About Easter, 1070, three ecclesiastics of high rank, sent by the Pope, at King William's request, arrived in England in the capacity of legates. One was bishop of Sion, the other two were cardinals, and their errand was to set the Church of England in order. After being received by William with great honour, and magnificently entertained in the castle of Winchester, the legates convoked a great assembly of Norman priests and warriors, and summoned to it the Anglo-Saxon prelates and abbots. Having opened the business of the assembly by solemnly placing the Confessor's crown on the Conqueror's head, they proceeded to the discharge of their harsh duties, and pronounced sentence of deposition on many abbots and prelates. Among those who were deposed, the most important, from his position and influence, was Robert Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury. The difficulty of finding a proper successor to Stigand was not overlooked. Without delay, the legates prepared to bestow the archbishopric of Canterbury on Lanfranc of Pavia, one of the greatest scholars and most remarkable men of the century in which he lived. Lanfranc was a native of the city of Pavia, and a man of gentle blood. A scholar by nature, he early applied himself to those studies which enabled him to figure as the leader of the intellectual movement of the age. It has been said that, "to comprehend the extent of his talents, one must be Herodian in grammar, Aristotle in dialectics, Cicero in rhetoric, Augustine and Jerome in scriptural lore." Becoming a monk of Bec-Hellouin, Lanfranc rapidly raised that humble monastery to the dignity of a university, and came to be acknowledged as the great teacher of Latin Christendom. So signal was his success, and so high his reputation, that, from the remotest parts of Western Europe, and even from Greece, students resorted to Bec-Hellouin as to a new Athens. While at Bec-Hellouin, Lanfranc had the gratification to gain the confidence of William the Norman, and he became zealously attached to the ambitious duke's fortunes. But a serious difference arose. Lanfranc happened to set himself in opposition to William's marriage with Matilda of Flanders, as being within the degrees of relationship prohibited by the Church; and as, in regard to this affair, the duke would brook no contradiction, the priest of Pavia was commanded to depart. It is related that William, to speed Lanfranc on his way back to his native land, sent him a horse so lame of one foot, that it might be said to go on three legs, and that Lanfranc, meeting William on the road, begged at least to have a quadruped, and not a tripod, for his journey. But however that may have been, Lanfranc found his way to Rome, and placed himself under the wing of the Pope.