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 submission, the Pope supported him against the barons, who, however, did not give way in their opposition to the King, and it is very doubtful whether the Pope would have been able to save the kingdom for John. Fortunately John died at this time, and the accession of the young Henry paved the way for peace. During the minority that followed, England was practically ruled by the Pope through his legates. The Pope recognised Henry as in a special sense a pupil and orphan left to the charge of the Apostolic See, and Henry himself afterwards accepted this position. The first of these papal legates was Gualo, who practically ruled England with uncontrolled power, going into all kinds of details, even inquiring by direction from Rome into the sanitary condition of the cathedral close at Salisbury. The Pope went so far as to direct the next legate, Pandulph, to override the decision of a court of law, and to proceed as if no order of the King's Court existed, a clear proof that the Pope considered his authority to be superior to the royal authority. All this was of course most galling to such men as Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury; and, as events turned out, it became manifest that it was impossible for any person living at Rome, however exalted and however good his intentions, to interfere with advantage in the affairs of a country like England.

Grosseteste was born in 1175 at Stradbroke, in Suffolk, of humble parentage. In after years a nobleman once asked him how he had managed to gain his courtly manner, and Grosseteste's reply was to the effect that he had from his early years studied