ke. He
employed clerical ministers and paid them by church preferments, but his
nominations to bishoprics did not always receive papal confirmation
which had become recognized as essential. His weak son Edward II.
yielded readily to papal demands. The majority of the bishops of the
reign, and specially those engaged in politics, were unworthy men;
religion was at a low ebb; plurality and non-residence were common. By
the constitution _Execrebilis_ John XXII. ordered that all cures held in
plurality save one should be vacated, and, which was not so well,
"reserved" all benefices so vacated for his own appointment. As the
residence of the popes at Avignon from 1308 to 1377 brought them under
French influence, Englishmen during the war with France were specially
displeased that large sums should be drawn from the kingdom for them and
that they should exercise patronage there. In the reign of Edward III.
the popes, though appointing to bishoprics by provision, did not give
them to foreigners, but they appointed foreigners, enemies of England,
to lesser preferments, deaneries and prebends. In 1351 the Statute of
Provisors declared provisions unlawful. Capitular elections, however,
remained mere forms; the king nominated, and the popes provided, and
took advantage of their claim to appoint to sees vacant by translation.
Papal interference in suits concerning temporalities was checked by a
law of 1353 (the first statute of _Praemunire_), which made punishable
by outlawry and forfeiture the carrying before a foreign tribunal of
causes cognizable by English courts. This measure was extended in 1365,
and in 1393 by the great statute of _Praemunire_. Indignant at the law
of 1365, Urban V. demanded payment of the tribute promised by John,
which was then thirty-three years in arrear, but parliament repudiated
the claim. The Black Death disorganized the church by thinning the ranks
of the clergy, who did their duty manfully during the plague. In the
diocese of Norwich, for example, 800 parishes lost their incumbents in
1349, 83 of them twice over (Jessopp). Large though insufficient numbers
were instituted to benefices and unfit persons received holy orders. The
value of livings decreased and many lay vacant. Some incumbents deserted
their parishes to take stipendiary work in towns or secular
employments, and unbeneficed clergy demanded higher stipends.
Greediness infected the church in common with society at large. Yet
Chaucer's idea