The absolute supremacy of the Conqueror in ecclesiastical matters is expressed in three rules which he is said to have laid down, and which define his rights in relation to the papacy. He would have no Pope acknowledged as apostolic without his bidding, and no papal letters brought into his kingdom unless he approved them. Synodical decrees were to have no force unless he had first ordained them; and none of his barons or officers of state were to be excommunicated or subjected to ecclesiastical rigour without his precept. Nor did he hesitate to return a flat refusal to a papal demand; for when Gregory sent a legate to admonish him to be more punctual in forwarding Peter's pence, and to demand a profession of fealty to the Holy See, he wrote that he admitted the one claim and not the other. Fealty he would not do, for he had not promised it, nor did he find that earlier kings had done it. He took his stand on his position as king of England; that which his predecessors had done he would do, but he would not grant the Pope any authority over his kingdom that they had not granted. Even Gregory was forced to suffer this; he seems to have blamed Lanfranc for the king's independent answer, bade him come to Rome, and urged him to bring William to obedience. Lanfranc defended himself in becoming terms, but stayed where he was, and at last the Pope threatened to suspend him if he did not obey his summons. Gregory, however, had powerful enemies nearer home, and did not care to quarrel with a king who steadily refused to take part against him. His struggle with Henry IV. gave occasion for the exercise, perhaps for the enunciation, of the first of the Conqueror's rules, and Lanfranc writes that "our island" had not yet decided between Gregory and the antipope Clement. Lanfranc's own sympathies, of course, were with Gregory, but he would not condemn the action of the Emperor; he thought that the proper attitude for England was one of neutrality. [Sidenote: Norman bishops.]