Hildebrand however not only gave William, in his great stroke for an empire, the tremendous support of the Pope's authority but backed him up in many of his most high-handed and arbitrary proceedings against the Saxon prelates and rich abbeys which the Conqueror spoiled at his pleasure. It must not be forgotten, in respect to these latter spoliations, that the internal war which was raging in the Church all over the world, between the new race of reformers and the mass of ordinary clergy--who had committed many ecclesiastical crimes, who sometimes even had married and were comfortable in the enjoyment of a sluggish toleration, or formed connections that were winked at by a contemptuously sympathetic world; or who had bought their benefices great and small, through an entangled system of gifts, graces, and indulgences, as well as by the boldest simony--made every kind of revolution within the Church possible, and produced endless depositions and substitutions on every side. When, as we have seen, the bishop of a great continental see in the centre of civilisation could be turned out remorselessly from his bishopric on conviction of any of these common crimes and forced into the Cloister to amend his ways and end his life, it is scarcely likely that more consideration would be shown for an unknown prelate far away across the Northern seas, though it would seem to be insubordination rather than any ecclesiastical vice with which the Saxon clergy were chiefly charged. This first instance however of the papal right to sanction revolution, and substitute one claimant for another as the selection of Heaven, is perhaps the strongest proof that could be found of the impossibility of that ideal, and of the tribunal thus set up over human thrones and human rights. The papal see was thus drawn in to approve and uphold one of the most bloody invasions and one of the most cruel conquests ever known--and did so with a confidence and certainty, in an ignorance, and with a bias, which makes an end of all those lofty pretensions to perfect impartiality and a judgment beyond all influences of passion which alone could justify its existence. A great change had come over the firmament since the days when Leo IX. cleansed the Church at Rheims, and held that wonderful Council which set down so many of the mighty from their seats. Henry III., the enemy of simony, was dead, and the world had changed. As we shall often have occasion to remark, the papal rule of justice and purity was strong and succeeded--so long as the forces of the secular powers agreed with it. But when, as time went on, the Church found itself in conflict with these secular powers, a very different state of affairs ensued.