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With regard to the Church in England, the insulation
from Rome had impaired the influence of the Papacy. The misdeeds and
arrogance of the clergy had arrayed both people and monarch against their
claims, as several of the satirical poems already mentioned have shown. As
a privileged class, who used their immunities to do evil and corrupt the
realm, the clergy became odious to the _nobles_, whose power they shared
and sometimes impaired, and to the _people_, who could now read their
faults and despise their comminations, and who were unwilling to pay
hard-earned wages to support them in idleness and vice. It was not the
doctrine, but the practice which they condemned. With the accession of the
house of Plantagenet, the people were made to feel that the Norman
monarchy was a curse, without alloy. Richard I. was a knight-errant and a
crusader, who cared little for the realm; John was an adulterer, traitor,
and coward, who roused the people's anger by first quarrelling with the
Pope, and then basely giving him the kingdom to receive it again as a
papal fief.


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