they were not all so of necessity; and the instances are so numerous
where persons having the title of "Clericus" appear nevertheless to have
been in the married state, and to have discharged functions incompatible
with the service of the Church, that the assertion will not be denied
that the restrictions as to contracting matrimonial alliances did not
extend to clerks not in holy orders or below the grade of _subdiaconus_.
The _Registrum Brevium_ furnishes a precedent of a writ, "_De clerico
infra sacros ordines constituto non eligendo in officium_." This
distinction alone would prove that other clerks were not ineligible to
office. The various decrees of the Church may be cited to show that the
prohibition to marry did not include all clerks generally. Pope Gregory
VII., in a synod held in 1074, "interdixit clericis, maxime divino
ministerio consecratis uxores habere, vel cum mulicribus habitare, nisi
quas Nicena Synodus vel alii canones exceperunt."

The statutes made by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas,
Archbishop elect of York, and all the other bishops of England, in 1108,
in presence of King Henry I., and with the assent of his barons, confine
the interdiction respecting marriages to _Presbyteri, Diaconi et
Subdiaconi_, and a provision is made by them for those cases where
marriages had been contracted since the interdict at the Council of
London (that probably in 1103), viz. that such should be precluded
thereafter from celebrating mass, if they persist in retaining their
wives. "Illi vero presbyteri, diaconi, subdiaconi, qui post interdictum
Londoniensis Concilii foeminas suas tenuerunt vel alins duxcrunt, si
amplius missam celebrare voluerint, eas a se omnino sic facient alienas,
ut nec illae in domos eorum, nec ipsi in domos earum intrent.... Illi
autem presbyteri qui divini altaris et sacrorum ordinum contemptores
praelegerint cum mulicribus habitare a divino officio remoti, omnique
ecclesiastico beneficio privati, extra chorum ponantur, infames