at a later period. CHAPTER IX. _THE PAPACY AND THE PARLIAMENT._ ECCLESIASTICAL CHARACTER OF THE REIGN--ARCHBISHOPS AND THEIR ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION--PROVISIONS--STATUTE OF PROVISORS--OF PRAEMUNIRE--REFUSAL OF TRIBUTE--RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE STATE--CAUSES OF DISCONTENT AT THE CONDITION OF THE CHURCH--ATTACK ON CLERICAL MINISTERS AND THE WEALTHY CLERGY--CONCORDAT WITH THE PAPACY--THE GOOD PARLIAMENT--CONCLUSION. [Sidenote: Character of the period.] The fifty years of the reign of Edward III. are of special importance in the history of our Church; for they witnessed the restriction of papal authority by parliament, and the rise of a spirit of discontent at evils which existed in the National Church. From the time of John's submission the Popes had constantly treated England as a never-failing treasury, and had diverted the revenues of the Church to their own purposes. The breach between the papacy and the Crown in the reign of Edward I. had been followed by the expression of the national sense of injury in the parliament of Carlisle. The war with France caused the anti-papal feeling to grow and bring forth fruit. It was intolerable that the wealth of the country should go to enrich its enemies, and that French Popes should exercise jurisdiction here in defiance of the will of the king and to the subversion of the common law. The victories of England find their ecclesiastical significance in the legislation against papal oppression, in the statutes of Provisors and Praemunire. Within the Church several causes combined to give rise to an anti-clerical feeling. While the nation suffered severely from the expenses of the war, the Church was rich, and might, so men thought, well be forced to bear a larger share of the general burdens than the clergy were willing to lay upon themselves. The bishops filled all the chief administrative offices, and enjoyed their revenues in addition to the wealth of their sees. The inferior clergy were as a rule careless and ignorant. The Church, though it jealously watched over its rights of jurisdiction, found itself powerless to enforce needful discipline on the clergy, while the abuses of the ecclesiastical courts were a continual source of irritation to the laity. An attempt was made to debar the prelates from political offices, and an attack on the wealth of the Church was threatened. Then came the papal Schism, and new ideas were openly expressed concerning the papacy itself, the position and rights of the clergy, and the relations between Church and State. With these ideas we have nothing to do here. But as we follow the ecclesiastical history of the reign we shall see how the way was prepared for them; how it was that Wyclif, a strenuous upholder of the rights of the National Church, was led to form a spiritual conception of the Church Universal, to declare that a Pope who was not Christ-like was Antichrist, and to teach that it would