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[Illustration: _John Hampden._
_From a print by J. Houbraken 1740._]
LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE
Studies in Democratic History
by
JOSEPH CLAYTON ❦ ❦
With a Frontispiece in Photogravure
and Numerous Other Illustrations
New York: Mitchell Kennerley
Two East Twenty-Ninth Street · MCMXI
To the Memory of
FREDERICK YORK POWELL
Regius Professor of Modern History
at the University of Oxford
1894–1904
“I loved him in life and I love him
none the less in death: for what
I loved in him is not dead.”
CONTENTS
_Page_
PREFACE xi
I. ARCHBISHOP ANSELM AND NORMAN AUTOCRACY, 1093–1130 3
II. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY, THE DEFENDER OF THE POOR, 1162–1170 33
III. WILLIAM FITZOSBERT, THE FIRST ENGLISH AGITATOR, 1188–1189 69
IV. STEPHEN LANGTON AND THE GREAT CHARTER, 1207–1215 81
V. BISHOP GROSSETESTE, THE REFORMER, 1235–1253 99
VI. SIMON OF MONTFORT AND THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT, 1258–1265 117
VII. WAT TYLER AND THE PEASANT REVOLT, 1381 141
VIII. JACK CADE, THE CAPTAIN OF KENT, 1450 173
IX. SIR THOMAS MORE AND FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE, 1529–1535 193
X. ROBERT KET AND THE NORFOLK RISING, 1549 217
XI. ELIOT, HAMPDEN, AND PYM AND THE SUPREMACY OF THE COMMONS,
1626–1643 245
XII. JOHN LILBURNE AND THE LEVELLERS, 1647–1653 277
XIII. WINSTANLEY THE DIGGER, 1649–1650 293
XIV. MAJOR CARTWRIGHT, THE FATHER OF REFORM, 1776–1820 307
XV. ERNEST JONES AND CHARTISM, 1838–1868 319
CONCLUSION 335
INDEX 339
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
JOHN HAMPDEN
_From the Engraving by Jacob Houbraken_ _Frontispiece_
facing p.
ARCHBISHOP ANSELM
_From an Old French Engraving in the British Museum_ 3
THOMAS À BECKET
_From an Engraving after Van Eyck_ 33
KING RICHARD II.
_From the Panel Painting in the Sanctuary in Westminster Abbey_ 141
SIR THOMAS MORE
_From the Drawing by Hans Holbein_ 193
SIR JOHN ELIOT
_From a Steel Engraving by William Holl_ 245
JOHN PYM
_From the Engraving by Jacob Houbraken_ 257
MAJOR CARTWRIGHT
_From a Contemporary Drawing_ 307
PREFACE
“_Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers who begat us._”
The names of the seventeen men, here named “Leaders of the People,” are
for the most part familiar in our mouths as household words. Those who
triumphed, like Anselm and Stephen Langton; or whose cause triumphed,
like Simon of Montfort, Eliot, Pym and Hampden, are beyond any loss of
fame. Those who in high place quitted themselves like men and died game
(if the phrase may be permitted), as did Thomas Becket and Sir Thomas
More, have, for all time, deservedly their reward. The unsuccessful
rebels, FitzOsbert (called Longbeard), Wat Tyler, Jack Cade and Robert
Ket, are hard put to get rid of the obloquy heaped upon them by
contemporary authority; while the later rebels, equally unsuccessful,
Lilburne, Winstanley, Major Cartwright and Ernest Jones, relying on
the pen rather than the sword, escaped the hangman, and in so doing
narrowly escaped oblivion. Good Bishop Grosseteste, living out his long
life, thwarted often, but unmartyred, enjoys the reputation commonly
awarded to conscientious public servants who die in harness.
On the whole, re-perusing the records of these seventeen men, who would
altogether reverse the verdicts of time? The obloquy may be removed
when the work of the rebels is fairly seen, and it may be judged that
they deserved better of the State than appeared when they troubled its
peace. The rebels of the pen, too, should be worthy of recollection
in this age, for they wrought manfully with the weapon now at once so
powerful and so popular. The greater men of our series stand out higher
as the distance increases. So far readjusted, the awards of history may
be accepted.
But with all the differences of character, one common quality binds
these men whose stories are here retold--a resolute hatred of
oppression. And one common work, successful or unsuccessful, was
theirs--to labour for the liberties of England and the health of its
people. The value of each man’s work can only be stated approximately:
it is difficult to make full allowance for the vastly different parts
our heroes, statesmen and rebels alike, were called to play. The great
thing is, that whatever the part, they played it faithfully, as they
read it, to the end. We may admit the degrees of service given: it is
impossible to do otherwise. Some of these Leaders shone as great orbs
of light in their day and generation, lighting not only England, but
all western Europe--and still their light burns true and clear across
the centuries. Others were but flickering rush-lights--long extinct
now. But none were will-o’-the-wisps, for all helped to show the road
to be travelled by English men and women seeking freedom, and moving
ever towards democracy. At the least, we--enjoying an inheritance won
at a great price, and only to be retained on terms no easier--can
keep the memory green of some few valiant servants of our liberties.
