His successor,
St. Anselm (A.D. 1093), also an Italian, and a man of great learning
and holiness, was prepared to carry out a similar line of conduct; but
the covetous and irreligious tyrant, William Rufus, was seeking at
{147} the same time to reduce Bishops to the state of mere nominees and
vassals of the crown, and a long contest ensued[2]. The dispute was
carried on into the next reign; and at length, in A.D. 1107, a
compromise was agreed upon, by which it was arranged that Bishops
should receive investiture from the Pope, and, at the same time, take
an oath of allegiance to the king. [Sidenote: St. Thomas of
Canterbury.] Anselm's unflinching advocacy of Papal claims cost him
years of exile from his diocese, and much suffering; but, in the
following century, similar conduct involved still more serious
consequences to St. Thomas a Becket, the then Archbishop of Canterbury.
The new question in dispute was the right of clerical offenders to be
tried in the spiritual courts, instead of coming under the jurisdiction
of the civil power; but, in reality, it was only another form of the
constant endeavours of the English monarchs to free themselves from the
foreign bondage which was, to some extent at least, self-imposed.
Becket fell a martyr to his own sense of duty and the king's
displeasure, A.D. 1170.

[Sidenote: Roman influence strongest in England.]

Papal usurpation in England reached its height when, in A.D. 1208,
Innocent III placed the kingdom under an Interdict, for refusing to
receive as Archbishop of Canterbury his nominee, Stephen Langton, who
was unacceptable both to king and people; and soon after proceeded to
excommunicate John, and depose him from his throne. The king's
cowardly and unconstitutional conduct in resigning his kingdom into the
{148} hands of the Pope's legate (A.D. 1213), and receiving it again at
the end of three days as a tributary vassal of the Roman see, caused
England to be looked upon for some years as only a fief of Rome.

[Sidenote: Kept up by the Friars;]

In the reign of Henry III. (A.D. 1216-A.D. 1272), Roman influence in
England was greatly sustained by the introduction of the Preaching
Orders of Franciscan and Dominican Friars, who, being many of them
foreigners, and all of them independent of any episcopal control, and
subject to Papal jurisdiction only, were very energetic in their
endeavours to maintain and extend the authority of the popedom.

[Sidenote: by the habit