The Roman conquest brought the legislative code of the empire into Britain, but with the advent of Christianity Roman law was gradually coloured by ecclesiastical law, and assumed a different complexion. Some writers go so far as to say that Roman law was entirely superseded. Through the law the Church kept an invisible hold upon the people, and compelled subjugation to its decrees. The Church, however, did not need shelter or excuse for any of its acts. It was powerful enough to command obedience to whatever it chose to decree. There was no influence greater, no authority more dreaded. Its rival, education, was but a puny stripling, without armour or weapons. In the tenth century we find a repetition of the ecclesiastical law excluding women from certain parts of the church. There is a Saxon constitution which runs-- “We charge that at the time when the priest sings mass no woman be nigh the altar, but that they stand in their own place, and that the mass priest there receive of them what they are willing to offer.” Women were not suffered to penetrate within the altar precincts in the sixteenth century. It is related that Sir Thomas More’s wife did not sit with her husband in the chancel, but in some other part of the church, in what are described as the common parish seats. The entrance of women within the Church of Durham was limited to a certain point in the nave marked by a blue cross on the marble pavement, in accordance with the rule of St. Cuthbert. One day in the year 1333, Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III., paid a visit to Durham Cathedral, supped with the king in the Prior’s chamber, and retired to rest in the apartment arranged for her husband in the priory. The monks were scandalized, and sought an interview with the king, who bade the queen rise, which she did immediately, and, clad only in her night array, went over from the priory buildings to the castle for the night, beseeching St. Cuthbert’s pardon for having polluted sacred ground with her presence. Ecclesiastical law affected women very disastrously by the enforcement of priestly celibacy. Although against the rules of the Church, marriage was common among the clergy in pre-Norman times, especially in the north of England. Substantial reasons existed against allowing priests to marry. There were complaints that the married clergy took the Church property to provide marriage portions for their sons and daughters and legacies for their wives, and were generally in the habit of applying ecclesiastical funds to their private uses.