The conquest of England may be regarded as a papal triumph over a Church and a nation which had stood apart from Roman Christendom and followed their own devices. Both before and after his victory the Conqueror availed himself of the help of Rome. Nevertheless he was strong enough to hold his own even against Gregory VII., and refused to allow the Pope any authority in his kingdom excepting within limits of his own appointment. The Church equally with the nation was conquered, and tasted the bitterness of defeat, but there was no break in the continuity of its life. Each Norman or French bishop who succeeded to the see of an English predecessor looked on himself as an English bishop, and the Church of the conquered people united conquerors and conquered in one English nation. William strengthened the Church as a means of strengthening himself, and his policy of separating the spiritual and secular courts was followed by few signs of coming conflict during the strong rule of the Norman kings.
The conflict came after a suspension of the royal authority. The immunity of the clergy from secular jurisdiction confronted Henry II. as a dangerous obstacle to the success of his designs for the foundation of a strong and orderly government. His strife with Archbishop Thomas ended in his humiliation, but it left in the Constitutions of Clarendon the groundwork of a system to which the future relations between Church and State made continual and progressive approaches. The Church lost by the dispute; for the energy that might have been devoted to producing a higher clerical standard was frittered in a somewhat ignoble quarrel. Yet it also gained something besides a victory of doubtful benefit. Anselm, in a better cause, had already resisted despotism; and Thomas died for what he believed to be the rights of the Church over which he had been called to rule. Both alike asserted the sacredness of spiritual things. Neither Anselm nor Thomas received any hearty support from Rome; in both cases the action of the Popes appears to have been governed by motives of expediency. Nor was it in the Church's quarrel alone that churchmen dared to encounter the wrath of kings. Thomas of Canterbury, Hugh of Lincoln, and Geoffrey of York each opposed the undue exercise of the royal power in secular matters, and were the earliest assertors of constitutional rights. At the same time, under both the Norman and the first two Plantagenet kings, the Church at large was on the side of the Crown, and did the nation good service by maintaining its authority against the feudal nobility.