Economic policy has often been written about as though it were simply a vulgarized version of economic theory. Admittedly, nobody supposes that the content of economic theory is inviolable or unchanging, embodying truths universally true over time. But the relationship is nonetheless often assumed to one of cause and effect. Presumably, then, changes occur in the ‘low politics’ of economic policy when, in due course, the ‘high thinking’ of economic theory achieves successive intellectual breakthroughs, embodying deeper and truer insights.There are several reasons why we should now be doubtful about this kind of model. One reason is the way that the history of ideas has been refashioned during the last generation or so, deposing from their eminent pedestals the ‘great thinkers’ who had previously been supposed to hand on their wisdom, in ever more refined form, to equally eminent successors. Historians now realise that the context in which arguments are mounted is much more important and needs to be recovered. More generally, the nature of intellectual revolutions is now contextualized with greater attention to the common contexts in which ideas have been generated and received.

This chapter raises the intriguing question why some of the eighteenth-century innovations in English leisure actually failed to be transmitted to the continent. Despite the eighteenth century seeing the first wave of a ‘sportification process’, as traditional games turned into organised and commercial competitions, involving teams, rules, regulating bodies, prizes and spectators, the development of the new-style sports (such as horse-racing, cricket, and golf) was largely confined to England. Elsewhere – across the British Isles, the colonies and the European continent –- dissemination was limited and usually a failure. Why? The chapter examines a range of variables and suggests tentatively that the key factors affecting the spread of a more commercialized regime of sport across Europe were patterns of urbanization, the media and censorship, and the presence of competing institutions, especially those associated with the church.

From the twelfth century, clergy enjoyed another privilege related to criminal violence. The canon ‘Si quis suadente’ (1139) declared that anyone who laid ‘violent hands’ on a clerk or monk incurred excommunication reserved to papal absolution. Historians have seen this sanction as ‘automatic’ and an expression of papal power, but recent scholarship has questioned this. Bishops enforcing the canon sought papal guidance on its operation: What kinds of clergy and violence was it meant to cover? Did it exclude some uses of force, notably self-defence? Did all offenders need papal absolution? Papal answers to such questions formed a new body of case law that complicated the canon’s operation and made it less automatic. Canonistic commentary added to this complexity, essentially giving bishops power to decide whether the canon’s sanction applied and whether offenders needed recourse to Rome. In English practice, offenders were rarely referred to Rome and usually received episcopal absolution. Church courts also encouraged reconciliation between clerical victims and lay assailants through arbitration, rather than emphasising division between them that the canon potentially signified.

Violence is central to popular images of the Middle Ages. Where do clergy fit into this picture? In theory, they were meant to oppose violence and promote peace. But in practice, clergy sometimes took part in warfare. Recent scholarship shows that clergy even engaged in interpersonal violence, and this book pursues this theme further. It will draw on approaches from anthropology, gender and the ‘history of emotions’, which ask fundamental questions: What is violence? How can it be defined as legitimate or illegitimate? Is it innate or learnt behaviour? What purposes does it serve? How far is it gendered? What motivated it? And was the Middle Ages more violent than the present? In applying these approaches, the book seeks to understand how far clergy were separate from the violent culture of laymen around them. Various sources will be used to answer this central question, notably the papal penitentiary registers, church and secular court records and canon law. Legal theory sought to set clergy apart from laymen especially regarding violent crime, so the book will seek to compare this with judicial practice. It thus constitutes a study in legal and social history.

By 1200, clerks might face homicide charges before royal and church courts. Both jurisdictions recognised similar homicide charges: intentional killing; complicity; self-defence; and accidental death. It has long been argued that English common law was separate from continental Roman and canon law. But this chapter shows that common law and canon law display striking similarities in theory and practice when dealing with homicide charges. This was arguably not a matter of coincidence or ‘common sense’ (Hurnard) but a result of canon law influence on common law; both formed a common legal culture, at least regarding homicide. The only outlier was judicial homicide, a charge only applied to clergy before church jurisdiction and concerning involvement in secular law penalties of death and mutilation. This exception aside, the chapter systematically compares canon and common law theory and practice on each homicide charge. For legal practice, it draws on both royal and church court records and papal penitentiary petitions to exonerate clergy from homicide, which are remarkably similar in their argumentation and narratives to common law jury recommendations for royal pardons for homicide.

Benefit of clergy marked a major difference between clergy and laity by the twelfth century, at least in theory. In theory, it granted clergy accused of violent and other crimes immunity from lay justice. It was a cause of the famous clash between Henry II and Thomas Becket, and historians of the Becket ‘crisis’ have thus seen it as a point of conflict between Church and ‘State’. This chapter attempts a different approach, to see it from the perspective of clerical defendants. It begins by tracing the privilege’s evolution in canon law and canonistic doctrine. This legal theory increasingly insisted on clerical immunity from lay jurisdiction but to some extent allowed clerical defendants to submit to lay jurisdiction with episcopal consent, and bishops to hand over incorrigible clerks to secular correction. In subsequent English practice, clerical defendants appeared before lay criminal courts but increasingly fewer pleaded immunity and sought to be handed over to church courts. The reason is that they faced long detention in episcopal custody before their church trial; they preferred instead to explore every means to acquittal in lay courts before pleading clergy as a last resort.

In theory, major differences separated clergy from laity by the twelfth century, especially regarding violence: clergy were subject only to church courts for violent crimes; they enjoyed special papal protection from violent assault; they were to renounce violent behaviour and even sexual relations; and were subject to a different system of law and clemency from laity regarding homicide. In practice, these differences were fading by the fifteenth century. Increasingly, fewer men charged with crimes before lay courts pleaded clergy and sought transfer before church courts for fear of long detention in episcopal gaols awaiting a church trial. English application of papal protection from anti-clerical violence increasingly stressed reconciliation between clerical victims and lay assailants rather than social division. Clergy became subject to lay violence not for being different from laity but too similar to them, especially in pursuing sex and violence and other deviance from ideal priestly standards. Finally, common law on homicide, especially self-defence, increasingly resembled canon law, which explains why clergy accepted lay justice and clemency when facing homicide charges.