Diverse as are the subjects with which the foregoing chapters have been concerned, there are three problems of general interest, towards an understanding of which they all contribute. These are the position of the church in public opinion; the effects of the Black Death; and the relations of the church to the central government, and in the present chapter I propose to discuss very briefly the evidence relating to these three subjects.

The Position of the Church in Public Opinion

As a rule, students have sought for expressions of public opinion mainly in contemporary chronicles, poems and letters, and in such official records as the petitions presented in parliament. But public opinion may also be estimated from other records which at first appear less promising, and such are the documents with which we have been dealing. They contain very few definite statements of opinion, but they are of great value in bringing before us a multitude of men and women, of all classes, in one of the few relations with the church in which the individual was free to express his own wishes and tastes, that of benefactors, whose actions often tell us quite as much as any definite statement of their views, with regard to what they were thinking of the church and churchmen of their own day. Moreover, some of the documents we have been considering contain valuable evidence as to what opportunities there were for men who were not clerics to judge for themselves of the characters of ecclesiastical persons, and especially of the Religious.