Indeed, it was here that the conflict of the international, ecclesiastical state, and of the secular governments became keenest.

Both kings and people wished to control their own spiritual affairs as well as their temporalities.
[Sidenote: The ecclesia Anglicana] England traveled farthest on the road towards a national church.

For three centuries she had been asserting the rights of her government to direct spiritual as well as temporal matters.

The Statute of Mortmain [Sidenote: 1279] forbade the alienation of land from the jurisdiction of the civil power by appropriating it to religious persons.

The withdrawing of land from the obligation to pay taxes and feudal dues was thus checked.