which all the movements and operations could
now be directed by one head, and conducted upon
one uniform plan. The clergy of each particular
country might be considered as a particular
detachment of that army, of which the
operations could easily be supported and seconded
by all the other detachments quartered
in the different countries round about. Each
detachment was not only independent of the
sovereign of the country in which it was quartered,
and by which it was maintained, but
dependent upon a foreign sovereign, who
could at any time turn its arms against the
sovereign of that particular country, and support
them by the arms of all the other detachments.
Those arms were the most formidable that
can well be imagined. In the ancient state
of Europe, before the establishment of arts
and manufactures, the wealth of the clergy
gave them the same sort of influence over the
common people which that of the great barons
gave them over their respective vassals,
tenants, and retainers. In the great landed
estates, which the mistaken piety both of
princes and private persons had bestowed upon
the church, jurisdictions were established, of
the same kind with those of the great barons,
and for the same reason. In those great landed
estates, the clergy, or their bailiffs, could easily
keep the peace, without the support or
assistance either of the king or of any other
person; and neither the king nor any other
person could keep the peace there without the
support and assistance of the clergy. The jurisdictions
of the clergy, therefore, in their
particular baronies or manors, were equally
independent, and equally exclusive of the authority
of the king's courts, as those of the
great temporal lords. The tenants of the
clergy were, like those of the great barons,
almost all tenants at will, entirely dependent
upon their immediate lords, and, therefore,
liable to be called out at pleasure, in order to
fight in any quarrel in which the clergy might
think proper to engage them. Over and
above the rents of those estates, the clergy possessed
in the tithes a very large portion of the
rents of all the other estates in every kingdom
of Europe. The revenues arising from both
those species of rents were, the greater part of
them, paid in kind, in corn, wine, cattle, poultry,
&c. The quantity exceeded greatly what
the clergy could themselves consume; and
there were neither arts nor manufactures, for
the produce of which they could exchange
the surplus. The clergy could derive advantage
from this immense surplus in no other
way than by employing it, as the great barons
employed the like surplus of their revenues,
in the most profuse hospitality, and in
the most extensive charity. Both the hospitality
and the charity of the ancient clergy,
accordingly, are said to have been very great.
They not only maintained almost the whole
poor of every kingdom, but many knights and
gentlemen had frequently no other means of
subsistence than by travelling about from monastery
to monastery, under pretence of devotion,
but in reality to enjoy the hospitality of
the clergy. The retainers of some particular
prelates were often as numerous as those of
the greatest lay-lords; and the retainers of all
the clergy taken together were, perhaps, more
numerous than those of all the lay-lords.
There was always much more union among
the clergy than among the lay-lords. The
former were under a regular discipline and
subordination to the papal authority. The latter
were under no regular discipline or subordination,
but almost always equally jealous of
one another, and of the king. Though the
tenants and retainers of the clergy, therefore,
had both together been less numerous than
those of the great lay-lords, and their tenants
were probably much less numerous, yet their
union would have rendered them more formidable.
The hospitality and charity of the
clergy, too, not only gave them the command of
a great temporal force, but increased very much
the weight of their spiritual weapons. Those
virtues procured them the highest respect and
veneration among all the inferior ranks of
people, of whom many were constantly, and
almost all occasionally, fed by them. Every
thing belonging or related to so popular an
order, its possessions, its privileges, its doctrines,
necessarily appeared sacred in the eyes
of the common people; and every violation
of them, whether real or pretended, the highest
act of sacrilegious wickedness and profaneness.
In this state of things, if the sovereign
frequently found it difficult to resist the
confederacy of a few of the great nobility, we
cannot wonder that he should find it still
more so to resist the united force of the clergy
of his own dominions, supported by that of the
clergy of all the neighbouring dominions. In
such circumstances, the wonder is, not that
he was sometimes obliged to yield, but that he
ever was able to resist.
The privileges of the clergy in those ancient
times (which to us, who live in the present
times, appear the most absurd), their total
exemption from the secular jurisdiction,
for example, or what in England was called
the benefit of clergy, were the natural, or rather
the necessary, consequences of this state
of things. How dangerous must it have been
for the sovereign to attempt to punish a clergyman
for any crime whatever, if his order were
disposed to protect him, and to represent either
the proof as insufficient for convicting so holy
a man, or the punishment as too severe to be
inflicted upon one whose person had been
rendered sacred by religion? The sovereign
could, in such circumstances, do no better
than leave him to be tried by the ecclesiastical
courts, who, for the honour of their own
order, were interested to restrain, as much as