by the law of celibacy, more liable to fall into those crimes which arise from illicit connection with the other sex. A case of this peculiar * nature brought on the contest between Henry and Becket. I must remind you, Sir, that the Judges complained † to the King of the frequent thefts, rapines, and homicides, which went unpunished because they were committed by the clergy. William of Newbury (a churchman himself,..but one who, standing in no need of such immunities, perceived the evil which arose from them) affirms that more than an hundred homicides had been perpetrated by the clergy in England in that reign; and his honest avowal is, that having a license to do what they would with impunity, they were in no fear either of God or man. The Popes themselves, when they were personally concerned, paid no regard to the immunities for which they contended so haughtily. Before the Italian mode of putting an enemy out of the way quietly was brought to that perfection which it had attained in the days of the Borgias, we read of their mutilat * Lyttelton, iv. 14. third ed. Quoted in Turner...ut supra. * ing the Cardinals who opposed them, torturing them, and putting them to death, without observing any formalities of deprivation, or even of trial...The secular powers seldom ventured to violate this injurious immunity, but sometimes they had recourse to singular means for checking or punishing the audacity with which the clergy presumed upon it. A woman of Santarem went to King Pedro 0 Justiceiro at Evora, and complained that a dignified and wealthy Priest had murdered her husband, and that no redress was given her. Pedro was a man whose character was worthy of being dramatized by Shakspeare, so strongly had the circumstances of his life and station acted upon his strong feelings and ungoverned mind. When next he came to Santarem, he fixed his eyes upon a young mason whose appearance he liked, sent for him, and ordered him to * Modern Universal Hist. vol. ix. 544. Luitprand, 1. vi. c. vi. referred to. + Lenfant, C. de Pise, t. i. 43-46. The Bishop of London was one of the cardinals whom Urban VI. tortured, and would have put to death, as he did the other cardinals, if the King had not interfered. Urban's pretext was, that these cardinals intended to poison him. One of them confessed he had deserved all his sufferings for the cruelties which he had practised when acting as legate for this very Urban. seek for the priest, kill him wherever he might find him, and escape if he could; but if he failed in escaping, he was to allow himself to be taken, and leave the rest to him. The man found the murderer engaged in a religious procession, killed him on the spot, and was immediately apprehended. Pedro sent orders that the case must not be tried till he was present; meantime he directed the widow to supply the prisoner with food, and his own almoner to give her money for that purpose. The clergy prest for justice, as the King intended they should do: the matter accordingly was brought into court in his presence, and after the whole evidence had been heard, and the fact proved upon the mason, Pedro asked whether the priest who had been murdered had been an inoffensive peaceable man, or if he had done any thing which might probably have provoked the fate he had met with; for it was hardly to be supposed that he should have been killed in this public manner without some cause. It was replied that some time ago he had killed a man, but that that affair had been regularly settled. And how settled? the King inquired. He had been suspended, they said, from saying mass, or officiating as a priest. The King then pronounced that the mason should be punished in the same manner, and passed sentence upon him that he should never again work at his trade. And then he married him to the widow, and settled a pension upon them sufficient for their support.* The magistrates of Padua carried this sort of wild justice farther. Finding that the ecclesiastical authorities never inflicted any adequate punishment upon offenders of their own body, they made a decree that whoever killed a priest should be fined one penny, and it is said that many persons availed themselves of this invitation to execute justice for themselves. You have yourself stated that the contest in its first stage turned wholly upon these immunities: but you affirm that they were an acknowledged bulwark § of the English constitution. A bulwark of the constitution, Sir! Say rather a strong hold for criminals, erected in defiance of it. ..You call them also rights, Sir, which seems rather an unfortunate denomination for the privilege of doing wrong. * Fernam Lopes, Chronica del Rey D. Pedro, c. x. + Modern Universal History, vol. ix. p. 648. The authorities referred to are Spond. Annal. 1282. Jacob. Cavac. 1. iii. Hist. Cœnob. S. Justin. Patav. "most These rights, however, as you say, certainly at that time made a part of the law of England." I have just shown when and in what manner they became so; and that because they were inconsistent with the spirit of that law, and had been found injurious in practice, by impeding the course of justice and lessening the security of the subject, the Judges, in the exercise of their duty, represented them as a grievance to the King, in order that the privilege might be withdrawn by the same authority which had conferred it. But let us listen to Montesquieu,” you say. "I am not,” says that great man, “violently in love with the privileges of the clergy; but I wish that their jurisdiction should once be well established. After that the question is not, whether it was right to establish it, but whether it is established; whether it makes part of the laws of the land, and whether it is connected with them throughout." So far, Sir, I accord with him and with you. When he says, "as much as the power of the Church is dangerous in a republic, so much is it useful in a monarchy, particularly in those which tend to despotism,"..I hesitate; for it appears to * Page 81. |