The words are calm and dignified, the words of a man who, forsaken by

all, had no guide left but the light within him. There is indeed a

ring about some of Anselm’s sayings which is not pleasing in English

ears; we may doubt whether Dunstan would have drawn the distinction

which was drawn by Anselm. And yet that distinction comes to no more

than the undoubted truth that we should obey God rather than man. The

only question was whether obedience to Pope Urban was a necessary part

of obedience to God. The foreign clergy doubtless held stronger views

of papal authority than had been known of old in England; but we may

be sure that every man, native or foreign, held that the Bishop of

Rome had some claim on his reverence, if not on his obedience. The

ancient custom that an English archbishop should go to him for the

pallium shows it of itself. The craven bishops themselves would, if

secretly pressed by their consciences or their confessors, have spoken

in all things as Anselm spoke. And there was one hard by, if not

present in that company, yet within the wall of the same castle, who

had gone many steps further Romeward than Anselm went. Closeted with

the King, caballing with him against the man of God, was Bishop

William of Durham, the man who had openly appealed to the Pope from

the sentence of an English court, the man who had openly refused to

Cæsar what was most truly Cæsar’s, who had denied the right of the

King and Witan of England to judge a bishop, even in the most purely

temporal causes.[1346] Anselm had made no such appeal; he had made no

such exclusive claims; it is needless to say that he did not, like

William of Saint-Calais, take to the policy of obstruction, that he

did not waste the time of the assembly by raising petty points of law,

or subtle questions as to the befitting dress of its members.[1347]

Anselm was a poor Papist, one might almost say a poor churchman,

beside that still recent phase of the bishop who had now fully learned

that the will of God was not to be thought of when it clashed with the

will of the King. It was not Anselm, but the man who sought to

supplant Anselm, who had taken the first and greatest step towards the

establishment of foreign and usurped jurisdictions within the realm.

[Sidenote: Answer of the bishops.]

[Sidenote: Anselm goes in to the King.]

[Sidenote: Anselm asleep.]

[Sidenote: The King’s message.]

[Sidenote: Advice of the bishops.]

[Sidenote: Anselm to submit to the King in all things.]

The bishops heard the answer of their Primate. They rose troubled and

angry; they talked confusedly to one another; they seemed as if they

were pronouncing Anselm to be guilty of death.[1348] They turned to

him in wrath; they told him that they would not carry to the King such

a message as that, and they went out to the room where the King was.

But it was right that the King should know what Anselm’s answer had

been. Anselm had no one whom he could send on such an errand; it was

not in his nature to thrust another into the mouth of the lion when he

could brave the danger himself. He went into the presence-chamber; he

repeated his own words to the King, and at once withdrew. The wrath of

William was kindled; he took counsel with the bishops and the nobles

of his party, to see what answer he could make; but they found none.

As in the hall at Lillebonne, when the Conqueror put forth his plan

for the invasion of England,[1349] men were to be seen talking

together by threes and fours, seeking for something to say which might

at once soften the King’s wrath and at the same time not directly deny

the doctrine set forth by Anselm.[1350] They were long over their

discussion; the subject of their debates meanwhile sat leaning against

the wall of the place of meeting, in a gentle sleep.[1351] He was

awakened by the entrance of the bishops, accompanied by some of the

lay nobles, charged with a message from the King. His lord the King

bade him at once, laying aside all other words――the words, one would

think, of dreamland so cruelly broken in upon――to hear, and to give

his answer with all speed.[1352] They had not as yet to announce any

solemn judgement of the King and his Witan; their words still took the

form of advice; but it was advice which was meant to be final and

decisive.[1353] As for the matters which had been talked about between

him and the King at Gillingham, the matter for whose decision he had

sought the present adjournment, the matter at issue was plain and

easy. The whole realm was complaining of the Archbishop, because he

was striving to take away from the common lord of all of them his

crown, the glory of his Empire. For he who seeks to take away the

King’s dignities and customs seeks to take away his crown; the one

cannot be without the other.[1354] They counselled Anselm at once to

throw aside all obedience and submission to Urban, who could do him no

good, and who, if he only made his peace with the King, could do him

no harm. Let him be free, as an Archbishop of Canterbury should be in

all his doings; as free, let him wait for the will and bidding of the

King in all things.[1355] Let him, like a wise man, confess his fault

and ask for pardon; then should his enemies who now mocked at his

misfortunes, be put to shame as they saw him again lifted up in

honour.[1356]

[Sidenote: Their definition of freedom.]

[Sidenote: Anselm will not reject Urban.]

Such was the advice which the stranger bishops of England, with such

of the stranger nobles as acted with them, gave to the stranger

Primate. Such was their prayer, such was their counsel; such was the

course which they insisted on as needful for Anselm and for all who

held with him. Among those was the true Englishman who wrote down

their words, and who must have smiled over the definition of freedom

which, even in their mouths, has a sound of sarcasm. Anselm said that,

to speak of nothing else, he could not cast aside his obedience to the

Pope. But it was evening; let there be an adjournment till the morrow;

then he would speak as God should bid him.[1357] The bishops deemed

either that he knew not what more to say or else that he was beginning

to yield through fear.[1358] They went back to the King, and urged him

that the adjournment should not be allowed, but that, as the matter

had been discussed enough, if Anselm would not agree to their counsel,

the formal judgement of the Assembly should be at once pronounced

against him.[1359]

[Sidenote: William of Saint-Calais.]

[Sidenote: His schemes against Anselm.]

[Sidenote: He aspires to the archbishopric.]

[Sidenote: Objects of the King.]

And now for the first time we come across a distinct mention of an

individual actor, standing out with a marked personality from the

general mass of the assembled Witan. Foremost on the King’s side, the

chosen spokesman of his master, was the very man who had gone so far

beyond Anselm, who had forestalled Thomas himself, in asserting the

jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome within this realm of England.

William of Saint-Calais, who, when it suited his purpose, had appealed

to the Pope, who had been so anxious to go to the Pope, but who, when

he had the means of going, had never gone, stood now fully ready to

carry out the Imperial teaching that what seems good to the prince has

the force of law. This man, so ready of speech――that we have seen long

ago――but, in Eadmer’s eyes at least, not rich in any true wisdom, was

all this time stirring the King up to wrath against Anselm, and doing

all that he could to widen the breach between them.[1360] Men

believed, on Anselm’s side at least, that his object was to bring

about the Archbishop’s deprivation or resignation by any means, in

hopes that he might himself succeed him.[1361] Was this mere surmise,

or had the Bishop of Durham any solid ground for looking forward to a

translation to Canterbury? Had he the needful means? William of

Saint-Calais was not a servant of the King’s to make a fortune in his

service, like Randolf Flambard or Robert Bloet. He had risen, like

Anselm himself, through the ranks of monk, prior, abbot, and bishop.

But so too had Herbert Losinga, who had managed to buy a bishopric for

himself and an abbey for his father. William of Saint-Calais had since

his consecration spent three years in banishment while his bishopric

was in the King’s hands. Still he may, during his two terms of

possession before and after, have screwed enough out of the patrimony

of Saint Cuthberht to pay even the vast price at which the

archbishopric would doubtless be valued. Or he may have fondly dreamed

that, if Anselm could be got rid of by his means, the service would be

deemed so great as to entitle him to Anselm’s place as a free gift.

Anyhow he worked diligently on the King’s behalf. We are told――and the

picture is not out of character――that Rufus wished to get rid of

Anselm as the representative within his realm of another power than

his own. He deemed himself to be no full king as long as there was any

one who put the will of God before the will of the King, or who named

the name of God as a power to which even the King must yield.[1362] In

his hatred to Anselm, he hoped to carry one of two points. Either the

Archbishop would abjure the Pope, and would abide in the land a

dishonoured man who had given up the cause for which he strove. Or

else, if he still clave to the Pope, the King would then have a

reasonable excuse for driving him out of the kingdom.

[Sidenote: Bishop William’s promises to the King.]

[Sidenote: His speech to Anselm.]

To these intrigues of the blaspheming King the Bishop of Durham was

not ashamed to lend himself. He recked nothing of the dishonour under

which it was thought that Anselm would hardly bear to live. He

promised to the King that he would bring about one of two things;

either the Archbishop should renounce the Pope, or else he should

formally resign the archbishopric by restoring the ring and

staff.[1363] Now seemingly was the time to press him, when he was

weary with the day’s work and sought for a respite, when his enemies

were beginning to hope that, either through fear or weariness, he

would be driven to yield. So the bishops again went back from the King

to the Archbishop, with him of Durham as their leader and spokesman.

The time-server made his speech to the man of God. “Hear the King’s

complaint against you. He says that, as far as lies in your power, you

have robbed him of his dignity by making Odo Bishop of Ostia”――William

of Saint-Calais had had other names for him in an earlier

assembly――“Pope in his England[1364] without his bidding. Having so

robbed him, you ask for an adjournment that you may devise arguments

to prove that that robbery is just. Rather, if you please, clothe him

again with the dignify of his Empire,[1365] and then talk about an

adjournment. Otherwise know that he will invoke the wrath of Almighty

God upon himself, and we his liegemen will have to make ourselves

sharers in the curse, if he grants you an adjournment of an hour.

Wherefore at once make answer to the words of our lord, or else expect

presently a judgement which shall chastise your presumption. Do not

think that all this is a mere joke; we are driven on by the pricks of

a heavy grievance.[1366] Nor is it wonderful. For that which your lord

and ours claims as the chief thing in his whole dominion, that in

which it is allowed that he surpasses all other kings,[1367] that you

unjustly take away from him as far as lies in your power, and by

taking it away you throw scorn on the oath which you have sworn to

him, and plunge all his friends into this distress.”

[Sidenote: William’s Imperial claim.]

[Sidenote: William and the vassal kingdoms.]

[Sidenote: His ill-success at this moment.]

Here are forms of words which may make us stop to study them. In this

speech, and in the one which went before it, we see the ground on

which William founded a claim to which he attached such special

importance. It was not merely the King of the English, it was the

_Basileus_ of Britain, the Cæsar of the island world, whose dignity

was deemed to be touched. To allow or to refuse the acknowledgement of

Popes is here declared by William of Saint-Calais to be no part of the

prerogative of a mere king; it is spoken of as the special attribute

of Empire. He who, alone among Christian princes, knew no superior

either in the elder or the younger Rome, was alone entitled to judge

how far the claims of the Pontiff of one world should be acknowledged

in another. This sole claim to Imperial power on behalf of the Monarch

of all Britain[1368] might have been disputed in the last age in

Bulgaria and in the next age in Castile; at that moment William of

England was without a rival. He might even, if he chose to take up

Anselm’s line of argument, bear himself as more truly Imperial than

the German king whose Roman crown had been placed on his head by a

schismatic pontiff. And yet at no moment since the day when Scot and

Briton and Northman bowed to Eadward the Unconquered had the Emperor

of the Isle of Albion been less of an Emperor than when Anselm met the

Red King at Rockingham. The younger William had indeed fallen away

from the dominion of the father who had received the homage at

Abernethy and had made the pilgrimage to Saint David’s. The Welsh were

in open and triumphant revolt; the Scots had driven out the king that

he had given them. The Welsh had broken down his castles; the Scots

had declared their land to be barred against all William’s subjects,

French and English.[1369] True he was girding himself up for great

efforts against both enemies; but those efforts had not yet been made.

William was just then as far away as a man could be from deserving his

father’s surnames of the Conqueror and the Great. At such a moment, we

may really believe that he would feel special annoyance at anything

which might be construed as casting doubt even in theory on claims

which he found it so hard to assert in practice. In the moment of his

first great success in England, there had been less to bring the wider

and loftier side of his dominion before his mind. He had thought less

of his right to allow or to refuse the acknowledgement of Popes in the

days when the _regale_ was asserted by Lanfranc and the _pontificale_

by William of Saint-Calais, than he thought now that the _regale_ was

asserted by William of Saint-Calais and the _pontificale_ by Anselm.

[Sidenote: The real question hitherto evaded.]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s challenge.]

[Sidenote: He states the real case.]

[Sidenote: New position of the bishops.]

The shamelessness of the words of William of Saint-Calais in the mouth

of William of Saint-Calais might have stirred even the meek Anselm to

wrath. But he bore all with patience; he only seized, with all the

skill of his scholastic training, on the palpable fallacy of the

Bishop’s argument. The Assembly had come together to discuss and

settle a point of law. Was the duty which Anselm professed towards the

Pope inconsistent or not with the duty which he no less fully

acknowledged towards the King? On that point not only had no judgement

been given, but no arguments either way had been heard. Messages had

gone to and fro; Anselm had been implored, advised, threatened; but

prayers, advice, and threats had all assumed that the point which they

had all come there to discuss had already been ruled in the sense

unfavourable to Anselm. William of Saint-Calais could talk faster than

Anselm; but, as he had not Anselm’s principle, so neither had he

Anselm’s logic. Anselm saw both his intellectual and his moral

advantage. His answer to the Bishop of Durham took the shape of a

challenge. “If there be any man who wishes to prove that, because I

will not give up my obedience towards the venerable chief Pontiff of

the holy Roman Church, I thereby break the faith and oath which I owe

to my earthly King, let him stand forth, and, in the name of the Lord,

he will find me ready to answer him where I ought and as I ought.” The

real issue was thus at last stated; Anselm demanded that the thing

should at last be done which the Assembly had been called for the very

purpose of doing. The bishops were puzzled, as they well might be;

they looked at one another, but no one had anything to say; so they

went back to their lord.[1370] Our guide however puts thoughts into

their hearts which Anselm had certainly not uttered, which his

position in no way implied, and which one is tempted to think that

both Anselm and Eadmer first heard of in later times when they came to

talk with a pope face to face. The bishops, we are told, remembered,

what they had not thought of before, that an Archbishop of Canterbury

could not be judged on any charge by any judge except the Pope.[1371]

This may be so far true as that William of Saint-Calais may have

remembered the day when he had urged those very claims on behalf, not

only of an Archbishop of Canterbury, but of a Bishop of Durham. If the

other bishops had any such sudden enlightenment, they did well to keep

their new light to themselves. The doctrine that no one but a Pope

could judge the Archbishop, combined with the doctrine that there

could be no Pope in England without the King’s leave, amounted, during

the present state of things, to a full licence to the Archbishop to do

anything that he might think good.

