His temper was now to influence the whole system of government.  In 1227 Henry declared himself of age; and though Hubert still remained Justiciar every year saw him more powerless in his struggle with the tendencies of the king.  The death of Stephen Langton in 1228 was a yet heavier blow to English freedom.  In persuading Rome to withdraw her Legate the Primate had averted a conflict between the national desire for self-government and the Papal claims of overlordship.  But his death gave the signal for a more serious struggle, for it was in the oppression of the Church of England by the Popes through the reign of Henry that the little rift first opened which was destined to widen into the gulf that parted the one from the other at the Reformation.  In the mediaeval theory of the Papacy, as Innocent and his successors held it, Christendom, as a spiritual realm of which the Popes were the head, took the feudal form of the secular realms which lay within its pale.  The Pope was its sovereign, the Bishops were his barons, and the clergy were his under vassals.  As the king demanded aids and subsidies in case of need from his liegemen, so in the theory of Rome might the head of the Church demand aid in need from the priesthood.  And at this moment the need of the Popes was sore.  Rome had plunged into her desperate conflict with the Emperor, Frederick the Second, and was looking everywhere for the means of recruiting her drained exchequer.  On England she believed herself to have more than a spiritual claim for support.  She regarded the kingdom as a vassal kingdom, and as bound to aid its overlord.  It was only by the promise of a heavy subsidy that Henry in 1229 could buy the Papal confirmation of Langton’s successor.  But the baronage was of other mind than Henry as to this claim of overlordship, and the demand of an aid to Rome from the laity was at once rejected by them.  Her spiritual claim over the allegiance of the clergy however remained to fall back upon, and the clergy were in the Pope’s hand.  Gregory the Ninth had already claimed for the Papal See a right of nomination to some prebends in each cathedral church; he now demanded a tithe of all the moveables of the priesthood, and a threat of excommunication silenced their murmurs.  Exaction followed exaction as the needs of the Papal treasury grew greater.  The very rights of lay patrons were set aside, and under the name of “reserves” presentations to English benefices were sold in the Papal market, while Italian clergy were quartered on the best livings of the Church.

[Sidenote:  Fall of Hubert de Burgh]

The general indignation at last found vent in a wide conspiracy.  In 1231 letters from “the whole body of those who prefer to die rather than be ruined by the Romans” were scattered over the kingdom by armed men; tithes gathered for the Pope or the foreign priests were seized and given to the poor; the Papal collectors were beaten and their bulls trodden under foot.  The remonstrances of Rome only made