On the first of August (1107) a council of the bishops, abbots and chief men of the realm was held at London in the king’s palace, and for three whole days the question of the investitures of churches was discussed by the king and the bishops in Anselm’s absence, some urging upon him to maintain the practice of his father and brother in defiance of the apostolic command. For the Pope, taking a firm stand upon the decree which had been published thereon, had conceded the homage which Pope Urban had prohibited equally with investitures, and thereby secured the king’s consent to his view of the investitures.... Afterwards, in the presence of Anselm, and the whole council standing, the king agreed and ordained that from that time forward no man should be invested in any bishopric or abbey by the king or the hand of any layman in England by the giving of the pastoral staff or ring, Anselm on his side granting that no man elected to be a prelate should be deprived of consecration to the dignity he had received, by reason of the homage which he should do to the king. Upon this settlement of the dispute, institutions were made by the king, without investiture of the pastoral staff or ring, by the counsel of Anselm and the chief men of the realm, to almost all the churches of England, so long bereft of their pastors. OPPRESSIVE TAXATION UNDER HENRY I. (1105). =Source.=--Eadmer, _Historia Novorum in Anglia_, ed. Rule, p. 184. (Rolls Series.) The character and number of the burdens, under which the whole of England was crushed at this time, are difficult, I know, to describe. For the king, leaving Normandy because he could not conquer the whole of it by the means described above,[28] returned to England to collect larger supplies of money with which he might go back and subdue the remainder, disinheriting his brother. In the levying of this money the collectors showed no regard for pity or mercy, but all men suffered a ruthless and outrageous exaction, as those who came to us testified. Indeed you might have seen men who had nothing to give driven from their own homes, or the doors of their houses torn off and carried away, and themselves exposed to wholesale plunder; or they were reduced to extreme poverty, their mean furniture being seized, or at any rate persecuted and tortured in other shameful ways. Against those who were thought to have any wealth certain new and ingeniously devised penalties were charged, and so, when they dared not venture to implead the king for the defence of their land, their possessions were seized and themselves reduced to serious distress. But these measures perhaps will be deemed slight by some, because they were not peculiar to king Henry’s reign; many a like oppression had been committed under his brother, not to mention his father king William. Yet they were thought harder and more intolerable, because much less than usual was found to be extracted from a people already despoiled and exhausted.