NOTE [N]

The legates À LATERE, as they were called, were a kind of delegates who possessed the full power of the pope in all the provinces committed to their charge, and were very busy in extending as well as exercising it. They nominated to all vacant benefices, assembled synods, and were anxious to maintain ecclesiastical privileges, which never could be fully protected without encroachments on the civil power. If there were the least concurrence or opposition, it was always supposed that the civil power was to give way: every deed which had the least pretence of holding of any thing spiritual, as marriages, testaments, promissory oaths, were brought into the spiritual court, and could not be canvassed before a civil magistrate. These were the established laws of the church; and where a legate was sent immediately from Rome, he was sure to maintain the papal claims with the utmost rigour: but it was an advantage to the king to have the Archbishop of Canterbury appointed legate, because the connexions of that prelate with the kingdom tended to moderate his measures.