[Sidenote: Anselm insulted.]

[Sidenote: Popular feeling on his side.]

[Sidenote: Anselm and the knight.]

[Sidenote: “Vox populi vox Dei.”]

[Sidenote: Perplexity of the King.]

[Sidenote: His speech to the bishops.]

[Sidenote: William of Saint-Calais breaks down.]

[Sidenote: The assembly adjourned.]

Meanwhile things were taking a new turn in the outer place of

assembly. There a state of mind very unlike that of the King’s inner

council began to show itself. There were those, as there will always

be in every gathering of men, whose instinct led them to insult and

trample on one who seemed to be falling. By such men threats,

revilings, slanders of every kind, were hurled at the Archbishop, as

he sat peacefully waking and sleeping, while William of Saint-Calais

marched to and fro at the head of his episcopal troop. But threats and

revilings were not the only voices that Anselm heard. The feeling of

the great mass of the assembly was with him. Well might it be so.

Englishmen still abiding on their own soil, Normans who on English

soil were growing into Englishmen, men who had brought with them the

spirit which had made the Conqueror himself pause on the day of

Lillebonne, were not minded to see the assembly of the nation turned

into a mere tool to carry out a despot’s will. They were not minded

that the man whose cause they had come together to judge according to

law should be judged without law by a time-serving cabal of the King’s

creatures. English thegns, Norman knights, were wrought in another

mould from the simoniacal bishops of William’s court. A spirit began

to stir among them like the spirit of the old times, the spirit of the

day which called back Godwine to his earldom and drove Robert of

Jumièges from his archbishopric. When Anselm spoke and William of

Saint-Calais stood abashed and speechless, the general feeling of the

assembly went with the man who was ready to trust his cause to the

event of a fair debate, against the man who could do nothing but take

for granted over and over again the very question which they had come

there to argue. There went through the hall that deep, low murmur

which shows that the heart of a great assembly is stirring and that it

will before long find some means of clearer utterance. But for a while

no man dared to speak openly for fear――it is Eadmer’s word――of the

tyrant.[1372] At last a spokesman was found. A knight――we should

gladly know his name and race and dwelling-place――stepped forth from

the crowd and knelt at the feet of Anselm,[1373] with the words,

“Father and lord, through me your suppliant children pray you not to

let your heart be troubled at what you have heard; remember how the

blessed Job vanquished the devil on his dunghill, and avenged Adam

whom he had vanquished in paradise.” Anselm received his words with a

pleased and cheerful look; for he now knew that the heart of the

people was with him. And his true companions rejoiced also, and grew

calmer in their minds, knowing the scripture――so our guide tells

us――that the voice of the people is the voice of God.[1374] While a

native English heart was thus carried back to the feelings of bygone

times, the voice of the stranger King, to whom God was as a personal

enemy, was speaking in another tone. His hopes had utterly broken

down; his loyal bishops had made promises to him which they had been

unable to fulfil. When he heard how popular feeling was turning

towards Anselm, he was angered beyond measure, to the very rending

asunder of his soul.[1375] He turned to his bishops in wrath. “What is

this? Did you not promise that you would deal with him altogether

according to my will, that you would judge him, that you would condemn

him?” The boasted wisdom, the very flow of speech, of their leader the

Bishop of Durham now failed him; he spoke as one from whom all sense

and reason had gone away.[1376] All that he could say who had so

lately with curses and threats refused Anselm’s plea for an

adjournment was to propose an adjournment himself. It was night; let

Anselm be bidden to go to his own quarters; they, the bishops, would

spend the night in thinking over what Anselm had said, and in devising

an answer on the King’s behalf.[1377] The assembly was accordingly

prorogued till the next morning, and Anselm went to his own quarters,

uncondemned, with his cause as yet unheard and unanswered, but

comforted doubtless that he had put his enemies to silence, and that

he had learned that the hearts of the people were with him.

[Sidenote: March 13, 1095.]

[Sidenote: Debates in the inner council.]

[Sidenote: William of Saint-Calais recommends force.]

[Sidenote: The lay nobles refuse.]

[Sidenote: Speech of the King.]

[Sidenote: Speech of Robert of Meulan.]

Tuesday morning came, and Anselm and his companions took their seats

in the accustomed place,[1378] awaiting the King’s bidding. That

bidding was slow in coming. The debates in the King’s closet were

perplexed. The King and his inner counsellors were working hard to

find some excuse for the condemnation of Anselm. The King asked the

Bishop of Durham how he had passed the night;[1379] but the night

thoughts of William of Saint-Calais, sleeping or waking, did not bring

much help to the royal cause. He confessed that he could find no way

to answer Anselm’s argument, all the more because it rested on holy

writ and the authority of Saint Peter. We must always remember that

the texts which Anselm quoted, and the interpretation which he put

upon them, were in no way special to himself. Every one acknowledged

them; William of Saint-Calais had appealed to them when it suited his

purpose to do so. But the bishop who had once laid the lands of

northern England waste could recommend force when reason failed. He

whose dealings towards the King in whose cause he was now working had

been likened to the deed of Judas was now ready to play Judas over

again towards the Patriarch of all the nations beyond the sea. “My

counsel,” he said in plain words, “is that he be put down by

force;[1380] if he will not consent to the King’s will, let the ring

and staff be taken from him, and let him be driven from the kingdom.”

This short way of dealing with the Archbishop, proposed by the man who

had once argued that none but the Pope could judge any bishop, suited

the temper of the King; it did not suit the temper of the lay nobles.

Many of them had great crimes of their own to repent of; but they

could see what was right when others were to practise it. Besides

Anselm was in one way their own chief; if they were great feudatories

of the kingdom, so was he, the highest in rank among them. The

doctrine that the first vassal of the kingdom was to be stripped of

his fief at the King’s pleasure might be dangerous to earls as well as

to bishops. The lay nobles refused their consent to the violent scheme

of the Bishop of Durham. The King turned fiercely on them. “If this

does not please you, what does please you? While I live, I will not

put up with an equal in my kingdom.” Speaking confusedly, it would

seem, to bishops and barons alike, he asked, “If you knew that he had

such strong grounds for his cause, why did you let me begin the suit

against him? Go, consult, for, by God’s face, if you do not condemn

him according to my will, I will condemn you.”[1381] The common

spokesman was found in him whose counsel was held to be as the oracle

of God.[1382] Count Robert of Meulan spoke, and his speech was

certainly a contrast to that of Bishop William, though both alike,

these two special counsellors, confessed that Anselm had been too much

for them. “All day long were we putting together counsels with all our

might, and consulting how our counsels might hang together, and

meanwhile he, thinking no evil back again, sleeps, and, when our

devices are brought out, with one touch of his lips he breaks them

like a spider’s web.”[1383]

[Sidenote: The King and the bishops.]

[Sidenote: The king bids the bishops withdraw their obedience from

Anselm.]

[Sidenote: He withdraws his protection.]

[Sidenote: The bishops and abbots carry the message.]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s answer.]

When the temporal lords, the subtlest of counsellors among them, thus

failed him, the King again turned to his lords spiritual. “And you, my

bishops, what do you say?” They answered, but their spokesman this

time is not mentioned; Bishop William, it would seem, had tried and

had failed. They were grieved that they could not satisfy the pleasure

of their lord. Anselm was Primate, not only of the kingdom of England,

but of Scotland, Ireland, and the neighbouring islands――lands to which

William’s power most certainly did not reach at that moment. They were

his suffragans;[1384] they could not with any reason judge or condemn

him, even if any crime could be shown against him, and now no crime

could be shown. “What then,” asks William, “can be done?” The question

was answered by a suggestion of his own, one which sounds as if it

really were his own, and not the device of Bishop William or Count

Robert. If the bishops could not judge him, could they not withdraw

from him all obedience and brotherly friendship? This, they said, if

he commanded it, they could do. It is not clear by what right they

could withdraw their obedience from a superior whom they could not

judge; but both king and bishops were satisfied. The bishops were to

go and do the business at once; when Anselm saw that he was left

alone, he would be ashamed, and would groan that he had ever forsaken

his lord to follow Urban.[1385] And, that they might do this the more

safely, the King added that he now withdrew from Anselm all protection

throughout his Empire, that he would not listen to or acknowledge him

in any cause,[1386] that he would no longer hold him for his

archbishop or ghostly father. Though the King’s commandment was

urgent, the bishops still stayed to devise other devices against

Anselm; yet found they none. At last the bishops, now taking with them

the abbots, a class of whom we have not hitherto heard in the story,

went out and announced to Anselm at once their own withdrawal of

obedience and friendship and the King’s withdrawal of protection. The

Archbishop’s answer was a mild one. They did wrong to withdraw their

obedience and friendship where it was due, merely because he would not

withdraw his where it was also due. But he would not deal by them as

they dealt by him. He would still show them the love of a brother and

a father; he would do what he could for them, as brethren and sons of

the church of Canterbury, to bring them back from their error into the

right way. And whereas the King withdrew from him all protection and

would no longer acknowledge him as father and archbishop, he would

still discharge to the King every earthly duty that lay upon him, and,

so far as the King would let him,[1387] he would still do his duty for

the care of the King’s soul. Only he would, for God’s service, still

keep the name, power, and office, of Archbishop of Canterbury,

whatever might be the oppression in outward things that it might bring

upon him.

[Sidenote: The King turns again to the lay lords.]

[Sidenote: The lay lords support Anselm.]

[Sidenote: The King’s difficulties.]

[Sidenote: Shame of the bishops.]

[Sidenote: The King further examines the bishops.]

[Sidenote: His treatment of them.]

His words were reported to the King.[1388] We are again admitted to

witness the scene in the presence-chamber. The bishops had proved

broken reeds; William would make one more appeal to the lay nobles.

“Everything that he says,” began the King, “is against my pleasure,

and no one shall be my man who chooses to be his.[1389] Wherefore, you

who are the great men of my kingdom, do you, as the bishops have done,

withdraw from him all faith and friendship, that he may know how

little he gains by the faith which he keeps to the Apostolic See in

defiance of my will.” But the lay lords were not like the bishops; one

would like to know by what mouth they made their calm and logical

answer. They drew a clear distinction between spiritual and temporal

allegiance. The King had told them that no one could be his man and

the Archbishop’s at once, and he had bidden them to withdraw their

faith――clearly using the word in the feudal sense――from the

Archbishop. They answered that they were not the Archbishop’s men,

that they could not withdraw from him a fealty which they had never

paid to him. This of course was true of the lay nobles as a body,

whatever questions there might be about Tunbridge castle or any other

particular fief. But they went on to say that, though Anselm was not

their lord, yet he was their archbishop, that it was he who had to

“govern Christianity” in the land; that, as Christian men, they could

not, while in that land, decline his mastership, all the more as there

was no spot of offence in him which should make the King treat him in

any other way.[1390] Such an answer naturally stirred up William’s

wrath; but the earls and great barons of his kingdom were a body with

whom even he could not dare to trifle. He was stronger than any one

among them; he might not be stronger than all of them together, backed

as they now were, as the events of the day before had shown, by

popular feeling. He had once beaten the Norman nobles at the head of

the English people; he might not be able to beat the Norman nobles and

the English people together. He therefore made an effort, and kept

down any open outburst of the wrath that was in him.[1391] But the

bishops were covered with confusion; they felt that all eyes were

turned on them, and that their apostasy was loathed of all.[1392] This

and that bishop was greeted, seemingly by this or that earl or baron,

with the names usual in such cases, Judas, Pilate, and Herod.[1393]

Then the King put the trembling bishops through another examination.

Had they abjured all obedience to Anselm, or only such obedience as he

claimed by the authority of the Roman Pontiff?[1394] The question was

hard to answer. Anselm does not seem to have claimed any obedience by

virtue of the authority of the Pope; he had simply refused to withdraw

his own obedience from the Pope. Some therefore answered one way, some

another. But it was soon plain which way the King wished them to

answer. The real question in William’s mind had nothing to do with the

Pope; any subtlety about acknowledging this or that Pope was a mere

excuse. It was Anselm himself, as the servant of God, the man who

spake of righteousness and temperance and judgement to come, that

Rufus loathed and sought to crush. Those bishops therefore who said

that they had abjured Anselm’s obedience utterly and without condition

were at once bidden to sit down as his friends in seats of

honour.[1395] Those who said that they had abjured only such obedience

as was claimed by the Pope’s authority, were sent, like naughty

children, into a corner of the room, to wait, as traitors and enemies,

for their sentence of condemnation.[1396] But they debated among

themselves in their corner, and soon found the means of winning back

the royal favour. A heavy bribe, paid at once or soon after, wiped out

even the crime of drawing distinctions while withdrawing their

obedience from a metropolitan whom the King hated.[1397]

[Sidenote: Anselm wishes to leave England.]

[Sidenote: Perplexity of the King.]

[Sidenote: Another adjournment.]

While his suffragans were undergoing this singular experience of the

strength of the secular arm, Anselm sent a message to the King. He now

asked that, as all protection within the kingdom was withdrawn from

him, the King would give him and his companions a safe-conduct to one

of his havens, that he might go out of the realm till such a time as

God might be pleased to put an end to the present distress.[1398] The

King was much troubled and perplexed. He wished of all things for

Anselm to leave the kingdom; but he feared the greater scandal which

would arise if he left the kingdom while still in possession of the

archbishopric, while he saw no way of depriving him of it.[1399] He

again took counsel; but this time he did not trouble the bishops for

their advice. Of them he had had enough; it was their counsel which

had brought him into his present strait.[1400] He once more turned to

the lay lords. They advised yet another adjournment. The Archbishop

should go back to his own quarters in the King’s full peace,[1401] and

should come again in the morning to hear the King’s answer to his

petition. Many of the King’s immediate courtiers were troubled; they

groaned at the thought of Anselm’s leaving the land.[1402] But he

himself went gladly and cheerfully to his lodgings, hoping to cross

the sea and to cast off all his troubles and all the burthens of the

world.[1403]

[Sidenote: Wednesday, March 14, 1095.]

