which he had been so strangely called were the only matters which
occupied the mind of England during this memorable year. The months
which passed between the first nomination of Anselm and his
consecration to the archbishopric, that is, the months from March to
December, were a busy time in affairs of quite another kind than the
appointment of pastors of the Church. The events of those months
chiefly concerned the relations of England to the other parts of the
island, Welsh and Scottish, and I shall speak of them at length in
another chapter. Here it is enough to say that the very week of the
Easter Gemót was marked by striking events in Wales,[1141] and that
during the whole time from March to August, negotiations were going on
between William and Malcolm of Scotland. In August Malcolm came
personally to Gloucester, but William refused to see him. Malcolm then
went home in wrath, and took his revenge in a fifth and last invasion
of England, in the course of which he was killed near Alnwick in the
month of November. By that time Anselm was already enthroned, but not
yet consecrated. The main telling of the two stories must be kept
apart; but it is well always to keep the joint chronology of the two
in mind. In reading the Lives of Anselm, where secular affairs are
mentioned only casually, we might sometimes forget how stirring a time
the year of Anselm’s appointment was in other ways; while the general
writers of the time, as I have already noticed,[1142] tell us less
about Anselm than we should have looked for. The affairs of Scotland
and the affairs of Anselm were going on at the same time; and along
with them a third chain of affairs must have begun of which we shall
hear much in the next year. Rufus was by this time already planning a
second attack on his brother in Normandy. Except during the short
season of his penitence, he was doubtless ready for such an enterprise
at any moment. And this same year, seemingly in the course of its
summer, a special tempter came over from beyond sea. This was William
of Eu, of whom we have already heard as the King’s enemy and of whom
we shall hear again in the same character, but who just now appears as
the King’s counsellor. As the owner of vast English estates, he had
played a leading part in the first rebellion against William, with the
object of uniting England and Normandy under a single prince.[1143]
That object he still sought; but he now sought to gain it by other
means. He had learned which of the brothers was the more useful master
to serve. He was now, by the death of his father, Count of Eu, and Eu
was among the parts of Normandy which Robert had yielded to
William.[1144] For Eu then Count William was the man of King William;
but he was still the man of Duke Robert for some other parts of his
possessions. He thought it his interest to serve one lord only; he
accordingly threw off his allegiance to Robert, and came over to
England to stir up William to take possession of the whole
duchy.[1145] And it must surely have been in connexion with these
affairs that, at some time between March and September, William had an
interview with Count Robert of Flanders at Dover. By this description
we are doubtless to understand the elder Count Robert, the famous
Frisian, of whom we have already heard as an enemy to the elder
William,[1146] but who must now have been at least on terms of peace
with his son. He was drawing near the end of his life, a memorable
life, nearly the last act of which had been honourable indeed. He had,
several years before the preaching of the crusade, sent a body of the
choicest warriors of Flanders to defend Eastern Christendom against
the Turk.[1147] Robert died in October of this year, and was succeeded
by his son Robert of Jerusalem,[1148] a name which the father had an
equal right to bear. The younger Robert had been associated by his
father in the government of the county; but one may suppose that, when
our guide speaks of Robert Count of Flanders, it is the elder Robert
who is meant. He was the enemy of the elder William rather in his
Norman than in his English character, and his enmity may have passed
to his successor in the duchy and not to his successor in the kingdom.
One can hardly help thinking that this meeting of William of England
and Robert of Flanders had some reference to joint operations designed
against Robert of Normandy. But, if so, the alliance was put an end to
by the death of Robert the Frisian, and, when the time for his Norman
enterprise came, William had to carry it on without Flemish help.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Interview between Anselm and the King at Rochester.]
By this time Anselm had received the letters from Normandy which were
to make him free to accept the archbishopric; but the letters to the
King from the same parties had not yet come. At this stage then Anselm
wished for an interview with the King, the first――unless they met at
Easter at Winchester――since they had parted in the sick room at
Gloucester. William was on his way back from his meeting with the
Count of Flanders at Dover; he came to Rochester, where Anselm was
then staying with Bishop Gundulf. There Anselm took the King aside,
and laid the case before him as it then stood.
[Sidenote: Anselm’s position.]
Anselm was at this moment, in his own view, a private man. He was no
longer Abbot of Bec. His monks had released him from that office, and
he had formally resigned it by sending back to them the pastoral
staff.[1149] He was not yet Archbishop of Canterbury; he was not yet,
in his own view, even Archbishop-elect; all that had been done at
Gloucester he counted for null and void. But he was now free to accept
the archbishopric, and, though he still did not wish for the post, he
had got over the scruples which had before led him to refuse it. In
such a case he deemed it his duty to be perfectly frank with the King,
and to tell him on what terms only he would accept the primacy, if the
King still persisted in offering it to him.
[Sidenote: His conditions with the King.]
[Sidenote: Restoration of the estates of the see.]
[Sidenote: He demands to be the King’s spiritual guide.]
The conditions which Anselm now laid before William Rufus were three.
The first of them had to do with the temporal estates of the
archbishopric. I have elsewhere spoken of the light in which we ought
to look at demands of this kind.[1150] We may be sure that Anselm
would gladly have purchased the peace of the land, the friendship of
the King, or anything that would profit the souls or bodies of other
men, at the cost of any temporal possessions which were strictly his
own to give up. But, if he became Archbishop of Canterbury, he would
become a steward of the church of Canterbury, a trustee for his
successors, the guardian of gifts which had been given to God, His
saints, and His Church. In any of these characters, it would be a sin
against his own soul and the souls of others, if he willingly allowed
anything which had ever been given to his church to be taken from her
or detained from her. If the King chose to keep the see vacant and to
turn its revenues to his own use, that would be his sin and not
Anselm’s; but Anselm would be a sharer in the sin, if he accepted the
see without requiring full restitution of everything to which the see
had a lawful claim. In the private conference at Rochester, he
therefore demanded, as a condition of his accepting the see, that he
should receive all that Lanfranc had held, without delay or dispute or
process in any court. As for lands to which his church had an ancient
claim, but which Lanfranc had been unable to win back, for those he
demanded that the King should do him justice in his court.[1151] The
second demand touched the ancient relations between the crown and the
archbishopric. The sheep, about to be yoked with the wild bull, sought
to make terms with his fierce comrade. Anselm demanded that, in all
matters which touched God and Christianity, the King should take him
as his counsellor before all other men; as he acknowledged in the King
his earthly lord, so let the King acknowledge in him his ghostly
father and the special guardian of his soul.[1152]
[Sidenote: Acknowledgement of Popes.]
[Sidenote: Schism in the papacy. Victor the Third. 1086-1087. Urban
the Second. 1088-1099. Urban and Clement.]
[Sidenote: English feeling on the subject.]
[Sidenote: Anselm requires to be allowed to acknowledge Urban.]
To these two requests Anselm added a third, one which touched a point
on which the Red King seems to have been specially sensitive. It had
been the rule of his father’s reign that no Pope should be
acknowledged in England without his consent.[1153] William Rufus seems
to have construed this rule in the same way in which he construed some
others. From his right to nominate to bishoprics and abbeys he had
inferred a right not to nominate to them; so, from his right to judge
between contending popes, he inferred the right to do without
acknowledging any pope at all. And, if the King acted in this way for
his own ends, the country at large seems to have shown a remarkable
indifference to the whole controversy. To Englishmen and to men
settled in England it was clearly a much greater grievance to be kept
without an Archbishop of Canterbury than it was to be left uncertain
who was the lawful pope. At this moment the Western Church was divided
between the claims of Wibert or Clement, the Imperial anti-pope of the
days of Hildebrand, and those of Urban, formerly Odo of Ostia, who,
after the short reign of Victor, stepped into Hildebrand’s place. In
the eyes of strict churchmen Urban was the true Vicar of Christ, and
Wibert was a wicked intruder and schismatic. Yet it will be remembered
that Lanfranc himself had, when the dispute lay between Wibert and
Hildebrand, spoken with singular calmness and caution of a question
which to more zealous minds seemed a matter of spiritual life and
death.[1154] Our own Chronicler seems to have measured popes, as well
as kings and bishops, by the standard of possession; he found it hard
to conceive a pope that “nothing had of the settle at Rome.”[1155]
Even Anselm’s own biographer speaks very quietly on the point. Two
rival candidates claimed the popedom; but which was the one rightly
chosen no one in England, we are told, knew――or seemingly cared.[1156]
Another of our guides describes Urban and Clement as alike men of
personal merit, and looks on the controversy as one in which there was
much to be said on both sides. The chief argument for Urban was that
his supporters seemed to increase in number; otherwise no one really
knew on which side the divine right was. In England opinion was
divided; but fear of the King――so we are told――made it lean on the
whole to Clement.[1157] Earlier in the reign we have heard Bishop
William of Durham talk a great deal about going to the Pope; but he
had taken care not to say to which pope he meant to go, and in the end
he had not gone to either.[1158] With Anselm the matter was more
serious. Urban was his pope. All the churches of Gaul had acknowledged
him; Bec and the other churches of Normandy had acknowledged him along
with the rest.[1159] From the obedience which he had thus plighted he
could not fall back. He told the King that, though he, King William,
had not acknowledged Urban, yet he, Anselm, must continue to
acknowledge him and to yield him such obedience as was his due.[1160]
To be allowed freely to do so must be one of the conditions of his
accepting the archbishopric.
[Sidenote: The King’s counsellors; Count Robert and Bishop William.]
[Sidenote: The Bishop’s new policy.]
[Sidenote: The King’s answer.]
The King’s answer was unsatisfactory, but not openly hostile. He was
however beginning to be on his guard; he called to his side the two
subtlest advisers that the Church and realm of England could supply.
The one was Count Robert of Meulan, at home alike in England,
Normandy, and France. The other was William Bishop of Durham, once the
strong assertor of ecclesiastical claims, who had appealed to the Pope
against the judgement of the King and his Witan. He had indeed both
learned and forgotten something in his exile. He had come back to be
the special counsellor of Rufus, the special enemy of Anselm, the
special assertor of the doctrine that it was for the King alone to
judge as to the acknowledgement of Popes. The King, having listened to
Anselm, sent for these two chosen advisers. He bade Anselm say over
again in their hearing what he had before said privately. He then, by
their advice, answered that he would restore to the see everything
that had been held by Lanfranc; on other points he would not as yet
make any positive engagement.[1161]
[Sidenote: The letters come from Normandy.]
[Sidenote: The King prays Anselm to take the archbishopric.]
[Sidenote: He asks for the confirmation of grants made by him during
the vacancy.]
[Sidenote: Anselm refuses.]
Up to this time the King had not yet received his expected letters
from Normandy. They presently came, and Rufus evidently thought that
some step on his part ought to follow. He had asked the Duke, the
Archbishop, and the monks of Bec, to set Anselm free to accept the
archbishopric. They had done so at his request. Unless then he wished
to make fools of himself and of everybody else, he could not help
again offering the see to the man whom he had himself chosen, and who
was now free to take it. He sent for Anselm to Windsor, where he now
was; he prayed him no longer to refuse the choice of the whole
realm;[1162] but in so doing, he fell back somewhat from the one
distinct promise which he had made at Rochester. When the estates of
the see came into his hands on the death of Lanfranc, he had granted
out parts of them on tenure of knight-service. These grants he asked
Anselm, as a matter of friendship to himself, to allow.[1163] Was
William merely seeking an excuse for backing altogether out of his
offer of the archbishopric, or did he feel himself bound in honour to
the men to whom he had made the grants? If so, his scruple of honour
was met by Anselm’s scruple of conscience. Anselm would not be a party
to any alienation of the goods of the Church; above all, he would not
make any agreement about such matters before he was invested with any
part of them.[1164] The point clearly is that so to do would be more
than wasting the estates of the Church; it would be obtaining the
archbishopric by a corrupt bargain. To agree to give up the estates of
the see to the King’s grantees would be the same thing as obtaining
the see by a bribe to the King. Anselm therefore refused to consent to
the grants which the King had made during the vacancy. The whole
matter thus came to a standstill. Rufus refused the investiture unless
his grants were to stand good. Anselm went away rejoicing.
[Sidenote: Anselm’s statement of the case.]
[Sidenote: Nature of the King’s grants.]
[Sidenote: The King’s case.]
[Sidenote: Anselm’s argument.]
[Sidenote: The King’s _advocatio_ of the archbishopric.]
The whole case was set forth at length by Anselm in a letter to his
friend Hugh Archbishop of Lyons, the head prelate of his native
Burgundy.[1165] The alienation to which Anselm was asked to consent
was called by the King a “voluntary justice,” a phrase which has a
technical sound, but the meaning of which is not very clear.[1166] The
King’s argument was that, before the Normans invaded England, the
lands in question had been held of the archbishopric by English
thegns, that those thegns had died without heirs, and that it was open
to the King to give them what heirs he would.[1167] It was certainly
strange, if, on the one hand, not one of these thegns had been
constrained to make way for a Norman successor, and if, on the other
hand, not one of them had left a son to succeed him. But we must take
the fact as it is stated. Rufus seems to mean that, during Lanfranc’s
incumbency, the lands which these thegns had held of the see had
fallen back to the lord for lack of heirs, and had become demesne
lands of the archbishopric. The King asserts his right, during the
vacancy of the see, to grant out such lands by knight-service, service
to be paid of course to the King as long as the vacancy lasted, but
seemingly to the Archbishop, as soon as there should be an archbishop
in possession. If this was the argument, an argument which savours of
the subtlety of Flambard, there is, from Flambard’s point of view, a
good deal that is plausible about it. The King, as temporary lord,
claims to deal with the land as any other lord might do, and, when his
temporary lordship comes to an end, he calls on the incoming lord to
respect his acts. The legal question would seem to be whether the new
doctrine which gave the King the temporary profits of the
archbishopric gave him any right to turn its demesne lands into fiefs.
Anselm’s argument seems to be that anyhow the possessions of the
archbishopric were practically lessened, as they undoubtedly were.
Experience showed that such a lordship as the see would keep over the
lands so granted out would be both hard to enforce and of little value
if enforced.[1168] Practically the grants were an alienation of the
lands of the see. And to this Anselm could not consent. Open robbery
from some quarter which owed no special duty to the archbishopric he
might bear, and in such a case there would be more hope of gaining
back what was lost by the help of the law.[1169] But for the King, the
advocate of the see, and for himself, its guardian, to come to an
agreement whereby the see would be damaged, was a thing to which
Anselm would never consent.[1170] In this argument we hear the word
_advocate_, the equivalent of the modern _patron_, in its elder sense.
