| The history of England includes many conflicts between its ruling authorities and the Roman Catholic Church. In the middle ages and the early modern period particularly, these clashes largely resulted in a struggle for precedence and influence between secular and ecclesiastical authority. This thesis analyzes one such conflict---that which concerns the papal inquisitors' efforts to use torture to obtain confessions during the trials of the Knights Templar in England---in order to better understand one of the earliest English endeavors to privilege English common law over cannon law. By examining this case study, this thesis reveals that as early as the fourteenth century English secular and ecclesiastical authorities were unwilling to allow canon law to supersede common law when it came to maltreatment of prisoners accused of crimes. As a result, one can begin to appreciate the determination and skill with which the English defended their common law tradition and ecclesiastical autonomy, and perhaps may have thereby, facilitated a process by which some semblance of English identity began to take shape in subsequent centuries. |
