Their forethought was insufficient permanently to prevent royal influence from bending canonical election to its will. Henry III., indeed, in his reissues was made to repeat the phrase _quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit_, but omitted all reference alike to canonical election and to the charters of 21st November, 1214, and 15th January, 1215. Later in his reign, he took advantage of this, with the Pope’s connivance or support, to reduce again the rights of cathedral chapters in the appointment of bishops to the sinecure they had been before. It is true that Henry III. was prone, alike by nature and from policy, to lean on the papal arm, and that the _Curia_ at Rome rather than the _Curia Regis_ for a time dominated the appointment to vacant sees. Henry and Innocent IV. indeed formed a tacit alliance for dividing all fat livings among their respective creatures, king’s men or pope’s men, who had little interest in England or its welfare. Edward I., impatient of foreign dictation as he was, had to submit to a partial continuance of “provisions” for hangers-on of the papacy in his insular domains; but the national church had little to gain. The canons elected the nominee of king or pope, as each was, for the moment, in the ascendant.[348] ----- Footnote 348: Cf _supra_, p. 167. ----- An interesting, if purely academic, question might be raised as to how far the rights guaranteed by Magna Carta to the English church were meant to imply freedom from papal as well as from royal interference. It is clear that the movement which culminated in the charter of 21st November, 1214, originated in England, not at Rome; and apparently Nicholas, the papal legate at that date, opposed the endeavours of Stephen Langton to obtain it. The archbishop indeed looked upon the legate as the chief obstacle to the reform by the king of the grievances of the national church.[349] In spite of Magna Carta, then, the independence of the national church retrograded, rather than advanced, during the long alliance between Henry III. and the successive occupants of the papal throne.[350] ----- Footnote 349: See Miss Norgate, _John Lackland_, p. 208, and authorities there cited. Footnote 350: Cf. Prothero, _Simon de Montfort_, p. 152. “The English church was indeed less independent of the king in 1258 than in 1215, and far less independent of the Pope than in the days of Becket.” -----