The ecclesiastical system of the Norman kings may be summed up as a generally successful attempt to give the Church power of action apart from the State, so far as was consistent with the supremacy of the Crown. Under Rufus this system became a mere means of tyranny; and among the many glories that attend the memory of St. Anselm, not the least is that he delivered the Church from the domination of the feudal idea, which would have destroyed her spirituality and left her helpless before the royal power. By the Conqueror and Henry I. the supremacy was used to establish harmony of action between Church and State, and to preserve the national character of the Church. Nevertheless the new relations with Rome introduced by the Conquest began to bear fruit in Henry's time, for on all occasions, both by the grant of legatine commissions and by upholding the pretensions of York, the Popes strove to depress the primatial see and to increase their own authority in England.
Although Henry had none of the brutal contempt for law that distinguished his brother, he was not less despotic, and his policy towards the Church differed from that pursued by his father in that, while the Conqueror made her co-ordinate under himself with the State, he degraded her to the position of a servant. He kept the see of Canterbury vacant for five years after the death of Anselm; all ecclesiastical matters were governed by political or personal considerations rather than with an eye to the true interests of the Church, and Henry was not above making money from ecclesiastical appointments. His chief adviser was Roger, bishop of Salisbury, an able minister and a magnificent noble, who owed his preferment to his administrative talents; for Henry employed clerical ministers, partly because he was thus enabled to secure men who had received a regular official training as royal clerks, and partly, no doubt, because their celibacy made it less likely that they would put their authority to a dangerous use. He rewarded them with bishoprics and other preferments, and thus secularized the Church in order to make her serve the State. At the same time, his reign saw the beginning of a movement that was destined to revive her spiritual character, and by that revival to increase her power and dignity. This quickened influence was due to the higher life that followed the introduction of the Cistercian rule.