[Sidenote: Anselm summoned to the King’s presence.]

[Sidenote: The lay lords propose a “truce.”]

[Sidenote: Adjournment till May 20.]

The fourth day of the meeting came, and the way in which its business

opened marks how the tide was turning in Anselm’s favour. A body of

the nobles came straight from the King, asking the Primate to come to

the royal presence.[1404] Anselm was tossed to and fro between the

hope of leaving the kingdom and the fear of staying in it. Eadmer was

eager to know what would be the end of the whole matter.[1405] They

set forth and reached the castle. They were not however, at first at

least, admitted to the presence-chamber, but sat in their wonted

place. Before long the lay nobles, accompanied by some of the bishops,

came to Anselm. They were grieved, they said, as old friends of his,

that there had been any dispute between him and the King. Their object

was to heal the breach, and they held that the best means towards that

object was to agree to an adjournment――a truce, a peace[1406]――till a

fixed day, during which time both sides should agree to do nothing

which could be counted as a breach of the peace. Anselm agreed, though

he said that he knew what kind of peace it would be.[1407] But it

should not be said of him that he preferred his own judgement to that

of others. To all that his lord the King and they might appoint in the

name of God he would agree,[1408] saving only his obedience to Pope

Urban. The lords approved; the King agreed; he pledged his honour to

the observance of the peace till the appointed day, the octave of

Pentecost. The day seems to have been chosen in order that the other

business of the Whitsun Gemót might be got over before the particular

case of Anselm came on. If matters had not been brought to an

agreement before that time, the case was to begin again exactly at the

stage in which it had left off at Rockingham.[1409] It is not clear

whether, even at this last moment, William and Anselm again met face

to face. But the Archbishop, by the King’s leave, went to Canterbury,

knowing that the truce was but an idle and momentary veiling of hatred

and of oppression that was to come.[1410]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Importance of the meeting at Rockingham.]

So it soon proved; yet the scene at Rockingham was a victory, not only

for a moment but for ever. No slight step had been taken in the great

march of English freedom, when Anselm, whom the King had sought to

condemn without trial or indictment, went back, with his own immediate

case indeed unsolved, but free, uncondemned, untried, with the voice

of the people loud in his favour, while the barons of the realm

declared him free from every crime. It was no mean day in English

history when a king, a Norman king, the proudest and fiercest of

Norman kings, was taught that there were limits to his will. It is

like a foreshadowing of brighter days to come when the Primate of all

England, backed by the barons and people of England――for on that day

the very strangers and conquerors deserved that name――overcame the Red

King and his time-serving bishops. The day of Rockingham has the

fullest right to be marked with white in the kalendar in which we

enter the day of Runnymede and the day of Lewes.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: William keeps faith to Anselm personally.]

[Sidenote: He oppresses his friends.]

The honour of the chivalrous King was pledged to the peace with

Anselm. But the honour of the chivalrous King was construed after a

truly chivalrous fashion. William doubtless thought that he was doing

all that a true knight could be expected to do, if he kept himself

from any personal injury to the man to whom he had personally pledged

his faith. Anselm was unhurt; he was free; he went whither he would;

he discharged the ordinary duties of his office undisturbed; it does

not appear that he was in any way personally molested, or that any of

the property of his see was taken into the King’s hands. But William

knew full well how to wreak his malice upon Anselm without breaking

the letter of the faith which he had pledged. He knew how to grieve

Anselm’s loving heart far more deeply than it could be grieved by any

wrong done to himself. The honour of the good knight was pledged to

Anselm personally; it was not pledged to Anselm’s friends and tenants.

Towards them he might, without breach of honour, play the greedy and

merciless king. A few days after Anselm had reached Canterbury, Rufus

sent to drive out of England the Archbishop’s cherished friend and

counsellor the monk Baldwin of Tournay,[1411] and two of his clerks.

Their only crime was standing by their master in the trial which still

stood adjourned.[1412] The Archbishop’s chamberlain was seized in his

master’s chamber before his master’s eyes; false charges were brought

against his tenants, unjust imposts were laid upon them, and other

wrongs of many kinds done to them.[1413] The church of Canterbury, it

was said, began to doubt whether it had not been better off during the

vacancy than now that the archbishopric was full.[1414] And all this

while, heavy as William professed to deem the crime of so much as

giving Urban the title of Pope, William’s own dealings with Urban were

neither slight nor unfriendly.

§ 5. _The Mission of Cardinal Walter._ 1095.

[Sidenote: Events of the months of truce, March-May, 1095.]

[Sidenote: Assemblies of the year.]

The months of truce between the King and the Archbishop were, as our

next chapter will show, busy months in other ways. William Rufus was

all this time engaged in another dispute with a subject of a rank but

little below that of the Primate, a dispute in which, at least in its

early stages, the King appears to much greater advantage than he

commonly does. A conspiracy against William’s throne and life was

plotting; Robert of Mowbray was making ready for revolt, and his

refusal to appear, when summoned, at the Easter and Whitsun assemblies

of this year was the first overt act of his rebellion. We may conceive

that Anselm did not attend either of those gatherings; that of

Whitsuntide we know that he did not. It might be more consistent with

the notion of the truce that he should keep away from the King’s

presence and court till the time which had been fixed for the

controversy formally to begin again. At Easter and for some time

after, Anselm seems to have stayed at Canterbury, and, while he was

there, the metropolitan city received an unexpected visitor, who did

not allow himself to be treated as a guest.

[Sidenote: Position of Urban.]

[Sidenote: Council of Piacenza. May 1-7.]

[Sidenote: Its decrees.]

[Sidenote: No mention of English affairs.]

[Sidenote: William’s fresh schemes to turn the Pope against Anselm.]

The year which we have reached was one of the most memorable in the

history of the papacy. Urban, though not in full possession of Rome,

had kept his Christmas there a year before, and his cause was

decidedly in the ascendant throughout the year of the Red King’s

second Norman campaign.[1415] At the beginning of the next year, after

keeping Christmas in Tuscany, Urban went on into Lombardy, where the

Emperor still was, though his rebel son Conrad, crowned and largely

acknowledged as King of Italy, was far more powerful than his

father.[1416] Almost on the same days as those which in England were

given to the council of Rockingham, Urban held his great council of

Piacenza, a council so great that no building could hold its numbers;

the business of the assembly was therefore done, as we have seen it

done in our own land, in the open fields.[1417] There the Empress

Praxedes told her tale of sorrow and shame; there the cry of Eastern

Christendom, set forth in the letters of the Emperor Alexios, was

heard and heeded; there the heresy of Berengar, already smitten by

Lanfranc,[1418] was again condemned; there a new set of anathemas were

hurled at the married clergy,[1419] and a more righteous curse was

denounced against the adulterous King of the French. But no mention

seems to have been made of English affairs; one is a little surprized

at the small amount of heed which the dispute between the King and the

Archbishop seems to have drawn to itself in foreign lands. Yet, next

to the ups and downs of the Emperor himself, one would have thought

that no change could have so deeply affected the Roman see as the

change from William the Great to William the Red. It is part of the

same general difficulty which attaches to the Red King’s career, the

strange fact that the worst of all crowned sinners, the foulest in

life, the most open in blasphemy, the most utter scorner of the

ecclesiastical power, never felt the weight of any of those

ecclesiastical censures which so often lighted on offenders of a less

deep dye. But if Urban was not thinking about William, William was

certainly thinking about Urban. It was at this stage that we light on

the curious picture which we have before seen, showing us England in a

state of uncertainty, and seemingly of indifference, between the rival

Pontiffs.[1420] But just now it suited William to acknowledge some

Pope, because he thought that his only chance of carrying out his

purposes against Anselm was by the help of a Pope. He had found that

no class of men in his kingdom, except perhaps some of the bishops,

would support him in any attempt to deprive the Primate of his own

arbitrary will. Mere violence of course was open to him; but his Witan

would not agree to any step against Anselm which made any pretence to

legal form, and, with public feeling so strongly on Anselm’s side,

with a dangerous rebellion brewing in the realm, the King might well

shrink from mere violence towards the first of his subjects. His new

device was to acknowledge a Pope, and then to try, by his usual arts,

arts which Rome commonly appreciated, to get the Pope whom he

acknowledged to act against the Archbishop. To see Anselm deprived, or

in any way humbled, by an exercise of ecclesiastical power, would be

to wound Anselm in a much tenderer point, and would therefore be a

much keener satisfaction to his own spite, than anything that he could

himself do with the high hand.

[Sidenote: Mission of Gerard and William of Warelwast.]

[Sidenote: Their commission.]

[Sidenote: They are practically sent to acknowledge Urban.]

As soon therefore as William found, by the issue of the meeting at

Rockingham, that Anselm could not be bent to his will, and that he

could practically do nothing against Anselm, he sent two trusty clerks

of his chapel and chancery on a secret and delicate errand. They were

men of the usual stamp, both of whom afterwards rose to those high

places of the Church which were just then commonly reserved for men of

their stamp. They were Gerard, afterwards Bishop of Hereford and

Archbishop of York, and William of Warelwast, afterwards Bishop of

Exeter. As we read our account of their commission, it would almost

seem as if they were empowered to go to Rome, to examine into the

state of things, and to acknowledge whichever seemed to be the true

Pope, or rather whichever Pope was most likely to suit their master’s

purpose. But practically they had no choice but to acknowledge Urban.

Local English feeling might indeed set little store by one who simply

“hight Pope, though he nothing had of the settle at Rome;”[1421] but

Urban was plainly the stronger Pope, the Pope acknowledged by all who

were not in the immediate interest of the Emperor. And, what was more,

Urban was the only Pope who could carry out William’s purpose. A

censure from Urban would be a real blow to Anselm and to Anselm’s

partisans; a censure from Clement would in their eyes go for nothing,

or rather it would be reckoned as another witness in their favour.

Practically Gerard and William of Warelwast went to acknowledge Urban,

and to see what they could make of him. They went secretly. Anselm

knew nothing of their going. Most likely nothing was known of their

errand by any man beyond the innermost cabal of the King’s special

counsellors.[1422]

[Sidenote: Urban at Cremona. April 10, 1095.]

[Sidenote: Dealings of Gerard and William with Urban.]

[Sidenote: The Sicilian “Monarchy.”]

[Sidenote: Relations between England and Sicily.]

Their mission is said to have been to Rome; but the name Rome must be

taken in a conventional sense for any place where the Pope might be.

It is not likely that they really reached the Eternal City. In the

former part of April Urban was at Cremona, and was received there with

great state by the rebel King Conrad.[1423] The momentary effort of

Henry which followed, his vain attempt on Nogara, only raised the

position of Urban and the Great Countess yet higher.[1424] It was most

likely at Cremona that the ministers from England met Urban. They were

to try, if possible, to win over the Pontiff, by gifts, by promises,

by any means, to send a pallium to England for the King to bestow on

the Archbishop of Canterbury, without mentioning the name of Anselm.

They were, it seems, to try to obtain for the King a legatine

authority like that which, then or later, had been granted to the

Norman princes of Sicily.[1425] A Norman king of England was surely as

worthy of such powers as a Norman Great Count of Sicily; and

throughout these disputes we ever and anon see the vision of the

“Sicilian Monarchy,” as something at which kings of England were

aiming, and which strict churchmen condemned, whether in Sicily or in

England.[1426] It is even possible that Gerard and William of

Warelwast may have discussed the matter with some members of the

Sicilian embassy which about this time brought the daughter of Count

Roger to Pisa as the bride of King Conrad.[1427] Close intercourse

between the Norman princes of the great Oceanic and the great

Mediterranean island is now beginning to be no small element in

European politics. Some commission of this kind from the Pope was what

William’s heart was set upon; he thought he had good right to it; he

thought that his hope of it could not be doomed to disappointment.[1428]

Did the proudest of men look forward, as an addition to royal and

imperial power, to a day when he might fill a throne in the mother

church of England, looking down on the patriarchal chair, as the empty

thrones of later Williams still look down on the lowlier metropolitan

seats of Palermo and Monreale?

[Sidenote: Gerard and William come back,]

[Sidenote: and bring Cardinal Walter as Legate.]

[Sidenote: He brings a pallium.]

[Sidenote: Secrecy of his errand.]

[Sidenote: His interview with the King.]

[Sidenote: William acknowledges Urban.]

[Sidenote: Walter refuses to depose Anselm.]

