g polluted the holy confines with her
presence.

Ecclesiastical law operated disastrously against women in declaring
for a celibate priesthood. In Anglo-Saxon times the priests married;
but the Council of Winchester, in 1076, took a stand against the
marriage of the clergy, and forbade priests to take to themselves
wives, although it permitted the parish clergy who were already
married to continue in the marital state. In 1102, however, it was
declared that no married priest should celebrate mass, and in 1215
the Lateran Council definitely pronounced against marriage of priests.
Many of the clergy had by no means shown a docile spirit in relation
to this invasion of what they considered the domain of their personal
rights; when forced into submission, they evaded the ordinances by
taking concubines. Even in the fifteenth century, it was not uncommon
to find married priests. In the document entitled _Instructions for
Parish Priests_, those who were too weak to live uprightly in the
celibate state were counselled to take wives. Concubinage, as a
substitute for the interdicted marriage, continued to be practised
down to the sixteenth century, nor was this form of illicit living the
worst vice of the clergy. Debauchery spread throughout the country,
until in the sixteenth century it is said that as many as one hundred
thousand women fell under the seductions of the priests, for whose
particular pleasures houses of ill fame were kept. From the laity,
complaints became general that their wives and daughters were not safe
from the advances of the priests. In 1536 the clergy of the diocese of
Bangor sent to Cromwell the following remarkable plea against taking
away their women from them: "We ourselves shall be driven to seek our
living at all houses and taverns, for mansions upon the benefices and
vicarages we have none. And as for gentlemen and substantial honest
men, for fear of inconvenience, and knowing our frailty and accustomed
liberty, they will in no wise board us in their houses." All the
literature of the Middle Ages leads to but one conclusion--that the
clergy were the great corrupters of domestic virtue among the burgher
and agricultural classes. The morals of the lords and ladies of the
upper strata of the aristocratic class were of no higher grade; the
offenders, however, were seldom the priests, but the gallants of that
privileged circle. The lower rank of the aristocracy,--the knights and
lesser landholders,--w