wished to control them. When Cardinal Vivian, papal legate, arrived in England in 1176, ‘without the King's license’, Henry, according to the chronicler Roger of Howden, sent two bishops to warn him that ‘unless he was ready to abide by the will of the King he would not be allowed to proceed further’. The cardinal swore ‘that he would do nothing on his legation hostile to [Henry] or to his kingdom’; Henry then treated him with great honor, and the next legate took good care to obtain the king's permission to land in advance. Henry liked upright and spiritual-minded churchmen; he disliked those whom, he said, ‘embraced the world with both arms’. He often promoted men who might have been expected to give him trouble, such as Baldwin of Ford, whom he first made Bishop of Worcester, then Canterbury. Henry Il was one of those medieval sovereigns, by no means uncommon, who genuinely wanted to make the Christian society work; who thought that an active, vigorous, even militant church and higher clergy were necessary for the material, as well as the spiritual, well-being of the commonwealth. Such rulers, in the Carolingian tradition, were willing to work with the Church even after it had robbed them of much of their theoretical status and power as anointed servants of the Lord. But of course none of them, however well disposed, could conceivably have accepted the line of thinking illustrated by Boniface VIII'S bulls cited at the beginning of this section. The result was that, after the twelfth century, it was rare even for the more serious-minded and hardworking monarchs to devote much of their energies to reforming the Church and improving its pastoral performance objects which had been central to the policies even of mediocre Dark Age Christian monarchs. On the contrary, the ruler's interest now centered on blocking and controlling the Church, and diverting as much as possible of its resources in money and personnel to secular purposes. This might not have mattered so much if the bishops had preserved their status. In western and northern Europe they conserved much of their wealth, but in other respects they became the principal victims of the papal contest with secular power. Ever since the emergence of the monarchical bishop in the second century, episcopacy had been the key institution of Christianity. The quality and drive of the clergy, and therefore the level of Christian conduct, depended above all on able, holy and vigorous bishops. Without good bishops, the papacy could not in practice have any real influence on society. After the capitulation of King John of England to the papacy for instance, Innocent Ill, in theory at least, had virtual charge of the English church. But he did, or could do, virtually nothing to promote reform. He. possessed neither the machinery nor the administrative manpower for detailed supervision. So his advice to his legates was nearly always to do what the king wanted. Again, in theory, by the beginning of the thirteenth century the papacy had won the battle to appoint bishops. The object of the campaign had been to improve the quality of Episcopal personnel. In fact if anything the quality went down. In. practice, local rulers and the Pope engaged in a carve-up of appointments. Both were motivated by considerations other than provision of the best kind of man. Kings did not particularly like having clergy as ministers of state, since they could not be brought to book in royal courts for peculation, treason, and so forth; on the other hand, they could not afford to pay laymen, and clerical ministers could be rewarded with bishoprics and other benefices. The financial argument nearly always won. Hence about half the bishoprics went to royal officials, courtiers and so forth. The Pope, too, needed to reward his clerks and supporters. His share of the jobs varied, but might be as much as a third. The division of the Episcopal spoils was not conducted by any formal system, but in man-to-man bargains between the papacy and the royal representative. Royal appointments could be very bad. The Black Prince got his illiterate friend Robert Stretton the bishopric of Coventry and Lichfield, despite the fact that his profession of canonical obedience had to be read out on his behalf; the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury made a fuss, but had to give way in the end. On the other hand, some papal appointments were just as bad, or worse. In 1246, with the object of ‘liberating’ the Church from the Hohenstaufen, Innocent IV forbade any Episcopal elections on the Lower Rhine without permission of the Holy See. The next year he appointed to Liege Henry, brother of the Count of Gueldre, who was only nineteen and illiterate. He was sent to Liege purely for the papacy's political and 54