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436 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE bribes. As he did not, however, absolutely forbid the giving of gratuities, most suitors at the papal court still deemed it expedient to scatter money with a free hand. It was indeed remarkable that, although many a pope reformed this body at the opening of his pontificate, it always seems to have needed reform by the time the next pope entered office. From the pope's side legates went forth to various parts of Europe to execute his will or to inspect conditions and Papal report upon them to him. They were held to legates strict account if they failed to carry out Inno- cent's instructions to his satisfaction. One in particular, who absolved one of the rival candidates for the German throne without first securing from him the release of certain prisoners, was upon his return deprived by Innocent of his bishopric and banished to an island to pass the rest of his life as a simple monk. It had long bee/i customary for newly elected archbishops to receive from the pope a scarf or collar called the pallium. Archbishops By withholding this badge of their office the and bishops p p e could practically veto their appointment. Innocent in one of the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 speaks of an archbishop's "receiving the pallium, that is to say, the full right to fill his office." The archbishop had a certain authority over a number of bishops whom he could summon to a provincial synod, but some bishops were practically independent of archiepiscopal control and the authority of different archbishops was very unequal. In England there were seventeen bishops under the Archbishop of Canterbury, only two under the Archbishop of York. Before Innocent's time the monasteries had pretty generally escaped from the control of the local bishop and had come directly under papal supervision. From the time of Innocent the popes claimed more and more the right to depose bish- ops and archbishops if their administration or character proved unsatisfactory, and to refuse on occasion to approve of the elections of bishops as well as to withhold the pallium from archbishops. Sometimes, however, it was not easy to depose a prelate whose see was far from Rome. In the case