GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 97 



Those bishoprics which in the thirteenth century were be- 

 stowed on men of saintly life and reputation, became in the 

 fourteenth the provision for the younger sons of the noble 

 families f . The Church used to create an aristocracy by the 

 act of canonisation. It was unlike any other aristocracy, for 

 the dignity was conferred on the dead, and did not bestow 

 any precedence on the kindred of an illustrious man, still less 

 on any eldest son. The Roman court was not very liberal 

 in its grants of posthumous honour to English virtue, but 

 there was little which could have been recognized in the 

 fourteenth century. 



The Papacy had ceased to use its power for the general 

 interests of mankind, and was no longer the protector of the 

 people, as in some degree it was when it interposed in the 

 twelfth century between the king and nobles on the one 

 side and the mass of the nation on the other. All writers 

 bear testimony to the rapacity and vices of the Avignon 

 popes, and the lasting injury which they inflicted on the power 

 and authority of their office. 



We all know how deep was the dissatisfaction felt at the 

 action of the Papacy, and how disaffection to that which 

 had hitherto been the centre of Western Christianity had 

 pervaded the laity, and not a few among the clergy. Lan- 

 guage which a previous generation would have shuddered at 

 was freely used at the close of the century, when Wiklif and 

 his followers attacked with great breadth and boldness the 

 vices and errors of the Pope, the bishops, and the monks. 

 There can be no doubt that the country was generally infected 

 with Lollardism, and though the tenets of the poor priests be- 

 came unacceptable for a time, owing to their connexion with 

 the outbreak of 1381, they ultimately spread, and produced such 

 results as must have made the work of the Reformation all the 



f Thus among the bishops of the fourteenth we find the names of Arundel, Courtney, 

 Nevil, Percy, Spenser, Grandison, Wentworth, Stratford. Wykeham's mitre was the 

 reward of long service rendered to the king in the office of architect. There is a story 

 that he paid a heavy bribe for his nomination. 



H 



