The dispute between King John of England and Pope Innocent III over his election was a major factor in the crisis which produced the Magna Carta in 1215.

On the death of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1205, the election of a successor encountered difficulties: some of the younger canons of the cathedral chapter elected Reginald, the subprior of Christ Church, Canterbury, as Archbishop while another faction under pressure from King John chose John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich.

[9] His first act as Archbishop was to absolve the King, who swore an oath (which he almost immediately violated) guaranteeing that unjust laws should be repealed and the liberties granted by Henry I should be observed.

At a council of churchmen at Westminster on 25 August 1213, to which certain barons were invited, he read the text of the charter of Henry I and called for its renewal.

In the sequel, Stephen's energetic leadership and the barons' military strength forced John to grant his seal to Magna Carta (15 June 1215).

He obtained a promise from the new pope, Honorius III, that during his lifetime no resident papal legate should be again sent to England, and won other concessions from the same pontiff favourable to the English Church and exalting the see of Canterbury.

They were conveyed by Peter des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester, to Canterbury where the leader of the first group of friars, Gilbert of Fresney, was asked to preach an impromptu sermon on the merits of his new order.

His many sermons and his glosses, commentaries, expositions, and treatises on almost all the books of the Old Testament are preserved in manuscript[15] at Lambeth Palace, at Oxford and Cambridge, and in France.

Classically, scrolls of the books of the Bible have always been divided by blank spaces at the end (petuhoth) or middle (setumoth) of the lines.

While Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro is also known to have come up with a systematic division of the Bible (between 1244 and 1248), it is Langton's arrangement of the chapters that remains in use today.