclude with an invocation of him in form as a canonised saint.56 A fact like this, that Grossetête, in spite of the Papal refusal of his canonisation, continued to live for centuries in the mouth and the heart of the English people as "St. Robert," is a speaking proof of the change which had already come over the spirit of the

age; that the absolute authority of Papal decrees was already shaken; that the nimbus which surrounded the Holy See itself was paling. During the period when the Papal power was at its zenith, we can as little imagine the case of a man being venerated as a saint in a considerable portion of western Christendom, where canonisation had been positively refused by the Curia, as the converse case of a design on the part of Rome to canonise a churchman being upset by the opposition of a portion of the Catholic Church-an event which actually occurred when, in 1729, Benedict XIII. proposed to canonise Gregory VII, but was compelled to give up the idea out of regard to the decided declarations of France and Austria.

As Protestants, we have both a right and a duty to hold in honour the memory of a man like Grossetête. His creed, indeed, was not the pure confession of the Evangelical Churches; but his fear of God was so earnest and upright; his zeal for the glory of God was SO glowing; his care for the salvation of his own soul and of the souls committed to him by virtue of his office was so conscientious; his faithfulness so approved; his will so energetic; his mind so free from man-fearing and manpleasing; his bearing so inflexible and beyond the power of corruption,-that his whole character constrains as to the sincerest and deepest veneration. When, in addition, we take into view how high a place he assigned to the Holy Scriptures, to the study of which, in the University of Oxford, he assigned the first place as the most fundamental of all studies,58 and which he recognises as the only infallible guiding star of the Church; 59 when we remember with what power and persistency, and with

out any respect of persons, he stood forward against so many abuses in the Church, and against every defection from the true ideal of church-life; when we reflect that he finds the highest wisdom to stand in this "To know Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2-1) 60-it is certainly not saying too much when we signalise him as a venerable witness to the Truth, as a Churchman who fulfilled the duty which he owed to his own age, and in so doing lived for all ages; and who, through his whole career, gave proofs of his zeal for a sound reformation of the Church's life.

SECTION III.-Henry Bracton and William Occam, and the Tone of Church Life and Politics in the 14th Century.

A MAN of kindred spirit to Grossetête, though differing from him in important points, was Henry of Bracton, a younger contemporary of the celebrated Bishop of Lincoln.

Bracton, the greatest lawyer of England in the Middle Ages, was a practical jurist, but also a learned writer upon English Common Law.61 Both as a municipal judge and scientific jurist, he maintained the rights of the State in opposition to the Church, and sought to define as accurately as possible the limits of the secular and the spiritual jurisdictions. In particular, he treated as encroachments of the spiritual jurisdiction its claims of right in questions of patronage. On this point, it is true Bracton and Grossetête would hardly have been of one mind; but none the less they both stood upon common ground, in being decidedly national in their spirit and views, and in offering strenuous opposition to the aggressions of the Court of Rome.

Only a few years after Grossetête's death, contests arose on constitutional questions, in which the opposition of the barons was for some time in the ascendant. At the head of this party stood Simon of Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who had been a friend of Grossetête. In the year 1258, the Parliament of Oxford appointed an administration, which, while Henry III. continued nominally to reign, was to wield all the real power of the State; and it was by no means only the great barons of the kingdom who had a voice in this government. Earl Simon was the champion and hero of the lower clergy and the Commons, who stood behind him and his allied barons. The object in view was to put an end to arbitrary and absolute government, and to put in its place the rule of the Constitution, of Law, and of Right. The movement found its most powerful support in the Saxon population of the country. It was directed, not least, against the undue influence of foreigners upon public affairs. Under the powerful Edward I. (1272-1307) the kingdom again recovered its strength; and after the feeble, unfortunate reign of Edward II., national feeling was again roused by the French war of succession in the reign of Edward III. (1327-1377), when the nation gathered up its strength for the long wars with France, a struggle which had a powerful effect in developing both the national character and language.

What the kingdom had chiefly stood in need of was a higher authority and a more concentrated strength than had obtained under Henry III., and Edward I. was exactly the man to remedy that defect. He had made many concessions, it is true, to the estates of his kingdom in the matter of Parliamentary rights, under the repeated pressure of his

undertakings against Wales, Scotland, and the Continent; but he had done this without any loss to the Crown. On the contrary, the Crown had only been a gainer by the freedom and rights which had been guaranteed to the nation. It was now, for the first time, that the Crown entered into a compact unity with the nation, acquired a full national character, and became itself all the stronger thereby.

This immediately showed itself when Boniface VIII. attempted to interfere with the measures of the King against Scotland, as he had done a few years before in the transactions between England and France. In a bull, dated 27th June 1299, Boniface not only asserted his direct supremacy over the Scottish Church as a church independent of England, but also put himself forward, without ceremony, as arbiter of the claims which Edward I. was then advancing to the Scottish Crown. "If Edward asserted any right whatever to the kingdom of Scotland, or any part thereof, let him send his plenipotentiaries with the necessary documents to the Apostolic See; the matter will be decided there in a manner agreeable to right."

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In resisting such assumptions the King found the most determined assistance in the spirit of the country itself. He laid the matter, with the necessary papers, before his Parliament, which met in Lincoln on 20th January 1301; and the representatives of the kingdom took the side of their King without reserve. The nobles of the realm sent, 12th February 1301, a reply to that demand of Boniface VIII., in which they repelled, in the most emphatic manner, the attempted encroachment. No fewer than 104 earls and barons, who all gave their names at the beginning of the document, and sealed it with their seals at the end, declared in it, not only in their own name, but also for the whole

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