nity prepared the way for the evangelizing of later colonists;
and when, through the crimes and weakness of the later Anglo-Saxon
princes, the country fell altogether into the hands of Danish invaders,
Canute the Great (A.D. 1016-A.D. 1033) not only embraced Christianity
himself, but secured for his native country the services of English
missionaries. [Sidenote: Evangelization of Scandinavia.] In fact, at
this time Scandinavia seems to have been the chief mission-field of the
English Church.

[Sidenote: Roman influence comparatively small under the Saxons.]

We can hardly be wrong in gathering from all this, that Roman influence
had only to a certain limited extent been introduced into the Church of
England by St. Augustine's mission, and that, as time passed on, the
foreign element had become absorbed in the national one. With the
Norman conquest of A.D. 1066, the {146} case was, however, altered.
[Sidenote: Much increased under the Normans.] The claims of the Popes
to temporal as well as to spiritual authority were by that time
definite and authoritative; the Conquest itself had been undertaken by
the permission of Alexander II., and the authority of the foreign
conquerors, (as the Norman and early Plantagenet kings continued to
be,) required foreign support. Hence the Bishops of Rome gained an
amount of political influence in England which was thoroughly
unconstitutional, and which could probably never have been attained by
any foreign power, had the English sovereigns immediately after the
Conquest felt themselves more firmly fixed upon the throne they had
seized.

[Sidenote: Denationalizing of the Episcopate.]

The appointment of foreigners to the highest ecclesiastical offices in
England, was one means by which the Norman sovereigns sought to secure
themselves against disaffection amongst their new subjects; but the
real result of this policy was to foster the claims of the Popes to
religious and secular supremacy in this country; for these foreign
ecclesiastics, though English Bishops, were not loyal subjects of the
English crown, nor were their interests identical with those of their
flocks. [Sidenote: Lanfranc.] Thus the Italian Lanfranc, when
appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by William the Conqueror (A.D.
1070), did not hesitate to obey the summons of the Pope to Rome for the
purpose of receiving the pall, and thus acknowledging that he held his
Bishopric from the Papal see. [Sidenote: St. Anselm.]