might go on tracing a constant connection between the Church in England and Rome, and a constant dependence of the former upon the latter through the intervening times, through the era of Dunstan and that of Edward the Confessor down to the Conquest, and from the Conquest to the times with which we are more immediately concerned, and with one only result, that, though not without checks depending upon the personal characters of individual popes or kings, or the political circumstances of the time, the connection becomes closer and the dependence more plainly visible, until we arrive at that remarkable period when John became a vassal of the Holy See and held his kingdom of Innocent III.
From Innocent III. downwards until we come to the age of the Reformation itself, there is not the slightest ground for maintaining that the Church in England was less papal than elsewhere in Europe. It might even be contended with some show of reason that it was more so. Milman quotes as a common saying in the reign of Henry III. that 'England was the Pope's farm.'[1]
The papal character of the Church in England in the century immediately preceding the Reformation is admitted even by Dean Hook,[2] who asserts, however, that up to the pontificate of Martin V. (1417) it had maintained its independence, and had subsisted under a sort of royal supremacy differing little from that established, or, as he would rather say, re-established under Henry VIII. There is no doubt, indeed, that when the papal power revived under Martin V. its renewed vigour was felt in England as well as elsewhere;
- ↑ Latin Christianity, vol. vi. p. 235.
- ↑ Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. v. p. 100.
