But not with king and barons only had the archbishop to deal. There were endless difficulties with the clergy concerning the restitution of their property, and the payment of compensation to be settled. And above all there was Nicholas, the papal legate, in England, usurping the primate’s functions, filling up vacant bishoprics and churches, regardless of the rights of the Church and of the archbishop. Nicholas was recalled to Rome when the interdict was finally removed, and in November, 1214, John made a public proclamation that free and undisturbed election to all the churches in his realm should be allowed henceforth. This was an attempt on the king’s part to have the Church on his side against the barons, for the battle was beginning between John and the barons which was to be fought to a bitter end. John’s last campaign to recover the lost Angevine provinces for the English crown ended in disaster, and he returned to England in 1214 to face the full discontent of the barons whom he had harassed and insulted from the day he came to the throne, and of a country suffering from “the evil customs which the king’s father and brother had raised up for the oppression of the Church and realm, together with the abuses which the king himself had added thereto.” The national grievances were enormous and intolerable. The whole administration of justice was corrupt, and no one could be sure how the arbitrary decisions of the king’s officers would be carried out. Liberty of the person was a farce when free men could be arrested, evicted from their lands, exiled and outlawed without legal warrant or a fair trial. “In a word, the entire system of government and administration set up under the Norman kings, and developed under Henry and Richard, had been converted by the ingenuity of John into a most subtle and effective engine of royal extortion, oppression and tyranny over all classes of the nation, from earl to villein.”[29]