Notwithstanding these flights of the imagination, no organized resistance was offered to the reform. The clergy sullenly acquiesced, and submitted to a pressure which was becoming irresistible. The triumph of the sacerdotal party, however, was gradual, and no exact limit can be assigned to the recognition of the principle of celibacy. In 1250 the idea of married priests was still sufficiently prevalent to lead the populace of London to include matrimony among the accusations brought against Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury, when his tyranny had aroused general resistance;[709] and in 1255 Walter Kirkham, Bishop of Durham, still felt it necessary to prohibit the marriage of his clergy under pain of suspension and deprivation.[710] It is perhaps noteworthy, however, that, not long after this, Horne, in his Myrror of Justice, when treating of exceptions to the benefit of clergy, specifies second marriages, but not single marriages, as depriving clerks of the privilege of ecclesiastical trial.[711] By this time, however, priestly marriage may be considered to have become nearly obsolete in England. When, in 1268, the Cardinal-legate Ottoboni held a great national council in London, and renewed the constitutions of his predecessor Otto, he made no allusion to marriage, and only denounced the practice of concubinage, which he endeavored to eradicate by commanding all archdeacons to make a thorough inquisition annually into the morals of the clergy under their jurisdiction.[712] These constitutions of Otto and Ottoboni long remained the law of the English church, and we find them constantly referred to in the canons of councils and pastorals of bishops, ceaselessly laboring to effect the impossible enforcement of discipline; even as late as 1399 the Archbishop of Canterbury ordered his suffragans to have them read and explained in the vernacular in all their episcopal synods.[713] How hard was the task may be readily conceived when we see, in 1279, the primate Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, applying to Rome for assistance in prosecuting a certain bishop against whom he had long been vainly endeavoring to bring the law to bear. A concubine had confessed to having borne five children to the offender;[714] he had himself admitted his guilt in a private interview with Peckham, for which he had afterwards claimed the seal of the confessional; yet the archbishop complains that his efforts will be unsuccessful unless he is fortified with letters from the pope himself. His strict injunctions of secrecy on his correspondent, and his evident dread lest the criminal’s agents in Rome should get wind of the application, show how difficult was the enterprise, and how rarely prelates could be expected to undertake duties so arduous and so unpromising.[715]