The dependence of the Church on the royal power was strictly enforced. Homage was exacted from bishop as from baron. No royal tenant could be excommunicated without the king’s leave. No synod could legislate without his previous assent and subsequent confirmation of its decrees. No papal letters could be received within the realm save by his permission. William firmly repudiated the claims which were now beginning to be put forward by the court of Rome. When Gregory VII called on him to do fealty for his realm, the king sternly refused to admit the claim. “Fealty I have never willed to do, nor do I will to do it now. I have never promised it, nor do I find that my predecessors did it to yours.” The Conquest was hardly over when the struggle between the baronage and the crown began. The wisdom of William’s policy in the destruction of the great earldoms which had overshadowed the throne was shown in an attempt at their restoration made by Roger, the son of his minister, William Fitz-Osbern, and by the Breton Ralf de Guader, whom the king had rewarded for his services at Senlac with the earldom of Norfolk. The rising was quickly suppressed, Roger thrown into prison, and Ralf driven over sea; but the intrigues of the baronage soon found another leader in William’s half-brother, the Bishop of Bayeux. Under pretense of aspiring by arms to the papacy, Bishop Odo collected money and men; but the treasure was at once seized by the royal officers, and the bishop arrested in the midst of the court. Even at the king’s bidding no officer would venture to seize on a prelate of the Church; it was with his own hands that William was forced to effect his arrest. “I arrest not the bishop, but the Earl of Kent,” laughed the Conqueror, and Odo remained a prisoner till William’s death.