Henry's long reign (1100-1135) was more noteworthy for the tendencies which were at work in it, than for the particular events which mark its individual years. It is mainly important as the time of the silent growth together of Norman and English, and the stereotyping of the constitution on a strong monarchical basis. In his day the king was everything, and the Great Council of tenants-in-chief was no check on him, and did little more than register his decrees. If his successors had all been like himself, England might have become a pure despotism, though one well ordered and--considering the lights of the times--not oppressively administered. [Sidenote: =Fresh disputes with the Church.=] The strife between the monarchy and the Church, which had first taken shape in the quarrel of William Rufus and Anselm, continued in Henry's time, but raged on a new point of issue. When the archbishop returned from exile, he refused to take the usual oath of homage, and to be reinvested in his see by the new king, alleging that, as a spiritual person, he owed fealty to God alone, and received all his power and authority from God, and not from the king. This new and strange doctrine he had picked up in Rome during his exile: the papacy was at this time putting forth those monstrous claims to dominion over kings and princes with which it had been inspired a few years before by the imperious Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII.). Henry could only reply that, though the archbishop was a spiritual person, he was also a great tenant-in-chief, holding vast estates, and that for them he must do homage to the crown, like all other feudal landowners. Anselm refused, and there the matter stood still, for neither would yield, though they treated each other courteously enough, and did not indulge in the angry recrimination which had been wont to take place when Rufus was in Henry's place. Anselm even went into exile again for a space. But at last he and the king met at Bec, in Normandy, in 1106, and hit on a wise compromise, which they agreed to apply both to Anselm's case and to all future investitures of bishops. The newly elected prelate was to do homage, as a feudal tenant, for the estates of his see; but he was not to receive the symbols of his spiritual authority from the king, but was to take up his ring and crozier from the high altar of his cathedral, as direct gifts from God. This decision served as a model for the agreement between the Pope and the empire, when fourteen years later the "Contest about Investiture," as this widespread dispute was called, was brought to an end on the continent. [Sidenote: =Wars with Duke Robert.--Partial conquest of Normandy.=]