The Conquest had some very marked effects in this region of life. In the first place, it was absolutely necessary for William to have the clergy on his side; if he had not he would have nothing to form a counterpoise for the power of the barons, which was already threatening, nor would he have been able to get hold of the people. He wanted to be a national king--the protector of the national Church, the king of the English people. In the hope of securing the support of the bishops he waited for three years before he took summary measures against those who were still secretly or overtly hostile. When patience was seen to be unavailing he deposed Archbishop Stigand, no doubt at the instigation of the Pope, but in his place he set, not a Norman, who would have alienated the people, but a wise Italian, under whose counsels the Norman king and the English people were drawn together almost as closely as the king and people had been before the Normans came. Two effects resulted directly from this. The Conquest of England coincides in point of time with the great period of the Hildebrandine ideas; the reign of Gregory VII. and of the Popes appointed by his influence, in which a new interpretation was put on the relations of Church and State, and a jealous equilibrium established or attempted, the result of which in France and Germany seemed to be the tying of the State to the chariot-wheels of the Church. Of such a consummation there was in England no chance under William and Lanfranc, but nevertheless the coincidence in time was not without its consequences. England and her Church were drawn into the vortex of the Church politics of Europe, and the relations between Church and State in England were re-modelled upon the new type. The courts of the bishops for the trial of clerks were separated from the courts of the sheriffs; the election of prelates was arranged by a sort of compromise between royal power and canonical form; the bishops became barons and held their lands, or a portion of them, by the new baronial tenure; and their councils were marked off by a much broader line than they had been from the councils of the Witan, or the courts of the king. Then, too, a new concordat was arranged to regulate the exercise of the papal power, for which, before the Conquest, the English had had a respectful but very distant regard. The king insisted that when there were rival popes he should be the judge to determine which should be accepted in England; no suit or appeal should be carried to Rome without his leave; none of his servants should be excommunicated against his sovereign will; no legate should land without his permission; no ecclesiastical legislation should be enforced without his approval. [Sidenote: The Norman Bishops. ]