After repeated attempts and repeated failures, on the part of the pope, to introduce a legatine power into England, it was so far accomplished during the troubled reign of Stephen, A.D. 1135. This was an entirely new thing in this country, and a most daring thing on the part of Rome. But as it forms a distinct and important epoch in the history of the English church, we must carefully mark the change. And here, to ensure accuracy, we will quote a few passages from our legal historian, Thomas Greenwood, barrister-at-law, book 12, vol. 5.
"The publication and adoption of the Isidorian Decretals changed the order and distribution of the ecclesiastical powers. Every function of church management became vested in the clergy, or, which was the same thing, in the Pope of Rome as their supreme head. The authority of the state in all matters even remotely connected with the life and conversation, temporal or spiritual, of churchmen, was vehemently denounced and repelled: their possessions were pronounced sacred and inalienable; their duties subject to no censorship but that of their official superiors; their persons exempt from secular jurisdiction or punishment; all interference on the part of prince or secular person in the appointment of bishops, priests, or spiritual incumbents was declared to be of the nature of simony. Although these principles of church legislation had been in few instances fully developed in practice, they had been received without contradiction, and partially adopted by the clergy of France, Italy, and Germany. In Normandy a complete separation of the secular and ecclesiastical jurisdiction had already taken place. In England, however, as yet the only canons known to clergy or laity were those enacted by the national church herself, with the assent and concurrence of the sovereign.... The exertions of the Romanizing bishops of England, subsequent to the conquest, were steadily directed to the introduction of the more important articles of the Isidorian code; more especially to the emancipation of church property and endowments from its dependence upon crown or secular ordinance, and of the persons and causes of clerks from the interference of the king's judges...."
"The earlier ordinances of William the Conqueror for the separation of the ecclesiastical from the lay tribunals were never carried out to the extent of exempting churchmen from responsibility to the law. But it is also true, that both the Conqueror and his successors, down to John, endeavored to steer a middle course between canonism and prerogative. In their solicitude to stand well with the court of Rome, they often took steps which endangered the safety, but certainly never shifted the ancient basis, of the law of the land, or the rights of the crown. In the bitter quarrel between Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury and Henry I., the latter stoutly maintained his right to determine which of the two rival pretenders to the papacy the clergy of his dominions should recognize. And when Anselm, without the king's consent, insisted upon transferring his spiritual allegiance to Urban II. in preference to his rival Clement III., Henry bluntly informed him that 'he knew of no law or custom which entitled a subject, without the king's license, to set up a pope of his own over the kingdom of England; and that any man who should presume to take out of his hands the decision of that question would have as good a right to take the crown from his head!'..."
"The struggle between Henry and Anselm was long and obstinate. The bishop fled to Rome; the king seized the temporalities of his See. While the contest was still undecided, a papal officer appeared on the coast announcing himself as legate of the court of Rome, entrusted with a legatine power over all England from the pope. But the king held it to be a special prerogative of his crown to accept or reject at pleasure such interferences with the ordinary course of ecclesiastical government by a foreign prince; and the legate was sent away without having been admitted to the presence of the king. About fifteen years afterward, the same pope made a second attempt to introduce a legate-extraordinary into the kingdom, but with no better success.... A third attempt of the same pontiff was equally unsuccessful. It was indeed, by this time, pretty well understood that the law and custom of England repudiated the legative commission, as an illegal interference with the ordinary course of church government, which the common law had placed under the superintendence of the sovereign."
But after the death of the wise and able Henry I., which took place in 1135, the crafty and persevering pope—Alexander III.—was more successful. In the reign of Stephen, a feeble monarch, a legate from Rome made his way into our island. The Anglican prelates fully understood the drift of the movement; and a synod held in London protested, in the face of the legate, against the presumption of a foreign priest in taking the presidential chair above archbishops, bishops, abbots, and the assembled nobility of the whole realm of England. The protest, however, remained without effect. A timid and time-serving spirit was creeping into the heart of the Anglican church. The prevailing ignorance of the mass of the people, the secular character of the clergy, the miserable state of the whole country, during the reign of Stephen, afforded a favorable opportunity for the systematic encroachments of the Romanizing party upon the prerogative of the crown and the liberties of the national church. The Anglo-Norman bishops at the time were barons rather than prelates, their palaces were castles, their retainers vassals in arms: almost all were wearing arms, mingling in war, and indulging in all the cruelties and exactions of war. Such were the prelates of England when Henry II. ascended the throne in 1154. The opposition of Becket to this rich and powerful king, throws a clearer light on the secular ambition of Rome than any of the conflicts we have yet recorded.