Bishops, Parliament and Trial by Peers: Clerical Opposition to the Confiscation of Episcopal Temporalities in the Fourteenth Century

Abstract

This article demonstrates that from the mid- to late fourteenth century the English clergy pursued a sustained campaign to protect episcopal temporalities from royal seizure by asserting the right of bishops to be judged by their peers in parliament. The most important stage of this movement came in the parliament of January 1352 when the clergy made a case for episcopal exceptionalism in English law. The legal identity of bishops in England underwent a seismic shift and it was conceded that in certain cases a bishop should be judged in accordance with his temporalities rather than his spiritual office.