therto belonged to the Greek
Empire, and which the Germans had been unable to conquer; he promised,
in return, to defend the prerogatives of S. Peter. Between the
hierarchy which was striving to perfect its supremacy, and the warlike
chivalry of the 11th century, an alliance was formed like that once
concluded with the leaders of the Frankish host. The ideas were
already stirring from which proceeded the Crusades, the foundation of
the Spanish kingdoms, and the creation of the Latin Empire at
Constantinople. In the princely fiefs of the French Crown, and above
all in Normandy, they seized on men's minds. Chivalrous life and
hierarchic institutions, dialectic and poetry, continual war at home
and ceaseless aspirations abroad, were here fused into a living whole.

In the Germanic countries also this close alliance of hierarchy and
chivalry now sought to win influence, but here it met with a strenuous
resistance. In England, Edward the Confessor had tried to prepare the
way for it: Godwin and his house opposed it. And when the former named
the Norman Robert Archbishop of Canterbury, and the latter drove him
out, the English quarrels became connected with those of Rome;
Stigand, the archbishop put in by Godwin, received his pallium from
Pope Benedict X, who had been elected in the old tumultuous manner
once more by the neighbouring Roman barons, but had to succumb to
Hildebrand's zeal for a regular election by the cardinals, on which
the emancipation of the Papacy depended. It seemed, then, intolerable
at Rome that there should be a primate of the English Church,
connected by his Church position with a phase of the supreme
priesthood now condemned and abolished: it is very intelligible that
this priesthood in its present form took up a hostile position towards
the England of that time. In this, moreover, it found an ally ready to
act in Duke William of Normandy, who wished to be regarded as the born
champion of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty, and as the natural successor to
its rights. Once already his father had collected a fleet to restore
the exiled Aethelings, and was only kept back from an invasion by
unfavourable weather. There had often since been rumours, that Edward
had destined Duke William to be his successor; men asserted that
Harold had previously recognised this right, and that in return
William's daughter, and a part of the land as an independent
possession, had been promised him.[12] In his own position William had