en the Bishop of
Dorchester, in Oxfordshire, migrated to Lincoln, and the Bishop of
Thetford to Norwich. New churches were built and old ones restored
after the new Continental style, which is known in England as Norman,
and which Eadward had introduced in his abbey of Westminster. The
Church, though made dependent on William, was independent, so far as
its spiritual rights were concerned, of the civil courts.
Ecclesiastical matters were discussed, not in the Witenagemot, but in
a Church synod, and, in course of time, punishments were inflicted by
Church courts on ecclesiastical offenders. The power of William was
strengthened by the change. That power rested on three supports--the
Norman conquerors, the English nation, and the Church, and each one of
these three had reason to distrust the other two.

[Illustration: East end of Darenth Church, Kent. Built about 1080.]

8. =Pope Gregory VII.=--The strength which William had acquired showed
itself in his bearing towards the Pope. In =1073= Archdeacon
Hildebrand, who for some years had been more powerful at Rome than the
Popes themselves, himself became Pope under the name of Gregory VII.
Gregory was as stern a ruler of the Church as William was of the
State. He was an uncompromising champion of the Cluniac reforms (see
p. 67). His object was to moderate the cruelty and sinfulness of the
feudal warriors of Europe by making the Church a light to guide the
world to piety and self-denial. As matters stood on the Continent, it
had been impossible for the Church to attain to so high a standard.
The clergy bought their places and fought and killed like the laymen
around them. The Cluniac monks, therefore, thought it best to separate
the clergy entirely from the world. In the first place they were to be
celibate, that they might not be entangled in the cares of life. In
the second place they were to refrain from simony, or the purchase of
ecclesiastical preferment, that they might not be dependent on the
great men of the world. A third demand was added later, that bishops
and abbots should not receive from laymen the ring and staff which
were the signs of their authority--the ring as the symbol of marriage
to their churches; the staff or crozier, in the shape of a shepherd's
crook, as the symbol of their pastoral authority. The Church, in fact,
was to be governed by its own laws in perfect independence, that it
might become more pure itself, and thus capable of setting a better