Perhaps One In Six People Were Technically a Clergyman
November 4, 2025
Perhaps one in six Englishmen in the late twelfth century [C.E.] was technically a clergyman. While most were not and never would be priests, there were plenty in minor orders or who had entered the Church for an education and left to work for lay masters. Many parish priests were poorly educated and barely literate. Their lives would not have differed much from those of ordinary peasants. But clerical status bestowed great advantage if one fell foul of the law. The Church demanded the right to discipline criminous clerks but punishments were considerably lighter under canon law than under the secular criminal code. The Church would neither inflict trial by ordeal nor mutilate or execute the guilty….
— The Plantagenets, Unholy War
