The English Church in the Middle Ages

This book is intended to illustrate the relations of the English Church with the papacy and with the English State down to the revolt of Wyclif against the abuses which had gathered round the ecclesiastical system of the Middle Ages, and the Great Schism in the papacy which materially affected the ideas of the whole of Western Christendom. It was thought expedient to deal with these subjects in a narrative form, and some gaps have therefore had to be filled up, and some links supplied. This has been done as far as possible by notices of matters which bear on the moral condition of the Church, and serve to show how far it was qualified at various periods to be the example and instructor of the nation. No attempt, however, has been made to write a complete history on a small scale, and I have designedly passed by many points, in themselves of interest and importance, in order to give as much space as might be to my proper subjects. Besides, this volume has been written as one of a series in which the missions to the Teutonic peoples, the various aspects of Monasticism, the question of Investitures, and the place which the University of Oxford fills in our Church's history have been, or will be, treated separately. Accordingly I have not touched on any of these things further than seemed absolutely necessary.