The dates show that the journeys must have been hasty, and that the

business was got through with all speed. The two clerks could not have

left England before the middle of March, and May was not far advanced

before they were in England again, and a papal Legate with them. This

was the Cardinal Walter, Bishop of Albano, whose good life is

witnessed by our own Chronicler.[1429] His Italian subtlety showed

itself quite equal to the work of outwitting the King and his

counsellors whenever he chose; but his Roman greediness could not

always withstand their bribes. He came, bringing with him a pallium,

but the whole affair was, by the King’s orders, shrouded in the

deepest mystery. Not a word was said about the pallium; indeed the

Legate was not allowed to have any private discourse with any man. His

two keepers, Gerard and William, watched him carefully; they passed in

silence through Canterbury, and took care not to meet the

Archbishop.[1430] A few days before Whitsuntide, Cardinal Walter had

an interview with the King. He spoke so that William understood him to

be willing to abet all his purposes. Some special privilege was

granted to William, which amounted at the least to this, that no

legate should be sent into England but one of the King’s own

choosing.[1431] Not a word did Cardinal Walter say on behalf of

Anselm, not a word that could make peace between him and the King, not

a word that could give Anselm any comfort among all the troubles that

he was enduring on behalf of the Christian religion and of the

authority of the Holy See.[1432] Many who had looked for great good

from the Legate’s coming began to murmur, and to say, as Englishmen

had learned to say already and as they had often to say again, that at

Rome gold went for more than righteousness.[1433] To King William

everything seemed to be going as he wished it to go. Fully satisfied,

he put out a proclamation that throughout his Empire――through the

whole patriarchate of Anselm――Urban should be acknowledged as Pope and

that obedience should be yielded to him as the successor of Saint

Peter.[1434] Walter had now gained his point; William fancied that he

had gained his. He at once asked that Anselm might be deprived of his

archbishopric by the authority of the Pope whom he had just

acknowledged. He offered a vast yearly payment to the Roman See, if

the Cardinal would only serve his turn in this matter.[1435] But

Walter stood firm; he had done the work for which he had come; England

was under the obedience of Urban. And, much as gold might count for at

Rome, neither the Pope nor his Legate had sunk to the infamy of taking

money to oppress an innocent man and a faithful adherent. Anselm was

indeed treated by them as Englishmen, whether by race, by birth, or by

adoption, whether Edmund, Thomas, or Anselm, commonly were treated by

Popes. He was made a tool of, and he got no effectual support; but

Urban was not prepared for such active wickedness as the Red King

asked of him.

[Sidenote: William and his counsellors outwitted by the Legate.]

[Sidenote: He is driven to a reconciliation with Anselm.]

William was now thoroughly beaten at his own weapons. The craft and

subtlety of Randolf Flambard, of William of Saint-Calais, of the

Achitophel of Meulan himself, had proved of no strength before the

sharper wit of Walter of Albano. The King complained with good right

that he had gained nothing by acknowledging Urban.[1436] In truth he

had lost a great deal. He had lost every decent excuse for any further

attack upon Anselm. The whole complaint against Anselm was that he had

acknowledged Urban. But the King had now himself acknowledged Urban,

and he could not go on persecuting Anselm for simply forestalling his

own act. In legal technicality doubtless, if it was a crime to

acknowledge Urban when the King had not yet acknowledged him, that

crime was not purged by the King’s later acknowledgement of him. Rufus

himself might have been shameless enough to press so pettifogging a

point; but he had learned at Rockingham that no man in the land, save

perhaps a few servile bishops, would support him in so doing. There

was nothing to be done but for William to make up his quarrel with

Anselm, to make it up, that is, as far as appearances went, to make it

up till another opportunity for a quarrel could be found. But till

such opportunity was found, Anselm must be openly and formally

received into the King’s favour.[1437] The thing had to be done;

only if some money could be squeezed out of Anselm in the process of

doing it, the chivalrous King would be the better pleased.

[Sidenote: Whitsun Gemót at Windsor. May 13, 1095.]

[Sidenote: The King’s message to Anselm.]

[Sidenote: The Legate’s coming revealed to Anselm.]

[Sidenote: Anselm will not pay for the pallium.]

[Sidenote: Anselm and William reconciled.]

[Sidenote: Their friendly discourse.]

The feast of Pentecost came, and with it the second of the assemblies

at which the rebellious Earl of Northumberland refused to show

himself. The King and his Witan were at Windsor; the Archbishop was

keeping the feast at his manor of Mortlake. On the octave he was

himself, according to the truce made at Rockingham, to appear at

Windsor. In the course of the Whitsun-week a message was brought to

him from the King, bidding him go to Hayes, another of his manors

nearer to Windsor, in order that messages might more easily go to and

fro between him and the King.[1438] He went, and Eadmer went with him.

The next day nearly all the bishops came to him; some of them, it will

be remembered, had kept the King’s favour throughout, and the others

who had lost it had bought it again. Their object was to try to

persuade the Archbishop to give money to the King for the restoration

of his favour. Anselm answered stoutly, as before, that he would not

so dishonour his lord as to treat his friendship as something which

could be bought and sold.[1439] He would faithfully discharge every

temporal duty to his lord, on the one condition of being allowed to

keep his obedience to Pope Urban. If that was not allowed, he would

again ask for a safe-conduct to leave the kingdom. They then told

him――the secret must have been still kept, though Urban was

acknowledged――that the Bishop of Albano had brought a pallium from the

Pope; they did not scruple to add that he had, at the King’s request,

brought it for Anselm.[1440] Would not the Archbishop pay something

for so great a benefit?[1441] Would he not at least, now that the

pallium had come to him instead of his going for the pallium, pay the

sum which the journey to Rome would otherwise have cost him?[1442]

Anselm would pay nothing. The King had thus to make the best of a bad

bargain. As Anselm would not pay for either friendship or pallium,

there was nothing to be done but to let him have both friendship and

pallium without paying. The King once more consulted his lay nobles,

and, by their advice,[1443] he restored Anselm to his full favour, he

cancelled all former causes of quarrel, he received him as archbishop

and ghostly father, and gave him the fullest licence to exercise his

office throughout the realm. One condition only seems to have been

made; Anselm was to promise that he would observe the laws and customs

of the realm and would defend them against all men.[1444] The promise

was made, but with the express or implied reservation of duty to

God.[1445] That was indeed the reservation which William most hated;

but in his present frame of mind he may have brought himself to

consent to it. Anselm came to Windsor, and was admitted by the King to

his most familiar converse in the sight of the lords and of the whole

multitude that had come together.[1446] Cardinal Walter came in at the

lucky moment, and was edified by the sight. He quoted the scripture,

“Behold, how good and joyful it is brethren to dwell together in

unity.” He sat down beside the friendly pair; he quoted other

scriptures, and expressed his sorrow that he himself had not had any

hand in the good work of bringing them together.

[Sidenote: Anselm asked to take the pallium from the King.]

[Sidenote: He refuses.]

[Sidenote: Assent of the Assembly.]

The wild bull and the feeble sheep thus seemed for a moment to pull

together as friendly yokefellows. But a Norman king did not, in his

character of wild bull, any more than in his character of lion,

altogether cast aside his other character of fox. He, or Count Robert

for him, had one shift left. Or it might almost seem that it was not

the King’s own shift, but merely the device of flatterers who wished

to win the royal favour by proposing it. Would not the Archbishop, for

the honour of the King’s majesty, take the pallium from the King’s

hand?[1447] Anselm had made no objection to receiving the staff from

the King’s hand, for such was the ancient custom of England. But with

the pallium the King had nothing to do; it belonged wholly to the

authority of Saint Peter and his successor.[1448] Anselm therefore

refused to take the pallium from the King. The refusal was so clearly

according to all precedent, the proposal the other way was such a

manifest novelty, that nothing more was said about the matter. It was

settled that, on a fixed day, the pallium should be laid on the altar

of Christ in the metropolitan church, and that Anselm should take it

thence, as from the hand of Saint Peter himself.[1449] The expression

used is remarkable, as showing that the popular character of these

assemblies had not utterly died out. “The whole multitude

agreed.”[1450] They agreed most likely by a shout of Yea, Yea, rather

than by any more formal vote; but in any case it was that voice of the

people which Eadmer at least knew to be the voice of God.

[Sidenote: Anselm absolves two repentant bishops.]

[Sidenote: Robert and Osmund.]

[Sidenote: Wilfrith of Saint David’s restored.]

The Archbishop and his faithful comrade now set out for Canterbury.

But he was called on to do some archiepiscopal acts by the way. They

had hardly left Windsor when two bishops came to express their

repentance for the crime of denying their metropolitan at

Rockingham.[1451] These were the ritualist Osmund of Salisbury, and

Robert of Hereford, the friend of Wulfstan. It was believed that,

besides the visit at the moment of his departure, the saint of

Worcester had again appeared to Bishop Robert. He had warned him of

divers faults in his life and in the administration of his diocese,

giving him however good hopes if he mended his ways.[1452]

Notwithstanding this voice from the dead, Robert had consented to the

counsel and deed of them at Rockingham; he now came with Osmund to ask

pardon. Anselm turned into a little church by the wayside, and gave

them absolution. Then and there too he did another act of

archiepiscopal clemency to a more distant suffragan. Wilfrith Bishop

of Saint David’s had been――we are not told when――suspended for some

fault――we are not told what. Anselm now restored him to his episcopal

office.[1453]

[Sidenote: Anselm receives the pallium at Canterbury. June 10, 1095.]

The Archbishop went on to Canterbury, and there awaited the coming of

the Roman Cardinal. On the appointed day, a Sunday in June, Bishop

Walter came. He was met with all worship by the convents of the two

monasteries, Christ Church and Saint Augustine’s, by a great body of

clergy, and by a vast crowd of layfolk of both sexes. The Bishop of

Albano bore the precious gift in a silver casket. As they drew near to

Christ Church, Anselm, with bare feet, but in the full dress of his

office, supported on either side by the suffragans who had come to the

ceremony, met the procession. The pallium was laid on the altar; it

was taken thence by the hand of Anselm, and reverently kissed by those

who were near him.[1454] The Archbishop was then clothed with his new

badge of honour; nothing was now wanting to his position. Already

invested, consecrated, clothed with full temporal and spiritual powers

within his own province by the King and the bishops of England, he now

received the solemn recognition of the rest of the Western Church, in

the person of its chief Pontiff.[1455] Anselm and England were again

in full fellowship with the lawful occupier of the apostolic throne.

Nothing now was wanting. The Archbishop, clad in his pallium, sang the

mass. But, as at his consecration, men found an evil omen in part of

the words of the service. The gospel of the day told of the man who

made a great supper and bade many, but whose unthankful guests began

to make excuse.[1456]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Death of Bishop Robert of Hereford. June 26, 1095.]

[Sidenote: The Legate stays in England.]

[Sidenote: Objects of Walter’s mission.]

[Sidenote: His dealings with Anselm.]

The reception of the pallium by Anselm was the last great ceremony

done in the metropolitan church during this his first primacy; it was

one of the very few great ceremonies done in the unaltered church of

Lanfranc. And, if we are to understand that all the suffragans of

Canterbury were present, one of them was soon taken away. Not many

days after Anselm first put on the pallium, his late penitent, Bishop

Robert of Hereford, left the world, to join for ever, as the charity

of Worcester believed, the saintly friend whom he had twice

wonderfully seen.[1457] Cardinal Walter meanwhile stayed in England

during the greater part of that year, and according to some accounts

for some months of the year which followed. Notwithstanding the good

life for which the Chronicler gives him credit, he seems, like other

Romans, to have been open to the King’s special means of influence,

and a foreign writer who had good means of knowing seems to speak of

his general conduct in England as having greatly tended to bring his

office into discredit.[1458] His commission from Pope Urban was a

large one. Among other things, he had to look to the better payment of

the Romescot,[1459] which, it will be remembered, had not always

flowed regularly into the papal coffers even in the days of the

Conqueror,[1460] and which of course did not flow at all in the days

when no Pope was acknowledged in England. He had also to enquire

generally into the state of things in England, and to consult with

Anselm as to the means of reform. It is plain however from most

independent testimonies that the Archbishop and the Cardinal were by

no means suited to work together. Two letters from Anselm to Walter

throw a singular light on some points in the story which are not

recorded in any narrative. The personal intercourse of the two

prelates was interfered with by a cause which we should hardly have

looked for, namely, the occupation of Anselm in the duties of a

military command. But it is plain that Anselm did not look for much

good from any special intercourse between himself and the Cardinal. He

writes that private conferences between the two were of no use; they

could do nothing without the King’s consent and help.[1461] But Anselm

seems to have taken a more constitutional view of the way by which the

King’s consent and help was to be got than the Roman Legate was likely

to take. Anselm says that they would meet to no purpose, except when

the King, the bishops, and the nobles, were all near to be referred

to.[1462] This reads very much as if Anselm was aware of some

underhand practices between the King and the Legate, and had no mind

to meet the emissary of Rome except when he himself would have the

constitutional voice of the nation to back him. But as things stood at

the moment, circumstances seem to have hindered the meeting for which

Walter seems to have wished and Anselm not to have wished.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The King’s northern march.]

[Sidenote: Anselm entrusted with the defence of Canterbury.]

[Sidenote: Letters between Anselm and Walter.]

[Sidenote: Position of the bishops.]

[Sidenote: The bishops object to Anselm’s position.]

We are now in the thick of the revolt of Earl Robert of Mowbray, the

tale of which will be told in full in the next chapter. The King was

on his march northward to put down the revolt. King, Archbishop, and

Legate, had parted as if the Legate at least was not to see either of

the other two again in England.[1463] At such a time the desired

conference could not be held; and Anselm himself was bound for the

time within a very narrow local range. While the King marched on

towards Northumberland, the Archbishop was entrusted with the care of

Canterbury, perhaps of Kent generally, against an expected Norman

invasion.[1464] If Anselm’s conscience would have allowed him to take

part in actual warfare, we can hardly fancy that he would have proved

a captain to the liking of the Red King. Yet it does sometimes happen

that a simple sense of duty will carry a man with credit through

business the most opposite to his own temper and habits. It is more

likely however that the duty really laid upon Anselm, as upon Wulfstan

at Worcester, was rather to keep the minds of the King’s forces up to

the mark by stirring exhortations, while the task of personally

fighting and personally commanding was given to others. Still he was,

both by the King’s word of mouth and by his writ and seal, entrusted

with the care of the district,[1465] and he deemed it his duty not to

leave Canterbury, except to go to any point that might be immediately

threatened.[1466] Why Walter could not have come to Canterbury is not

clear. Anyhow personal communication was hindered, and to that

hindrance we owe a letter which gives us a further insight into the

almost incredible shamelessness of the King’s courtly bishops. Walter,

it is plain, had been rebuking them for their conduct towards Anselm.

