132	The Norman Conquest
was common before the Conquest, notwithstanding some
attempts at reform in the time of Dunstan; and the ordina-
tion of sons of priests, a dangerous abuse, looking as it
did towards the formation of a clerical caste, was not un-
common. Celibacy of the clergy was a leading principle
in the Cluniac programme. Far-sighted church reform-
ers saw that the transmission of church property by
heredity and the building up of family interests would
work against the undivided devotion to the church and
the centralisation under the pope which they desired.
This might seem, then, a natural place for Lanfranc to
begin his reforms and push them with vigour. But he
was very shrewd and moderate in his dealings with the
lower clergy. By ruling that for the future no priests
should marry and no married clerks be ordained, he ac-
complished his end slowly and without upheaval. The
Conquest unquestionably resulted in bringing the lower
clergy under better order and control.
In all countries where the reform movements had taken
root it had often come to pass that the right to present to
the parish church was vested in some neighbouring mon-
astery; usually one of the monks received ordination for
this purpose, and the church in question was said to be
ctreformed.7' In this way the monastery gained nearly
complete control over the income of the living and over
the incumbent. This undermined the power of the bishop
and tended to make the priest the servant of the mon-
astery. It was part of the long conflict between the
secular and regular clergy, in which the latter, whose
interests were always identified with centralisation and
the papacy, were strengthened by every monastic revival.
In England, lay patronage had been almost universal
before the Conquest,x although a few parishes had been
"reformed.'7 After the Conquest, many lay patrons,
with their continental penchant for making pious gifts to
monasteries, parted with their rights. This and the gen-
eral effect of continental ideas upon the church depressed
1 See above, p, 61.