The point at which the English Church falls into line with the rest of the Church in respect of obedience to Rome and the full working of the canon law of the Roman Church forms the natural terminus ad quem of the story which I have been tracing. But it is necessary to review the history of the next thirty or forty years in the light of the conclusions reached in the last chapter, in order to see whether the events of those years show the victory of the Papacy to have been a definite one, whether the position it had won was maintained. Farther than John's surrender to the Pope it is obviously not necessary to go, but up to that point there is a certain ambiguity in the situation which needs briefly to be elucidated.

The terms on which Henry was reconciled with the Church at Avranches in 1172 are told us, in identical language, by the king himself and by the papal legates. He promised: (1) To maintain 200 knights at Jerusalem. (2) To allow freedom of appeals to Rome; if he was suspicious of an appellant, he might exact a pledge from him that he was planning no injury to king or kingdom. This saving clause did not, as some people have suggested, make the concession nugatory; we have seen that appeals at once became numerous, and with what result.