They were open to ecclesiastical censure for denying their archbishop,

and he blames Anselm himself for too great lenity towards them.[1467]

Anselm pleads that they had returned to him and had promised obedience

for the future.[1468] The others, it would seem, had followed the

example of the Bishops of Hereford and Salisbury. But it comes out in

the letter that some of these undutiful suffragans had taken up the

strangest and most self-condemning line of defence. These men,

cringing slaves of the King, who had carried every mean and insulting

message from the King to the Primate, who had laid down the rule that

neither bishops nor other men had anything to do but to follow the

King’s will in all things, were not ashamed to plead that Anselm was

no lawful archbishop, that he could claim no duty from them, simply

because he had done what they had themselves done in a far greater

degree. These faithful servants of King William were not ashamed to

urge that their master and his kingdom had been in a state of schism,

cut off from the Catholic Church and its lawful head, and that Anselm

had been a partaker in the schism. He had received investiture from a

schismatic King; he had done homage to that schismatic King, and had

received consecration from schismatic bishops. In other words, they

plead that Anselm is no lawful archbishop, because he had been

consecrated by themselves.

[Sidenote: His answer.]

[Sidenote: Question about the monks of Christ Church.]

[Sidenote: Anselm and his tenants.]

A more shameless plea than this could hardly be thought of, but Anselm

does not seem stirred by its shamelessness. He simply answers the

doubt which was cast on his own appointment and consecration as calmly

as if it had been started by some impartial outsider.[1469] Those who

consecrated him were not schismatics; no judgement had cut them off

from the communion of the Church. They had not cast off their

allegiance to the Roman Pontiff; they all professed obedience to the

Roman See; they had not in any way denied that Urban was the lawful

Pope; they had simply, in the midst of the controversy which was going

on, doubted whether it was their clear duty to receive him as

such.[1470] That his own position was perfectly good was shown by the

conduct of the Pope himself. Urban knew all that had happened between

him and the King, together with all the circumstances of his

consecration. So knowing, he had treated him as lawfully consecrated,

and had sent him the pallium by Walter’s own hands.[1471] If such

objections had any force, why had not Walter spoken of them before he,

Anselm, had received the pallium?[1472] Another passage in this letter

would seem to imply that some complaint had been made as to Anselm’s

dealings with the monks of his own church. The Cardinal asks Anselm to

leave them in free possession of their goods.[1473] Anselm answers

that he earnestly desires the peace and advantage of his monks, and

with God’s help he will do all that lies in his power to settle

everything for their advantage.[1474] Anselm and his monks seem to

have been commonly on the best of terms. Still we seem here to see the

beginnings of those disputes which grew into such terrible storms a

hundred years later. The lands of the monks had, as we have

seen,[1476][**dup anchor] not been spared during the vacancy of the

archbishopric. And it may be that some wrong had been again done to

them when the King was molesting the Archbishop’s men during the time

of truce. We heard not long ago of great complaints going up during

that time; some of them may have taken the formal shape of an appeal

to the Cardinal. Anselm’s reeves may have been no more scrupulous than

the reeves of other men. Indeed we find a curious witness that it was

so. The question was raised why Anselm, a monk and a special lover of

monks, did not always live at Canterbury, among his monks.[1475]

Several answers are given. The most remarkable is that his presence in

his manors was needed to protect his poorer tenants from the

oppression of his reeves.[1476] When such care was needed on behalf of

the tenants, it is quite possible that the reeves might sometimes

meddle wrongfully with the possessions of the monks also.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Gemót of Windsor and Salisbury. Christmas, 1095-1096.]

[Sidenote: Anselm attends the Bishop of Durham on his death-bed.

January, 1096.]

[Sidenote: Consecration of bishops.]

[Sidenote: Samson Bishop of Worcester.]

[Sidenote: Gerard Bishop of Hereford, Archbishop of York 1100.]

[Sidenote: Consecration of Gerard and Samson. June 6, 1096.]

A time of peace for Anselm followed, though hardly a time of peace for

England. Before the year was out the King had put down the revolt in

Northumberland; Earl Robert of Mowbray was his prisoner. An expedition

against the Welsh was less successful, and Scotland still remained

under the king of her own choice. The Christmas Gemót, of which we

shall have presently to speak at length, was a famous, and, what was

not usual in our early assemblies, a bloody gathering. It was held at

Windsor and was then adjourned to Salisbury; at the former place at

least Anselm was present, and he had an opportunity of showing

Christian charity to an enemy. At Windsor Bishop William of Durham

sickened and died. His latter days are so closely connected with the

fall of Earl Robert that they will be better spoken of elsewhere. It

is enough to say here that his last hours were cheered by the ghostly

help of the holy man against whom he had so deeply sinned. Meanwhile

Anselm, comforted by the recall of his friend Baldwin,[1477] was doing

his duty in peace; ruling, writing, exhorting, showing love to every

living creature,[1478] ever and anon called on to discharge the

special duties of his office. In this interval he consecrated two

bishops to sees within the realm. The churches of Worcester and

Hereford were vacant by the deaths of the two friends Wulfstan and

Robert. Both sees were filled in the year after they fell vacant. Were

they filled after the usual fashion of the Red King’s day, or was

Anselm, now, outwardly at least, in William’s full favour, able during

this interval of peace to bring about some relaxation of the crying

evil of this reign? There is no direct statement either way; we can

judge only by what we know of the characters of the two men appointed.

Neither of them, one would think, was altogether to the mind of

Anselm. In the place of the holy Wulfstan, the diocese of Worcester

received as its bishop, and the monks of Worcester received as their

abbot, a canon of Bayeux, Samson by name, a brother of Archbishop

Thomas of York. The influence of the Northern Primate may perhaps be

seen in the appointment of his kinsman to a see so closely connected

with his own. Samson was one of the school of learned men with whom

Odo――it was his one redeeming merit――had filled his church of

Bayeux.[1479] He was as yet only in deacon’s orders, and he was

possibly married, at least he is said to have been the father of the

second archbishop Thomas of York.[1480] He seems to have been one of

those prelates, who, without any claim to special saintship, went

through their course at least decently. He was bountiful to all; to

the monks of Worcester he did no harm――some harm seems to have been

looked for from a secular――beyond suppressing their dependent

monastery of Westbury.[1481] Of the new Bishop of Hereford we know

more. He was that Gerard who had helped to bring Cardinal Walter to

England, one of the King’s clerks, not even in deacon’s orders, and a

thorough time-server.[1482] We cannot help suspecting that his

bishopric was not granted for nothing, whatever may have been the case

with Samson at Worcester. The bishops-elect came to Anselm for

consecration. He was then with his friend Gundulf at Lambeth, then a

manor of the see of Rochester. In the chapel of the manor Anselm

ordained them priests.[1483] The next day he consecrated them in the

cathedral church of London, with the help of four of his suffragans,

three of whom, Thomas of York, Maurice of London, and Gundulf of

Rochester, had in different ways a special interest in the ceremony.

The fourth was Herbert, described as of Thetford or Norwich. It was in

the course of this year that he began his great work in his last-named

see.[1484]

[Sidenote: Anselm consecrates Irish bishops.]

This year too Anselm was able to show that his style of Patriarch of

all the nations beyond the sea was not an empty title. It was now that

he consecrated two bishops to sees in Ireland, Samuel of Dublin and

Malchus of Waterford. They were both Irish by birth, but monks of

English monasteries, Samuel of Saint Alban’s, Malchus of Winchester.

They came with letters from the clergy and people of their sees, and

from King Murtagh or Murchard, of whom we shall hear again, and who

takes to himself the sounding title of King of Ireland. Both

were consecrated by Anselm, Samuel at Winchester, Malchus at

Canterbury.[1485] It was no new claim; two predecessors of Samuel had

already been consecrated by Lanfranc.

§ 6. _The Crusade and the Mortgage of Normandy. November, 1095-March,

1097._

[Sidenote: Council of Piacenza. March 7, 1095.]

[Sidenote: Appeal of the Emperor Alexios.]

[Sidenote: Council of Clermont. November 18, 1095.]

[Sidenote: The first Crusade.]

[Sidenote: Bearing of the crusade on our story.]

[Sidenote: No king engaged in the first crusade.]

[Sidenote: The crusades a Latin movement.]

[Sidenote: Name of _Franks_.]

[Sidenote: Share of Normandy and Flanders.]

[Sidenote: Place chosen for the council.]

We must now for a while again turn our eyes to Normandy, but to

Normandy mainly as affected by the most stirring scenes in the history

of the world. We have seen Urban at Piacenza; we have heard him there

make his appeal to Western Christendom on behalf of the oppressed

churches and nations of the East. Their cry came up then, as it has

come up in our own ears; and it was answered in those days as one only

among Christian nations has been found to answer it in ours. In those

days the bulwark and queen of the Eastern lands still stood untouched.

The New Rome had not then to be won back for Christendom; it had

simply to be preserved. By the prince who still kept on the unbroken

succession of Constantine and Diocletian and Augustus the appeal was

made which stirred the hearts of nations as the heart of one man. The

letters of Alexios had been read at Piacenza; the great call from the

mouth of the Western Pontiff was made in the ears of a vaster

multitude still in the memorable assembly of Clermont. But the tale of

the first Crusade needs not to be told here. The writers of the time

were naturally called away from what might seem the smaller affairs of

their own lands to tell of the great struggle of two worlds. Some of

the fullest accounts of the gathering and march of the crusaders are

to be found in the writings to which we are in the habit of turning in

every page for the history of England and Normandy.[1486] Our native

Chronicler can spare only a few words, but those are most pithy words,

to set forth the great stirring of the nations.[1487] And in our

present tale the holy war directly comes home to us, chiefly because

so many men whom we have already heard of took a part in it. Above

all, it places two of our chief actors before us in parts eminently

characteristic of the two. We see how Duke Robert of Normandy went

forth to show himself among the foremost and the worthiest in the

struggle, and how King William of England took occasion of his

brother’s zeal to gain his duchy by money wrung from English

households and English churches. I have noticed elsewhere,[1488] as

has been often noticed before, that the work of the first crusade was

strictly the work of the nations, and of princes of the second rank.

Dukes and counts there were many in the crusading army, but no king of

the West joined in its march. The Western Emperor was at open war with

the Pope who preached the crusade. The kings of Spain had their own

crusade to wage. The kings of England and France were of all men in

their kingdoms the least likely to join in the enterprise. The

kingdoms of the North were as yet hardly stirred by the voice of

Urban. It is indeed plain that the whole movement was primarily a

Latin movement. It is with a true instinct that the people of the East

have from those days onward given the name of _Franks_ to all the

Christians of the West. It is a curious speculation, and one at which

I have already hinted elsewhere, what would have been the share of

England in the crusades, if there had been no Norman Conquest.[1489]

As it was, the part of the Teutonic nations in the crusades is

undoubtedly secondary to that of the Latin nations. Germany takes no

leading part till a later stage; Scandinavia takes no leading part at

all; England is brought into the scene as an appendage to Normandy.

The English crusaders served under the banner of the Norman

Duke.[1490] Among the secondary powers Flanders indeed appears among

the foremost; but Flanders, a fief of the crown of Paris, was, as a

power, though not as a people, more Latin than Teutonic. The elder

Count Robert had won the honour of forestalling the crusade by sending

help to the Eastern Emperor on his own account.[1491] It was fittingly

in a Latin city, in a Gaulish city, that Urban, himself by birth a

Frenchman in the stricter sense,[1492] called the nations of the West

to arms. But it was equally fitting that it should not be within the

immediate dominion of a king who had no heart for the enterprise, of a

king whose own moral offences it was one of the duties of the Pontiff

and his council to denounce. Not in the dominions of any king, not in

the dominions of any of the great dukes and counts who were in power

on a level with kings, but in the land of the lowlier counts, not as

yet dauphins, of Auvergne, the assembly met whose acts were to lead to

the winning back of the Holy City for Christendom, but with which we

are more directly concerned as causing William the Red to reign at

Rouen as well as at Winchester.

[Sidenote: Decrees of the council.]

[Sidenote: Lay investiture forbidden.]

[Sidenote: Sentences against Clement and the Emperor; against Philip

and Bertrada.]

[Sidenote: Urban preaches the crusades; his geography.]

The preaching of the crusade was not the only business of the great

assembly at Clermont. A crowd of canons of the usual kind were passed

against the usual abuses. Those abuses were not confined to England

and Normandy. We are told that in all the lands on our side of the

Alps――and we may venture to doubt whether things were likely to be

much better on the other side――simony prevailed among all classes of

the clergy, while the laity had taken to put away their wives and to

take to themselves the wives of other men.[1493] The great example of

this last fault was certainly King Philip of France, whose marriage or

pretended marriage with Bertrada of Montfort, the wife of Count Fulk

of Anjou, was one of the subjects of discussion at the council. All

abuses of all these kinds were again denounced, as they had often been

denounced before, and were often to be denounced again. But what

concerns us more immediately is the decree that no bishop, abbot, or

clerk of any rank, should receive any ecclesiastical benefice from the

hand of any prince or other layman.[1494] This struck straight at the

ancient use both of England and of Normandy. It forbad what Gregory

the Seventh had, if not allowed, at least winked at, during his whole

reign, in the case of the common sovereign of those two lands.[1495]

This decree, we cannot doubt, had an important bearing on the future

position of Anselm. Wibert, calling himself Clement, was of course

excommunicated afresh, along with the Emperor as his supporter. So

were the King of the French and his pretended queen, for their

adulterous marriage. So were all who should call them King and Queen

or Lord and Lady, or should so much as speak to either of them for any

other purpose except to rebuke their offences.[1496] The thunders of

the Church could have found only one more fitting object than the

reformation of this great moral scandal. But we see to what a height

ecclesiastical claims had grown, when the council took on itself to

declare the offenders deprived of their royal dignity and their feudal

rights. Then followed the great discourse which called men to the Holy

War. Urban told how, of the three parts of the world, the infidels had

rent away two from Christendom; how Asia and Africa were theirs――a

saying wholly true of Africa, and which, when the Turk held Nikaia,

seemed even more true of Asia than it really was. Europe alone was

left, our little portion. Of that, Spain had been lost――the Almoravids

had come in since our last glimpse of Spanish matters[1497]――while

most of the northern parts of Europe itself were still shrouded in

heathen darkness. It needs some little effort to remember how true to

the letter Urban’s religious geography was. The south-western

peninsula was then, what the south-eastern is now, the land of

Christian nations slowly winning back their own from infidel masters.