The _advocatio_, the _advowson_, of an ecclesiastical benefice carries
with it, not only the right to name the incumbent of that benefice,
but also the duty of acting as its protector.[1171] For the King, the
advocate of the see of Canterbury, to do anything against its rights
was a greater crime than if another man did the same. For the
Archbishop to betray the rights of his church and his successors was a
greater crime still. And if King and Archbishop agreed to any such
spoliation, all other men would naturally hold that the act could not
be questioned. On these grounds Anselm refused to consent to the
King’s grants. He left the royal presence trusting that he was now
free from the burthen of ecclesiastical rule in any shape. He had been
set free from the abbatial rule of Bec; he had escaped being loaded
with the primatial rule of Canterbury. He was, as he wished to be, a
private man.[1172]
[Sidenote: Public feeling since the nomination at Gloucester.]
[Sidenote: Gemót at Winchester.]
[Sidenote: The King renews his promises.]
[Sidenote: Anselm receives the archbishopric, and does homage.]
But a private man Anselm was not to remain. After the scene in the
sick room at Gloucester, neither William nor Anselm could act exactly
as if that scene had never taken place. The momentary repentance of
the King, and the acts done during the time of that repentance, had
given a strength to public opinion which even William Rufus could not
despise. The old abuses, the old oppressions, began again; but men
were now less disposed to put up with them than they had been before.
They would no longer go on without an archbishop, after an archbishop,
and Anselm as that archbishop, had been more than promised, after he
had been given to them. The general murmur became so loud that the
King had to give way.[1173] He could no longer help giving the
archbishopric to Anselm, and that on Anselm’s own terms. And what he
did, he did in the most solemn and, as far as outward appearances
went, the most thorough manner. An extraordinary Gemót of the
kingdom――for the season was neither Christmas, Easter, nor
Pentecost――was summoned to Winchester. In the presence of the
assembled Witan, William Rufus, in full health, renewed the promises
which he had made in his sickness. The wrongs done in his kingdom,
above all, the wrongs done to the Church, were a second time to come
to an end.[1174] Anselm was exhorted, and at last persuaded, to accept
the archbishopric. He received it, seemingly without scruple,
according to the ancient use of England; he became the man of the
King.[1175] Anselm kneeling before Rufus, with his pure hands between
the polluted hands of the King, pledging himself as the King’s man for
all earthly worship, makes a scene which it is strange to think
of.[1176] The deed was now done, and it could not be recalled. Bishop
in the spiritual sense Anselm was not as yet; but he was the legal
possessor of all the temporal estates and temporal jurisdiction of the
see of Canterbury.
[Sidenote: The King’s writ.]
[Sidenote: The Archbishop’s thegns.]
[Sidenote: Clauses in favour of the monks.]
[Sidenote: The city of Canterbury and abbey of Saint Alban’s.]
[Sidenote: Anselm and Saint Alban’s.]
[Sidenote: Death of Abbot Paul. 1093.]
[Sidenote: Vacancy of the abbey.]
The act which had just been done had now to be announced to the whole
nation in the ancient form. The writ of King William went forth,
announcing to all the King’s faithful men, French and English, that he
had granted to Anselm the archbishopric of Canterbury, with all the
rights, powers, and possessions――rights, powers, and possessions,
recited in the English tongue――which belonged to the see, with all
liberties over all his men, within boroughs and without. And words
were added which seemed meant expressly to enforce Anselm’s view of
the point last in dispute. The new archbishop was to have all these
liberties over as many thegns as King Eadward the King’s kinsman had
granted to the see of Christ Church. This can hardly mean anything
except the annulling of the grants which the King had made during the
vacancy.[1177] Anselm was to have all such temporal rights as had been
lawfully held by Lanfranc, as had been before him unlawfully held by
Stigand. The writ further contains provisions on behalf of the
metropolitan monastery. The estates of the convent were distinct from
those of the see; still, in such a time of unlaw, it is likely that
some excuse had been found to do them some wrong also. To the monks of
Christ Church therefore the King confirms all their rights and
possessions, with all the tolls and dues from the haven of Sandwich;
no man, French or English, should meddle with them or their
servants.[1178] Our Canterbury guide speaks also of a renewed grant,
on more favourable terms than before, of the city of Canterbury and of
the abbey of Saint Alban’s.[1179] These possessions were at least not
granted by the writ which announces the grant of the archbishopric. Of
one of them the local patriotism of Saint Alban’s naturally knew
nothing, though we hear of the friendship which Anselm showed to the
house and to its abbot Paul. This friendship could hardly have been
shown in the character of archbishop, as Paul died during the year of
Anselm’s appointment.[1180] And it is not wonderful that Anselm’s
friendship for the abbey did not avail to save it from the usual fate.
For four years after the death of Paul, the church of Saint Alban
remained without an abbot, while the King held the lands of the abbey,
cut down its woods, and found many ingenious excuses, such as Flambard
knew how to devise, for wringing money out of its tenants.[1181]
[Sidenote: The question as to the Pope left unsettled.]
[Sidenote: No reference to the Pope in English episcopal
appointments.]
It would seem that, of the three points which had been insisted on by
Anselm at Rochester, two were left out of sight in the public assembly
at Winchester no less than in the private conference at Windsor. The
question about the grants of the archiepiscopal lands was settled, at
least in name and for the time, in favour of Anselm; but nothing was
said either about William’s obligation to take Anselm as his spiritual
guide or about the acknowledgement of Urban as Pope. The former of
these two was in truth a matter for the King’s private conscience; it
was hardly a matter to be discussed and legislated about in an
assembly of the kingdom. And even the matter of the Pope did not touch
Anselm’s conscience in exactly the same way as the question of the
grants. If Anselm had allowed the grants, it would have been, in his
view, an alienation of the rights of his see, and therefore a personal
crime. But he might, without in any way giving up his position,
receive the investiture without saying anything about the papal
question at all. It was not yet held that the Bishop of Rome was
entitled to any voice as to the election, investiture, or
consecration, of any English bishop. In the case of a diocesan bishop,
there was no need for any reference to the Pope at any stage; in the
case of a metropolitan, the pallium had to be asked for; but it was
not asked for till after consecration. Anselm had given fair warning
to the King that he meant to acknowledge Urban. But at no stage of the
business which had yet been reached was there any need for any formal
acknowledgement of any Pope. Anselm might therefore fairly hold that
his first warning was enough, and that he was not called upon to raise
the question again, till the time came when it would be his duty to
seek for the pallium from one Pope or the other. When that time came,
he would be ready to do or suffer as the circumstances of that yet
future day might dictate.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Order of episcopal appointments.]
[Sidenote: Opposite present practice.]
[Sidenote: Theories of the two systems.]
[Sidenote: Present process.]
Before the time for any dealings with Rome should come, there were
still two more ceremonies to be done in England. The process of making
a bishop was, then as now, a long one; but the order of the several
stages was different then from what it now is. Anselm had done homage
and had received restitution of the temporalities; but he was not yet
enthroned, still less consecrated. The order then was, homage,
enthronement, consecration. The present order is the exact opposite.
The bishop-elect is consecrated; then he takes corporal possession of
the see by enthronement; last of all, he does homage to the King and
receives restitution of the temporalities. In the elder state of
things the spiritual office was bestowed on one who was already full
bishop for all temporal purposes. By the later rule the temporal
rights are bestowed on one who is already full bishop for all
spiritual purposes. The difference in order seems to arise from the
different theory of the episcopate which has prevailed since the
restoration of ecclesiastical elections was fully established by the
Great Charter. In the irregular practice of the eleventh century, the
notion of investiture of a benefice by the king had come to the front.
The king had in his hands a great fief, which he granted to whom he
would; that fief was chargeable with certain spiritual duties. It was
therefore for the Church, by her spiritual rite of consecration, to
make the king’s nominee, already invested with his temporal rights,
capable of discharging his spiritual duties. Such was clearly the
established view of the days of Rufus, and the order of the process is
in harmony with it. The office is treated as an appendage to the
benefice. In the theory which is both earlier and later the benefice
is treated as an appendage to the office. The order of the process is
therefore reversed. The spiritual office is first filled by the three
ecclesiastical processes of election, confirmation, consecration――the
last of course being needless when the person chosen is already a
bishop. The bishop then takes personal possession of his church by
installation or enthronement. The spiritual functions over, the
bishop, now in full possession of his office, lastly receives the
attached benefice by homage to the king and restitution of the
temporalities at his hands. That elections were hardly ever really
free at any time, that the royal leave was needed for the election,
that kings recommended, that popes “provided,” that the later law
requires the electors to choose only the king’s nominee and requires
the metropolitan to confirm the person so chosen, makes no difference
to the theory. The royal power is kept in the background; it is the
ecclesiastical power which formally acts. The king’s hand pulls the
wires of the ecclesiastical puppets; but the ecclesiastical puppets
play their formal part. The whole is done according to a theory which
naturally places the formal act of the temporal power last. In the
days of Rufus the whole was done according to another theory which, as
naturally, placed the formal act of the temporal power first of all.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Enthronement of Anselm. September 25, 1093.]
[Sidenote: Flambard brings a suit against Anselm on the day of
enthronement.]
The next stage then was for Anselm, still only a presbyter, but
already invested with all the temporal powers and possessions of the
archbishopric, to take personal possession of his see in the
metropolitan church. It was the only time that such a rite was
performed in the short eastern limb of the new church of Lanfranc.
Anselm’s own later days were to see the removal of the patriarchal
throne of Britain to be the centre of the more stately apse of Conrad,
as later days saw it again removed to be the centre of the yet more
stately apse of the two Williams. On that throne, Anselm, chosen to be
Pope of the island Empire, was placed on one of the later days of
September in the presence of a rejoicing crowd of monks, clergy, and
lay folk. Well might they rejoice; the Church had again a shepherd;
the nation had again a defender. But even that day of joy did not pass
without signs that the favour of the temporal lord of the island
Empire was already turned away from its new pontiff. The King’s sense
of personal honour required him to carry out the promise made at
Gloucester, to allow, even to compel, Anselm to become archbishop. But
he had no sense of Christian or kingly duty to keep him from insulting
and harassing the man whom he had promoted, or to constrain him to
keep the promises contained in his own proclamation. Those things had
not been done in the character of _probus miles_, of knight and
gentleman. It was quite consistent with chivalrous honour to send
Flambard to disturb the joyful day of enthronement by the announcement
of a hostile suit against the new archbishop. We are not told what was
its exact nature, only that it was something which, in the eyes of
strict churchmen at least, wholly concerned the affairs of the Church,
and with which the King’s court had nothing to do.[1182] In the older
days of England such a distinction could hardly have been drawn; after
the separation of the jurisdictions under the Conqueror, it may have
been fair enough. Whatever the actual matter in dispute was, we can
understand the general indignation at the choice of such a moment for
the serving of the notice, at the malice which would not let even the
first day of the Primate’s new dignity pass unmolested. We can also
easily picture to ourselves the fierce swagger of Flambard,
graphically as it is set before us.[1183] And we can listen also to
the mild grief of Anselm, inferring from such treatment on the first
day of his primacy what the troubles of his future life were likely to
be.[1184]
[Sidenote: Other events of the year.]
[Sidenote: Consecration of Anselm at Canterbury. December 4, 1093.]
[Sidenote: Thomas of York.]
[Sidenote: Other bishops present.]
[Sidenote: Absence of Herbert,]
[Sidenote: Wulfstan,]
[Sidenote: and Osbern.]
After the enthronement more than two months still passed before the
final rite of consecration admitted Anselm to the fulness of his
spiritual office. They were months of no small moment in the history
of Britain. They beheld the last invasion of Malcolm, his death,[1185]
the death of his saintly wife, the uprising of Scottish nationality
against the foreign innovations or reforms which Malcolm and Margaret
represented in the eyes of their native subjects. The affairs of
Scotland, of Wales, of Normandy, were all on the Red King’s mind at
the same moment, as well as the affairs of Anselm. But it is these
last that we have to follow for the present. Early in December, on the
second Sunday in Advent, the more part of the bishops of England came
together at Canterbury for the consecration of the new metropolitan.
At their head was the Archbishop of York, Thomas of Bayeux. It was the
privilege of his see――so the loyal historian of the church of York
takes care that we should know――when Canterbury was without an
archbishop, to consecrate bishops and to put the crown on the king’s
head within the vacant province.[1186] Whether the one available
suffragan of the northern province came along with Thomas, in the form
of William of Durham, we are not distinctly told. But of the bishops
of the province of Canterbury eight must have been there. Robert Bloet
was the elect of Lincoln; but he, like Anselm, was himself awaiting
consecration. Of the rest three were absent, and among those three
were the only two who were English either by birth or by adoption, the
two whom we could have most wished to have a share in the work.
Herbert of Thetford must now have been on his penitential journey to
Rome or on his way back.[1187] The holy Wulfstan, the one Englishman
by descent as well as by birth who was left among the bishops of
England, the only one who had been a bishop in the old days of King
Eadward, was still in the land, but was kept away by age or sickness.
So was Osbern of Exeter, the only one of the foreign stock who had
thoroughly made himself an Englishman by adoption. These two sent
letters of consent instead of their personal presence.[1188] The
others gathered round the high altar of Lanfranc’s rearing at Christ
Church. Most of them are men with whose names we are familiar; Maurice
of London, Walkelin of Winchester, Gundulf of Rochester, Osmund of
Salisbury, Robert of Hereford, John who had moved from Wells to Bath,
Robert of Lichfield or of Chester, who had moved in a fiercer sort to
Earl Leofric’s Coventry. All of them, whatever they were in other
ways, were mighty builders. If William of Durham, whose church had
just begun to rise on the height above the Wear,[1189] was really in
their company, there was indeed the master-builder of all, whose heart
might already swell to think how the work which he had begun would
surpass the work of Lanfranc under whose roof they were met. These
eight came together in the new metropolitan church to perform the rite
which should make Anselm at once their brother and their father.
[Sidenote: Position of Thomas.]
[Sidenote: Thomas objects to the description of Anselm as
“Metropolitan of Britain.”]
[Sidenote: His objection admitted.]
[Sidenote: Anselm’s consecration.]
