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418 MEDIEVAL^ENGLAND
had been given to the goods and privileges of churches and
monasteries; a coherent body of law had been established; a
higher justice had been made available; and the papacy had
beenaliving source ofcounsel and encouragement. In all this the
papacy, by and large, had acted as ahead working in solidarity
with its members and for their good, and despite very real
abuses and justified complaints the pope was, and was felt to be,
a support and a guide from whom individual churches received
more than they lost. The costs of litigation and protection, if
sometimes excessive, were at least borne by those concerned,
and such quarrels as arose were between the secular power and
the Church or between bishops and regulars, not between the
papacy and its subjects.
The climax ofthis development, so far as England was con/'
cerned, came in the pontificate of Innocent III (1199-1216),
from whom, in the reign of John, both the king and his
opponents solicited aid which the pope did his best to give, and
to whom John in desperation commended his realm as to a
feudal overlord. That episode was at once the climax and the
watershed in the history ofthe political relations ofthe papacy
with England. Thenceforward, at first slowly but afterwards
more rapidly, the solidarity of interest between the Curia and
various parts of the Church began to loosen. The papacy,
wielding unquestioned authority, advanced with apparent
success claims to complete and immediate jurisdiction over
every branch and member of the Church, but often gave the
impression of irresponsible and autocratic action. The Curia
began to exploit the rest ofthe Church for its own profit, and
the papal court, swollen out of all
recognition since the days of
Gregory VII or even ofInnocent III, began to be regarded and
to act as a
bureaucracy whose interests might well conflict with
those ofthe Church as a whole. Two administrative
develop'
ments which attained
maturity in the thirteenth
century were at
once causes and symptoms of this new state of things: papal
taxation, and papal interference with the customary processes of
appointment to prelacies and benefices.
Before the end of the twelfth
century the papal Curia had