The pope, of course, could not grant Henry’s request. To allow the high offices of the Church to be disposed of at the caprice of kings and princes, without any recognition of the sacredness of these offices, to admit that the chief ministers of religion were first and foremost “the king’s men,” seemed to Pope Paschal, as it seemed to Anselm, a concession to evil, and the establishment of a principle which experience had proved thoroughly vicious and mischievous. Then for nearly three years a correspondence dragged on between Henry and the pope, neither wishing for an open rupture, and in the meantime, Henry, backed by most of the bishops and nobles in setting at nought the canons which had forbidden investiture, proposed to go on appointing and investing new bishops as before. Finally, the king appealed to Anselm to go to Rome “and try what he could do with the pope, lest the king by losing the rights of his predecessors should be disgraced.” Anselm was now (1103) an old man of seventy, but he agreed to go; only “he could do nothing to the prejudice of the liberty of the Church or his own honour.” What Henry hoped for was that the pope would grant some personal dispensation in the matter of the royal “customs,” and he had tried to persuade Anselm that such dispensation was sure to be granted. Anselm did not believe the dispensation possible or desirable, but left the decision with the acknowledged head of Christendom at Rome; and though for another three years Henry urged his suit, no dispensation could be wrung from the pope. All that the pope would grant was that the bishops might do “homage” to the crown for their temporal rights. At last, in April, 1106, Anselm returned to England. The bishops themselves, who had sided with the king against him, implored him to return, so wretched had become the state of religion in England in his absence. They promised to do his commands and to fight with him the battle of the Lord. Henry, fresh from the conquest of Normandy, sent word of his good-will, and of his desire for the archbishop’s presence. The long drawn-out battle was over, and the king had to be content with “homage,” and to resign the claim to investiture.