And, before Swedish kings had crossed the Baltic, before

Sword-brothers and Teutonic knights had arisen, before Russia had made

her way northward, southward, and eastward, all north-eastern Europe

was still heathen, while Scandinavia, Poland, and Hungary, were still

recent conquests for the faith. Into the central strip of Christian

land which lay between the heathen of the north and the Turks and

Saracens of the south, east, and west, the enemy was now ready to

cross. Urban called on his hearers to go forth and stop the way; and

not a few of the men whose names have been famous, some whose names

have been infamous, in our own story were among the foremost to go

forth on the holy errand to which the voice of the Pontiff called

them.

[Sidenote: French and other crusaders.]

[Sidenote: 1096.]

[Sidenote: Hugh brother of King Philip.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Meulan marries his daughter.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Flanders and Stephen of Chartres.]

[Sidenote: The brothers from Boulogne;]

[Sidenote: Eustace,]

[Sidenote: Baldwin,]

[Sidenote: Godfrey of Lorraine.]

[Sidenote: Norman crusaders.]

[Sidenote: Ralph of Wader.]

Those among the recorded crusaders whose names come more immediately

home to Englishmen did not join the holy war till a later time. But

not a few names which have been long familiar to us are to be found in

the list of those who joined in the first regular expedition which set

forth in the course of the year which followed the assembly at

Clermont. Beyond the bounds of England and Normandy we may mark the

names of Hugh surnamed the Great, the brother of King Philip, Count of

Vermandois, Count of Valois in succession to the holy Simon,[1498] but

who appears in our chief list of crusaders by the lowlier title of the

Count of Crêpy. He went to the work, leaving his fiefs to his sons.

His daughter Isabel or Elizabeth he gave in marriage to Count Robert

of Meulan, by this time no very youthful bridegroom.[1499] Among

princes of greater power, but of less lofty birth, the foreign allies

of the Norman house were represented by the younger Count Robert of

Flanders, nephew of the Conqueror’s queen, and by Stephen Count of

Chartres and Blois, husband of the Conqueror’s noblest child, and

father of a king of England and of a bishop of an English see more

personally eminent than his royal brother. Rotrou of Mortagne and

Walter of Saint Valery went from the border lands so closely connected

with Norman history. In Everard of Puiset we hear the name of a house

which was in the next century to become famous in England on the

throne of Saint Cuthberht, the throne at that moment empty and widowed

by the death of William of Saint-Calais. And from a house most hateful

to England, but which had received no small share of the spoils of

England, went forth three brethren, one of whom was to show himself

the worthiest, and to be placed the highest, in the crusading host.

Eustace of Boulogne, a prince beyond the sea but in England lord

of lands scattered from Mendip to the Kentish and East-Saxon

shores,[1500] marched with his two brothers, both of whom were to

reign as kings in the Holy City. The part of Baldwin in the enterprise

had been already foreshadowed in visions told in the hall of

Conches.[1501] Visions were hardly needed to foretell the greatness of

Godfrey of Lorraine, who had won his duchy as the prize of faithful

service to the Emperor, but who was none the less ready to discharge

the duties of a higher allegiance at the bidding of the Pontiff. From

Normandy itself went, among a crowd of others, some of that younger

generation which is beginning to supply the chief actors in our tale.

Philip, the son of the lately deceased Roger of Montgomery, Ivo and

Alberic the sons of the lately deceased Hugh of Grantmesnil,[1502] all

went forth; so did Gerard of Gournay and his wife Eadgyth, he to die,

she to come back for another marriage.[1503] And with them went

another married pair whose names carry us back to earlier times. The

double traitor, Ralph of Wader, traitor to England, traitor to

William, went forth with his valiant Emma, to do something to wipe out

his old crimes by good service beneath the walls of Nikaia, and to

leave his bones and hers in lands where his memory was not a memory of

shame.[1504]

[Sidenote: Duke Robert.]

[Sidenote: His need of money.]

[Sidenote: He is driven to apply to William.]

[Sidenote: Position of William.]

We may be sure that among the crowd of men of every rank who were

stirred by the voice of Urban none took up the cross with a more

single mind than the Duke of the Normans. It was an appeal which spoke

at once to the better side of him, an appeal which took him away from

that land of his birth and dominion which was to him a land of such

utter failure. As a son and a ruler, he had much to repent of; as a

warrior, a worthy object of warfare was for the first time opened to

him. But how was he to go, at least how was he to go as became the

prince of a duchy which under other princes had been so great? His

hoard was empty; half his barons were in practical rebellion; his

brothers held no small part of his duchy. He had no resource but one,

to seek help, at whatever cost, from the brother who could command the

wealth of England, even though the price should be nothing short of

yielding the whole of Normandy to him who already held a part. It is

needless to say that King William of England had no thought of going

on the crusade himself. He was not indeed hindered, as the Emperor and

the King of the French were hindered, by actually lying under the

censures of the Church. But he was as little likely as either of them

to gird on his sword in the great quarrel. The voice which stirred the

heart of Robert to the quick found no kindred chord to strike on in

the mocking soul of Rufus. The enemy of God felt no call to march in

the cause of God. He was not likely to spend his treasures or to

display his chivalry in warfare which could not bring him any direct

increase of wealth or power. It was rather for him to stay at home,

and to reap what he could in the way of either wealth or power at the

cost of those whose madness led them on errands which could bring in

neither. Palestine was far away and hard to win. Normandy, so much as

was left of Normandy, so much as was not already his own, was near and

was easy to win with his own special arms. William Rufus was not at

all likely to turn aside from any offer of the kind which Robert might

make to him.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Mission of Abbot Jeronto.]

[Sidenote: Jeronto rebukes William.]

[Sidenote: The Pope sends his nephew. Easter, April 13, 1096.]

The brothers were however at war, and the services of a mediator were

needed to open negotiations between them. The Pope becomingly

undertook the office, and sent a prelate from the more distant parts

of Gaul, Jeronto, Abbot of Saint Benignus at Dijon, to make peace

between the King and the Duke. We are told that Walter of Albano’s

greediness and subserviency to the King had brought the name of

Legate, and of Rome itself, into discredit. Jeronto was therefore

trusted with a commission to make an appeal to William, such as Walter

had clearly never made, about the evils which were allowed to go on

under his government.[1505] Of the two branches of this commission one

prospered better than the other. At first, we are told, the Abbot’s

righteous boldness and plainness of speech seemed to have made an

effect on the King, while it raised general hopes of reform among the

nation.[1506] But the King or his counsellors knew how to deal, if not

with Abbot Jeronto, at least with those in greater authority. He had,

so the story runs, sent a messenger of his own to the Pope――most

likely during his sojourn in northern Gaul, of which we shall hear

again――carrying with him the weighty argument of ten marks of the

purest gold.[1507] Trusting to this means of gaining his end, the King

kept the Abbot of Dijon with him, till the Easter of the next year. By

that time the King’s messenger came back, bringing with him a

commissioner from the Pope, a layman, the sister’s son of Urban, by

whose word of mouth it would seem the Abbot’s commission was cancelled

and all questions were adjourned till the next Christmas.[1508] When

the next Christmas came, the King was not in England, to attend to

ecclesiastical reform or to anything else.

[Sidenote: Peace between Robert and William.]

[Sidenote: Normandy pledged to William. 1096.]

The other object for which Jeronto came to England was fully carried

out, whether Jeronto himself had any real hand in bringing it about or

not. Peace was made between the Duke of the Normans and the King of

the English. In order that Robert might have money to go to the

crusade, the duchy of Normandy was pledged to his brother for a sum of

ten thousand marks. The transaction was not a cession or a sale; it

was a mere pledge. The duchy was to pass to William merely for a

season, for three years, or for so long a time as Robert should be

away. If the Duke should come back, and should find himself able to

pay the money, the duchy was to be his again.[1509] Still William’s

possession seemed likely to be a lasting one. There seemed but small

chance of Robert’s ever coming back, and smaller still of his coming

back with ten thousand marks to spare out of the spoils of the

infidels. If he ever did come so laden, William Rufus doubtless

trusted that, by some means either of force or of fraud, his brother’s

restoration to his duchy might be either evaded or withstood.

[Sidenote: The price not large.]

[Sidenote: Heavy taxation to raise the money.]

[Sidenote: Whitsun Assembly, 1096.]

[Sidenote: Extortion of the benevolence.]

[Sidenote: Oppression of tenants.]

[Sidenote: Protest of the prelates.]

[Sidenote: Comparison of the prelates and the lay lords.]

[Sidenote: Plunder of the churches.]

The price for which Normandy was thus handed over does not, when

compared with other payments of the time, seem a large one. It was not

very much higher than the sums which Herbert Losinga was said to have

paid for a bishopric for himself and an abbey for his father.[1510]

The price to be paid for at least a three years’ possession of all

Normandy was not much more than three times the sum which courtiers at

least had looked on as a reasonable contribution for an Archbishop of

Canterbury to make towards a single Norman expedition.[1511] Yet the

sum which was now to be paid is spoken of as a drain upon the whole

kingdom. Rufus had no thought of paying the money out of any rightful

revenues of the crown or out of any stores which he had already wrung

from his people. Something was to be wrung from them yet again for the

special object of the moment. The time would seem to have been the

summer of the year which followed the gathering at Clermont, the year

which in England began with the death of Bishop William of Durham and

the frightful punishment of Count William of Eu. The matter may have

been discussed at the Whitsun Assembly of that year, of which we have

no record. At any rate a heavy tax was laid on the whole kingdom; we

may be sure that the Red King took the occasion to wring more out of

the land than the actual sum which he had to pay to his brother.

Otherwise, except on the view that everything had been taken already,

the payment of a sum less than seven thousand pounds could hardly have

weighed on the whole kingdom as this benevolence is said to have

weighed. For a benevolence it was, at least in form; men were invited

to give or to lend; but we gather that some more stringent means was

found for those who failed to give or to lend willingly.[1512] The

English Chronicler sends up his wail for the heavy time that it was by

reason of the manifold gelds, and he tells us how, as so often

happened, hunger followed in the wake of the extortioner.[1513] Other

writers describe the King as demanding loans and gifts from his

prelates, earls, and other great men. The great lay lords, we are

told, raised their share by the plunder of the knights who held fiefs

of them and of the churls who tilled their demesne lands.[1514] It is

the cry of these last that we hear through the voice of the

Chronicler. The bishops and abbots are said to have made a protest, a

thing which almost passes belief on the part of the bishops of the Red

King’s day. When called on for their shares, they are said to have

answered, in the spirit, or at least in the words, of Ælfheah, that

they could not raise the money by any means save the oppression of the

wretched tillers of the earth.[1515] Judged by the conduct of the two

classes at Rockingham, the prelates and the lay barons seem to have

changed places. It is the churchmen now who have the conscientious

scruple. Yet the difference is not wonderful. The barons were used to

general havoc and violence of every kind; what they scrupled at was

the deliberate perversion of formal justice to crush a single man who

claimed their reverence on every ground, official and personal. The

prelates, on the other hand, might be ready for any amount of cringing

and cowardice, and might yet shrink from being made the agents of

direct oppression in their own persons. Anyhow another means of

payment was suggested by the cunning agents of the impious King. It

may have been the future Bishop of Durham who answered, “Have ye not

chests full of the bones of dead men, but wrought about with gold and

silver?”[1516] In this strait the churchmen took the sacrilegious

hint. The most sacred objects were not spared; books of the gospels,

shrines, crucifixes, were spoiled of their precious ornaments,

chalices were melted down, all the gifts of the bounty of the old time

were seized on, not to relieve the poor, but to fill the coffers of

the King with the money that was needed for his ambitious

schemes.[1517]

[Sidenote: Contribution of Anselm.]

[Sidenote: He mortgages the manor of Peckham to his monks.]

In all this we have learned to suspect some exaggeration; extreme

measures taken at some particular places must have been spoken of as

if they had been universal throughout the land. In one case, and that

the case of the highest personal interest, we get the details, and

they are a good deal less frightful than the general picture. Among

the other great men of the land, the Archbishop of Canterbury was

called on for his contribution. His friends advised compliance with

the request, and he himself did not complain of it as unreasonable.[1518]

But Anselm had no great store of money in hand. He consulted the

Bishops of Winchester and Rochester, Walkelin and Gundulf, and by

their advice he borrowed a sum of money from the hoard of his monks,

who seem to have been better provided than himself. The convent, by a

vote of the majority, agreed to help the Archbishop with a present sum

of two hundred pounds, in return for which Anselm made over to them

for seven years his manor of Peckham, which brought in thirty pounds

yearly. The money supplied by the monks, together with what Anselm

could raise himself, made up a sum which seems to have satisfied the

King; at least no complaint or dispute is recorded.[1519]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Conference between William and Robert.]

[Sidenote: Robert sets forth on the Crusade. September, 1096.]

[Sidenote: His companions, Robert, Stephen, and Odo.]

[Sidenote: Conduct of Robert.]

[Sidenote: Robert at Rome.]

[Sidenote: His reception by Roger of Apulia.]