What is wanted is a real history of the growth of the idea of freedom
and of popular liberty in this country; and these rough biographical
sketches may be accepted as a contribution to the materials for such a
book. “Biography is a department of history, and stands to it as the
life-history of a plant or an animal does to general biology.”
I have gone back to all the original sources to get once more at the
lives of these “Leaders of the People,” and to see them as they were
seen by their contemporaries; but I have also done my best to read
what the historians of our own day have written concerning them, and
in mentioning my authorities I have, in each case, given a list of the
modern books that seem to me valuable.
J. C.
_September, 1910._
Archbishop Anselm and Norman Autocracy
1093–1109
AUTHORITIES: Eadmer--_Historia Novorum_ and _Life of Anselm_; Orderic
of St. Evroul; _The English Chronicle_; Florence of Worcester; William
of Malmesbury; (Rolls Series); Sir Francis Palgrave--_England and
Normandy_; Freeman--_Norman Conquest_, Vol. V., _Reign of William
Rufus_; Dean Church--_St. Anselm_.
[Illustration: ARCHBISHOP ANSELM
(_From an old French Engraving in the British Museum._)]
ARCHBISHOP ANSELM AND NORMAN AUTOCRACY
1093–1109.
The first real check to the absolutism of Norman rule in England was
given by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury.
The turbulent ambition of Norman barons threatened the sovereignity of
William the Conqueror and of his son, the Red King, often enough, but
these outbreaks promised no liberty for England. The fires of English
revolt were stamped out utterly five years after Senlac, and the great
Conqueror at his death left England crushed; but he left it under the
discipline of religion, and he left it loyal to the authority of the
crown, grateful for the one protection against the lawless rule of the
barons.
The English Chronicler, writing as “one who knew him and once lived at
his court,” summed up the character of the Conqueror’s life and work in
words that have been freely quoted through the centuries:--
“King William was wiser and mightier than any of his forerunners. He
built many minsters, and was gentle to God’s servants, though stern
beyond all measure to those who withstood his will.... So stark and
fierce was he that none dared resist his will. Earls that did aught
against his bidding he put in bonds, and bishops he set off their
bishoprics, and abbots off their abbacies, and thanes he cast into
prison. He spared not his own brother, called Odo, who was the chief
man next to the king, but set him in prison. So just was he that the
good peace he made in this land cannot be forgotten. For he made it so
that a man might fare alone over his realm with his bosom full of gold,
unhurt; and no man durst slay another man whatsoever the evil he hath
done him; and if any man harmed a woman he was punished accordingly. He
ruled over England, and surveyed the land with such skill that there
was not one hide but that he knew who held it, and what it was worth,
and these things he set in a written book. So mighty was he that he
held Normandy and Brittany, won England and Maine, brought Scotland and
Wales to bow to him, and would, had he lived two years longer, have
won Ireland by his renown, without need of weapons. Yet surely in his
time men had much travail and very many sorrows; and poor men he made
to toil hard for the castles he had built. He fell on covetousness, and
the love of gold; and took by right and by unright many marks of gold
and more hundred pounds of silver of his people, and for little need.
He made great deer-parks, and ordered that whoso slew hart or hind, him
men should blind; and forbade men to slay deer or boar, and made the
hare go free; he loved the big game as if he were their father. And the
poor men that were oppressed he recked nought of. All must follow the
king’s will if they would live, or have land, or even a quiet life.”
But now, in September, 1087, the great King William was dead, with
his life-work done; and from the tyranny of a strong and just ruler,
England passed to the despotism of his fearless son, William the Red,
who was “terrible and mighty over his land and his men and towards all
his neighbours;” in whose reign “all that was loathsome in the eyes of
God and righteous men was of common use; wherefore he was loathed by
well-nigh all his people, and hateful to God as his end showed.”
There was much of the later Puritan in William I. in the steadfastness
of purpose, the suppression of “malignants,” and determination to have
justice done, no less than in the sincerity for Church reform, and
the deep respect for the ordinances of religion. No king of England
worked more harmoniously with a strong archbishop than William I. with
Lanfranc--save, perhaps, Charles I. with Laud.
Then on the death of William I., followed less than two years later
by Lanfranc’s, came the reaction in Church and State from the efforts
after law, religion, and social decency under the Conqueror’s rule.
The Red King had all his father’s sternness and strength, but was
without any of that belief in justice, that faith in the Sovereign
Power of a Living God, that desire for law and order, and that grave
austerity in morals, which saved the Conqueror from baseness in his
tyranny.
William II., unmarried, made the wildest and most brutish profligacy
fashionable at court. To pay for his debaucheries and extravagances
he plundered all who could pay, in especial the Church, enjoying the
revenues of all vacant sees and abbeys, and declining to fill up the
vacancies so that this enjoyment might remain. After Lanfranc, as the
king’s chief adviser, came Ranulf (nicknamed the Torch, or Firebrand),
a coarse, unscrupulous bully, with the wit of a criminal lawyer. This
man was made Bishop of Durham, and Justiciar. For him government
meant nothing but the art of getting money for his royal master, and
silencing all opposition.
For over three years there was no Archbishop of Canterbury, and the
Red King refused to fill up the vacancy caused by Lanfranc’s death,
preferring to enjoy the revenues and possessions of the see; a thing
that was shocking to all lovers of religion, and scandalous to those
who cared for public decency and the good estate of the country.