But, before the rite could be gone through, an old question was
stirred again, by no means for the last time. The leader of the
episcopal band was fully minded that the rank to which they were about
to admit the prelate elect should be clearly defined. Thomas of York
had doubtless not forgotten the day when he had himself gone away
unconsecrated from the spot where they were now met, because he could
not bring himself to make such a submission to the higher dignity of
Canterbury as Anselm’s predecessor had required of him.[1190] He now
had his opportunity of raising his voice with greater success on
behalf of the dignity of his own church. Before the consecrating
prelates went on to the examination of the bishop-elect, it was the
business of the Bishop of London to read the formal document declaring
the cause why they had come together.[1191] Bishop Maurice handed over
this duty to the Bishop of Winchester. Walkelin began to read how the
church of Canterbury, the metropolitan church of all Britain, was
widowed of its pastor. The Archbishop of York stopped him;
“Metropolitan church of all Britain? Then the church of York, which
all men know to be a metropolitan church, is not metropolitan. We all
know that the church of Canterbury is the primatial church of all
Britain; metropolitan church of all Britain it is not.”[1192] This was
not a distinction without a difference. To allow the claim of
Canterbury to be the metropolitan church of all Britain would have
been to admit that the church of York was a mere suffragan see of
Canterbury. The other form simply asserted the precedency of
Canterbury as the higher in rank of the two metropolitan sees of
Britain. So Anselm’s correspondent at Lyons was Primate of all the
Gauls, without endangering the metropolitan rank of Rheims and Rouen.
But William the Good Soul would have been stirred to wrath had it been
hinted that Lyons was the metropolitan church of all Gaul, and Rouen
simply its suffragan. A zealot for the rights of Canterbury admits
that the objection of Thomas was a good one.[1193] The wording of the
document was at once changed;[1194] the rite went on, and Anselm was
consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of all Britain. If
the more northern suffragans of York had any objections to make, they
were just then less likely than ever to be at Canterbury to make them.
[Sidenote: Question of acknowledging the Pope.]
[Sidenote: Thomas claims jurisdiction over Lincoln.]
[Sidenote: Robert Bloet’s consecration delayed.]
The position of the newly-consecrated Primate within his own island
was thus settled to the satisfaction of the man who thought that he
had a special interest in the matter. It was perhaps more difficult to
settle his relation to the ecclesiastical powers beyond his own
island. Anselm had warned the King that, if he became archbishop, he
must yield obedience to Urban. But, as the King had not acknowledged
Urban, it would have been deemed unlawful to speak of Urban as Pope in
any public act. The difficulty seems to have been got over by Anselm
making a profession of obedience to the Roman Church, without
mentioning the name of any particular pontiff.[1195] Thus passed the
day of the consecration; but, on the morrow, Thomas of York,
successful thus far, found yet another point to assert on behalf of
the alleged rights of his church. He had, it will be remembered,
striven to hinder Remigius from transferring the see of Dorchester to
a spot which he deemed to be in his own province and diocese.[1196]
Since that time, notwithstanding his remonstrances, the minster of
Lincoln had arisen; but it remained unconsecrated, and its builder was
dead. To the mind of Thomas these facts perhaps seemed to be signs as
clear in their meaning as any which the Bishop of Hereford would find
out from the lore of the stars.[1197] Thus emboldened, on the day
after he had consecrated Anselm to the see of Canterbury, Thomas
warned the new Primate against proceeding, as he had purposed, to
consecrate Robert Bloet to the see of Lincoln. He might consecrate
him, if he would, to the ancient see of Dorchester; but not to Lincoln
or to any other place in that land of Lindesey which belonged to the
jurisdiction of York.[1198] Anselm seems to have yielded; at least the
matter remained unsettled, and the elect of Lincoln remained
unconsecrated for two months longer.
[Sidenote: Christmas Gemót at Gloucester. 1093-1094.]
[Sidenote: Anselm received by the King.]
Anselm now, after so many difficulties, was at last fully Archbishop.
He remained in his metropolis for eight days only after his
consecration. He then set forth for the Christmas Assembly of the
realm, to be held at Gloucester.[1199] The prayer which he had drawn
up at the assembly held there twelve months before had indeed been
answered. The King’s heart had been stirred; the Archbishop had been
appointed. Unhappily also the King’s heart had been stirred back
again. William was again the king who had mockingly bidden his bishops
to pray as they thought good, not the king who had passionately called
on Anselm to step in between him and eternal death. The breach between
King and Primate had begun before Anselm was fully Primate, when
Flambard had insolently summoned him in his own church on the day of
his enthronement. Whatever the matter of the summons was, Anselm was
now ready in the King’s court to answer it. But of that dispute we
hear no more. The Archbishop came to Gloucester, and was courteously
and cheerfully received, not only by the assembled nobles, but by the
King himself.[1200] But the Witan were not to depart from the place of
meeting till new grounds of quarrel had arisen between the two unequal
yokefellows who were at last fully coupled together.
§ 3. _The Assembly at Hastings and the Second Norman Campaign._ 1094.
[Sidenote: Events of the year 1094.]
[Sidenote: Affairs of Normandy; their connexion with Anselm.]
The events of the year on which we have now entered consist partly of
warlike movements in Normandy and Scotland, partly of matters directly
touching ecclesiastical questions, above all touching Anselm. Of
these, the affairs of Scotland and the affairs of Anselm have hardly
any bearing on one another. But the affairs of Normandy and the
affairs of Anselm have a close connexion. They were discussed in the
same assemblies; and one ground of quarrel between King and Primate
arose directly out of the discussion of Norman affairs. Some of the
details of the two stories are so mixed up with one another that it
would be hard to keep them apart. Again, the Scottish warfare of this
year is part of a continuous series of Scottish events spread over
several years. But the Norman warfare is a kind of episode. It is
connected by the laws of cause and effect with things which went
before and with things which came after; but, as a story, it stands by
itself or is mixed up with the story of Anselm. It cannot be dealt
with, like the King’s first Norman war, as a distinct chapter of our
history. It will therefore be better, during the year which follows
the consecration of Anselm, to keep Scottish affairs apart from the
history of the ecclesiastical dispute, but to treat the Norman
campaign as something filling up part of the time between two great
stages in Anselm’s history.
[Sidenote: Robert’s challenge of William. 1093-1094.]
[Sidenote: Form of the message.]
[Sidenote: War decreed.]
The chief business of the assembly which now met at Gloucester was the
reception of a hostile message from the Duke of the Normans. This fact
makes us wish to know more in detail what Count William of Eu had
suggested, and what King William of England had done. It is certain
that King William needed no pressing to make him inclined for another
attempt on his brother’s dominions; but it is clear that the coming of
Count William had led to some special action which had given Duke
Robert special ground of complaint. The Norman embassy came, and
challenged one brother in the name of the other, almost as an earlier
Norman embassy had challenged Harold in the name of the father of both
of them.[1201] The diplomacy of those days was clear and outspoken.
The _bodes_ of Duke Robert seem to have spoken to King William in the
midst of his Witan, much as the bodes of the Athenian commonwealth
spoke, with a greater amount of personal deference, to King Philip on
his throne. They told the King of the English that their master
renounced all peace and treaty with him, unless he would do all that
was set down in the treaty; they declared him forsworn and truthless,
unless he would hold to the treaty, or would go and clear himself at
the place where the treaty had been made and sworn to.[1202] Such a
message as this was hardly wise in Robert, whatever it might have been
in a prince who had the resources of his dominions more thoroughly at
his command. It was in some sort an appeal to arbitration; but it was
put in a shape which was sure to bring on war. William had no doubt
made up his mind for a Norman enterprise in any case; the message of
Robert would really help him by turning a certain amount of public
feeling to his side. An expedition was decreed; Normandy was to be a
second time invaded by the Red King.
[Sidenote: Contributions collected for the war.]
[Sidenote: Anselm unwilling to contribute.]
[Sidenote: He gives five hundred pounds.]
And now came the question how ways and means were to be found for the
new war. That some of the ways and means which were employed were
unworthy of all kingly dignity[1203] is not wonderful in this reign.
But the only one of which we distinctly hear seems in itself less
unworthy than some others, though the particular form which it took is
eminently characteristic of Rufus. The great men who had come together
to the assembly made presents to the King, forerunners of the
benevolences of later times. The great men of Normandy had,
twenty-eight years before, made contributions of ships for the
invasion of England.[1204] Now the great men of England, some of them
the same persons, made contributions of money for the invasion of
Normandy. This was at least less unworthy of the kingly dignity than
some of the tricks by which Flambard wrung money out of more helpless
victims. But the Red King’s way of dealing with such gifts shows the
mixture of greed and pride which stands out in all his doings. If the
sum offered was less than he thought it ought to be, he cast it aside
with scorn; nor would he ever again admit the offerer to his
friendship, unless he made amends by a second offer of such a sum as
the King might think becoming.[1205] To this custom Anselm now
conformed, with the other nobles and prelates; but it was with some
pains that his friends persuaded him to conform to it.[1206] With his
usual fear of being misconstrued, he dreaded that if, so soon after
his consecration, he gave the King any sum which the King would think
worth taking, it might have the air of a simoniacal bargain.[1207] He
might also hold that the goods of the Church ought not to be applied
to worldly, least of all to warlike, uses; he might even feel some
scruple in helping towards a war against a prince who had so lately
been his own worldly lord. But he was won over by the argument that a
gift in season might win the King’s favour for ever, and that he might
be allowed to give his mind with less disturbance to the spiritual
duties of his office.[1208] He brought himself therefore to offer the
King five hundred pounds of silver. William was satisfied with the
amount, and received the gift with courteous thanks.[1209]
[Sidenote: William persuaded to refuse the money.]
[Sidenote: Anselm prays Rufus to take the money.]
[Sidenote: Rufus refuses it.]
What followed showed that William Rufus had counsellors about him who
were worse than himself, or who at any rate were not ashamed to play
upon the worst parts of his character to obtain their own ends. In
this case they are nameless. Are we to fill up the blank with the
names of the Bishop of Durham and the Count of Meulan? Or is it safer
to lay any evil deed the doer of which is not recorded on the broad
back of Randolf Flambard? At any rate, some malignant persons, whoever
they were, came about the King, and persuaded him that the gift of the
Archbishop was a contemptible sum which he ought to reject. One whom
he had exalted and enriched above the other great men of England
ought, in such need as that in which the King found himself, to have
given him two thousand pounds, or one thousand at the very least. To
offer so little as five hundred was mere mockery. Let the King wait a
little, let him change his face towards the Archbishop, and Anselm
would presently come, delighted to win back the King’s favour with the
gift of five hundred pounds more.[1210] Thus the Primate’s enemies,
whoever they were, sought to frighten him, and to get more money out
of him for the King’s use. But their schemes were disappointed.[1211]
Anselm was presently surprised by a message to say that the King
refused his gift――the gift which he had already cheerfully
accepted.[1212] He then sought an audience, and asked the King whether
such a message was really of his sending. Some tyrants might have seen
in this question an escape from a difficulty. It would have been easy
for Rufus to have denied his own act; but his pride was up, and direct
lying was never in his vein. He avowed his message. Then Anselm prayed
him not to refuse his gift; it was the first that he had offered; it
should not be the last. It would be better for the King to receive a
smaller sum from him as a friend, than to wring a larger sum from him
as a slave.[1213] Of the alternative of increasing the amount of the
gift he said not a word. One motive was that he could not raise a
greater sum without doing wrong to his tenants――the wrong which he had
declared Ælfheah to be a true martyr for refusing to do.[1214] The
King was now in the mood for short and wrathful speeches. “Keep your
money and your jaw to yourself; I have enough of my own. Get you
gone.”[1215] Anselm obeyed, remembering that at his enthronement the
Gospel had been read which said that no man could serve two masters.
He rejoiced that no one now could deem that he had been guilty of any
corrupt bargain with the King. Yet he tried once more through
messengers to persuade the King to take his gift, but, as he steadily
refused to double it, it was still thrust aside with scorn. The
assembly broke up; the Archbishop, still in the King’s disfavour, went
away, and the money which the King had despised was given to the poor.
[Sidenote: Dispute with the Bishop of London.]
[Sidenote: Judgement of Wulfstan.]
This business over, Anselm had now a few weeks, but a few weeks only,
to give to his immediate pastoral work. Even those weeks were
disturbed by a dispute with one of his suffragans. The point at issue
was the right of the Archbishop to consecrate churches and do other
episcopal acts in such of his manors as were locally in other
dioceses. This right was denied by Bishop Maurice of London, who sent
two of his canons to forbid the Archbishop to consecrate the newly
built church of Harrow.[1216] The matter was settled by an appeal to
one who knew the ancient laws of England better than either Maurice or
Anselm. Wulfstan of Worcester, now “one and alone of the ancient
fathers of the English,” wrote back his judgement in favour of the
Primate’s right.[1217] The question was thus decided; Maurice did not
dare to set up his judgement on such a matter against that of the
venerable saint, the relic of a state of things which had passed
away.[1218]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Assembly at Hastings. February 2, 1094.]
[Sidenote: The fleet delayed by the wind.]
Those of the great men of England who had come to the Gemót at
Gloucester from the more distant parts of the kingdom could hardly
have reached their homes when they were again summoned to give the
King the benefit of their counsels. William Rufus was so strong upon
his throne that in his days assemblies were sure to be frequent. He
was moreover planning a campaign beyond the sea, so that it was very
doubtful whether he would be able this year to wear his crown in
England at the usual times of Easter and Pentecost. The Easter Gemót
was therefore in some sort forestalled. As the starting-point for his
second invasion of Normandy the King had chosen the spot which had
been his father’s head-quarters in the great invasion of England. At
Pevensey he had once beaten back the invasion of his Norman brother;
at Hastings he now gathered the force which was for the second time to
avenge that wrong. The chief men of England were again brought
together. We may perhaps see in this assembly a case of the military
Gemót. Anselm and several other bishops were there; but it is said
that their presence was required to give their blessing to the King
and his army before they crossed the sea.[1219] But that final
blessing could not be given till many weeks after the army or assembly
first came together. When the younger William sought to invade
Normandy, he was kept lingering at Hastings, as the elder William had
been kept lingering at Saint Valery when he sought to invade England.
For six weeks the north wind refused to blow. While thus kept back
from warfare, the King seems to have amused himself with
ecclesiastical business and ecclesiastical ceremonies, and he further
brought on himself the sharpest of ecclesiastical rebukes.[1220]
[Sidenote: The Abbey of Battle.]
[Sidenote: Completion of the building.]
[Sidenote: Consecration of the church. February 11, 1094.]
[Sidenote: Bishops present; Ralph of Coutances.]
[Sidenote: Death of Geoffrey Bishop of Coutances. February 3, 1093.]
[Sidenote: William and Anselm at Battle.]