The ten thousand marks were raised and paid. We may well believe that

more than the ten thousand marks were raised; but we may be sure that

not a penny more than his bargain entitled him to found its way into

the hands of Duke Robert. In September the whole business was

finished. King William crossed the sea, and met his brother in a

conference held under the mediation of the King of the French, at some

point of the border-land of the Vexin, at Pontoise or at Chaumont,

places of which we shall have to speak again.[1520] The money was paid

to the Duke; the duchy was handed over to the King, and Robert of

Normandy set forth for the holy war. He went in company with his

cousin the Count of Flanders and his brother-in-law the Count of

Chartres. And with them went a kinsman of an elder generation, whose

long history, though not specially long life, is now drawing to an

end. Bishop Odo of Bayeux could not bear to stay in Normandy again to

become a subject of the nephew to whom he had surrendered himself at

Rochester.[1521] He joined the forces of his elder nephew, and with

him went the eloquent Bishop of Evreux, Gilbert, who had preached the

funeral sermon of the Conqueror.[5122] The Duke on his armed

pilgrimage showed new powers. He could now, often but not always,

overcome his love of idleness and pleasure, and whenever the moment of

real danger came, he was ever foremost, not only in the mere daring of

the soldier, but in the skill and counsel of the commander.[1523]

Another hand has traced his course with all vividness, but with less

sympathy than one could have wished for the general objects of the

holy war.[1524] A few points in Robert’s eastern career are all that

need now be touched on. He and his companions passed by Lucca, and

there received the blessing of the orthodox Pope Urban.[1525] They

went on to what should have been Urban’s see, and found how truly the

English Chronicler spoke when he said that Urban nothing had of the

settle at Rome. When they went to pay their devotions in the basilica

of Saint Peter, they met with much such entertainment from the

followers of the schismatic Clement as the monks of Glastonbury had

met with from their abbot Thurstan.[1526] They reached southern Italy,

now a duchy of the house of Hauteville, and the reigning Duke Roger,

son of the renowned Wiscard, is said to have welcomed his natural lord

in the head of the ducal house of his ancestral land.[1527]

[Sidenote: Siege of Amalfi.]

[Sidenote: Bohemond takes the cross.]

[Sidenote: The crusaders winter in Apulia. 1096-1097.]

[Sidenote: Odo dies at Palermo. February, 1097.]

At the time of their coming, Duke Roger, his uncle Count Roger of

Sicily, who had won back a realm for Christendom, and his brother

Bohemond――Mark Bohemond we find him accurately called[1528]――were

warring against the famous merchant town of Amalfi,[1529] rebellious

in their eyes against the Norman Duke, in its own eyes loyal to the

Eastern Emperor. At the coming of the crusaders Bohemond took the

cross, and rent up a goodly cloak into crosses for his followers.[1530]

Count Roger was left almost alone to besiege Amalfi, and he went back

to his own island. Yet, after this outburst of pious zeal, those who

were highest in rank among the warriors of the cross tarried to spend

a merry winter in that pleasant land, while many of the lower sort,

already weary of the work, turned aside and went back to their

homes.[1531] The Norman prelates, from whatever motives, crossed to

the great island of the Mediterranean, a trophy of Norman victory only

second to the yet greater island of the Ocean. There, under the rule

of the Great Count of Sicily, the whilom Earl of Kent might see how

conquerors of his own blood could deal with the men of conquered lands

after another sort from that in which he had dealt with the men of his

English earldom. There, in the happy city of the threefold

speech,[1532] the Bishop of Bayeux might mark, in the great temple of

Palermo, once church, then mosque, and now church once more, those

forms of art of the Greek and the Saracen, which had lost in grace, if

they had gained in strength, in taking the shapes which he had himself

followed in his great work in his own Saxon city. There the Earl and

Bishop at last ended a career of which Kent and Bayeux could tell so

different a tale. Gilbert of Evreux discharged the last corporal work

of mercy for his fiercer brother; and the tomb of Odo of Bayeux arose

within the walls of the great church of Palermo, soon to boast itself

the head of the Sicilian realm.[1533] And, after all the changes of

later days, amid the small remains which the barbarians of the

_Renaissance_ have left us of the church of English Walter, we may,

even beside the tomb of the Wonder of the World, stop for a moment to

remember that the brother of our Conqueror, the scourge of our land,

found his last resting-place so far away alike from Bayeux, from

Senlac, and from Rochester.

[Sidenote: Duke Robert crosses to Dyrrhachion.]

[Sidenote: Use of the Bulgarian name.]

[Sidenote: Robert does homage to Alexios.]

[Sidenote: Robert at Laodikeia.]

[Sidenote: Hugh of Jaugy joins the crusades.]

[Sidenote: The “rope-dancers” at Antioch.]

[Sidenote: Robert said to have refused the crown of Jerusalem.]

[Sidenote: His return.]

The Bishop went no further than Palermo; the Duke went on by the

course which the warfare of the Apulian Normans had lately made

familiar. They entered the Eastern world at Dyrrhachion, where the

valour of Normans and Englishmen had been lately proved.[1534] They

passed, in the geography of our authors, through Bulgaria;[1535] that

is, they passed through those Illyrian and Macedonian lands where the

rule of Byzantium had again displaced the rule of Ochrida, but to

which the name of the people whom Samuel had made terrible still

clave, as in the language of fact, though not of diplomacy, it cleaves

still. They reached Thessalonica, they reached Constantinople, and

wondered at the glories of the New Rome.[1536] There, as in duty

bound, they pledged their faith to the truest heir of the Roman

majesty, whose lost lands they were to win back from the misbelievers.

Before the throne of Alexios Robert the Norman knelt; he placed his

hands between the Imperial hands, and arose the sworn liegeman of

Augustus.[1537] The homage of Harold to Robert’s father was not more

binding than the homage of Robert to Alexios; but an English earl and

a Norman crusader were measured in those days by different standards.

The host passed on; at Nikaia, at Antioch, at Jerusalem, Robert was

ever foremost in fight and in council. Yet the old spirit was not

wholly cast out. When the English Warangians at Laodikeia hailed their

joint leaders in the son of their Conqueror and in the heir of their

ancient kings,[1538] the pleasures of Asia, like the pleasures of

Apulia, were too much for the Duke, and it needed the anathemas of the

Church to call him back from his luxurious holiday to the stern work

that was before him.[1539] Before the walls of Jerusalem he found a

strange ally. Hugh of Jaugy, one of the murderers of Mabel, after his

long sojourn among the infidels, greeted his natural prince, returned

to his allegiance, and by his knowledge of the tongue and ways of

those whom he forsook, did useful, if not honourable, service.[1540] A

worthier comrade was a noble and valiant Turk, who of his own accord

came to seek for baptism and for admission to share the perils of the

pilgrims.[1541] The Norman Duke ever appears as the fellow-soldier of

his kinsman and namesake of Flanders; the two Roberts are always side

by side. It is needless to say that neither of them shared in that

shameful descent from the walls of Antioch which gained for some of

the heroes of Normandy the mocking surname of the _rope-dancers_.[1542]

It is hard to find any absolutely contemporary authority for the

statement which was very soon afloat, that the crown of Jerusalem was

offered to Robert and was refused by him.[1543] Robert could not have

been as Godfrey; but we can believe that his career would have been

more honourable in a Syrian than in a Norman dominion. He was at least

one of the first to stand on the rescued walls of the Holy City;[1544]

and in the fight for the newly-won realm against the Fatimite Caliph,

it was not merely by cutting down the Saracen standard-bearer with his

own hand, but by a display of really skilful tactics, that Robert did

much to win the day for Christendom.[1545] He then turned his face

towards Constantinople and towards Apulia, and we shall meet him again

in his own land.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: William takes possession of Normandy.]

[Sidenote: Grants to Henry.]

As soon as Robert had set forth for Jerusalem, William took possession

of the duchy of Normandy――in modern phrase, he took upon him its

administration――without opposition from any side. There was indeed no

side, except the side of mere anarchy, from which opposition could

come. It was perhaps a little humiliating for a great duchy to be

handed over from one prince to another by a personal bargain, like a

house or a field. But there was no practical ground for opposing

William’s entry. All classes, save mere robbers, lordly or vulgar,

must have had enough of Robert. And now Robert was gone, and in going,

he had handed them over to the prince for whom many of them had fought

or intrigued, and who already held some of the most important points

of the country. Whether it was good or bad for England and Normandy to

have the same ruler, it was clearly a gain for all Normandy to have

only one ruler. In one sense indeed this object was not even now

attained. William’s first step was to dismember the duchy which he had

bought. Henry, it will be remembered, had been left in Normandy a year

and a half before, and had been, perhaps ever since, acting in

William’s interests against Robert. He now received the reward of his

services in a noble fief indeed. He became again acknowledged Count of

the whole Côtentin. And to his peninsular dominion he was allowed to

add the whole Bessin, except the city of Bayeux and the castle and

town of Caen.[1546] The spot which contained the foundations of his

parents, the tombs of his parents, William Rufus could not bring

himself to give up, even to reward the faithful service of a brother.

[Sidenote: Rule of William in Normandy.]

[Sidenote: Synod of Rouen. 1096.]

[Sidenote: Truce of God confirmed.]

[Sidenote: Other decrees.]

[Sidenote: The days of King William.]

But for Henry, in full friendship with his brother, to hold a corner

of Normandy as a fief of his brother was a partition of Normandy of

quite another kind from such a partition as had been when William, as

Robert’s enemy, hemmed in Robert in his capital. There can be no doubt

that the exchange from Robert to William was an unspeakable gain to

the duchy. During the remainder of the life of Rufus Normandy had a

stern master; but, after the anarchy of Robert, what the land most

needed was a master of almost any kind. The kind of work which was

needed is shown in the acts of a synod which had been gathered at

Rouen by Archbishop William, while Robert still nominally ruled,

almost immediately after the greater gathering at Clermont. Three

Norman bishops had been at Clermont in person, Odo of Bayeux, Gilbert

of Evreux, and Serlo of Seez. They brought back the decrees of the

council to their brethren, who forthwith assembled to accept and

enforce in their own province all that had been ordered at Clermont

for the Church and the world in general. They confirmed the Truce of

God[1547] with all its enactments on behalf of the more useful and

helpless members of society. They drew up an oath to be taken under

pain of anathema by all men, which bound them to observe the Truce in

their own persons, and to give the help of the temporal arm to the

efforts of the ecclesiastical powers against those who should break

it.[1548] In those days at least peace could be had only through war,

and the Truce of God itself became the occasion of more fighting

against those who scorned its wholesome checks. Other anathemas were

pronounced against robbers, false moneyers, and buyers of stolen

goods, against those who gathered themselves together in castles for

purposes of plunder, and against the lords who sheltered such men in

their castles. Such castles were put under an interdict; no Christian

rite might be done in them.[1549] In going on to pronounce further

anathemas against the invaders of ecclesiastical rights, against the

unlawful occupiers of Church lands, against laymen who claimed to have

a right in tithes and other Church dues,[1550] the synod uses a

formula which shows how keenly Normandy felt the difference between

the great William and his eldest son. What the days of the Confessor

were in England, the days of the Conqueror were in his own duchy. The

synod decreed that all churches should enjoy their goods and customs

as they had been in the time of King William, and that no burthens

should be laid upon them but such as King William had allowed.[1551]

[Sidenote: Small results of the synod.]

[Sidenote: William’s rule in Normandy.]

[Sidenote: His appointments to prelacies.]

[Sidenote: Tancard Abbot of Jumièges. 1096-1101.]

[Sidenote: Etard Abbot of Saint Peter’s. 1096-1107.]

[Sidenote: February, 1098.]

[Sidenote: Turold Bishop of Bayeux. 1098-1195.]

It would be too much to think that William the Red at once brought

back the Norman duchy to the state in which it had been in those

golden days of William the Great. And it is still less needful to stop

to prove that even the days of William the Great would not have seemed

golden days as compared with the state of any well-governed land in

our own time. But there can be no doubt that the coming of the new

ruler wrought a real reform. And a reform was grievously needed. We

read that very little came of the well-intentioned decrees of the

synod. The bishops, Odo among them, did what they could――it is Odo’s

last recorded act in the lands with which we have to deal, and it is

something that he leaves us in the shape of a reformer and not in that

of an oppressor. But very little came of the efforts of the prelates.

The Duke did nothing to help them――his mind was perhaps too full of

the crusade――and things were at the moment of William’s coming in

almost greater confusion than ever.[1552] He at least gave the land

the advantage of a strong rule; he kept the luxury of oppression to

himself. The lesser scourges of mankind were thoroughly put down. We

hear no more of that private warfare which had torn the land in pieces

in the days of Robert. William recalled many of the lavish grants of

Robert; what his father had held, he would hold.[1553] Even in

ecclesiastical matters Rufus is not painted in such dark colours in

Normandy as he is in England. He is not charged with keeping

ecclesiastical benefices vacant in order that he might enjoy their

revenues. He found two great abbeys vacant, those of Jumièges and

Saint Peter-on-Dives; and he at once supplied them with abbots. They

were abbots of his own choosing, but it is not said that they bought

their places.[1554] Tancard, the new abbot of Jumièges, may lie under

some suspicion, as a few years after he was deposed on account of a

shameful quarrel with his monks.[1555] Saint Peter’s was vacant, not

by the death, but by the deposition and banishment――unjust we are

told――of its abbot Fulk. William appointed a monk of Jumièges called

Etard or Walter, who ruled well, we are told, for eleven years, till

Fulk came back with letters from the Pope, on which his successor

cheerfully made way for him again.[1556] No Norman bishopric was

vacant at the time of William’s entry, nor did any become vacant for

more than a year. Then in the midst of events which are to be told

hereafter, the news came that the throne of Bayeux was vacant by the

death of Odo far away at Palermo. William at once bestowed the staff

on Turold the brother of Hugh of Evermouth, seemingly the same Hugh

who figures in the legend of Hereward as his son-in-law and

successor.[1557] This prelate sat for seven years, and then, for

reasons of his own, gave up his see, and became a monk at Bec.[1558]

§ 7. _The Last Dispute between William and Anselm. 1097._

[Sidenote: Christmas, 1096-1097.]

[Sidenote: State of Wales at the end of 1096.]

[Sidenote: Easter, April 5, 1097.]

[Sidenote: William comes to England.]

[Sidenote: Assembly of Windsor.]

[Sidenote: Seeming conquest of Wales.]

[Sidenote: Good hopes for the future.]

[Sidenote: William complains of Anselm’s contingent to the Welsh war.]

[Sidenote: Estimate of the complaint.]