Eadmer, a contemporary, describes the condition of England in those
early years of William II.:--
“The king seized the church at Canterbury, the mother of all England,
Scotland, and Ireland, and the neighbouring isles; he bade his officers
to make an inventory of all that belonged to it, within and without;
and after he had fixed an allowance for the support of the monks who
served God in that place, he ordered the remainder to be disposed of
at a rent and brought under his domain. So he put up the Church of
Christ to sale; giving the power of lordship over it to anyone who,
however hurtful he might be, would bid the highest price. Every year,
in wretched succession, a new rent was set; for the king would allow no
bargain to remain settled, and whoever promised more ousted him who was
paying less, unless the former tenant, giving up his original bargain,
came up of his own accord to the offer of the later bidder: and every
day might be seen, besides, the most abandoned of men on their business
of collecting money for the king, marching about the cloisters of the
monastery, heedless of the religious rule of God’s servants, and with
fierce and savage looks giving their orders on all sides; uttering
threats, lording it over every one, and showing their power to the
utmost. What scandals and quarrels and irregularities arose from this
I hate to remember. Some of the monks of the church were dispersed at
the coming of this misfortune, and sent to other houses, and those who
remained suffered many tribulations and indignities. What shall I say
of the church tenants, ground down by such wasting and misery, that one
might doubt, but that worse followed, whether escaping with bare life
they could have been more cruelly oppressed. Nor did all this happen
only at Canterbury. The same savage cruelty raged in all her daughter
churches in England, which, when bishop or abbot died, at that time
fell into widowhood. And this king, too, was the first who ordered this
woeful oppression against the churches of God; he had inherited nothing
of this sort from his father, but was alone in keeping the vacant
churches in his own hands. And thus, wherever you looked, there was
wretchedness before your eyes; and this distress lasted for nearly five
years over the Church of Canterbury, always increasing, always, as time
went on, growing more cruel and evil.”
There is no word of exaggeration in this pitiful lament of Eadmer’s.
England under William II. was at the mercy of a Norman whose notion
of absolute monarchy was to bleed the land as a subject province.
Courageous in battle he was, and skilful in arms, but utterly heedless
of the welfare of the people he ruled. It was enough for the Red King
if his demands for money were met. There was no one strong enough to
gainsay his will, or stand before him as the prophets of old stood
before the kings of Israel, until Anselm came to Canterbury. It is only
in the utterances of men like Eadmer we learn something of the misery
of the nation.[1]
The king was with his court at Gloucester at Christmas, 1092, and
Anselm, then abbot of the famous monastery of Bec in Normandy, was
in England at that time; partly to comfort his friend, Earl Hugh of
Chester, who was sick, and partly to attend to the English affairs of
his monastery.
Anselm was known as the friend of Lanfranc. He had been a welcome guest
at the court of the Conqueror and in the cloisters at Canterbury. His
character stood high above all contemporaries in England or Normandy.
Anselm was surely the right man to be made archbishop, and so put
an end to a state of things which even to the turbulent barons was
discreditable to the country.
The Red King bade Anselm come to his court, and received him with great
display of honour. Then came a private interview, and Anselm at once
told the king how men spoke ill of his misrule: “Openly or secretly
things were daily said of him by nearly all the men of his realm which
were not seemly for the king’s dignity.” They parted, and Anselm was
busy for some time in England. When the abbot wished to return to Bec
William refused him leave to quit the country.
At the beginning of Lent, March, 1093, the king was lying sick at
Gloucester. It was believed the sickness was mortal. Certainly the king
thought himself dying. Anselm was summoned to minister to him, and on
his arrival bade the king “make a clean confession of all that he knows
that he has done against God, and promise that, should he recover, he
will without pretence amend in all things. The king at once agreed to
this, and with sorrow of heart engaged to do all that Anselm required,
and to keep justice and mercy all his life long. To this he pledged his
faith, and made his bishops witnesses between himself and God, sending
persons in his stead to promise his word to God on the altar. An Edict
was written and sealed with the king’s seal that all prisoners should
be set free in all his dominions, all debts forgiven, all offences
heretofore committed pardoned and forgotten for ever. Further, good and
holy laws were promised to the whole people, and the sacred upholding
of right and such solemn inquest into wrongdoing as may deter others.”
Thus Eadmer.
Florence of Worcester puts the matter more briefly. “When the king
thought himself about to die he vowed to God, as his barons advised
him, to amend his life, to sell no more churches nor farm them out,
but to defend them by his kingly might, and to end all bad laws and to
establish just laws.”
There was still the vacant archbishopric to be filled, and the king
named Anselm for Canterbury.
In vain Anselm pleaded that he was an old man--he was then sixty--and
unfit for so great a responsibility, that he was a monk and had shunned
the business of the world.
The bishops assembled round the sick king’s bed would not hear the
refusal. Here was religion well nigh destroyed in England, and evil
rampant, and the Church of God stricken almost to death, and at such a
time was Anselm to prefer his own ease and quiet to the call to deliver
Canterbury from its bondage? By main force they placed a pastoral staff
within his hands, and while the crowd shouted “Long live the bishop!”
he was “carried rather than led to a neighbouring church.” The king
at once ordered that Anselm should be invested with all the temporal
rights of the see, as Lanfranc had held them, and in September, 1093,
Anselm was enthroned at Canterbury, and in December he was consecrated.
