This vigorous measure was immediately carried into execution.[**] Orders were issued to the judges to receive no cause brought before them by the clergy; to hear and decide all causes in which they were defendants; to do every man justice against them; to do them justice against nobody.[***] The ecclesiastics soon found themselves in the most miserable situation imaginable.

They could not remain in their own houses or convents for want of subsistence; if they went abroad in quest of maintenance, they were dismounted, robbed of their horses and clothes, abused by every ruffian, and no redress could be obtained by them for the most violent injury.

The primate himself was attacked on the highway, was stripped of his equipage and furniture, and was at last reduced to board himself with a single servant in the house of a country clergyman.[****] The king, meanwhile, remained an indifferent spectator of all these violences: and without employing his officers in committing any immediate injury on the priests, which might have appeared invidious and oppressive, he took ample vengeance on them for their obstinate refusal of his demands.

Though the archbishop issued a general sentence of excommunication against all who attacked the persons or property of ecclesiastics, it was not regarded; while Edward enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing the people become the voluntary instruments of his justice against them, and inure themselves to throw off that respect for the sacred order by which they had so long been overawed and governed.
* Walsing.p.65.Heming.

vol.i.p.