They nominated to all vacant benefices, assembled synods, and were anxious to maintain ecclesiastical privileges, which never could be fully protected without encroachments on the civi[**] power.

If there were the least concurrence or opposition, it was always supposed that the civil power was to give way; every deed, which had the least pretence of holding of any thing spiritual, as marriages, testaments, promissory oaths, were brought into the spiritual court, and could not be canvassed before a civil magistrate.

These were the established laws of the church; and where a legate was sent immediately from Rome, he was sure to maintain the papal claims with the utmost rigor; but it was an advantage to the king to have the archbishop of Canterbury appointed legate, because the connections of that prelate with the kingdom tended to moderate his measures.

William of Newbridge, p.

383, (who is copied by later historians), asserts that Geoffrey had some title to the counties of Maine and Anjou.