Anselm warned the bishops and nobles when they forced the archbishopric
upon him that they were making a mistake. “You have yoked to the plough
a poor weak sheep with a wild bull,” he said. “This plough is the
Church of God, and in England it has been drawn by two strong oxen, the
king and the Archbishop of Canterbury, one to do justice and to hold
power in the things of this world, the other to teach and govern in the
things eternal. Now Lanfranc is dead, and with his untamed companion
you have joined an old and feeble sheep.”
That the king and the archbishop were unevenly yoked was manifest on
William’s recovery, but it was no poor sheep with whom Rufus had to
deal, but a man as brave and steadfast as he was gentle and wise.
Trouble began at once when William rose from his sick-bed. Anselm was
now enthroned and no attempt was made to revoke the appointment. But
the king’s promises of public amendment were broken without hesitation.
The pardoned prisoners were seized, the cancelled debts redemanded and
the proceedings against offenders revived.
“Then was there so great misery and suffering through the whole realm
that no one can remember to have seen its like in England. All the evil
which the king had wrought before he was sick seemed good by the side
of the wrong which he did when he was returned to health.”
The king wanting money for his expedition against his brother, Robert
of Normandy, tried to persuade Anselm to allow the Church lands,
bestowed since Lanfranc’s death on vassals of the crown on tenure of
military service, to remain with their holders. He was answered by
steady refusal. Had Anselm yielded, he would have been a party to the
alienation of lands, that, as part of the property of the see, he was
bound to administer for the common good; he would have been a party not
only to the spoiling of the Church, but to the robbery of the poor and
needy, whose claims, in those days, to temporal assistance from Church
estates were not disputed. Any subsequent restitution of such lands
was impossible, he foresaw, if it was shown that the archbishop had
confirmed what the king had done.
Then came the question of a present of money to the king. Anselm
brought five hundred marks, and, but for his counsellors and men of
arms, who told him the archbishop ought to have given twice as much,
William would have taken the gift gladly enough. As it was, to show
his dissatisfaction, the money was returned. Anselm went boldly to the
king and warned him that money freely given was better than a forced
tribute. To this frank rebuke of the extortion practised by the king’s
servants, William answered that he wanted neither his money, nor his
preaching, nor his company. Anselm retired not altogether displeased at
the refusal, for too many of the clergy bought church offices by these
free gifts after they were instituted. In vain his friends urged him to
seek the king’s favour by increasing his present, Anselm gave the five
hundred marks to the poor, and shook his head at the idea of buying the
king’s favour.
But if Anselm declined to walk in the path of corruption to oblige the
king, William was equally resolute to make the path of righteousness a
hard road for the archbishop.
In February, 1094, when the Red King was at Hastings waiting to cross
to Normandy, Anselm appealed to him to sanction a council of bishops,
whose decisions approved by the crown should have the authority of law.
There were two things for such a council to do: (1) stop the open vice
and profligacy which ravaged the land; (2) find abbots for the many
monasteries then without heads. In Anselm’s words, the council was “to
restore the Christian religion which was well-nigh dead in so many.”
William treated the request with angry contempt, and when Anselm sent
bishops to him asking why the king refused him friendship, an evasive
answer was returned.
“Give him money,” said the bishops again to Anselm, “if you want peace
with him. Give him the five hundred marks, and promise him as much
more, and you will have the royal friendship. This, it seems to us, is
the only way out of the difficulty.”
But it was not Anselm’s way. He would not even offer what had been
rejected. “Besides, the greater part of it was spent on the poor.”
William burst out into wrathful speech when he was told of this reply.
“Never will I hold him as my father and archbishop, and ever shall I
hate him with bitter hatred. I hated him much yesterday, and to-day I
hate him still more.”
A year later (March, 1095) at a great council of bishops and nobles,
held at the castle of Rockingham, the king’s hatred had full vent.
From the first the Archbishop of Canterbury received from the Pope a
_pallium_, the white woollen stole with four crosses, which was “the
badge of his office and dignity,”[2] and Anselm was anxious to journey
to Rome to obtain his pallium from Pope Urban. William objected to this
on the ground that there was another claimant to the papacy, and that
until he had decided who was the rightful pope no one in England had a
right to do so. In vain Anselm pointed out that he, with all Normandy,
had acknowledged Urban before he had become archbishop. William
retorted angrily that Anselm could only keep his faith to the Apostolic
See by breaking his faith to the king.
The council of Rockingham met to settle the question--not the question
of the supremacy of Rome in Western Christendom[3]--but the question
whether, in England, there was any higher authority than the crown.
William did not pretend to dispute the papal supremacy in the Church.
