From the settlement of the Northern nations the clergy must be considered in another light.  The Barbarians gave them large landed possessions; and by giving them land, they gave them jurisdiction, which, according to their notions, was inseparable from it.  They made them an order in the state; and as all the orders had their privileges, the clergy had theirs, and were no less steady to preserve and ambitious to extend them.  Our ancestors, having united the Church dignities to the secular dignities of baronies, had so blended the ecclesiastical with the temporal power in the same persons that it became almost impossible to separate them.  The ecclesiastical was, however, prevalent in this composition, drew to it the other, supported it, and was supported by it.  But it was not the devotion only, but the necessity of the tunes, that raised the clergy to the excess of this greatness.  The little learning which then subsisted remained wholly in their hands.  Few among the laity could even read; consequently the clergy alone were proper for public affairs.  They were the statesmen, they were the lawyers; from them were often taken the bailiffs of the seigneurial courts, sometimes the sheriffs of counties, and almost constantly the justiciaries of the kingdom.[78] The Norman kings, always jealous of their order, were always forced to employ them.  In abbeys the law was studied; abbeys were the palladiums of the public liberty by the custody of the royal charters and most of the records.  Thus, necessary to the great by their knowledge, venerable to the poor by their hospitality, dreadful to all by the power of excommunication, the character of the clergy was exalted above everything in the state; and it could no more be otherwise in those days than it is possible it should be so in ours.

William the Conqueror made it one principal point of his politics to reduce the clergy; but all the steps he took in it were not equally well calculated to answer this intention.  When he subjected the Church lands to military service, the clergy complained bitterly, as it lessened their revenue:  but I imagine it did not lessen their power in proportion; for by this regulation they came, like other great lords, to have their military vassals, who owed them homage and fealty:  and this rather increased their consideration amongst so martial a people.  The kings who succeeded him, though they also aimed at reducing the ecclesiastical power, never pursued their scheme on a great or legislative principle.  They seemed rather desirous of enriching themselves by the abuses in the Church than earnest to correct them.  One day they plundered and the next day they founded monasteries, as their rapaciousness or their scruples chanced to predominate; so that every attempt of that kind, having rather the air of tyranny than reformation, could never be heartily approved or seconded by the body of the people.