10. You can readily see that such a state of things, however good it may have been at the first, was dreadfully abused in the course of time. What at first had been merciful and just became in time mischievous and dangerous. The great struggle between King Henry II and Archbishop Thomas à Becket had to do with the power of these two sets of courts, the Church Courts and the King's Courts--it had to do with government, _not_ with religion and religious matters. 11. Clerks, or the clergy, were drawn from all classes of society, from the royal family down to the serfs on the manors. In fact, before the time of the Black Death, the only way in which a serf could become a freeman was by buying his freedom or by becoming a clerk. A serf who wanted his son to rise to a better position than his own would try to get him made a clerk; for the moment he became a clerk he was a =free man=. 12. But to attain his purpose the serf must first have the permission of his master or overlord. All overlords were not tyrants by any means. The serf might do his master a good turn--save his life, for instance--and in return his master would set him free, or allow his son to be taught by the priest and ordained; or he might let him join a college or monastery. 13. Many and many a priest, clerk, or monk, rose from being a serf or a villein in this way; so many, in fact, that a writer in the twelfth century complains that villeins were attempting "to educate their ignoble offspring". Later still, Piers Plowman complains that "bondsmen's bairns could be made bishops". 14. There was a very sharp line of division between clerks and those who were not clerks, and the privileges which clerks had, led to much squabbling and many disorders. 15. Kings and nobles employed clerks on their business, for the simple reason that they were able men. From the clerks, too, were drawn the men whom we should now call =lawyers=. We have seen that there was a vast deal of writing to be done in those days in connection with the towns and the manors. Amongst these clerks were good men and bad men; some who loved learning for its own sake; some who found that it paid better than anything else; and others who misused their privileges, did much evil, and brought the name of "clerk" into sad disgrace. =Summary.=--The population of England in the Middle Ages was small. At the Conquest it numbered 2,000,000, and in the time of King Henry VII it was only 4,000,000. It was kept down by famine, wars, and death-punishments, as well as by disease.