His claim was that the king alone must first acknowledge the pope
before any of his subjects could do so. In reality the king’s one
desire was “to take from Anselm all authority for maintaining the
Christian religion. For as long as any one in all the land was said
to hold any power except through him, even in the things of God, it
seemed to him that the royal dignity was diminished.” (Eadmer.) William
acknowledged Pope Urban readily enough, but he would have Archbishop
Anselm understand that the papacy must be acknowledged by permission
of the king of England. That was the real ground of contention between
these two men: was there any power on earth higher in England than the
English crown? According to William, to appeal to Rome was to dispute
the absolutism of the crown. Anselm maintained that in all things of
God he must render obedience to the Chief Shepherd and Prince of the
Church, to the Vicar of St. Peter; and in matters of earthly dignity
he must render counsel and service to his lord the king.
The bishops at Rockingham were the king’s men. Many of them had bought
their bishoprics, all were afraid of the royal displeasure. The stand
made by Anselm, unsupported though he was, did something to inspire
a better courage in the ranks of the clergy[4]; but in that Lent of
1095 there was no sign of support for the archbishop. William only
wanted to break the will of this resolute old man, the one man in all
the kingdom who dared to have a mind and utterance of his own, and the
mitred creatures of the king supported their lord even to the point
of recommending the forcible deposition of Anselm from his see, or
at least of depriving him of the staff and ring of office. With one
consent the bishops accepted the king’s suggestion of renouncing all
obedience to Anselm.
But the barons were not so craven. To the king’s threat, “No man shall
be mine, who will be his” (Anselm’s), the nobles said bluntly that not
having taken any oath of fealty to the archbishop they could not abjure
it. And Anselm was their archbishop. “It is his work to govern the
Christian religion in this land, and we who are Christians cannot deny
his guidance while we live here.”
The three days’ conference at Rockingham ended in disappointment to the
hopes of William of absolute autocracy, and in general contempt for the
prelates whose abject servility had availed nothing.
Anselm alone stood higher in the eyes of the men of England, and
greater was the ill-will of William. For another two years Anselm held
his ground against the king. The pallium was brought from Rome by
Walter, Bishop of Albano, and placed on the altar at Canterbury, and
Anselm was content to take it from the altar. William had written in
vain to Pope Urban praying for the deposition of Anselm, and promising
a large annual tribute to Rome if his prayer was granted. The pope, of
course, declined to do anything of the sort, and William had to make
the best of the situation. He wanted money for his own purposes, and
his barons were now against him in his quarrel with the archbishop.
For a time William adopted a semblance of peace with Anselm, but his
anger soon blazed out again. The ground of complaint this time was that
the soldiers whom the archbishop had sent to the king for his military
expedition against Wales were inadequate--without proper equipment, and
unfit for service. The archbishop was summoned to appear before the
King’s Court to “do the king right.”
From the time of his acceptance of the archbishopric, Anselm had been
hoping against hope that the king would support him, as the Conqueror
had supported Lanfranc, in the building up of the Christian religion
in England--this summons to the King’s Court was the death-blow to all
these hopes. The defendant in the King’s Court was at the mercy of
the king, who could pronounce whatever judgment he pleased.[5] Anselm
returned no answer to the summons, but his mind was made up.
“Having knowledge that the king’s word ruled all judgment in the King’s
Court, where nothing was listened to except what the king willed, it
seemed to Anselm unbecoming that he should contend, as if disputing, as
litigants do, about a matter of words, and should submit the justice
of his cause to the judgment of a court where neither law, nor equity,
nor reason prevailed. So he held his peace, and gave no answer to the
messenger.” (Eadmer.)
From the despotism of the Red King Anselm would turn for justice to the
centre of Christendom. In England he was impotent to stem the evil that
flowed from the savage absolutism of the throne. All that one man could
do to resist the royal tyranny Anselm had done, and now this summons to
the King’s Court was the final answer to all his efforts to restrain
a lawless king, and to promote the Christian religion in England. He
would not go through the farce of pleading in the King’s Court, where
judgment was settled by the unbridled caprice of the king, self-respect
forbade the archbishop from that; he would appeal to the only court on
earth higher than the courts of kings--the court whose head, in those
days, was the head of Christendom.[6]
William dropped the summons to the King’s Court, and for a time refused
permission to Anselm to leave the country. Bishops and barons now urged
Anselm not to persist in his appeal to Rome. But the archbishop was
resolute, and in the autumn of 1097 the king yielded, and Anselm left
the country.[7]
The first campaign against despotism in England was over--the battle
was to be renewed when Henry I. wore the crown.
At Rome Pope Urban, with all the goodwill in the world, and with a
very real affection and regard for Anselm, could do nothing against
the Red King except rebuke his envoys, and do honour to the much-tried
archbishop. Anselm himself prevented the excommunication of William
when it was proposed at the Council of Bari, October, 1098.
But Pope Urban would not allow Anselm to resign his archbishopric, and
this in spite of all Anselm’s entreaties.
In the spring of 1099 came a General Council at Rome--at which Anselm
assisted--a council remarkable for its decision against allowing clergy
to receive investiture of churches from the hands of laymen, and by
so doing to become the vassals of temporal lords. Excommunication
was declared to be the penalty for all who gave or received Church
appointments on such conditions.
It was at the close of this council that an outspoken Bishop of Lucca
called attention to Anselm’s case. “One sits amongst us in silence and
meekness who has come from the far ends of the earth. His very silence
cries aloud. His humility and patience, so gentle and so deep, as they
rise to God should set us on fire. This one man has come here, wronged
and afflicted, seeking judgment and justice of the Apostolic See. And
now this is the second year, and what help has he found?”
