ed the
land among his nobles and prelates. In those days, you understand, a
high ecclesiastic was a man of war, who did not stoop to veil his
predatory nature under pretense of philanthropy; the abbots and
archbishops of William wore armor and had their troops of knights like
the barons and the dukes. William gave them vast tracts, and at the
same time he gave them orders which they obeyed. Says the English
chronicler, "Stark he was. Bishops he stripped of their bishopricks,
abbots of their abbacies". Green tells us that "the dependence of the
church on the royal power was strictly enforced. Homage was exacted
from bishop as from baron." And what was this homage? The bishop knelt
before William, bareheaded and without arms, and swore: "Hear my lord,
I become liege man of yours for life and limb and earthly regard, and
I will keep faith and loyalty to you for life and death, God help me."

The lands which the church got from William the Norman, she has held,
and always on the same condition--that she shall be "liege man for
life and limb and earthly regard". In this you have the whole story of
the church of England, in the twentieth century as in the eleventh.
The balance of power has shifted from time to time; old families have
lost the land and new families have gotten it; but the loyalty and
homage of the church have been held by the land, as the needle of the
compass is held by a mass of metal. Some two hundred and fifty years
ago a popular song gave the general impression--

For this is law that I'll maintain
Until my dying day, sir:
That whatsoever king shall reign
I'll still be vicar of Bray, sir!

So, wherever you take the Anglican clergy, they are Tories and
Royalists, conservatives and reactionaries, friends of every injustice
that profits the owning class. And always among themselves you find
them intriguing and squabbling over the dividing of the spoils; always
you find them enjoying leisure and ease, while the people suffer and
the rebels complain. One can pass down the corridor of English history
and prove this statement by the words of Englishmen from every single
generation. Take the fourteenth century; the "Good Parliament"
declares that

Unworthy and unlearned caitiffs are appointed to benefices
of a thousand marks, while the poor and learned hardly
obtain one of twenty. God gave the sheep to be pastured, not
to be shaven and shorn.

And a little later comes the p