Henry VII.; or that if it had survived the first Tudor, the second would
have suffered it to flourish unregarded for eighteen years of his reign.
The exaggeration is so flagrant that we can hardly infer from it even a
substratum of truth. Such diatribes as this must be referred to, not as
being valid evidences against the accused, but as proving the passion of
the controversy, and the hesitation necessary before accepting conclusions
traceable to the wild and whirling words of such controversialists.

[Sidenote 1: Clerical privileges]
[Sidenote 2: Tentative reforms]

In another respect however there was a serious demand for reform; namely
the legal and judicial privileges which the ecclesiastical body had
acquired in the course of centuries, and which had gradually become the
source of serious abuses. The administration of certain branches of the
Civil Law had been absorbed by the Clerics, who were charged with
converting their functions into an elaborate machinery for extorting fees;
and on the Criminal side, what was known as Benefit of Clergy, as well as
the rules of Sanctuary, had become not merely anomalous but an actual
encouragement to crime. Any criminal or accused person who succeeded in
reaching Sanctuary was safe from the secular arm; and any one who could
produce evidence, even of the flimsiest character, that he was a cleric
could claim to be tried by the ecclesiastical instead of the secular
courts. Originally these privileges had been of very great service in the
wild days when judicial treatment was at least more readily obtainable from
the Clergy, when trial by ordeal was common, and the merciless punishments
of the ordinary law gave place to the milder but not ineffective penalties
of Ecclesiastical discipline. Even the legal fictions by which evildoers
were allowed to claim Benefit of Clergy as Clerics had their justification.
But when even murderers could escape with a moderate penance as Clerics,