Pope Urban answered that attention should be given, but nothing further
was done.
Anselm left Rome and went to Lyons, remaining in France until the
death of William in August, 1100. Henry was at once chosen king in his
room, and crowned at Westminster three days after his brother’s death.
Six weeks later, at Henry’s earnest request--he prayed him “to come
back like a father to his son Henry and the English people”--Anselm
landed at Dover and returned to take up the task allotted to him on his
consecration as archbishop.
Henry at the outset of his reign promised “God and all the people” that
the old scandals of selling and farming out the Church lands should
be stopped, and “to put down all unrighteousness that had been in his
brother’s time, and to hold the best laws that ever stood in any king’s
day before him.” That this charter was of value may be taken from the
verdict on the king by the Chronicler of the time. “Good man he was and
great awe there was of him. No man durst misdo against another in his
day. He made peace for man and beast. Whoso carried a burden of gold
and silver no man durst do him wrong.”
Two evils that pressed very hardly on the mass of hard-working people,
the devastation that attended the king’s progress through the land[8],
and the coining of false money, were at Anselm’s instigation checked by
the king.
But with all Henry’s desire for the restoration of religion and law
in the land, he was the Conqueror’s son, and for Anselm the struggle
against absolutism in government was not yet over. Only now the battle
was not with a fierce, untamed despot like the Red King, but with an
autocrat of an even more formidable type, a stern man of business, in
whose person alone must be found the source of all law and order, and
who would brook no questioning of the royal will.
At the beginning of his reign Henry found the archbishop’s loyalty and
good sense invaluable. As Lanfranc had stood by the Conqueror in a
marriage which was objectionable from the point of view of Church law,
so Anselm stood by his son when he sought the hand of Edith, daughter
of the sainted Queen Margaret of Scotland. Here the objection to the
marriage was not on the grounds of affinity or consanguinity, but in
the fact that Edith was an inmate of the convent at Romsey, and, it
was alleged, a professed nun. Edith insisted that she had but taken
refuge in the convent to obtain the protection of her aunt Christina,
the abbess, and she had worn the habit of a nun as a safeguard against
the brutal passions of the Red King and his courtiers. The fear of
violence at the hands of the Normans had driven women to take the veil,
and Lanfranc had been known to grant release from vows taken under such
mortal pressure. Anselm was not the man to exalt the letter of the law
above the spirit of liberty. He was content that a council of the great
men in Church and State should hold an inquiry, and on their verdict
declaring Edith free of her vows, the archbishop gave his blessing on
the marriage.
The same great qualities of loyalty and good sense made Anselm stand
by the king when the Norman lords, pricked on by Ranulf the Torch, the
rascally Bishop of Durham (who had escaped from imprisonment in the
Tower by making his gaolers drunk), and hating Henry for “his English
ways,” proposed to back up Robert of Normandy in his attempts to seize
the crown. According to Eadmer, but for Anselm’s faithfulness and
labours, which turned the scale when so many were wavering, King Henry
would have lost the sovereignty of the realm of England at that time.
But Anselm’s services to the king are of small account by the side of
his services to English liberty, and Anselm’s resistance to Henry’s
demands for an absolute monarchy was of lasting influence in the
centuries that followed.[9]
The struggle began when Henry called upon Anselm for a new declaration
of homage to the crown, and required him to receive the archbishopric
afresh by a new act of investiture. This was a claim that had never
been made before. “It imported that on the death of the sovereign the
archbishop’s commission expired, that his office was subordinate and
derivative, and the dignity therefore reverted to the crown.” (Sir F.
Palgrave.)
Anselm met the demand with the answer that such a course was
impossible. Nay, the very ecclesiastical “customs” which for some time
past had given the appointment of bishops and abbots to the crown, and
had made the bishops “the king’s men” by obliging them to do homage and
to receive investiture of their office with ring and staff at the royal
hands, were now impossible for Anselm. The Council at the Lateran, at
which Anselm had been present, had forbidden the bishops of the Church
to become the vassals of the kings of the earth, and Anselm was not the
man to question this decision. He had seen only too much, under William
the Red, of the curse of royal supremacy in the Church. He had stood
up alone against the iniquities of misrule, just because the bishops,
who should have been pastors and overseers of a Christian people, were
the sworn creatures of the king. Henceforth it was forbidden by the
authority that rested in the seat of St. Peter at Rome for a bishop to
receive consecration as a king’s vassal.
But if Anselm would be no party to what had become an intolerable evil,
Henry would not give up the rights his father had exercised without
a contest. He was willing to do his best for the Church, but it must
be in his own way. “Pledging himself in his own heart and mind not to
abate a jot of his supremacy over the clergy, he would exercise his
authority in Church affairs somewhat more decently than his father,
and a great deal more than his brother; but that was all.” (Sir F.
Palgrave.)
Both Henry and Anselm recognized the gravity of the issue. Were the
bishops and abbots to continue to receive investiture from the king
they were “his men,” and his autocracy was established over all. Stop
the investiture and the bishops were first and chiefly the servants of
the Most High, acknowledging a sovereignty higher than that exercised
by the princes of this world, and preferring loyalty to the Church
Catholic and its Father at Rome, to blind obedience to the crown.
