12 ON THE INFLUENCE OF FEUDALISM. 



and tlierefore all possibk contrivances are used to make the most of 

 these causes that come before them ; so they are universally dreaded 

 and hated." Whether any material improvement has taken place in 

 these courts since the honest Bishop wrote, I shall not here enquire ; 

 if any of my hearers have had the opportunity of using them, they 

 can best decide. 



It may be asked, what has this to do with feudalism ? Nothing, if 

 results be simply regarded, but much if the origin of the power be 

 considered. William had to maintain his position not only by the 

 prowess of his knights, but also by the influence of his clergy ; that 

 influence he acquired and preserved by vesting in them immense 

 possessions of which they were his feudal tenants, and in 

 return for their devoted adherance to his interests he separated 

 them as an ecclesiastical body from the rest of his subjects, by giving 

 them exclusive jurisdiction in matters relating to themselves, which 

 were afteiwards enlarged by forced constructions on the nature of 

 many affiiirs purely civil. The crown, however, as the feudal lord 

 paramount, did not relinquish its right to be the ultimate court of 

 appeal against the decision of the ecclesiastical tribunals, a right 

 which was expressed by the constitutions of Clarendon (Henry 2nd) 

 declared at the Reformation to be the antient law of the realm, and 

 at this present time exercised by the Queen in Her Judicial Privy 

 Council, in lieu of the court of Delegates which has been recently 

 abolished. 



The appointment of our bishops has from the most antient times 

 been a royal prerogative, although frequently claimed and exercised 

 by the clergy as their privilege of election ; and that privilege 

 received confirmation as a right by a charter of King John, who was 

 induced to grant it in order to obtain the protection of the Pope against 

 his discontented barons, and which provided that he should giant 

 to the Monasteries and Cathedrals his license to elect an abbot or 

 bishop on each vacancy. This license was called the Conge d' elire 

 and is still used as a form on the appointment of a new prelate by 

 the Crown in whom the antient right has been revived ever since the 

 Refonnation. 



But in every age of the system, from the period of the Conquest to 

 the abolition of military tenm'es in the reign of Charles the Second, 

 the clergj' had been bound to perform their feudal services as fully 



