It was certainly not a boon for England that her present sovereign was destined to remain within her borders for the greater part of his remaining years. To know John well was to loathe him, as every contemporary chronicle bears witness. The two years that followed the loss of Normandy were a time of growing discontent and incessant disputes about taxation. The king kept collecting scutages and tallages, yet barons and towns complained that nothing seemed to be done with the money he collected. At last, however, in 1206, the king did make an expedition to Poitou, and recovered some of its southern borders. Yet, with his usual inconsequence, he did not follow up his success, but made a two years' truce with Philip of France on the basis of _uti possidetis_--which left Normandy and all the territories on and about the Loire in the hands of the conqueror. Quarrel with the Papacy. It is probable that this pacification was the result of a new quarrel which John had just taken up with a new enemy--the Papacy. The dispute on the question of free election, which was to range over all the central years of his reign, had just begun. In the end of 1205 Hubert Walter, archbishop of Canterbury, had died. The king announced his intention of procuring the election of John de Gray, bishop of Norwich, as his successor; but, though his purpose was well known, the chapter (i.e. the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury) met secretly and elected their sub-prior Reginald as archbishop. They sent him to Rome at once, to receive confirmation from Pope Innocent III., whom they knew to be a zealous champion of the rights of the Church. But John descended upon them in great wrath, and by threats compelled them to hold a second meeting, and to elect his nominee Gray, in whose name application for confirmation was also made to the pope. Innocent, however, seeing a splendid chance of asserting his authority, declared both the elections that had taken place invalid, the first because it had been clandestine, the second because it had been held under _force majeure_, and proceeded to nominate a friend of his own--Cardinal Stephen Langton, an Englishman of proved capacity and blameless life, then resident in Rome. He was far the worthiest of the three candidates, but it was an intolerable invasion of the rights of the English crown and the English Church that an archbishop should be foisted on them in this fashion. The representatives of the chapter who had been sent to Rome were persuaded or compelled to elect him in the pope's presence (Dec. 1206).