In brief, the question in dispute really was--Was there, or was there
not, any power on earth greater than the English crown?--a question
which no English king before Henry VIII. answered successfully in the
negative. In contending for the freedom of the bishops of the Church
from vassalage to the crown, Anselm was contending for the existence
of an authority to which even kings should pay allegiance. It was
not the rights of the clergy that were at stake, for the terrors of
excommunication did not prevent bishops from receiving consecration
on Henry’s terms, and Anselm stood alone now, as in the days of the
Red King, in the resistance to despotism. It was the feeling and the
knowledge, which Anselm shared with the best churchmen of his day, that
great as the power of the king must be, it was a bad thing for such
power to exist unchecked, and that it were well for the world that its
mightiest monarchs should know there was a spiritual dominion given to
the successor of St. Peter, and to his children, a dominion of divine
foundation that claimed obedience even from kings.
Anselm put it to the king that the canons of the Church, and the
decrees of a great council had forbidden the “customs” of investiture
which the king claimed; and he pleaded that he was an old man, and that
unless he could work with the king on the acceptance of the Church
canons, it was no use his remaining in England, “for he could not
hold communion with those who broke these laws”: Henry, for his part,
was much disturbed. It was a grave matter to lose the investiture of
churches, and the homage of prelates; it was a grave matter, too, to
let Anselm leave the country while he himself was hardly established
in the kingdom. “On the one side it seemed to him that he should be
losing, as it were, half of his kingdom; on the other, he feared lest
Anselm should make his brother Robert King of England,”--for Robert
might easily be brought to submit to the Apostolic See if he could be
made king on such terms.
Henry suggested an appeal to the pope on the question of the right
of the crown to “invest” the bishops, and Anselm, who all along was
anxious for peace--if peace could be obtained without acknowledgment
of royal absolutism--at once agreed.
The pope, of course, could not grant Henry’s request. To allow the high
offices of the Church to be disposed of at the caprice of kings and
princes, without any recognition of the sacredness of these offices,
to admit that the chief ministers of religion were first and foremost
“the king’s men,” seemed to Pope Paschal, as it seemed to Anselm,
a concession to evil, and the establishment of a principle which
experience had proved thoroughly vicious and mischievous.
Then for nearly three years a correspondence dragged on between
Henry and the pope, neither wishing for an open rupture, and in the
meantime, Henry, backed by most of the bishops and nobles in setting at
nought the canons which had forbidden investiture, proposed to go on
appointing and investing new bishops as before.
Finally, the king appealed to Anselm to go to Rome “and try what he
could do with the pope, lest the king by losing the rights of his
predecessors should be disgraced.”
Anselm was now (1103) an old man of seventy, but he agreed to go; only
“he could do nothing to the prejudice of the liberty of the Church or
his own honour.” What Henry hoped for was that the pope would grant
some personal dispensation in the matter of the royal “customs,” and
he had tried to persuade Anselm that such dispensation was sure to be
granted. Anselm did not believe the dispensation possible or desirable,
but left the decision with the acknowledged head of Christendom at
Rome; and though for another three years Henry urged his suit, no
dispensation could be wrung from the pope. All that the pope would
grant was that the bishops might do “homage” to the crown for their
temporal rights.
At last, in April, 1106, Anselm returned to England. The bishops
themselves, who had sided with the king against him, implored him to
return, so wretched had become the state of religion in England in his
absence. They promised to do his commands and to fight with him the
battle of the Lord.
Henry, fresh from the conquest of Normandy, sent word of his good-will,
and of his desire for the archbishop’s presence. The long drawn-out
battle was over, and the king had to be content with “homage,” and to
resign the claim to investiture.
“On August 1st (1107) an assembly of bishops, abbots, and chief men of
the realm, was held in London, in the king’s palace, and for three days
the matter of the investiture of churches was fully discussed between
the king and the bishops in Anselm’s absence. Then, in the presence of
Anselm and before the whole multitude, the king granted and decreed
that henceforth and for ever no one should be invested in England with
bishopric or abbey by staff and ring, either by the king or the hand
of any layman; while Anselm allowed that no one chosen for a bishopric
should be refused consecration for having done homage to the king. This
having been settled, the king, by the counsel of Anselm and the chief
men of the realm, appointed priests in nearly all those churches in
England which had long been widowed of their pastors.” (Eadmer.)
Victory rested with Anselm. The old archbishop had done his best for
the liberty of religion, and by contending for this liberty he had
wrought for common freedom.[10] Later ages and struggles were to bring
out more clearly that some measure of political and social liberty
must follow the demand for freedom in religion. “Religious forces,
and religious forces alone, have had sufficient influence to ensure
practical realisation for political ideas.” (Figgis, _Studies of
Political Thought_.)
Anselm’s life was nearly over, his work was accomplished, a
philosophical treatise “Concerning the agreement of Foreknowledge,
Predestination and the Grace of God with Free Will” was written with
difficulty in the last years. Then his appetite failed him, and all
food became loathsome. At last he was persuaded to take to his bed, and
on April 21st, 1109--the Wednesday of Holy Week--at daybreak Anselm
passed away.
