The wealth and power of the pre-Reformation episcopate lent force to the criticisms of the friars and Lollards. The bishops were spiritual noblemen and as such were inevitably far removed from any apostolic pattern of ministry. Instead, they were possessed of all the trappings of authority that the church and monarchy could offer. The most essential of their secular adjuncts of power was land, for no nobleman could maintain his place without the income and control over men that land alone afforded. The way in which land had come to the church served to stress the dual role of its leaders. It had come as pious donations and bequests from the Saxon monarchy and nobility and as a reward for feudal service from the Normans. This, of course, simplifies unduly the complex process by which the episcopal estates were acquired, but all the bishoprics had those two elements as the foundation of their possessions. Service to the crown, primarily in the form of the provision of revenue and men for war, continued to be an important duty of the bishops as tenants-in-chief in the early sixteenth century. In this sense, as in their daily management of property, it is difficult to differentiate the spiritual peers from their lay counterparts. The fact that much of the land had originally been given as an act of piety, to aid the church in its work of organising the faithful and of charity, was more easily forgotten in the daily lives of the bishops.