Note 185 — Chapter XV

The abbot elect of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, in 1171 was found, on investigation, to have seventeen illegitimate children in a single village. An abbot of St. Pelayo in Spain in 1130 was proved to have kept no less than seventy mistresses. Henry 3d, Bishop of Liege, was deposed in 1274 for having sixty-five illegitimate children.—Lecky, "Hist. of European Morals," p. 350. This same bishop boasted in a public banquet, that in twenty-two months, fourteen children had been born to him. A tax called "Cullagium," which was, in fact, a license to clergymen to keep concubines, was during several centuries systematically levied by princes.—Ibid, Vol. 2, p. 349. It was openly attested that 100,000 women in England were made dissolute by the clergy.—Draper's "Intellectua. Development of Europe," p. 498.