Anselm’s name has long been enrolled in the calendar of the saints
of the Church Catholic, no less is it to be cherished by all who
love liberty. Well may it be said of him, “he was ever a close
follower of Truth, and walked in noble companionship with Pity and
Courage.” Anselm’s plain good sense and charity were conspicuous in
his benediction of the marriage of Henry and Edith, but these great
qualities were earlier displayed when Lanfranc consulted him as to the
claims of the English Archbishop Ælphege to be canonised as a martyr.
Ælphege had been slain by the Danes for refusing to ransom his life at
the expense of his tenants; and Anselm replied to Lanfranc that he who
would die rather than oppress his tenants dies for justice’ sake, and
he who dies for justice dies a martyr for Christ.
His sympathy and humaneness shone out a thousand times. There is the
story Eadmer tells of an abbot, who came to Anselm at Bec, and deplored
that he could do no good with the boys at his monastery. “In spite
of all we do they are perverse and incorrigible,” said the abbot,
despondently. “We are always beating them, but they only get worse:
and though we constrain them in every way we can, it’s all of no use.”
“_Constrain_ them!” answered Anselm. “Tell me, my lord abbot, when
you plant a tree in your garden, do you so tie it up that it cannot
stretch forth its branches? And if you did so, what sort of tree would
it become a few years hence when you released it? But this is just
what you do with your boys. You cramp them in with terrors and threats
and blows, so that it is quite impossible for them to grow or enjoy
any freedom. And kept down in this way their temper is spoilt by evil
thoughts of hatred and suspicion against you, and they put down all you
do to ill-nature and dislike. Why are you so harsh with them? Are they
not human beings of the same nature as yourself? How would you like to
be treated as you treat them?” The abbot was finally persuaded that
he had been all wrong. “We have wandered,” he said, “from the way of
truth, and the light of discretion hath not shone on us.”
There is another story which gives Anselm’s pity and feeling of
kinship with the whole animal creation. It was when he was archbishop,
and was riding one day from Windsor to Hayes that a hare chased by the
dogs of some of his company took refuge under the feet of his horse.
Anselm at once pulled up and forebade the hare to be molested, and
when his escort laughed gleefully at the capture, the archbishop said:
“You may laugh, but it is no laughing matter for this poor unhappy
creature, which is like the soul of a departing man pursued by evil
spirits. Mortal enemies attack it, and it flies to us for its life: and
while it turns to us for safety we laugh.” He rode on, and in a loud
voice forbade the dogs to touch the hare; which, glad to be at liberty,
darted off to the fields and woods.
That Anselm never wavered in his tenderness for the weak and oppressed
may be learnt from the great Church Synod held at Westminster in
1102--a council summoned on the strong request of the archbishop. The
slave trade was specially denounced at this council as a “wicked trade
used hitherto in England, by which men are sold like brute animals,”
and a canon was drawn up to that effect.
Anselm’s enduring courage and desire for truth are conspicuous all
his life. He fought single-handed against both William and Henry,
and no weight of numbers, no world-wise talk from other prelates
could make him budge. If he withstood the Red King and his court at
Rockingham, equally firm was he in withstanding the Norman barons who
were inclined to break away from their sworn allegiance to Henry. No
Englishman by birth or blood was Anselm, for he was born at Aosta, and
spent the greater part of his life on the Continent, but he brought
to England the finest gifts of life, and gave them freely in service
to England’s liberty. He withstood an absolutism that threatened the
total enslavement of the nation, and the witness he bore to liberty
was taken up and renewed in the centuries that followed. “Anselm
was truly a great man. So good that he was held a saint in his very
lifetime, so meek that even his enemies honoured him, so wise that he
was the foremost thinker of his day, and the forerunner of the greatest
philosophers of ours.” (F. York Powell.)
Thomas of Canterbury
The Defender of the Poor
1162–1170
AUTHORITIES: Benedict of Peterborough; Garnier; William FitzStephen;
John of Salisbury; Herbert of Bosham; Alan of Tewkesbury; Edward
Grim; Roger of Pontigny; William of Canterbury; Robert of
Cricklade--_Materials for the History of Thomas Becket_, 7 vols.;
_Thomas Saga_ (Icelandic), translated by Magnusson; Giraldus
Cambrensis; Gervase of Canterbury; William of Newburgh; Roger of
Hoveden, III.; Ralph Diceto (Rolls Series); Froude, R. H.--_Remains_,
Vol. 3; _Life of Becket_, by Canon J. C. Robertson; _Life of St. Thomas
Becket_, by John Morris, S.J.; Stubbs--_Constitutional History_, Vol.
I; Freeman--_Historical Essays_, 1st Series; W. H. Hutton--_English
History by Contemporary Writers_--_St. Thomas of Canterbury_.
[Illustration: THOMAS A BECKET
(_From an old Engraving after Van Eyck._)]
THOMAS OF CANTERBURY THE DEFENDER OF THE POOR
1162–1170
Fifty years after the death of Anselm the struggle with absolute
monarchy had to be renewed in England, and again the Archbishop of
Canterbury was the antagonist of the crown, standing alone for the most
part, as Anselm stood, in his resistance to autocracy.