Lanfranc died in 1089,--the ablest churchman of the century next to the great Hildebrand, his master. It was through his influence that England was more closely allied with Rome, and that those fetters were imposed by the popes which the ablest of the Norman kings were unable to break. The Pope had sanctioned the atrocious conquest of England by the Normans--beneficially as it afterwards turned out--only on the condition that extraordinary powers should be conferred on the Archbishop of Canterbury, his representative in enforcing the papal claims, who thus became virtually independent of the king,--a spiritual monarch of such dignity that he was almost equal to his sovereign in authority. There was no such See in Germany and France as that of Canterbury. Its mighty and lordly metropolitan had the exclusive right of crowning the king. To him the Archbishop of York, once his equal, had succumbed. He was not merely primate, but had the supreme control of the Church in England. He could depose prelates and excommunicate the greatest personages; he enjoyed enormous revenues; he was vicegerent of the Pope. Loth was William to concede such great powers to the Pope, but he could not be King of England without making a king of Canterbury. So he made choice of Lanfranc--then Abbot of St. Stephen, the most princely of the Norman convents--for the highest ecclesiastical dignity in his realm, and perhaps in Europe after the papacy itself. Lanfranc was his friend, and also the friend of Hildebrand; and no collision took place between them, for neither could do without the other. William was willing to waive some of his prerogatives as a sovereign for such a kingdom as England, which made him the most powerful monarch in Western Europe, since he ruled the fairest part of France and the whole British realm, the united possession of both Saxons and Danes, with more absolute authority than any feudal sovereign at that time possessed. His victorious knights were virtually a standing army, bound to him with more than feudal loyalty, since he divided among them the lands of the conquered Saxons, and gave to their relatives the richest benefices of the Church. With the aid of an Italian prelate, bound in allegiance to the Pope, he hoped to cement his conquest. Lanfranc did as he wished,--removed the Saxon bishops, and gave their sees to Normans. Since Dunstan, no great Saxon bishop had arisen. The Saxon bishops were feeble and indolent, and were not capable of making an effective resistance. But Lanfranc was even more able than Dunstan,--a great statesman as well as prelate. He ruled England as grand justiciary in the absence of the monarch, and was thus viceregent of the kingdom. But while he despoiled the Saxon prelates, he would suffer no royal spoliation of the Norman bishops. He even wrested away from Odo, half-brother of the Conqueror, the manors he held as Count of Kent, which originally belonged to the See of Canterbury.