[Sidenote: Roman influence strongest in England.]
Papal usurpation in England reached its height when, in A.D. 1208, Innocent III placed the kingdom under an Interdict, for refusing to receive as Archbishop of Canterbury his nominee, Stephen Langton, who was unacceptable both to king and people; and soon after proceeded to excommunicate John, and depose him from his throne. The king's cowardly and unconstitutional conduct in resigning his kingdom into the { 148} hands of the Pope's legate (A.D. 1213), and receiving it again at the end of three days as a tributary vassal of the Roman see, caused England to be looked upon for some years as only a fief of Rome.
In the reign of Henry III. (A.D. 1216-A.D. 1272), Roman influence in England was greatly sustained by the introduction of the Preaching Orders of Franciscan and Dominican Friars, who, being many of them foreigners, and all of them independent of any episcopal control, and subject to Papal jurisdiction only, were very energetic in their endeavours to maintain and extend the authority of the popedom.
By this time, too, appeals to Rome against the decisions of English courts had come to be a great bar to national independence. Such appeals had been altogether unrecognized in England until the days of Stephen, and the practice was again forbidden in Henry II.'s reign by the Constitutions of Clarendon (A.D. 1164); but, after Becket's death, the prohibition was once more repealed. It is easy to see how seriously this system of appeals must have delayed and interfered with the regular course of justice in this country, and how capable it was of being made a political engine in the hands of the Pope, or of those who held with him. The exemption of most of the monasteries from the supervision of the Bishops was also a serious evil, interfering as it did with the Divinely-appointed functions of the episcopacy, and opening the door to disorders which the distant and usurped authority of the Popes had not power to remedy.
In the fourteenth century another means was resorted to of increasing the power of the Popes at expense of the monarch and people of { 149} England, by the payment of annates, or first-fruits, on the appointment of each Bishop; and so heavy did this burden become, that between A.D. 1486 and A.D. 1531, 160,000 pounds (or about 45,000 pounds a year of our money) was paid to Rome under the head of annates.