But one of the ceremonies which filled up the time of enforced leisure
must have been something more than a matter of amusement to William
the Red. Whatever traces of good feeling lingered in his heart
gathered round the memory of his parents. And he was now called on to
join in a rite which was the crowning homage to his father’s name, the
most speaking memorial of his father’s victory and his father’s
bounty. Again was a William encamped at Hastings called on to make his
way to the hill of Senlac. But this time he could make his way thither
in peaceful guise. The place was no longer a wilderness or a camp, no
longer the hill of the hoar apple-tree, no longer bristling with the
thickset lines of battle, no longer heaped with the corpses of the
conquerors and the conquered. The height which had once been fenced in
by the palisade of the English host was now fenced in by the precinct
wall of a vast monastery; its buildings, overhanging the hill side,
covered the spot where Gyrth had fallen by the hand of William;[1221]
its church, fresh from the hands of the craftsman, covered the ground
which had beheld the last act of the day of slaughter; its high altar,
blazing doubtless with all the skill of Otto and Theodoric,[1222]
marked the spot where Harold, struck by the bolt from heaven, had
fallen between the Dragon and the Standard. After so many years had
passed since the Conqueror had bidden that the memorial of the
Conquest should rise on that spot and on no other, the minster of
Saint Martin of the Place of Battle stood ready for consecration.
Moved by the prayer of Abbot Gausbert, prompted too by his own
reverence for the memory and the bidding of his father, William the
younger bade that his father’s church should at once be hallowed in
his own presence.[1223] On a Saturday then in the month of February,
in the twenty-eighth year since the awful Saturday of Saint Calixtus,
the two who were so unequally yoked together to draw the plough of the
Church of England made their way to the place of Battle. A crowd of
nobles and commons came together to the sight; and with them, besides
the Primate, were seven bishops of three different provinces. There
was Ralph of Chichester, bishop of the diocese, whose jurisdiction
within the favoured abbey was so zealously denied by every monk of
Battle.[1224] There were Walkelin of Winchester, Osmund of Salisbury,
John of Bath, and Gundulf of Rochester. There was the Primate’s great
northern enemy, William of Durham. And there too was a suffragan of
Rouen, the immediate successor of one of the fierce prelates who had
blessed the Conqueror’s host on the morning of the great battle.[1225]
Geoffrey of Mowbray, Bishop and once Earl, had died a year before, and
the episcopal chair of Coutances was now filled by his successor
Ralph.[1226] How, it may be asked, came a Norman bishop in the court,
almost in the army, of a king who was about to invade Normandy? The
answer is easy. The Côtentin was now again in the hands of
Henry,[1227] and the presence of its bishop at the court of William
was a sign of the good understanding which now reigned between the two
younger sons of the Conqueror. But on such a day as this all interest
gathers round the two main figures in the assembly, the two of highest
rank in their several orders. William the Red, strange assistant in
any religious rite, seems less out of place than usual as assistant in
the rite which was to dedicate the work of his father. And if prayers
and offerings were to go up on that spot for those who had fallen
there on the defeated as well as on the victorious side, there was no
mouth in which we should more gladly put them than in the mouth of him
who was the chief celebrant on that day. Anselm, standing at the head
of his foreign suffragans――English Wulfstan stood not by him――before
the altar of Saint Martin of the Place of Battle, seemed like a
representative of universal Christendom, of universal peace and love.
The holy man from Aosta sang his mass in honour of the holy man of
Tours. And he sang it on the spot where Harold of England had stood by
his standard in the morning, where William of Normandy had held the
feast of victory in the evening, the morning and evening of the most
memorable day in the history of our island since England became one
kingdom.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The King at Hastings.]
[Sidenote: William of Saint-Calais.]
[Sidenote: Consecration of Robert Bloet to Lincoln. February 12,
1094.]
[Sidenote: Robert’s gift to the King.]
[Sidenote: Plot against Anselm.]
[Sidenote: Compromise with York.]
[Sidenote: Character of Robert Bloet.]
[Sidenote: His offices.]
[Sidenote: His death. 1123.]
[Sidenote: Local legends about him.]
From the hill of Battle William went back to the hill of Hastings, now
crowned by the castle into which the hasty fortress of his father had
grown.[1228] Six years earlier the Bishop of Durham, charged with
treason, had in answer, pleaded that he had kept Hastings and its
castle in the King’s obedience.[1229] Notwithstanding that answer, he
had been banished; he had been recalled, and he now stood, with all
his former authority, chief counsellor of the King, chief enemy of the
Archbishop. On the morrow of the dedication of Saint Martin’s, William
of Saint-Calais joined with Anselm in the long-delayed consecration of
the elect of Lincoln. The rite was done in the church of Our Lady
within the castle of Hastings, by the hands of the same prelates who
had the day before dedicated the church of Battle. It was to the see
of Lincoln, not to the see of Dorchester, that Robert Bloet was
consecrated. Thomas of Bayeux was not there to repeat his protest. He
would have been there in vain. The bishop-elect had, in the course of
his chancellorship, got together the means of settling such questions.
His bishopric, granted at the time of the King’s repentance, had cost
him nothing. It was now a matter of regret with Rufus that it had cost
him nothing; Robert had therefore to pay all the more for the
establishment of the rights of his see. One who had the means of
knowing says that he gave the King the great sum of five thousand
pounds to decide the cause in favour of Lincoln.[1230] This was done,
the York writer complains, without the consent of the Archbishop of
York and without the knowledge of his chapter.[1231] The case must
have been settled either at Gloucester or now at Hastings. It was most
likely at Hastings, as we can hardly fancy Thomas keeping away from
the great Christmas gathering. Our Canterbury guide tells us a not
very intelligible story which may show us how the claim of Thomas was
spoken of in the southern metropolis. The cause of York had found at
least professing friends among the great men at Hastings, though it
met with no favour from the King himself. Not knowing perhaps with
what weighty arguments the elect of Lincoln had proved his case,
certain unnamed bishops and lords deemed that they would please the
King by anything which could annoy or discredit Anselm. They therefore
insidiously tried to persuade the Archbishop to consecrate Robert
without his making due profession to the church of Canterbury.[1232]
Anselm stood firm. The King, when he heard of the plot, took to his
magnanimous vein. His personal quarrel with Anselm should never lead
him to do anything against the dignity of the Church of Canterbury his
mother.[1233] The King and Flambard perhaps enjoyed the joke together.
But Robert Bloet made the needful profession, and was consecrated as
Bishop of Lincoln by Anselm and the assembled prelates. The
controversy with York was at last formally settled, by a compromise
which was announced in a royal charter. By this the Archbishop of York
accepted the patronage of the new abbey of Selby in his own diocese,
and that of the church of Saint Oswald at Worcester――the city and
diocese so long connected with York――in exchange for his claims over
Lindesey.[1234] The isle and city of Lindum has ever since remained an
undisputed member of the southern province. The new Bishop of Lincoln,
the first prelate consecrated to that see, has left a doubtful
character behind him. He held his bishopric for thirty years, living
on far into the reign of Henry, and keeping the royal favour till just
before his death. Chancellor under both Williams, he, as usual,
resigned that post on his consecration; but under Henry he ruled with
great power in the higher office of Justiciar.[1235] Bountiful in his
gifts to his see and to his church, the number of whose prebends he
doubled, splendid and liberal in his manner of life, bountiful to the
poor, winning the hearts of all around him, not himself a scholar, but
a promoter of scholars, skilful in worldly business of every kind, he
does not show us the best, but neither does he show us the worst type
of the prelates of his day. He was charged with looseness of life; but
his chief accuser found it wise to strike out the charge, and his son
Simon, Dean of his own church, was born while he was Chancellor to the
Conqueror, quite possibly in lawful wedlock. His last days form a
striking incident in the next reign; here he chiefly concerns us as
being in some sort, however strangely, bracketted with Anselm, as the
other bishop whom the Red King named during his short time of
repentance.[1236] Anyhow it was hard on him to tell in after days how
his ghost hindered anybody from praying or giving alms near his tomb
in the minster, and that only because he removed the monks of Stow to
Eynsham, because he subjected his see to the gift of a precious mantle
to the King, or because he agreed to the wise measure which lessened
the extent of his vast diocese.
[Sidenote: Return of Herbert of Thetford.]
[Sidenote: He is deprived by the King.]
Another bishop appeared at this gathering, whose coming was, for the
time, less lucky for himself than that of Robert Bloet. Herbert of
Thetford, struck with penitence for his simoniacal bargain, had, as it
will be remembered, gone beyond sea on an errand which of all others
was most offensive to the King. He had gone to receive again from the
Pope――doubtless from Urban――the bishopric which he had already bought
of the King.[1237] For this offence William now took away his staff;
that is, he deprived him of his bishopric. With whose advice or
consent this was done, and what line Anselm took with regard to such a
step, we are not told. At all events the King now deprived a bishop of
his office on the ground of what he deemed to be treason done without
the realm. This was the converse of the act by which, forty-two years
before, the nation had deprived another bishop on the ground of what
they deemed to be treason within the realm.[1238] William however did
not set up any doubtful Stigand of his own in the church of Thetford.
About a year later Herbert was again in possession of his see.[1239]
How he was restored to the King’s favour we are not told. He may have
deemed it no sin to win it by means which he had learned to look upon
as sin when applied to the obtaining of a spiritual office. Next year
he removed the seat of the East-Anglian bishopric once more. Herfast
had moved it from Elmham to Thetford. With the good will and help of
Roger Bigod Herbert now translated it to its final seat at Norwich. He
there began the foundation of that vast church and monastery, the
creation of which caused his name to be ever since held in at least
local honour.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Lent, 1094.]
[Sidenote: Anselm rebukes the minions.]
Meanwhile the north wind still refused to blow, and the King with his
prelates, lords, and courtiers, still tarried at Hastings. Lent began
before the fleet had a chance of sailing. The penitential season began
with the usual ceremonies. The Archbishop said his mass and preached
his sermon in the ears of the multitude who came together on the day
of ashes, to receive, according to custom, the ashes of penitence from
the hands of the Primate. Among them came the minions and young
gallants of the court of Rufus, with their long combed and twined
hair, their mincing gait, defying alike the commands of the Apostle
and the dictates of common decency and manliness. The voice of Anselm
rebuked them, as well he might, when the outward garb was but the sign
of the deeper foulness within. Not a few were moved to repentance;
they submitted to the loss of their flowing locks, and put on again
the form of men.[1240] Others were stubborn; they received neither
ashes nor absolution. In this battle with a foolish custom which was
in truth far more than a foolish custom, Anselm had not a few
forerunners or followers. Saint Wulfstan, Gundulf, Serlo of Seez, all
preached and acted vigorously against the long hair which was the
symbol of the crying vice of the time.[1241] Anselm deemed that the
evil called for something more than a single act of discipline. The
man of God felt called on to strike at the root of the mischief; he
was moved to make a warning appeal to the conscience, if any
conscience was left, of the chief sinner of them all, and he made it,
after his wont, at once gently and vigorously.
[Sidenote: Anselm’s interview with the King.]
[Sidenote: His silence about the war.]
[Sidenote: He asks for help in his reforms.]
We may guess that the King had not been present at the ceremonies of
Ash-Wednesday; had he been there, his presence would surely have been
dwelled upon. It seems that Anselm, though openly out of the King’s
favour, still visited him from time to time. One day therefore he went
and sat down beside him, and spoke what was in his heart.[1242] The
King was setting forth to conquer Normandy. It is to be noticed that
Anselm does not say a word as to the right or wrong of the war.
Perhaps, after the challenge of Robert, the cause of Rufus may have
seemed, even to him, to be technically just. Perhaps he knew that
anything that could be said on that subject would be fruitless. He may
even have deemed, a view which had much to be said for it, that a
conquest of Normandy by the Red King would be a good exchange for the
rule of its present sovereign. And we must remember that wars of all
kinds were in those days so constantly going on that they would seem
like a necessary evil, a dark side of the economy of things, but one
which could not be hindered. Even men like Anselm would come to look
with less horror than one might expect on wars which were waged only
by those whose whole business might seem to be warfare. Anyhow Anselm
said nothing directly against the war, even though it was to be waged
against the prince to whom he had lately owed allegiance and against
the land which had been to him a second birth-place. But he asked the
King whether he had any right to look for success in that or any other
enterprise, unless he did something to check the evils which had well
nigh uprooted the religion of Christ in his realm. He called on
William to give him the help of the royal authority in his own schemes
of reform. The King asked what form his help was to take,[1243] and
Anselm then put forth his views at length.
[Sidenote: He asks leave to hold a synod.]
[Sidenote: Advantages of the synod.]
[Sidenote: No synod held under Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Anselm’s appeal against the fashionable vices.]
First and foremost, the King was to help in the work of reform by
allowing Anselm to hold a synod of the realm. It will be remembered
that, by the laws of the Conqueror, no synod could be held without the
King’s licence, and the acts of the synod were of no force without the
King’s confirmation.[1244] But under the Conqueror Lanfranc had, on
the conditions thus laid down, held his synods without hindrance. That
is to say, the elder William, in all causes and over all persons
within his dominions supreme, used that supremacy as the chief ruler
of the Church from within, while the younger William turned that same
supremacy into a weapon wherewith to assault the Church as an enemy
from without. It is plain from the earnestness of Anselm one way――one
might almost say, from the earnestness of Rufus the other way――that
the synod was a real instrument for the reformation of manners. It is
plain that the assembled bishops, when they came together in a body,
could do more both for ecclesiastical discipline and for moral
improvement than they could do, each one in his own diocese. One cause
may have been that, in a synod, the assembled prelates might seem to
be really speaking as fathers in God, while the exercise of their
local jurisdiction was too much mixed up with the petty and not always
creditable details of their courts, with those tricks and extortions
of archdeacons and other officials of which we have often heard.
Anyhow, as the Roman Senate had good enough left in it to call forth
the hatred of Nero, so an ecclesiastical synod had good enough left in
it to call forth the hatred of William Rufus. Not one synod had he
allowed to be held during the whole time of his reign, now in its
seventh year.[1245] Anselm earnestly prayed to be allowed to hold one
for the restoration of discipline and the reformation of manners. The
King answered; “I will see to this matter when I think good; I will
act, not after your pleasure but after my own. And, pray,” added he
mockingly, “when you have got your synod, what will you talk about in
it?” The man of God did not shrink from going straight to the crying
evil of the time. What weighed most on Anselm’s mind was not any mere
breach of ecclesiastical rule――such breaches he had to speak of, but
he would not speak of them first;[1246] the burthen on his soul was
the hideous moral corruption, a new thing on English ground, which had
become rife throughout the land. Unless King and Primate, each in his
own sphere, each with his own weapons, worked together to root out
this plague, the kingdom of England might share the fate of the cities
which it had come to resemble. A strict law was needed, the very
hearing of which would make the guilty tremble.[1247] The words of
Anselm were general; there was no personal charge against William; the
Archbishop simply appealed to him as King to stop the sins of others.
But all this makes us feel more strongly the wonderful character of
such a scene, where two such men could be sitting side by side and
exchanging their thoughts freely. But the heart of Rufus was hardened;
he answered only by a sneer. “And what may come of this matter for
you?” “For me nothing,” said Anselm; “for you and for God I hope
much.”[1248]
[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical grievances.]
