Winchelsey had been sufficiently influential and astute to achieve united clerical decisions in ecclesiastical council after ecclesiastical council; but not far beneath the surface, and especially among the higher ranks of churchmen, there was an unwillingness to accept sacerdotalist views. This dissent is seen particularly in the careers and actions of royal clerks. With some clerks, refusal to be occupied in the affairs of secular government was a matter of the highest principle; but the continuing dependence of royal government, at all levels, upon the clergy needs no stressing. The policies of royal government were often shaped, if not determined, by the king's ministers, many of whom were churchmen.

We have seen bishops and magnates with distinguishable aims, different policies promoted by the Church and the Crown (as in 1296–7) which were apparently designed to set clergy and laity apart, and distinct attempts to draw a line between spiritualities and temporalities, not only in a material sense, which was relatively simple, but also in terms of political control, which was far from simple. At different times and on different issues each of these distinctions had a reality of its own. Yet, the king could claim an overriding patronage of the English Church, Winchelsey and Lancaster were popular saints, laymen rarely revealed themselves as enemies of the clergy, and the clergy's spiritualities and temporalities were usually taxed, whether for pope or king, together.