This was a strong instrument of political rights, for community of language tended to an amalgamation of the Norman and Saxon peoples.

With regard to the Church in England, the insulation from Rome had impaired the influence of the Papacy.

The misdeeds and arrogance of the clergy had arrayed both people and monarch against their claims, as several of the satirical poems already mentioned have shown.

As a privileged class, who used their immunities to do evil and corrupt the realm, the clergy became odious to the _nobles_, whose power they shared and sometimes impaired, and to the _people_, who could now read their faults and despise their comminations, and who were unwilling to pay hard-earned wages to support them in idleness and vice.

It was not the doctrine, but the practice which they condemned.