[Sidenote: Wrongs of the church tenants.]
[Sidenote: He prays the King to fill the vacant abbeys.]
[Sidenote: The abbeys in what sense the King’s.]
[Sidenote: Hostile answer of Rufus.]
There is so much of simple moral grandeur in this appeal of the
righteous man against moral evil that we might almost have wished that
Anselm’s discourse had ended at this point, and that he had not gone
on to speak of matters which to us seem to have less of a moral and
more of a technical nature. Yet Anselm would doubtless have thought
himself faithless to his duty, if he had left the King’s presence
without making a special appeal about the special grievances of
ecclesiastical bodies. Moreover the wrongs of the bishoprics and
abbeys were distinctly moral wrongs; the King’s doings involved breach
of law, breach of trust; they were grievances on which the head of the
ecclesiastical order was, as such, specially bound to enlarge. But
they were also grievances which did not touch the ecclesiastical order
only; the wrongs done to the tenants of the vacant churches are
constantly dwelled on as one of the worst features of the system
brought in by Rufus and Flambard. Anselm therefore deemed it his duty,
before he parted from the King, to say a word on this matter also, a
matter in which there could be no doubt that the King himself was the
chief sinner. No bishopric was now vacant; but several abbeys, Saint
Alban’s among them, were in the hands of Flambard. Such a state of
things called for his own care as Primate; he appealed to William to
give him his help as King. In the monasteries which were left without
rulers discipline became lax; the monks fell into evil courses; they
died without confession. He prayed the King to allow the appointment
of abbots to the vacant churches, lest he should draw on himself the
judgement which must follow on the evils to which their vacancies gave
cause.[1249] The King seems to have been less able to endure this
rebuke than the other. The disorders of his courtiers and of his own
private life he could not defend on any showing; but the demand that
the abbeys should be filled touched what he looked on as one of his
royal rights. Rufus burst forth in wrath. “Are not the abbeys mine?
Tush, you do as you choose with your manors; shall not I do as I
choose with my abbeys?”[1250] The answer of Anselm drew a distinction
which was a very practical one in those days, and which affects our
legal language still. To this day the King, the Bishop, the Chapter,
all speak of any episcopal see as “our cathedral church,” and all
speak, from their several points of view, with equal truth. Such a
church is the king’s church by virtue of the fundatorial rights which
he claims, in some cases by real historic succession, in all cases by
a legal theory. By virtue of those fundatorial rights, he claims to be
informed of every vacancy, and to give his consent to a new election.
In this sense Anselm did not deny that the abbeys were the King’s
abbeys; he did deny that they were the King’s in the further sense in
which Rufus claimed them. “The abbeys are yours,” he said, “to defend
and guard as an advocate; they are not yours to spoil and lay waste.
They are God’s; they are given that his servants may live of them, not
that you may make campaigns and battles at their cost.[1251] You have
manors and revenues of many kinds, out of which you may carry on all
that belongs to you. Leave, may it please you, the churches to have
their own.” “Truly,” says the King, “you know that what you say is
most unpleasing to me. Your predecessor would never have dared to
speak so to my father. I will do nothing on your account.” When Anselm
then saw that he was casting his words to the winds,[1252] he rose and
went his way.
[Sidenote: Lanfranc and Anselm.]
[Sidenote: No need to rebuke the Conqueror on these points.]
[Sidenote: Estimate of Anselm’s conduct.]
[Sidenote: The Archbishop’s claim to the regency.]
It may be that William Rufus spoke truly, and that Lanfranc would not,
in any case, have dared to speak to the Conqueror as Anselm dared to
speak to him. Lanfranc, with much that was great and good in him, was
not a prophet of righteousness like Anselm. But it is far more certain
that Lanfranc was never put to the test. The Conqueror never gave him
any need to speak to him as Anselm had now need to speak to his son.
What we blame in William the Great, what men like Wimund of Saint
Leutfred dared to blame in him, Lanfranc could not blame. The position
of Lanfranc in England involved the position of William. And, once
granting that position, there was comparatively little to blame in the
elder William. The beheading of Waltheof, the making of the New
Forest, stand almost alone; and the beheading of Waltheof was at least
no private murder; it was the judgement of what was in form a
competent court. The harshness and greediness with which the Conqueror
is justly charged was, after all, a small matter compared with the
utter unlaw of his son’s reign. And on the two subjects of Anselm’s
present discourse, the elder William needed no rebuke at any time. His
private life was at all times absolutely blameless, and, neither as
Duke nor as King, did he ever turn his ecclesiastical supremacy into a
source of gain. On both those points Lanfranc had as good a right to
speak as Anselm; but on those points he was never called on to speak
to his own master. Whether, in Anselm’s place, he would have dared to
speak as Anselm did, we cannot tell. But surely the holy boldness of
Anselm cannot be looked on as in any way blameworthy, as either
insolent or untimed. To him at least the time doubtless seemed most
fitting. He called on the King, before he exposed himself to the
dangers of a campaign beyond the sea, to do something to win God’s
favour by correcting the two grossest of the evils which were rife in
his kingdom. The Assembly was clearly not dissolved when Anselm spoke;
William could at once have filled the abbeys, he could at once have
put forth a law against the other class of offenders, in the most
regular form, by the advice of his Wise Men. Anselm might even have
held his synod while the wind was waiting. The synod in Lanfranc’s day
followed on the Gemót, and it took up only three days.[1253] Most of
the bishops were present at Hastings; those who were absent had
doubtless been summoned and, by the rule of the Great Charter and of
common sense, they would be bound by the acts of those who obeyed the
summons. Moreover, according to the precedents of the late reign,
Anselm would be the sole or chief representative of the King during
his absence. He might fairly ask to be clothed with every power,
temporal and spiritual, which was needed for the fit discharge of
kingly as well as pastoral duties.
[Sidenote: Anselm attempts to recover the King’s favour.]
[Sidenote: Advice of the bishops to give more money.]
Anselm was deeply grieved at the ill success of his personal appeal to
the King. He was now wholly out of the King’s favour, and he felt
that, without some measure of support from the King, he could not
carry out the reforms, ecclesiastical and moral, for which he
longed.[1254] He was ready to do anything that could be done with a
good conscience in order to win back the King’s good will. He sent the
bishops to William, to crave that he might, of the King’s free grace,
be again admitted to his friendship. If the King would not grant him
his favour, let him at least say why he would not grant it; if Anselm
had wronged him in any way, he was ready to make the wrong good.[1255]
The bishops laid the prayer of their metropolitan before the King. The
answer was characteristic. “I have no fault to find with the
Archbishop; yet I will not grant him my favour, because I hear no
reason given why I should.”[1256] What those words meant in the mouth
of Rufus the bishops knew very well. They went back to tell the
Primate that the mystery was clear.[1257] The King’s favour was to be
won only by money, and by money in no small store. Their counsel was
that Anselm should at once give the King the five hundred pounds which
he had before offered, and that he should promise him another gift of
the same amount as soon as he could get it out of his men.[1258] On
those terms they fully believed that the King would grant him his
peace and friendship. They saw no other way for him; they were in the
same strait themselves, and knew no other way out of it.[1259]
[Sidenote: Anselm’s grounds for refusing.]
[Sidenote: He will not oppress his tenants.]
[Sidenote: His answer to the bishops.]
[Sidenote: The King more hostile than ever.]
In the counsel thus given to Anselm by his suffragans we hear the
words, not of utterly worldly and unscrupulous men, but of the
ordinary prelates of the time, good men, many of them, in all that
concerned their own personal lives and the ordinary administration of
their churches, but not men disposed to risk or dare much, men
disposed to go on as they best might in very bad times, without doing
anything which might make things still worse. In the eyes of Anselm,
on the other hand, things hardly could be made worse; if they could,
it would be by consenting to them. By an unflinching assertion of
principle things might be made better; in the worst case the assertor
of principle would have delivered his own soul. In Anselm’s eyes the
course which his suffragans suggested was sinful on every ground;
moreover――an argument which some of them might better understand――it
was utterly inexpedient. He refused to make his way out of his
difficulties by the path which they proposed. The King allowed that he
had no ground of complaint; he was simply angry because he could not
get five hundred pounds out of him as the price of his favour. If now,
while his appointment was still fresh, he should win the King’s favour
at such a price, the King would get angry with him at any other time
that might suit him, in order to have his wrath bought off in the same
way. This last argument seems to show that Anselm was after all not so
lacking in worldly wisdom as some have thought. But his main argument
was that he would not commit the crime of wringing any more money out
of his tenants. They had been frightfully oppressed and robbed during
the vacancy; he had not as yet been able to do anything to relieve
them; he would not lay fresh burthens upon them; he would not flay
alive those who were already stripped to their skins.[1260] Again, he
would not deal with his lord the King as if his friendship was a thing
to be bought and sold. He owed the King faith and honour, and it would
be doing him dishonour to treat his favour like a horse or an ass to
be paid for in vile money. He utterly refused to put such an insult
upon his sovereign. He told his suffragans that they should rather do
their best to persuade the King to deal of his free grace as it was
fit for him to deal with his archbishop and spiritual father. Then he,
on his part, would strive to do all that he could and might do for his
service and pleasure. This ideal view of the relation of King and
Primate was doubtless above the heads of John of Bath, of Robert of
Lincoln, of Robert of Chester, and of William of Durham in his present
mood. It was surely one of them, rather than Osmund or Robert of
Hereford, who answered; “But at least you will not refuse him the five
hundred pounds which you once offered.” Anselm answered that he could
not give that either; when the King refused it, he had promised it to
the poor, and the more part of it had been given to them already. The
bishops went back to the King on their unpromising errand. William
bade them tell the Archbishop that he hated him much yesterday, that
he hated him much to-day, and that he would hate him more and more
to-morrow and every other day. He would never hold Anselm for father
or archbishop; he cursed and eschewed his blessings and prayers. Let
him go where he would; he need not stay any longer there at Hastings,
if it was to bless him on his setting sail that he was waiting.[1261]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Anselm leaves Hastings.]
[Sidenote: William crosses to Normandy. March 19, 1094.]
[Sidenote: Vain attempts to settle the dispute.]
[Sidenote: Verdict of the guarantors against William.]
The Red King had thus cast aside another offer of grace. Our guide
tells us; “We departed from the court with speed, and left him to his
will.” The pronoun is emphatic. From that time, if not from an earlier
time, English Eadmer was the inseparable companion of Anselm. Anselm
and Eadmer then turned away, at what exact date we are not told. But
the north wind seems not to have blown till more than half the month
of March had passed. Then at last King William of England set sail
from Hastings for the conquest of Normandy. He went without Anselm’s
blessing; yet some of the ceremonies which had been gone through
during his sojourn at Hastings must surely have dwelled in his mind.
Fresh from the rite which in some sort marked the completion of his
father’s work in England, the younger William set out so far to undo
his father’s work as to bring Normandy into political subjection to
England. At what Norman haven he landed we are not told; it was
seemingly in some part of the lands of his earlier conquest, the lands
on the right bank of the Seine. Before swords were drawn, an attempt
was made to settle the dispute between the brothers. King and Duke met
in person; what was their place of meeting we are not told; but no
agreement could be come to.[1262] A second meeting took place, in
which the guarantors of the former treaty were appealed to, much as
Cnut had appealed to the witnesses of the treaty between him and
Eadmund.[1263] The guarantors, the twenty-four barons, twelve on each
side, who had sworn to the treaty, agreed in a verdict which laid the
whole blame upon the King. The words of our account――it is the English
Chronicler who speaks――clearly imply that the guarantors on William’s
side agreed in this verdict no less than those who swore on behalf of
Robert.[1264] And he adds from himself that Rufus would neither allow
that he was in fault nor abide by his former engagement.[1265] This
meeting therefore was yet more fruitless than the former; the brothers
parted in greater anger than ever.[1266] The Duke went back to Rouen;
the King again took up his head-quarters at Eu.[1267]
[Sidenote: Castles held by the King.]
[Sidenote: La Houlme.]
[Sidenote: Argentan.]
[Sidenote: Taking of Bures.]
Again on Norman soil, William began to practise the arts which had
stood him in such stead in his former enterprise on the duchy. He
hired mercenaries; he gave or promised money or lands to such of the
chief men of Normandy as were willing to forsake the allegiance of
Robert; he quartered his knights both in the castles which he had
hitherto held, and in those which he won to himself by these
means.[1268] Some of these last were very far from Eu. It shows how
successful were the arts of Rufus, how wide was the disaffection
against Robert, when we find castles, far away from one another, far
away from the seat of William’s power in eastern Normandy, but hemming
in the lands in the Duke’s obedience on two dangerous frontiers,
garrisoned by the King’s troops. We are reminded of the revival of
Henry’s power in the Côtentin when we read that the castle of La
Houlme, at the junction of the two rivers Douve and Merderet, lying
south-east from Valognes and nearly east from Saint Saviour, was now
held for William.[1269] So was another stronghold in quite another
quarter, not far from the Cenomannian border, the castle of Argentan
on the upper course of the Orne, to the south of the great forest of
Gouffers. Two famous captains held these threatening posts. Argentan
was commanded by Earl Roger’s son, Roger the Poitevin.[1270] La Houlme
was held by William Peverel, the lord of Nottingham and the
Peakland.[1271] But the first military exploit of the campaign was
wrought in a land nearer to Eu. Bures――whether still held or not by
the faithful Helias we are not told――was taken, and the garrison were
made prisoners; some of them were kept in Normandy, others were sent
by Rufus for better safe-keeping in his own kingdom.[1272]
[Sidenote: Robert calls in King Philip.]
[Sidenote: Siege of Argentan.]
[Sidenote: Surrender of Argentan.]
[Sidenote: Ransom of prisoners.]
[Sidenote: Robert takes La Houlme]
Rufus thus pressed the war vigorously against his brother, with the
full purpose of wholly depriving him of the duchy. Robert, in his
distress, again called on his over-lord, and this time with more
effect than before.[1273] The French intervention was at least able to
turn the balance for a while against Rufus. No object was more
important for Robert than the recovery of the two strongholds which
threatened him, one in the dangerous land on the upper Orne, the other
in the no less dangerous Constantine peninsula. A joint expedition of
the new allies was agreed on, and King and Duke appeared side by side
before Argentan. The castle stood on a height of no great elevation
above the river, with the town, as usual, spreading down to its banks.
