affections of the clergy, and had afforded
the civil magistrate a pretence for laying like impositions on
ecclesiastical revenues, he attempted to resume the former station of
the sovereign pontiff, and to establish himself as the common protector
of the spiritual order against all invaders. For this purpose he issued
very early in his pontificate a general bull, prohibiting all princes
from levying without his consent any taxes upon the clergy, and all
clergymen from submitting to such impositions; and he threatened both of
them with the penalties of excommunication in case of disobedience.[*]
This important edict is said to have been procured by the solicitation
of Robert de Win chelsey, archbishop of Canterbury, who intended to
employ it as a rampart against the violent extortions which the church
had felt from Edward, and the still greater, which that prince's
multiplied necessities gave them reason to apprehend. When a demand,
therefore, was made on the clergy of a fifth of their movables, a tax
which was probably much more grievous than a fifth of their revenue,
as their lands were mostly stocked with their cattle, and cultivated by
their villains, the clergy took shelter under the bull of Pope Boniface
and pleaded conscience in refusing compliance.[**] The king came not
immediately to extremities on this repulse; but after locking up all
their granaries and barns, and prohibiting all rent to be paid them, he
appointed a new synod, to confer with him upon his demand. The primate,
not dismayed by these proofs of Edward's resolution, here plainly told
him that the clergy owed obedience to two sovereigns, their spiritual
and their temporal; but their duty bound them to a much stricter
attachment to the former than to the latter: they could not comply with
his commands, (for such, in some measure, the requests of the crown
were then deemed,) in contradiction to the express prohibition of the
sovereign pontiff.[***]

* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 706. Heming. vol. i. p. 104.

** Heming, vol., i. p. 107. Trivet, p. 296. Chron. Dunst.
vol. ii p. 652

*** Hemming. vol. i. p. 107.

{1297.} The clergy had seen, in many instances, that Edward paid little
regard to those numerous privileges on which they set so high a value.
He had formerly seized, in an arbitrary manner, all the money and plate
belonging to the churches and convents, and had applied them to the
public service;[*] and they could not but expect