as he knew that all claimants willingly conspire to flatter and aggrandize that authority from which they expect a confirmation of their own. The first election, he nulled, because its irregularity was glaring. The right of the bishops was entirely rejected: the Pope looked with an evil eye upon those whose authority he was every day usurping. The second election was set aside, as made at the king's instance: this was enough to make it very irregular. The canon law had now grown up to its full strength. The enlargement of the prerogative of the Pope was the great object of this jurisprudence,--a prerogative which, founded on fictitious monuments, that are forged in an ignorant age, easily admitted by a credulous people, and afterwards confirmed and enlarged by these admissions, not satisfied with the supremacy, encroached on every minute part of Church government, and had almost annihilated the episcopal jurisdiction throughout Europe. Some canons had given the metropolitan a power of nominating a bishop, when the circumstances of the election were palpably irregular; and as it does not appear that there was any other judge of the irregularity than the metropolitan himself, the election below in effect became nugatory. The Pope, taking the irregularity in this case for granted, in virtue of this canon, and by his plenitude of power, ordered the deputies of Canterbury to proceed to a new election. At the same time he recommended to their choice Stephen Langton, their countryman,--a person already distinguished for his learning, of irreproachable morals, and free from every canonical impediment. This authoritative request the monks had not the courage to oppose in the Pope's presence and in his own city. They murmured, and submitted. [Sidenote: A.D. 1208.]