persists in going tolerably right notwithstanding. This observation is thrown out merely to account for the long continuance of a system, containing within itself such active elements of ruin, as, abstractedly considered, might have been expected to put an end to it much sooner. But this is not all. In our _post-mortem_ examination of the Roman catholic church of England, undertaken with a view to ascertain the complicated disorders which made a way for its final dissolution, another feature presents itself akin to the last. William the Conqueror, who cared as little for the discipline of the church as for the laws of the land, thought proper to exempt a monastery which he had founded (that of St. Martin de Bello) from episcopal jurisdiction altogether. From this moment a mad ambition drove the monks of the principal religious houses to seek for themselves a similar privilege. Baldwin, abbot of St. Edmunds (Bury), at that time one of the finest foundations in England, obtained such exemption from pope Alexander, although, in the deed which conferred it, and which was executed before the year 1073, the pope, as if lending himself to a transaction hitherto unattempted and unheard of, expresses himself with some reserve--“as far as the thing could be done, _salvâ primatis obedientiâ_,” consistently with obedience to the primate. Lanfranc, however, then archbishop, who watched over the interests of the church (as we have already seen) with a cautious and prophetic eye, took away this dangerous privilege from the abbot, on his return to England, and reduced him to submission. But less resolute men, such as Radulph, William, and Theobald, succeeding him in the primacy, and the liberties of the church of England having been, in the mean while, crippled by the machinations of Rome, the monks took courage, and, feeling their own strength, claimed exemption from the jurisdiction of archbishops as well as bishops, as a matter of right; and, producing certain charters of ancient date (so they pretended), granted to them by popes or princes, carried their suit into the courts of Rome, and got it confirmed. This dispensation, bad in theory, was not better in practice. The monks of Malmesbury, for instance, had lately (about A. D. 1180) elected an abbot. The bishop of Salisbury interdicts the abbot elect from receiving the benediction at any other hands than his own; whereupon the latter goes into Wales, and procures it from the bishop of Landaff (for the Welsh church was still independent of England); on this the archbishop suspends the abbot until he can justify his disobedience by producing his letters of exemption. The abbot presents to the archbishop his charter, which turns out to be faulty in the style, the thread, and the seal, and which savours little of the court of Rome. The bishop asserts it to be spurious, and exhibits many professions of submission on the part of the abbots of Malmesbury, made to him or his predecessors. The abbot