The truth seems to be that the friars continued to be the most popular preachers, and to carry on a steady work among the poor of the towns. But, strongly papal in sentiment, their constitution made them an organized propaganda of any ideas which the cardinal protectors and generals of the orders residing in Rome suggested to the provincials in the several nations, they to the wardens of the districts, they to the priors of the houses, they to their individual friars, and they through the streets of the city and the length and breadth of the land. It was, perhaps, their political opposition to Henry VIII. more than any other cause of offence or dereliction of duty, which provoked their overthrow.
The two chief faults of the system were the principle of mendicancy and the exemption from episcopal control. It is worth while to study the institution carefully, for something of the same kind--brotherhoods of educated and trained men, who are content to abandon the world's ambitions, to live among the poor, to preach the gospel in a popular way, and to minister to the temporal sufferings of the people--is exactly what is wanted to produce a new revival among the masses of the people; and we need to ascertain the secrets of the friars' strength and of their weakness.
In the thirteenth century the popes assumed the right, as feudal lords over the Church, to demand from every church benefice a fine of its first year's income from every new incumbent, and an annual tax of one-tenth of its income. The Saxon kings had made the Church lands exempt from state imposts;[416] but now kings very naturally began to think that the necessities of the State had as good a claim as those of the pope; and there ensued a certain amount of friction. The popes, with very astute policy, reconciled the kings to the tax by sometimes ceding the proceeds of it to them. Thus in 1253, Pope Innocent IV. gave the tenths to King Henry III. for three years, which occasioned a taxation or valuation to be made in the following year, sometimes called the Norwich Taxation, sometimes Pope Innocent's Valor.
Again, in 1288, Pope Nicholas IV. gave the tenths to King Edward I. for six years, towards an expedition to the Holy Land; that they might be fully collected a new taxation was made by the king's precept, which was begun in that year and finished in the province of Canterbury in 1291, and in the province of York in 1292.[417] This taxation continued to be the basis of all assessments upon the Church down to the time of the Reformation.