XIV.] CONFUSION OF FUNCTIONS. 363 had no provision, it is not likely that the kings would have been jealous of papal or archiépiscopal enactments, or would have stood on their rights when the exact line was occasionally overstepped. But the extravagance of ecclesiastical claims provoked them to opposition and justified it. When the archbishops of Henry Ill's reign claimed exclusive jurisdiction in suits of advowsons, the right to exact personal tithes, and to try all questions of credit granted ' fide interposta,' even so gentle a worm as the king turned again ; and we find among his letters, and still more among those of his son, constant cautions to the primates and their convocations not to attempt anything to the prejudice of the crown and customs of the land, as well as innumerable prohibitions to ecclesiastical judges against their trying other civil suits than those which touch testamentary or matrimonial matters. Edward II had to prohibit the employment of imperial notaries. In the spiritual matters proper, the kings seldom interfered ; only where a political motive was suspected, or where a servant of the crown was attacked, or where the spiritual judge had clearly gone beyond his discretion. The Church history of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is full of cautions and prohibitions, and of struggles between the officers who had thus to interfere with one another ; and the definitions of the ' Articuli Cleri ' under Edward II which prescribed the points on which prohibitions were to be granted, and the Statute of Praemunire under Edward III, which forbade the multiplication of appeals to Rome, did little to ameliorate relations. When however heresy became a matter of litigation, the two systems deliberately worked together ; and, although there were many hitches, during the whole of the Lancastrian period there was more definite co'-operation and less conflict. The common law was really becoming more a matter of scientific treatment, and the greatest judges were men who had had