With the character and meaning of the "confirmation" obtained by Stephen from the pope, I have dealt in the body of this work. There are, however, a few minor points which had better be disposed of here. Of these the first is Miss Norgate's contention that when, in 1148, Stephen met Geoffrey's challenge to submit his claims to Rome, "by a counter challenge calling upon Geoffrey to give up his equally ill-gotten duchy before he would agree to any further proceeding in the matter," "Geoffrey took him at his word, but in a way which he was far from desiring. He did give up the duchy of Normandy, by making it over to his own son, Henry Fitz-Empress."[777] A reference to the passage in the _Historia_[778] on which Miss Norgate relies, will show at once that Geoffrey, on receiving the counter-challenge, abandoned all thought of carrying the matter further.[779] It also incidentally proves that Geoffrey had refused admission to his dominions to either pope or legate. This is a fact of interest. This was not the only occasion on which Stephen's "recognition" by the pope stood him in good stead. At the crisis of 1141, the sensitive conscience of Archbishop Theobald had prevented his transferring his allegiance to the Empress, badly though Stephen had treated him, till he received permission from the Lord's anointed to follow in the footsteps of his brother prelates.[780] The loyal primate explained the position when Gilbert Foliot had enraged the Angevins by doing homage to Stephen for the see of Hereford. Wholly Angevin though they were in their sympathies, the prelates maintained that they were bound as Churchmen to follow the pope's ruling, and that the Papacy had "received" Stephen as king.[781] Another point deserving notice is the choice of Arnulf, afterwards the well-known Bishop of Lisieux, as Stephen's chief envoy in 1136. For Miss Norgate, oddly enough, misses this point in her sketch of this distinguished man's career.[782] She has nothing to say of his doings between his _Tractatus de Schismate_, "about 1130," and his appointment to the see of Lisieux in 1141, from which date "for the next forty years there was hardly a diplomatic transaction of any kind, ecclesiastical or secular, in England or in Gaul, in which he was not at some moment or in some way or other concerned."[783] This, therefore, constitutes a welcome addition to his career, and, moreover, gives us the reason of Geoffrey's aversion to him, when duke, and of the "heavy price" with which his favour had to be bought by Arnulf.[784]