The existing fragments show that the fortress and its precinct covered
a vast space, but no architectural feature remains as a witness of the
siege of Argentan by Philip and Robert. The town contains several
attractive buildings of later date, ecclesiastical, civil, and
military. There are churches, town-walls with their towers, the later
_château_ within the fortress; but of the stronghold which Roger of
Poitou had to guard against the powers of Rouen and Paris but little
can be traced. There are some massive and irregular pieces of wall,
and part of a polygonal donjon, the latter at least far later than
Roger’s day. But of the size and strength of the castle there can be
no doubt. It is therefore with some little wonder that we read that
the besiegers found its capture so easy a matter as they did,
especially when its defender was one of the house of Montgomery and
Bellême. On the very first day of the siege the castle surrendered
without bloodshed. Roger of Poitou, with seven hundred knights and as
many esquires――a name which we are now beginning to come across――and
his whole garrison were made prisoners and were kept in ward till they
were ransomed.[1274] Here we see the hand of Philip; we see, as in
some other cases which we have come across already, the beginning of
one of the institutions of chivalry. We shall presently see the custom
of the ransom become a marked feature of the wars between France and
England――so we shall soon find ourselves obliged to call them――in the
eleventh century no less than in the fourteenth. But the bulky King of
the French was for the present contented with this one exploit and
with so valuable a stock of captives. Philip went back into France,
and left his Norman vassal to go on with the campaign alone.[1275]
Robert now drew some spirit from success. He marched westward, and
attacked La Houlme. The castle surrendered; the lord of the Peak, with
eight hundred men, became the prize of the Duke’s unusual display of
vigour.[1276]
[Sidenote: Difficulties of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Further taxation.]
[Sidenote: Levy of English soldiers.]
[Sidenote: Flambard takes away the soldiers’ money.]
The war went on; each side burned the towns and took the men of the
other side.[1277] But the tide had for the moment decidedly turned
against the Red King. The loss of Argentan and La Houlme, with their
commanders and their large garrisons, was a serious military blow. The
payment of their ransoms might be a still more serious financial blow.
And the payment of a ransom, by which he only got back again what he
had had before, would be less satisfactory to the mind of Rufus than
the payment of bribes and wages by which he had a hope of gaining
something fresh. The hoard at Winchester seems at last to have been
running low; but when William Rufus was king and when he had Randolf
Flambard to his minister, there could be no lack of ways and means to
fill it again. Specially heavy were the gelds laid on England both in
this year and in the following.[1278] And money was gained by one
device which surely would have come into the head of no king and no
minister save those by whom it actually was devised. A great levy was
ordered; King William sent over his bidding that twenty thousand
Englishmen should come over to help the King in Normandy.[1279]
Englishmen had by this time got used to service beyond sea. Nothing is
said of any difficulty in getting this great force together. The
troops were gathered at Hastings, ready to set sail. Each man had
brought with him ten shillings, the contribution of his shire for his
maintenance in the King’s service. For the men who answered to Rufus’
bidding were no mercenaries, not even housecarls; they were the _fyrd_
of England, summoned, by a perhaps unjustifiable but not very
wonderful stretch of authority, to serve their king beyond the sea.
But, when they were ready to sail, Flambard came, and by the King’s
orders took away each man’s money, and bade them all go home
again.[1280] One would like to know something of the feelings of the
men who were thus strangely cheated; we should surely have heard if
there had been any open resistance. Anyhow, by this amazing trick, the
Red King had exchanged the arms of twenty thousand Englishmen for a
sum of ten thousand pounds of English money. After all, the money
might be of greater use than the men in a war with Philip of Paris.
[Sidenote: Rufus buys off Philip.]
If William thus reckoned, he was not deceived. He was still at Eu.
Philip was again in arms; his forces joined those of Robert; again
King and Duke marched side by side, this time with the purpose of
besieging the King of the English in his Norman stronghold. The ten
thousand pounds now served William’s turn quite as well as the twenty
thousand men could have served it. The combined French and Norman host
had reached Longueville on the Scie, with streams and forests between
them and Eu.[1281] Longueville was the last stage of their march.
Thither Rufus sent those who knew how to bring his special arguments
to bear on the mind of Philip. The King again went back to France, and
the confederate army was broken up.[1282]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Contemporary notices of the campaign.]
[Sidenote: Difference between England and Normandy.]
[Sidenote: Private wars go on in Normandy.]
There is something very singular in the way in which this second
Norman war of William Rufus is dealt with by those who wrote at or
near the time. Some make no mention of it at all; others speak of it
only casually; our own Chronicler, who gives the fullest account of
all, does not carry it on to any intelligible issue of success or of
failure. In his pages, and in those of some others, the war drops out
of notice, without coming to any real end of any kind.[1283] The monk
of Saint Evroul, so lavish in local Norman details, seems to have had
his head too full of the local strifes among the Norman nobles to tell
us anything of a warfare which in our eyes comes so much nearer to the
likeness of a national struggle. It must always be remembered that the
local wars which tore every district of Normandy in pieces did not
stop in the least because two hostile kings were encamped on Norman
soil. There cannot be a more speaking comment, at once on the
difference between Robert and either of his brothers and on the
essential difference between the ordinary state of Normandy and of
England. With us private war was never lawful; we needed not the
preaching of the Truce of God.[1284] William the Great, when his
authority was fully established, kept England in peace; and in his
later years the peace of Normandy itself, as distinguished from the
border lands, was broken only by the rebellion of his own son. So in
England there still were rebellions alike against Rufus and against
Henry; but, when the rebellion was crushed, the land was at rest. In
Normandy, as soon as the hand of the great ruler was taken away,
things fell back into the state in which they had been during his own
minority. And they remained in that state till William the Red in his
later years again established order in the duchy. One can well
understand that the endless ups and downs in the local struggles which
went on close to every man’s door really drew to themselves far more
of men’s thoughts than the strife of King William, King Philip, and
Duke Robert himself. The two kings were but two more disputants added
to the crowd, and they were disputants who really did much less harm
to the land in general than was done by its own native chiefs. It is
not very wonderful then that we hear so little of this war from the
Norman side. It is not wonderful that, on the English side, when
stirring events began again before long to happen in England, the
Norman war dropped out of sight. And presently events in the world’s
history were to come which made even the warfare of England and France
seem trifles amid the general stir of “the world’s debate.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Relations of Rufus and Henry.]
[Sidenote: Saint Cenery taken by Robert of Bellême.]
[Sidenote: Henry and Hugh summoned to Eu.]
[Sidenote: They go to Southampton. October 31, 1094.]
[Sidenote: They keep Christmas in London.]
[Sidenote: The King comes to England. December 28, 1094.]
[Sidenote: William and Henry reconciled.]
[Sidenote: Henry goes to Normandy, c. Feb. 9, 1095.]
[Sidenote: His warfare with Robert.]
[Sidenote: General results of the campaign.]
[Sidenote: Progress of Henry.]
For the last events of Rufus’ second Norman war we have to go wholly
to our one witness in our own tongue. It is plain that the King, even
after his gold had turned Philip back, did not feel at all at ease in
his Norman quarters. He seems to have distrusted two important
personages at the other end of the duchy, his other brother and one of
the mightiest of his own subjects. Henry, Ætheling and again Count,
was safe in his castle of Domfront, among the people who had chosen
him as their protector. At one period of this year, he is described as
at war with both his brothers at once.[1285] We find him taking the
part of the lord of Saint Cenery, Robert son of Geroy,[1286] against
the common enemy, Robert of Bellême. His help however did not hinder
the cherished fortress from falling into the hands of the
tyrant.[1287] We hear of him before the end of the war in a way which
implies at least some suspicious feeling between himself and the King
his brother. Besides Henry, Hugh of Chester――rather Hugh of Avranches
or Hugh of Saint-James――was also in his own continental possessions.
The King summoned both of them to come to him at Eu, and, as the state
of the duchy did not allow them to come across Normandy by land, he
sent ships to bring them.[1288] But Henry and Hugh, from whatever
causes, did not choose to meet the King face to face. Instead of
sailing to Eu or its port, they made for Southampton, where they
landed and seemingly stayed――with what objects we are not told――for
some weeks.[1289] Thence they went to London, and kept Christmas
there. King William was not this year wearing his crown either at
Westminster or at Gloucester. But it is clear that the movements of
his youngest brother had an effect upon his own. For the first three
days of the holy twelve he stayed at Whitsand. On the fourth day, the
feast of the Innocents, the anniversary of the dedication of the West
Minster, he crossed the sea and landed at Dover.[1290] Thence he
seemingly came to London, where Henry was. Whatever quarrels or
suspicions had sprung up between the King and the Ætheling were now
made up. Henry was received into his brother’s fullest confidence. He
stayed in England till Lent began, when he went to spend the
penitential season in Normandy. But it was not to be an idle season;
in the month between Epiphany and Lent, the Red King had made his
preparations for a campaign in which Henry was to take his place. The
Count of Coutances then went again beyond sea with great treasures to
be used on the King’s behalf against his brother――Earl Robert, as
English lips called him. “And ofttimes upon the Earl he won, and to
him mickle harm either on land and on men did.”[1291] Here ends our
story. We get no further details till William became master of all
Normandy by quite another process. But though we get no details of the
war from Norman sources, we do get a general picture of its results.
The no-rule of Robert is once more set before us in speaking words.
The soft Duke, who feared his subjects more than they feared him, was
benumbed with softness and idleness.[1292] He is contrasted with both
his brothers. Henry held his stronghold at Domfront, together with a
large but undefined part of the duchy, including without doubt the
more part of his old peninsular county. Some places he had won by
arms; others, like Domfront itself, had sought his rule of their own
free will.[1293] Within these bounds he yielded to his brother the
Duke just so much service as he thought good,[1294] which at this
particular moment would be little indeed. And the other brother who
wore the diadem of England held more than twenty castles on Norman
ground. He, unlike Robert, was a ruler whom men feared; and his gifts,
and the fear of him together, kept many of the great men of the land,
not only in his allegiance, but in his zealous service.[1295] If
Normandy was not conquered, it was at least effectually dismembered.
[Sidenote: Norman supporters of William.]
[Sidenote: William of Eu.]
[Sidenote: Stephen of Aumale.]
[Sidenote: Robert of Meulan.]
[Sidenote: Walter Giffard.]
[Sidenote: Death of Roger of Beaumont. 1094.]
[Sidenote: Henry Earl of Warwick.]
[Sidenote: Death of Roger of Montgomery. 1094.]
[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême succeeds his father in Normandy, and Hugh
in England.]
[Sidenote: Death of Hugh of Grantmesnil.]
[Sidenote: His burial at Saint Evroul.]
[Sidenote: Death of Walter Giffard. 1102.]
[Sidenote: Eadmer’s judgement of the campaign.]
The list of the Norman nobles who joined the King from beyond sea
takes in most of the names with which we are most at home. There is
Ralph of Conches, Gerard of Gournay, Richard of Courcy. We hear now
too of Philip of Braose, a name to become famous in more than one part
of our island. And we find the names of men yet higher in power, and
nearer to the ducal house. There is the first author of the late
troubles, Count William of Eu, for the present still an adherent of
Rufus, before long to be heard of in quite another character. With him
stands Count Stephen of Aumale, also before long to play a part in our
story wholly different from that which we find him playing now. And it
is needless to say that Count Robert of Meulan was the Red King’s
servant in his Norman, as well as in his English character.[1296] Nor
do we wonder to find in the same list――for he was Earl of Buckingham
as well as lord of Longueville――the name of Walter Giffard, him who
appeared as an aged man forty years before.[1297] He still lived,
while, during this very year, more than one of the elder generation of
the famous men of Normandy passed away. The father of the Count of
Meulan, the old Roger of Beaumont, renowned so many years before alike
in arms and in council,[1298] died on the Norman soil which he had
guarded so well, and which he seems never to have left. He had for
some years left the world, to become a monk in the monastery of Preaux
of his father’s rearing.[1299] His estates had passed to his son at
Meulan, the mighty vassal of three lords. His younger son Henry had
his lot cast in England, where, perhaps before this time, the Red King
bestowed on him the earldom of Warwick. And, in the same year as the
lord of Beaumont, died, far away in England, another Roger, like him a
monk, but four days before a mighty earl, Roger of Montgomery, of
Arundel, and of Shrewsbury, the youngest brother of the house beyond
the Severn bridge of which he at least claimed to be the
founder.[1300] His vast possessions were divided at his death. Robert
of Bellême, already heir of his mother in the border-land, now became
heir of his father in Normandy. The earldom of Shrewsbury and Roger’s
other English estates passed to his second son Hugh, who bears the
character of being the only one of the sons of Mabel who was mild and
gentle[1301]――mild and gentle, we must understand, to Normans, perhaps
even to Englishmen, but certainly not to captive Britons. Of Hugh, as
well as of Robert of Bellême and Roger of Poitou, as well as of Arnulf
of Montgomery, a fourth son of the same fierce stock, we shall hear
much as our tale goes on. In England too, perhaps within his
sheriffdom of Leicester, died Hugh of Grantmesnil, of whom we have
lately heard in the civil wars both of Normandy and of England, and
whom his own shire and his neighbours of Northamptonshire had no
reason to bless. His body, we need hardly say, found its way across
the sea, to lie among his loyal bedesmen at Saint Evroul.[1302] These
men all left the world in the year with which we are now dealing, and
left the hoary Earl of Buckingham to be for eight years longer the
representative of an earlier day.[1303] The hands which eight and
twenty years before had been too feeble to bear the banner of the
Apostle[1304] were still, it would seem, ready to do whatever was
still found for them to do in the service of the Red King. But the
warfare of the King and his partisans is set down simply as one among
the many ways in which Normandy was torn in pieces by her own
children.[1305] An English writer meanwhile, on whose main subject the
Norman campaigns of Rufus had but a very indirect bearing, speaks
casually of this expedition as an undertaking on which a vast deal of
money was spent, but by which very little was gained.[1306]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Wretchedness of England.]
[Sidenote: Causes for the King’s return.]
[Sidenote: Affairs of Scotland]
[Sidenote: and Wales.]
[Sidenote: Plots at home.]
It is indeed to be borne in mind, as supplying at least a partial
explanation of the way in which the second Norman expedition comes to
an end without any end, that things in England were, just as they had
been three years and a half before, in a state which urgently called
for the presence of the King within his kingdom. We know not whether
it at all moved him that the heavy taxation which had been laid on his
kingdom for the cost of his warfare had brought the land to the lowest
pitch of wretchedness. Men, we are told, had ceased to till the
ground; hunger followed; there were hardly left any who could tend the
dying or bury the dead.[1307] These things might not have greatly
stirred the heart of the Red King; but he may, like other tyrants,
have felt that there was a bound beyond which oppression could not be
safely carried. And there were political and military reasons which
called him back. He could not afford to jeopard his undisputed
possession of England for the sake of a few more castles in Normandy.
