[Sidenote: His justification.]

Henry never shook himself free from the difficulties of his own early
misdeeds; but the rights upon which he took his stand were those
exercised by his predecessors. The uncompromising attitude of his
opponents and their humiliation of him made it a life-long struggle
between them. Henry was no saint; but his opponents' tactics were
indefensible. Under less adverse circumstances he might have proved a
successful ruler. But he was the victim of a party which deliberately
subordinated means to ends in pursuit of an ideal which Henry could
scarcely be expected to understand or appreciate.

[Sidenote: Henry V.]

The papal party in its malice had overreached itself in selecting
Henry V as its champion. True, he had destroyed the most stubborn
enemy of the Papacy; but his own interests caused him to adopt his
father's policy. His one object was to recover the prestige which the
German King had lost in the struggles of the last twenty years. He was
undisputed King in Germany; he showed an unscrupulous and overbearing
demeanour which aroused opposition on all sides. He was not likely to
be content with less power than his father had demanded over the
German clergy, and at the first vacancies he invested the new bishops.

[Sidenote: Growth of a party of compromise on investiture.]

Henry's bold action was not altogether without reason. For some years
there had been growing up within the ranks of the advocates of reform
a moderate party which, while opposed to simony and clerical marriage,
saw in the continued and close union of Church and State an