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422 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
extended this reservation to cover every kind of cession by
death, resignation, deprivation, or translation and every kind
of cleric and benefice, and widened the precincts of the Curia
to a two/days* journey in any direction. As those who ended
their days in or near the Curia were, almost by definition,
richly beneficed, this gave the pope considerable freedom.
Finally, the reservation was applied to all benefices vacated by
a bishop appointed by the pope. In addition to direct confer^
ments, expectations to benefices were also bestowed in great
numbers, and the situation was further complicated by the
fact that all that the papal grant conferred was the right to
claim a benefice, which might be disputed in the papal courts
or elsewhere.
During the first century of papal provisions, before the great
decretals of reservation had been issued, most of the appoint'
ments went to curial dignitaries and officials to foreigners,
that is, or at least to absentees and it was towards the end of
this epoch, when the Church in England was being simul"
taneously exploited in the interests ofthe Savoyard connexions
of Henry III, that the opposition was most vocal. The succes/
sive waves of reservation, while greatly increasing the number
of provisors, also widened the scope of the papal bounty, and
gave hopes to both careerists and poor clerks in every country,
while the legislation against pluralism, to be mentioned shortly,
spread the supply still more widely. As the royal and lay pa^
tronage was left untouched, the king and barons had no per"
sonal^ grievance and so did not press their opposition; indeed,
the king himselfused the system widely by entering the market
as petitioner for his proteges and officials. To strike the balance
of loss and gain to religion is a task which, even impossible,
would lie far outside the scope of these pages, but it is worth
while noting that from the end of the fourteenth century on>
wards considerable use was made by Oxford and Cambridge
of the papal largesse of preferment to university clerks who
might well otherwise have been left unbeneficed.
As has been already noted, the fortunes of major benefices
followed a different rhythm. Free canonical election, fought