He could hardly afford to jeopard for their sake the imperial
supremacy of his crown over the whole isle of Britain, a supremacy
which he was at that moment specially called on to assert. The year of
the second Norman campaign was a year of special importance in the
history both of Scotland and of Wales. While the Red King was warring
and bribing in Normandy, Scotland had, as in the days of Siward,
received a king from England, and, what had not happened in the days
of Siward, her people had slain the foreign nominee, and had again
chosen a king of their own. The first reign of Donald, the momentary
reign of Duncan, the beginning of the second reign of Donald, all of
them events which were not mere changes of sovereign, but real
revolutions in the state of the nation, had happened between the death
of Malcolm and the return of William from Normandy thirteen months
later. Wales too had risen in a movement which had more than was usual
of the character of real national insurrection, and the movement had
called for all the energies of the new Earl of Shrewsbury and of the
King himself on his return. And a plot yet nearer home, a plot to
deprive the King of his crown and life, a plot devised by men who had
been just now the foremost in supporting his cause, broke out soon
after his return. It broke out so soon after it that one is tempted to
think that it was already hatching, and that it was one of the causes
which brought him back. The seeming break-down of the Red King’s
second Norman campaign thus becomes more intelligible than some of the
other cases where he began an undertaking and failed to finish it.
William had plenty to do in Britain, both in camp and in council. As
soon as he was assured of the adhesion of his brother Henry, he could
afford, indeed he was driven, to leave him to do the work which had to
be done in Normandy.
§ 4. _The Council of Rockingham. December, 1094-March, 1095._
[Sidenote: Notices of the year 1095.]
[Sidenote: Councils of the year.]
The year to which the last Christmas feast introduces us brings
strongly home to us the singular way in which our general chroniclers
follow one line of events, while the special biographer of the
Archbishop follows another. There is no contradiction; but the gaps
which have to be filled up in each narrative are remarkable. It is not
perhaps wonderful that the biographer of Anselm should, even in a work
which bears a general title, pass by events which in no way affected
the history of Anselm. It is more remarkable that one of the most
striking scenes in Anselm’s history should not have been thought
worthy of notice by the more general annalists of our land. But so it
is. The year 1095 is a year of very stirring events, and it is
preeminently a year of councils. But, with a single exception, our two
authorities do not record the same events and the same councils. Both
tell us of the pallium being brought to Anselm; but, while one tells
us nothing of the most striking of the assemblies in which Anselm bore
a part, the other tells us nothing of the conspiracy, the revolt, the
war, which specially mark this year in the general story of England.
[Sidenote: Alleged Welsh campaign. January 9, 1095?]
[Sidenote: Movements of William. January-February, 1095.]
If our story is rightly told, the Christmas meeting of William and
Henry, followed before long by a Norman campaign on the part of Henry,
was followed yet more immediately by a Welsh campaign on the part of
William. The King took the affairs of his own island into his own
hands, and, for the present, he left those of the mainland to the
Count of Coutances. A winter campaign in Wales does not sound very
promising, and we are not surprised to hear that it did not add much
to the glory of the Red King’s arms.[1308] At all events it must have
been short, for, in the course of January and February we find him at
points at a considerable distance from the Welsh border. In January he
was at Cricklade in Wiltshire; in February he was at Gillingham in
Dorset, near to Ælfred’s monastery of Shaftesbury, and itself the
scene of the election of the Confessor.[1309] In both cases we hear of
the King’s movements through incidental notices in our ecclesiastical
story. The second is part of the story of Anselm; the first does not
concern Anselm himself; it forms part of the tale of the holiest of
his suffragans.
[Sidenote: Death of Wulfstan.]
[Sidenote: Sickness of Wulfstan.]
[Sidenote: Easter, 1094.]
[Sidenote: He dines with “good men.”]
[Sidenote: General respect for Wulfstan.]
[Sidenote: His correspondence.]
[Sidenote: His increased sickness. Whitsuntide, 1094.]
[Sidenote: Wulfstan and Robert of Hereford.]
[Sidenote: Death of Wulfstan. January 18, 1095.]
[Sidenote: His appearance to Bishop Robert.]
[Sidenote: His burial. Jan. 22.]
In this month of January the soul of the last surviving English
bishop, the sainted Wulfstan of Worcester, passed away. In the eyes of
one annalist his death was the great event of the year, and was
announced by signs and wonders in the heavens. “There was a stir among
the stars, and Wulfstan Bishop of Worcester died!”[1310] The health of
the good old man had been for some time ailing; we have seen that he
had latterly been unable to show himself in assemblies and ceremonies.
At the Easter of the year before his death, while the King was in
Normandy, he told his steward that on the day of the feast he meant to
dine in state with “good men.” The steward, mistaking the meaning of a
phrase which is ambiguous in several languages and which was specially
so in the English of his day,[1311] got together many of the rich men
of the neighbourhood――we are not told whether the Sheriff Urse was
among them. The day came; the Bishop entered the hall with a large
company of the poor, and ordered seats to be set for them among the
other guests. The steward was displeased;[1312] but Wulfstan explained
that those whom he brought with him were the men who had the true
riches; he had rather sit down with such a company than sit down, as
he had often done, with the King of the English.[1313] For Rufus, we
are told, always received Wulfstan with honour; we may doubt whether
either knew enough of the other’s language for rebukes to be met by
repartees. The great men of the realm did the like. Foreign princes,
prelates, and potentates honoured him with gifts and asked for his
prayers.[1314] Among his correspondents were the Pope――doubtless
Urban――Malcolm and Margaret of Scotland, and the kings of Ireland. To
this list are added the Archbishop of Bari and the Patriarch of
Jerusalem, which last name suggests correspondence on the common needs
of Christendom. At Pentecost Wulfstan was very sick; he sent for his
special friend Bishop Robert of Hereford, him whose skill had foretold
that Remigius would never dedicate his minster.[1315] Robert came; the
humble Wulfstan made his confession and submitted to the
discipline.[1316] But he lived on during the rest of that year.
Shortly after the beginning of the new year, he had another visit from
Bishop Robert and two abbots of his diocese, Serlo of Gloucester and
Gerald, abbot of the still unfinished house which Robert Fitz-hamon
was raising at Tewkesbury.[1317] Wulfstan again confessed; he foretold
his own death; he comforted his friends; he gave himself to religious
exercises, causing his seat in his chamber to be so placed that he
could see the altar in his chapel.[1318] At last, not many days after
Robert’s visit, the one remaining bishop of the old stock passed away
from his church and from the world. Men believed that he appeared _in
transitu_ to his friend Bishop Robert, who, as one who reconciled his
episcopal virtues with skill in the affairs of the world, was now with
the King at Cricklade.[1319] The vision bade Robert come to his
friend’s burial; he came, and the ceremony took place four days after
Wulfstan’s death, among a mighty gathering of those who had honoured
him in life. A generation later it was made a subject of complaint, a
subject of rebuke to an age which, we are told, was loath to believe
in signs and wonders, that so holy a man was not formally enrolled on
the list of saints.[1320] Aftertimes made up for this neglect.
Wulfstan became the chief object of local devotion, and no small
object of devotion throughout the land. The saint whom Rufus had
honoured in life became after death the special object of the devotion
of King John, who hoped to be safer in the next world if his body lay
in Wulfstan’s church under the shadow of Wulfstan’s shrine.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Anselm and Urban.]
[Sidenote: Need of the pallium.]
[Sidenote: Elder usage as to the pallium.]
[Sidenote: The pallium not needful for the validity of archiepiscopal
acts.]
[Sidenote: Character of William’s refusal.]
Another link with the past was thus snapped, and, what the King at
least thought more of, another bishopric passed into the hands of
Flambard. About a month after the shade of Wulfstan had appeared to
Bishop Robert in the King’s court at Cricklade, the living Anselm
showed himself to the King in person in his court at Gillingham.[1321]
Notwithstanding the hatred which William had expressed towards him at
Hastings, the Archbishop had reasons which urged him to seek another
interview. The errand on which he came was one at which he had hinted
before he had been invested with the archbishopric. He had then fairly
warned the King that, if he became archbishop, he must acknowledge
Urban as Pope.[1322] He had as yet done nothing towards acknowledging
him; he had taken no step which involved the acknowledgement of Urban
or of any other pope. With Anselm moral questions came first. The
points on which he had first striven to awaken the conscience of the
King had been the moral corruption of his court and kingdom, and the
synod which, in Anselm’s eyes at least, was the best means for its
reformation. But William had so utterly refused his consent to the
holding of a synod, he had so utterly refused to give Anselm any help
in his schemes of moral reform, that Anselm perhaps thought it useless
to press those subjects again upon him. The point which he still
thought it his duty to press was one which to us seems of infinitely
less importance than either, but with regard to which we must look at
matters with the eyes of Anselm’s day and not with the eyes of our
own. Anselm was full archbishop in all points spiritual and temporal,
as far as the spiritual and temporal powers of England could make him
so. But he still lacked one badge of metropolitan authority, without
which his position would certainly be deemed imperfect anywhere out of
England. He had not received the archiepiscopal _pallium_ from Rome.
He naturally wished for this final stage of his promotion, this sign
of recognition, as he would deem it, on the part of the Universal
Church and her chief pastor. Now this supposed need of the pallium was
not, like some of the claims of the Roman see, anything new. English
archbishops had gone to receive the pallium at Rome, or they had had
the pallium sent to them from Rome, in the days of the elder William,
in the days of Eadward, in the days of kings long before then.[1323]
Lanfranc had gone to Rome for his pallium with the full good will of
the Conqueror,[1324] and one of the chief ecclesiastical difficulties
of the time immediately before the Conqueror’s coming was the belief
that Stigand had received his pallium in an irregular way.[1325] The
amount of dependence on the Roman see which was implied in the receipt
of this badge of honour may perhaps be questioned. It would be
differently understood at Rome and at Canterbury. It would be
differently understood at Canterbury, according to the temper of
different archbishops, or according to their English or foreign birth.
But it is at least plain that the possession of the pallium was not at
this time looked on as at all needful for the validity of any
archiepiscopal act. Anselm, as yet unclothed with it, had consecrated
a bishop and had proposed to hold a synod. Still for the new
archbishop to go to Rome to receive that badge of his office which was
still lacking was a simple matter of course. Doubtless the journey
needed the formal leave of the king; but no king but William Rufus
would have thought of refusing his leave for the purpose. William had
indeed not acknowledged Urban; but Anselm had warned William that, if
he became archbishop, he must continue to acknowledge Urban, and
William had allowed him to become archbishop on those terms. The
earlier conduct of William in such matters could not have led Anselm
to think that he attached much real importance to the matter. William
of Saint-Calais had put forth the loftiest views of papal authority in
the hearing of William and Lanfranc, and they had been objected to on
quite other grounds. King and Primate had rightly objected when the
Bishop of Durham appealed from the King and his Witan to the Pope of
Rome; they had not quarrelled with the Bishop of Durham simply because
he had implied that there was a Pope of Rome. The refusal to allow
Anselm to go for the pallium could have come only from a king who was
determined to raise every point which could annoy the archbishop,
above all to raise every point which could by any chance drive him to
a resignation of the archbishopric. Or better still than all in the
Red King’s eyes would it be to find some point which could anyhow lead
to Anselm’s being deprived of the archbishopric. If such an end could
be gained, it would matter not by what power or by what process it was
done; it would matter not if it involved the forsaking on William’s
own part of every position which he had taken up.
[Sidenote: Anselm asks leave to go to Urban for the pallium.]
[Sidenote: William will acknowledge no pope.]
[Sidenote: Anselm’s argument.]
[Sidenote: William’s answer.]
[Sidenote: Position of Anselm towards Urban.]
Anselm then came to Gillingham, and asked the King’s leave to go to
the Pope to ask for his pallium. William at once asked to which Pope
he meant to go.[1326] Anselm of course answered, To Urban. The King
said that he had not yet acknowledged Urban as Pope, that it was
neither his custom nor that of his father to allow any one in his
kingdom so much as to call any one Pope without his leave. So precious
was this right to him that to seek to take it from him was the same
thing as to seek to take away his crown.[1327] Anselm then set forth
the case of the two contending Popes, and his own personal case in the
matter. He reminded the King of what he had told him at Rochester
before he took the archbishopric, that, as Abbot of Bec, he had
acknowledged Urban, and that he could not withdraw from the obedience
which he had pledged to him. The King, in great wrath, said that
Anselm could not at once keep his faith towards himself and the
obedience which without his leave he had promised to Urban.[1328] Now,
when Anselm pledged his obedience to Urban, he was not an English
subject, and he needed no leave from the King of England for anything.
He acknowledged Urban, as all the rest of Normandy acknowledged him.
The obedience which he had thus pledged Anselm looked on as still
personally binding on him, though his temporal allegiance was
transferred to a kingdom where Urban was not acknowledged. William,
not unnaturally, took no heed of Anselm’s personal obligations.
Whatever the Abbot of Bec might have done, neither the Archbishop of
Canterbury nor any other English subject could acknowledge any Pope
without the King’s leave. After all, Anselm’s acknowledgement of Urban
had not yet gone further than speaking of him as Pope. He had had no
dealings with him of any kind. He indeed proposed to do an act which
would have been the fullest acknowledgement of Urban’s claims. But he
had proposed to do it only with the King’s leave. What he should do in
case the King refused to give him leave to go, he had not said, very
likely he had not settled in his own mind. He would do nothing
contrary to his obedience to Urban; but as yet his obedience to Urban
was wholly in theory. The King’s words now made it a practical
question; any kind of adhesion to Urban was declared by the King’s own
mouth to be inconsistent with the duties of one who was the man of the
King of England.
[Sidenote: Twofold duty of the Archbishop.]
[Sidenote: He asks for an assembly to discuss the question.]
[Sidenote: Anselm’s purposes.]
[Sidenote: He will leave the realm if he may not acknowledge Urban.]
