new Orders:
even the troubles that their disorders gave rise to later, their
quarrels with the secular clergy, the monks and the University, the
constant appeals to the Pope that were a result of these disputes, the
obstinacy with which they endeavoured to form a Church within the
Church, all tended to increase and multiply the relations between Rome
and England.

The English clergy was not only numerous and largely endowed; it was
also very influential, and played a considerable part in the policy of
the State. When the Parliament was constituted the clergy occupied many
seats, the king's ministers were usually churchmen; the high Chancellor
was a prelate.

The action of the Latin Church made itself also felt on the nation by
means of ecclesiastical tribunals, the powers of which were
considerable; all that concerned clerks, or related to faith and
beliefs, to tithes, to deeds and contracts having a moral character,
wills for instance, came within the jurisdiction of the religious
magistrate. This justice interfered in the private life of the citizens;
it had an inquisitorial character; it wanted to know if good order
reigned in households, if the husband was faithful and the wife
virtuous; it cited adulterers to its bar and chastised them. Summoners
(Chaucer's somnours) played the part of spies and public accusers; they
kept themselves well informed on these different matters, were
constantly on the watch, pried into houses, collected and were supposed
to verify evil reports, and summoned before the ecclesiastical court
those whom Jane's or Gilote's beauty had turned from the path of
conjugal fidelity. It may be readily imagined that such an institution
afforded full scope for abuses; it could hardly have been otherwise
unless all the summoners had been saints, which they were not; some
among them were known to compound with the guilty for money, to call the
innocent before the judge in order to gratify personal spite.[227] Their
misdeeds were well known but not easy to prove; so that Chaucer's
satires did more to ruin the institution than all the petitions to
Parliament. These summoners were also in their own way, mean as that
was, representatives of the Latin country, of the spiritual power of
Rome; they knew it, and made the best of the stray Latin words that had
lodged in their memory; they used them as their shibboleth.

Bishops kept seigneurial retinues, built fortresses[228] and lived in
them, had their ar