GROWTH OF THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH 295 Had the bishops remained under royal control to the extent that they were in the reigns of Clovis and Charle- magne and William the Conqueror, kings might Appeals to have raised little objection to this extension of C ourt? Pa ecclesiastical jurisdiction, although of course the canon law jfees and fines of an ecclesiastical court did not go into the royal treasury. But the bishops were coming to look more land more toward Rome, and although the investiture strife had left the kings a large influence over episcopal elections, they no longer found it as easy to control a bishop once he J had been elected. Moreover, the custom had grown up of appealing cases from the local episcopal courts, presided over by the archdeacons, to the papal court at Rome, which was becoming the supreme court of Christendom. Indeed, very important cases were often brought before the papal court in the first instance. A uniform system of law came to be accepted throughout the Church in the West, based upon the decrees of the popes and church councils and upon the decisions rendered in the ecclesiastical courts, and called "canon law." A few years before Henry II became King of ! England a monk named Gratian at Bologna in Italy had
- made a compilation of the canons, or rules and decrees of
the Church, which was generally accepted. Henry II speedily restored order and the royal power in j England, and deprived of their castles the feudal nobles > who had been making trouble. It was one thing Henry n I to crush rebellious vassals, who were disorderly and Thomas Becket and lawless and of whose anarchy and evil deeds the English people were heartily tired ; it was quite another thing to try to restrict the growing power of a great organi- zation with a systematic body of law, and which had at
- that time a greater hold upon the popular mind than royalty
had, and which was more beloved by the people than was the stocky, red-headed, young foreigner who could spend but a fraction of his time away from his vast Continental fiefs.
- Yet Henry elected to struggle against the Church as well as
against feudalism, to try to regain from it the powers which it had assumed of late in England, and to bring its property,