Anselm, it is plain, was most anxious to do his duty alike as
churchman and as subject. He saw no kind of inconsistency between the
two. No such questions had been raised in the days of Lanfranc, and he
had not done, or proposed to do, anything but what Lanfranc had done
before him. Reasonably enough, he was not prepared to admit the King’s
interpretation of the law which declared that he could not be the
friend at once of Urban and of William. And, in a thoroughly
constitutional spirit, he demanded that the question should be
referred to a lawful assembly of the kingdom. Let the bishops, abbots,
and lay nobles come together, and let them decide whether the two
duties were so inconsistent with each other as the King said they
were.[1329] By their judgement on the point of law he would abide. If
they ruled that it was as the King said, that obedience to Urban was
inconsistent with allegiance to William, then he would shape his own
course accordingly. If such should be their verdict, he could not
abide in the land without either openly throwing off the obedience of
Urban or else openly breaking his duty as subject and liegeman to
William. He would do neither. In such a case he would leave the realm
till such time as the King should acknowledge Urban.[1330] By that
means he would avoid all breach of either duty. The case might well
have been argued on another ground, whether it was not being righteous
overmuch to bring back again, for the sake of a technical scruple of
any kind, all the evils which would at once follow if the land were
again left without an archbishop. Anselm’s answer would doubtless have
been that he could not do evil that good might come. And it would be
much clearer to the mind of Anselm than it would have been to the mind
of any native Englishman that a withdrawal of obedience from Urban was
the doing of evil. The feelings of Aosta, even the feelings of Bec,
were not quite at home in the air of Gillingham. But the bringing in
of foreign ideas, feelings, and scruples, was one of the necessary
consequences of foreign conquest. Anselm obeyed his own conscience,
and his conscience taught him as a conscience schooled at Aosta and
Bec could not fail to teach him.
[Sidenote: Frequency of assemblies under Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Easter Gemót. March 25, 1095.]
[Sidenote: A special meeting summoned.]
[Sidenote: Assembly of Rockingham. March 11, 1095.]
To Anselm’s proposal for referring the matter to the Witan of the
kingdom William made no objection. The Red King seems never to have
had any objection to meeting either his great men or the general mass
of his subjects. He was in truth so strong that every gathering of the
kind became little more than a display of his power. But it is not
easy to see why the question could not have been kept open till the
ordinary Easter Gemót. That Gemót was held this year at Winchester,
and, as we shall see in another chapter, matters of no small moment
had to be treated in it. The King’s authority was beginning to be
defied in northern England, and at this Easter it had to be asserted.
But, for whatever reason, it was determined that a special assembly
should be summoned a fortnight before the regular meeting at
Winchester, for the discussion of the particular point which had been
raised between the King and the Archbishop. It illustrates the way in
which the kings and great men of that time were always moving from
place to place that a spot was chosen for the special meeting, far
away from the spot where William and Anselm then were, far away from
the place where the regular assembly was to be held so soon after.
Gillingham and Winchester were comparatively near to each other; but
the assembly which was to give a legal judgement as to Anselm’s
conflicting duties was summoned to meet on the second Sunday before
Easter at the royal castle of Rockingham on the borders of
Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, a place which had at least the
merit of being one of the most central in England.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The King technically right.]
[Sidenote: Moral estimate of his conduct.]
[Sidenote: Position of the rival Popes.]
[Sidenote: William’s treatment of the question.]
[Sidenote: No real objection to Urban on his part.]
In the question which was now to be argued, there can be little doubt
that the King was technically in the right, as the law was understood
in his father’s time. By the custom of the Conqueror’s reign, no Pope
could be acknowledged without the King’s leave; and, though Anselm had
not taken any active or public step in acknowledgement of Urban, he
had acknowledged him in words spoken to the King himself, and he had
declared that he would not on any account withdraw his obedience from
Urban. At the same time one can hardly conceive a more pettifogging
way of interpreting the law, or a meaner way of abusing a legal power.
There was no reasonable ground for refusing to acknowledge Urban,
except on the theory that the deposition of Gregory and the election
of Clement were valid. Urban represented the claims of Gregory;
Clement still lived to assert his own claims. But though Lanfranc had
used cautious language about the dispute,[1331] England and her King
had never thought of acknowledging Clement or of withdrawing their
allegiance from Gregory. Gregory had been the Conqueror’s Pope, as
long as the two great ones both lived. And, if Clement’s election was
void from the beginning, Gregory’s death could not make his right any
better. Victor had succeeded Gregory, and Urban had succeeded Victor.
There could be no excuse for objecting to Urban, except on a ground
which William Rufus might have been glad to take up, but which he
could not take up with any decency. He might, not unreasonably from
his own point of view, have thrown himself into the Imperial cause, as
the common cause of princes. But he could not do this without throwing
blame on the conduct of his father. Or again, if he had tried, in any
legal or regular way, either to limit the papal power like Henry the
Second, or to cast it off altogether like Henry the Eighth, we at
least, as we read the story, could not have blamed him. But it was not
in the nature of William Rufus to do anything in a legal or regular
way. It was not in him to take up any really intelligible counter
position, either by getting rid of Popes altogether or by
acknowledging the Imperial Pope. It is true that he might have found
it hard to carry with him even his servile prelates, still harder to
carry his lay nobles, in either of those courses. But then it was just
as little in him honestly to take the third course which was open to
him, by frankly acknowledging Urban. It pleased him better to play
tricks with his claim to acknowledge popes, just as he played tricks
with his claim to appoint bishops and abbots. To keep the question
open, to give no reason on either side, but practically to hinder the
acknowledgement of any pope, was a more marked exercise of his own
arbitrary will than if he had ruled the disputed question either way.
But, just as he was ready to fill up a bishopric as soon as he thought
it worth his while in point of money, so he was quite ready to
acknowledge a pope as soon as it seemed worth his while to do so, in
point either of policy or of spite. All this while he had not the
slightest real objection to acknowledge Urban. Either now or very soon
after, he was actually intriguing with Urban, in hopes of carrying his
point against Anselm by his means.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Position of Rockingham.]
[Sidenote: History of the place.]
[Sidenote: The castle.]
[Sidenote: Description of the site.]
And now the Assembly came together which was to declare the law of
England as to the point in dispute between Anselm and the King. It was
not gathered in any of the great cities, or under the shadow of any of
the great minsters, of the realm. Nor yet was it gathered, as some
councils were gathered before and after, in one of those spots which
were simply the seats of the King’s silvan pleasures. Rockingham,
placed on the edge of the forest which bears its name, the wooded
ground between the sluggish streams of Nen and Welland, was
preeminently a hunting-seat; but it was not merely a hunting-seat; it
was also a fortress. As in so many cases, the Norman, in this case the
Conqueror himself, had seized and adapted to his own use the home and
the works of the Englishman. On a height just within the borders of
Northamptonshire, looking forth across the valley of the Welland over
the Danish land to the north, the Englishman Bofig had in King
Eadward’s days held _sac_ and _soc_ in his lordship of Rockingham. His
dwelling-place, like those of other English thegns, crowned a mound on
a site strong by nature, and which the skill of Norman engineers was
to change into a site strong by art. In the havoc which fell upon
Northampton, borough and shire, when William went forth to subdue the
Mercian land,[1332] the home of Bofig had become waste; and on that
waste spot the King ordered a castle to be built.[1333] At Rockingham,
as almost everywhere else, we find works earlier and later than the
time of our story, but nothing that we can positively assign to the
days of either William. There is no keep, as at Bridgenorth and at
Oxford, which we can assign to any of the known actors in our tale.
The mound of Bofig is yoked on to a series of buildings of various
dates, from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth. But we can still
trace the line of the walls and ditches which the Conqueror or his
successors added as new defences to the primitive mound and its
primitive ditch. Art and nature together have made the site almost
peninsular; but a considerable space, occupied by the parish church
and by the town which has sunk to a village, lies between the castle
and the stream that flows beneath the height. The site is a lordly
one, and is almost the more striking because it commands no other
great object such as those which are commanded by those castles which
were raised to protect or to keep down a city. When the forest was
still a forest in every sense of the word, the aspect of the castle of
Rockingham, one of the wilder retreats of English kingship, must have
been at once lonelier and busier than it is now.
[Sidenote: Meeting of the Assembly. March 11, 1095.]
[Sidenote: Place of meeting; the castle-chapel.]
[Sidenote: The King’s inner council.]
[Sidenote: Early hours of the assembly.]
[Sidenote: Anselm’s opening speech.]
[Sidenote: He states his case.]
At Rockingham then the Assembly met, a fortnight before Easter. The
immediate place of meeting was the church within the castle.[1334] The
church has perished, but its probable site may be traced among the
buildings to the north of the mound. But it is hard to understand how
the narrow space of a castle-chapel could hold the great gathering
which came together at Rockingham. The King and his immediate
counsellors sat apart in a separate chamber, while outside were a
numerous body, among whom we hear of the bishops and nobles, but which
is also spoken of as a vast crowd of monks, clerks, and laymen.[1335]
It may be that, according to an arrangement which is sometimes found
elsewhere, but of which there is no present trace at Rockingham, the
great hall opened into the chapel, so that, while the church was
formally the place of meeting, the greater space of the hall would be
open to receive the overflowing crowd.[1336] The time of meeting was
the early morning; a midnight sitting of the Wise Men was an unknown
thing in those days. The King sat within in the outer space, whatever
was its nature, Anselm addressed the assembly, calling forth the
bishops and lords from the presence-chamber to hear him. We must
remember that, in the absence of the King, he was the first man in the
Assembly and its natural leader. He laid his case before his hearers.
He had asked leave of the King to go to Pope Urban for his pallium.
The King had told him that to acknowledge Urban or any one else as
Pope without his leave was the same thing as trying to take his crown
from him. The King had added that faith to him and obedience to Urban
were two things which could not go together; Anselm could not practise
both at once. It was this point which the Assembly had come together
to decide; it was on this point that their counsel was needed. He bade
his hearers remember that he had not sought the archbishopric, that in
truth he would gladly have been burned alive rather than take
it.[1337] They had themselves forced him into the office――the bishops
certainly had in a literal and even physical sense. It was for them
now to help him with their counsel, to lessen thereby the burthen
which they themselves had laid on his shoulder.[1338] He appealed to
all, he specially appealed to his brother bishops, to weigh the matter
carefully, and to decide. Could he at once keep his plighted faith to
the King and his plighted obedience to the Pope? It was a grave matter
to sin against either duty. Could not both duties be observed without
any breach of either?
[Sidenote: The real point avoided on the King’s side.]
[Sidenote: Assumption of the King’s party against Anselm.]
[Sidenote: He is treated as an accused person.]
[Sidenote: Conduct of the bishops.]
This was indeed the question which the Assembly was brought together
to consider and to decide. The meeting had been called, at Anselm’s
own request, to inform him on the point of law, whether he could
acknowledge Urban without disloyalty to William. But during a long
debate of two days, that real issue is never touched, till Anselm
himself calls back men’s minds to the real object of their coming
together. It is assumed throughout by the King and the King’s party
that the point of law is already settled in the sense unfavourable to
Anselm, that Anselm has done something contrary to his allegiance to
the King, that he is there as an accused man for trial, almost as a
convicted man for sentence. That he is a member of the Assembly, the
highest subject in the Assembly, that the whole object of the meeting
is to decide a question in which the King and his highest subject
understand the law in different ways, seems not to come into the head
of any of the King’s immediate counsellors. Least of all does it come
into the heads of the bishops, the class of men who play the most
prominent and the least creditable part in the story.
[Sidenote: Answer of the bishops.]
[Sidenote: The meeting adjourned till Monday.]
[Sidenote: Meeting of Monday, March 12.]
[Sidenote: Anselm and the bishops.]
[Sidenote: They counsel unreserved submission.]
[Sidenote: Position of the bishops.]
[Sidenote: Anselm makes no exclusive claims.]
[Sidenote: His second speech.]
[Sidenote: His two duties.]
To Anselm’s question then the bishops were the first to make answer.
They are spoken of throughout as acting in a body; but they must have
had some spokesman. That spokesman could not have been the Bishop of
Durham, who must surely have been sitting with the King in his inner
council. William of Saint-Calais comes on the scene afterwards, but no
bishop is mentioned by name at this stage. The answer of the episcopal
body was not cheering. The Archbishop had no need of their counsel. He
was a man prudent in God and a lover of goodness, and could settle
such points better than they could. If he would throw himself wholly
on the King’s will, then they would give him their advice;[1339] or
they would, if he wished, go in and report his words to the King. They
did so; and Rufus, with a scruple which one would rather have looked
for from Anselm, ordered that, as the day was Sunday, the discussion
should be adjourned to the morrow. Anselm was to go to his own
quarters, and to appear again in the morning. One might like to know
where, not only the Archbishop, but the whole host of visitors at
times like this, found quarters. Unless they were all the King’s
guests in the castle, and filled its nooks and corners how they might,
it must have been much harder to find lodgings at Rockingham than it
was at Gloucester. Monday morning came; Anselm, with his faithful
reporter Eadmer, went to the place of meeting. Sitting in the midst of
the whole Assembly,[1340] he told the bishops, as it would seem, that
he was ready to receive the advice which he had asked for yesterday.
They again answered that they had nothing to say but what they had
said yesterday; they had no advice to give him, unless he was ready to
throw himself wholly on the King’s will. If he drew distinctions and
reservations, if he pleaded any call on behalf of God to do anything
against the King’s will, they would give him no help.[1341] So low had
the prelacy of England fallen under the administration of Rufus and
Flambard. Neither as priests of God, nor as Witan of the realm, nor
simply as freemen of the land, was there any strength or counsel in
them. Their answer seems almost to imply that they cast aside the
common decencies, not only of prelates but of Christian men, that they
fully accepted the ruling of their sovereign, that the will of God was
not to be put into comparison with the will of the King. Anselm is not
doing like some before and after him, not even like his chief enemy in
the present gathering. He is not asserting any special privilege for
his order; he is not appealing from a court within the realm to any
foreign jurisdiction. He asks for counsel how he may reconcile his
duty to God with his duty to the King; and the answer he gets is that
he has nothing to do but to submit to the King’s will; the law of God,
and seemingly the law of England with it, are to go for nothing. But
there was at least some shame left in them; when they had given their
answer, they held their peace and hung down their heads, as if waiting
for what Anselm might lay upon them.[1342] Then the Primate spoke,
seemingly not rising from his seat, but with uplifted eyes, with
solemn voice, with a face all alive with feeling.[1343] He looked at
the chiefs of Church and State, prelates and nobles, and told them
that if they, shepherds and princes,[1344] could give no counsel save
according to the will of one man, he must betake him to the Shepherd
and Prince of all. That Shepherd and Prince had given a charge and
authority to Peter first, and after him to the other Apostles, to the
Vicar of Peter first and after him to all other bishops, a charge and
authority which He had not given to any temporal prince, Count, Duke,
King, or Emperor.[1345] He owed a duty to his temporal prince, for the
Lord had bidden him to render to Cæsar the things that were Cæsar’s.
But he was bidden also to render to God the things that were God’s. He
would, to the best of his power, obey both commands. He must give
obedience to the Vicar of Peter in the things of God; in those things
which belonged to the earthly dignity of his lord the King, he would
ever give his lord his faithful counsel and help, according to the
measure of his power.
[Sidenote: Position of England towards the Popes.]
[Sidenote: Anselm and William of Saint-Calais.]
[Sidenote: Anselm not the first to appeal to Rome.]