But the foreign origin of the new prelates cut them off from the flocks they ruled and bound them firmly to the foreign throne; while their independent position was lessened by a change which seemed intended to preserve it.
Ecclesiastical cases had till now been decided, like civil cases, in shire or hundred-court, where the bishop sate side by side with ealdorman or sheriff.

They were now withdrawn from it to the separate court of the bishop.

The change was pregnant with future trouble to the Crown; but for the moment it told mainly in removing the bishop from his traditional contact with the popular assembly and in effacing the memory of the original equality of the religious with the civil power.
[Sidenote: William's death] In any struggle with feudalism a national king, secure of the support of the Church, and backed by the royal hoard at Winchester, stood in different case from the merely feudal sovereigns of the Continent.

The difference of power was seen as soon as the Conquest was fairly over, and the struggle which William had anticipated opened between the baronage and the Crown.

The wisdom of his policy in the destruction of the great earldoms which had overshadowed the throne was shown in an attempt at their restoration made in 1075 by Roger, the son of his minister William Fitz-Osbern, and by the Breton, Ralf de Guader, whom the King had rewarded for his services at Senlac with the earldom of Norfolk.