[Sidenote: Position of the Archbishop’s knights.]

[Sidenote: Anselm summoned to the King’s court.]

The year which followed William’s acquisition of Normandy was a busy

year in many ways. The King passed the winter in the duchy; the

greater part of the year he spent in England. He was largely occupied

with the affairs of Wales and Scotland, and in this year came the last

dispute between the King and the Archbishop, and the first departure

of Anselm from England. Since their reconciliation at Windsor two

years before, there had been no open breach between them. The first

difference arose out of the events of the Welsh war. At the end of the

year which saw William master of Normandy, he seemed to have wholly

lost his hold on Wales. Except Glamorgan and the one isolated castle

of Pembroke, the Britons seemed to have won back their whole

land.[1559] The affairs of Wales brought the King back from Normandy,

and he designed to hold the Easter Gemót in its usual place at

Winchester. Stress of weather however hindered him from reaching

England in time for the festival. He landed at Arundel on Easter eve,

and thence went to Windsor, where the Assembly was therefore held,

somewhat later than the usual time.[1560] The meeting was followed by

a great expedition into Wales, and by a submission of the country

which events a few months later proved to be very nominal

indeed.[1561] But there was at last an apparent success. William

seemed to be greater than ever; he had, by whatever means, won

Normandy and recovered Wales. And, more than this, the beginnings of

his Norman government had been good; he had thus far shown himself a

better nursing-father of the Church in his duchy than his brother

Robert had done. A hope therefore arose in many minds that the days of

victory and peace might be days of reformed government in England

also, and that King and Primate might be able to join in some great

measure for the improvement of discipline and manners.[1562] In this

hope they were disappointed, as they were likely to be, especially if

they reckoned on any long time of peace with the Britons. But the

first renewed breach between the King and the Archbishop arose from

quite a new cause. When the King came back from the Welsh war, he sent

a letter to Anselm, angrily complaining of the nature of the

Archbishop’s military contingent to his army. The knights whom Anselm

had sent had been so badly equipped and so useless in war that he owed

him no thanks for them but rather the contrary.[1563] This story is

commonly told as if Anselm had been the colonel of a regiment whose

men were, through his fault, utterly unfit for service. Anselm had

indeed, as we have seen, once held somewhat of a warlike command, but

it had been of a passive kind; he was certainly not expected to go to

the Welsh war himself. In truth the complaint is against knights;

doubtless, if the knights were bad, their followers would be worse;

but it is of knights that the King speaks. If I rightly understand the

relation between the Archbishop and his military tenants, these

knights were men who held lands of the archbishopric by the tenure of

discharging all the military service to which the whole estates of the

archbishopric were bound.[1564] It was doubtless the business of their

lord to see that the service was paid, that the proper number of

knights, each with his proper number of followers, went to the royal

standard. But one can hardly think that it was part of the

Archbishop’s business to look into every military detail, as if he had

been their commanding officer. It was not Anselm’s business to find

their arms and accoutrements; they held their lands by the tenure of

finding such things for themselves. The King was dissatisfied with the

archiepiscopal contingent, and, from his point of view, most likely

not without reason. Anselm’s troops might be expected to be among the

least serviceable parts of the army. Gentlemen and yeomen of Kent――we

may begin to use those familiar names――could have had no great

experience of warfare; there were no private wars to keep their hands

in practice; they could not be so well fitted for war in general or

specially for Welsh war, either as the picked mercenaries of the King

or as the tried followers of the Earl of Chester and the Lord of

Glamorgan. William, as a military commander, might naturally be

annoyed at the poor figure cut by the Archbishop’s knights; but there

is every reason to think that, in point of law, his complaint against

the Archbishop was unjust. It seems to be shown to be so by the fact

that the charge which the King brought against Anselm on this account

was one which in the end he found it better to drop. But he now bade

Anselm to be ready to _do right_ to him, according to the judgement of

his court, whenever he should think fit to summon him for that

end.[1565]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s distress.]

[Sidenote: His weariness of England.]

[Sidenote: Change in Anselm’s feelings.]

[Sidenote: His yearnings towards Rome.]

[Sidenote: Personal position of Urban.]

[Sidenote: Ideal aspect of Rome.]

Anselm seems to have been thoroughly disheartened by this fresh blow.

And yet it was no more than what he had been looking for. Over and

over again he had said that between him and William there could be no

lasting peace, that under such a king as William there could be no

real reform.[1566] And the new grievance was a personal one; whether

the charge was right or wrong, it had nothing to do with the interests

of the Church or with good morals; it simply touched his relations to

the King as his temporal lord. Since the meeting at Windsor two years

before, though William had given Anselm no kind of help in his plans,

he does not seem to have openly thwarted them, except, as seems

implied throughout, by still refusing his leave for the holding of a

synod. At the same time there had been quite enough to make Anselm

thoroughly weary of England and her King and of everything to do with

her. And the visits of the Cardinal of Albano and the Abbot of Saint

Benignus had done Anselm no good. From this time we mark the beginning

of a certain change in him which, without in any way morally blaming

him, we must call a change for the worse. Left to himself, he seems

not to have had the faintest scruple as to the customs which were

established alike in England and in Normandy. He was unwilling to

accept the metropolitan office at all; but he made no objection to the

particular way of receiving it which was the use of England and of

Normandy. He had, without scruple or protest, received the staff of

Canterbury from the son as he had received the staff of Bec from the

father. His wish to go to Rome to receive the pallium was fully

according to precedent, and it was only the petty captiousness of the

King that turned it into a matter of offence. But the mere talking

about Rome and the Pope which the discussion had led to was not

wholesome; and everything that had since happened had tended to put

Rome and the Pope more and more into Anselm’s head. The coming of the

Legate, the rebukes of the Legate, even the base insinuations of his

undutiful suffragans against the validity of his appointment, would

all help to bring about a certain morbid frame of mind, a craving

after Rome and its Bishop as the one centre of shelter and comfort

among his troubles. The very failure of Walter’s mission, the unworthy

greediness and subserviency into which the Legate had fallen, the

utter break-down of the later mission of Abbot Jeronto, would all tend

the same way. Anselm would hold, not that the Pope was corrupt, but

that none but the Pope in his own person could be trusted. He would

have nothing more to do with his unfaithful agents; he would go

himself to the fountain-head which could not fail him. And he to whom

he would go was not simply the Pope, any Pope; it was Urban the

Second, the reformer, the preacher of the crusade. Since Anselm’s work

had begun, the world had been filled with the personal fame of the

Pontiff in whose cause he had striven. In the same council which had

stirred the common heart of Christendom Urban had denounced those

customs of England to which Anselm had conformed in his own

appointment and which he had promised to defend against all men. The

rules laid down at Clermont against the acceptance of ecclesiastical

benefices from lay hands not only condemned his own appointment, made

before those decrees were issued; it condemned also the consecrations

to the sees of Hereford and Worcester which he had himself performed

since they had been issued. Amid the reign of unlaw, amid the constant

breaches of discipline, the frightful sins against moral right, which

he had daily to behold and which he was kept back from duly censuring,

with none to support him outwardly, none but a few chosen ones to

understand his inward thoughts, it is not wonderful if distant Rome

seemed to him a blessed haven of rest from the troubles and sorrows of

England. Let him flee thither at any cost, and have peace. Let him

seek the counsel of the ghostly superior to whom he looked up in

faith, and to whom he had been so faithful; to him he would open his

soul; from him he would receive guidance, perhaps strength, in a

course which was beset with so many difficulties on all sides. Rome,

seen far away, looked pure and holy; its Pontiff seemed the one

embodiment of right and law, the one shadow of God left upon earth, in

a world of force and falsehood and foulness of life, a world where the

civil sword was left in the hands of kings like William and Philip,

and where an Emperor like Henry still wielded it in defiance of

anathemas. At such a distance he would not see that the policy of

Popes had already learned to be even more worldly and crooked than

that of kings and emperors. He had not learned, what Englishmen had

already learned, that gold was as powerful in the counsels of the Holy

See as ever it was in the closet of the Red King. The Pope’s agents

and messengers might take bribes; the Pope himself, the holy College

around him, would never sink to such shame. The majestic and

attractive side of the Roman system was all that would present itself

to his eyes. He would flee to the blessed shelter and be at peace. He

had had enough of the world of kings and courts, the world where men

of God were called on to send men to fight the battles of this life,

and were called in question if swords were not sharp enough or if

horses were not duly trained and caparisoned. Weary and sick at heart,

he would turn away from such a scene and from its thankless duties; he

would, for a while at least, leave the potsherds of the earth to

strive with the potsherds of the earth; he would go where he might

perhaps win leave to throw aside his burthen, or where, failing that,

he might receive renewed strength to bear it.

[Sidenote: New position taken by Anselm.]

[Sidenote: Aspect of his conduct.]

[Sidenote: Causes of his loss of general support.]

In all this we can thoroughly enter into Anselm’s feelings, nor are we

called upon to pronounce any censure upon either his feelings or his

conduct. But it is plain that he was now taking up a wholly different

position from that which he had taken at Rockingham, a position in

which he could not expect to meet with, and in which he did not meet

with, the same support which he had met with at Rockingham. At

Gillingham and at Rockingham Anselm did nothing which could be fairly

construed as a defiance of the law or an appeal to the Pope against

any lawful authority of the King. All that he did was to ask the

King’s leave to go for the pallium, that is to do what all his

predecessors had done, to obey what might be as fairly called a custom

of the realm as any other. In the discussions which now began, his

conduct would, to say the least, have, in the eyes of any but the most

friendly judges, another look. He was asking leave to go to Rome, not

to discharge an established duty, but, as it might be not unfairly

argued, simply to gratify a caprice of his own. He might rightly ask

for such leave; but it rested with the King’s discretion to grant or

to refuse it, and no formal wrong would be done to him by refusing it.

And to ask leave to go and consult the Pope, not because of any

meddling with his spiritual office, not on account of any religious or

ecclesiastical difficulty, but because the King had threatened him

with a suit, just or unjust, in a purely temporal matter, had very

much the air of appealing from the King’s authority to the Pope. We

must remember throughout that Anselm nowhere makes the claim which Odo

and William of Saint-Calais made before him, which Thomas of London

made after him, to be exempt from temporal jurisdiction on the ground

of his order. As such claims had no foundation in English law, neither

was it at all in the spirit of Anselm to press them. All that he

wanted was to be allowed to seek help in his troubles in the only

quarter where he believed that help might be found. But the petition

for leave to seek it was put in a form and under circumstances which

might well have awakened some distrust, some unwillingness, in minds

far better disposed towards him than that of the Red King. We may not

for a moment doubt the perfect singlemindedness of Anselm, his perfect

righteousness from the point of view of his own conscience. But we

cannot wonder that, in the new controversy, he failed to have the

barons and people of England at his side, as he had had them on the

day of trial at Rockingham and on the day of peace-making at Windsor.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Anselm’s continued demands of reform.]

[Sidenote: He determines not to answer the new summons.]

[Sidenote: Working of the King’s court.]

[Sidenote: He determines on a last effort.]

The belief that the supposed season of peace might be a season of

reform had been shared by Anselm himself. He had more than once urged

the King on the subject; but William had always answered that he was

too busy dealing with his many enemies to think about such

matters.[1567] Such an answer was a mere put-off; yet a more

discouraging one might have been given. Anselm had therefore fully

made up his mind to make the most of this special opportunity, and to

make yet one more urgent appeal to the King to help him in his

work.[1568] And now, at the meeting where he trusted to make this

attempt, he was summoned to appear as defendant on a purely temporal

charge. To that charge he determined to make no answer. But surely the

reason which is given is rather the reason of Eadmer afterwards than

of Anselm at the time. Anselm is made to say that in the King’s court

everything depended on the King’s nod, and that his cause would be

examined in that court, without law, without equity, without

reason.[1569] He had not found it so at Rockingham, nor did he find it

so now. But we can quite understand that, with his mind full of so

much greater matters, he might think it better to let his judges

settle matters as they might, for or against him, in questions as to

horses and weapons and military training. The worst that could happen

would be another payment of money.[1570] Anselm believed that the

charge was a mere pretence, devised simply to hinder him from making

the appeal to the King which he designed.[1571] He therefore made up

his mind to make no answer to the summons, and to let the law, if

there was any law in the matter, take its course.[1572] When he looked

around at the spoliation of the Church, at the evils of all kinds

which had crept in through lack of discipline, he feared the judgement

of God on himself, if he did not make one last effort.[1573] His heart

indeed sank when he saw that, of all the evil that was done, the King

either was himself the doer or took pleasure in them that did it. But

he would strive once more; if his last effort failed, he would appeal

to a higher spiritual power than his own; he would see what the

authority and judgement of the Apostolic See could do.[1574]

[Sidenote: Whitsun Gemót. May 24, 1097.]

[Sidenote: Anselm favourably received; his last appeal.]

[Sidenote: Surmises as to the charge against Anselm.]

[Sidenote: He determines to ask leave]

[Sidenote: to go to Rome.]

[Sidenote: He declares his purpose to a chosen body.]

[Sidenote: Aspect of the demand.]

[Sidenote: The King’s answer.]

[Sidenote: The charge against Anselm withdrawn.]

The Whitsun festival came, and Anselm went to the Assembly. The place

of meeting is not mentioned; according to usage it would be

Westminster. Though the suit was hanging over Anselm, he went, not as

a defendant in a suit, but as a chief member of the Gemót. He seems to

have been graciously received by the King; at least we hear of him at

the royal table, and he had opportunities of private access to the

royal ear. Of these chances he did not fail to take advantage for his

purpose; but all was in vain; nothing at all tending to reform was to

be got out of William Rufus.[1575] In this way the earlier days of

meeting, the days of the actual festival, were spent. Then, as usual,

the various matters of business which had to be dealt with by the King

and his Witan were brought forward.[1576] Among other questions men

were eagerly asking what would become of the charge against the

Archbishop as to the bad equipment of his knights in the late Welsh

campaign. Would he have to pay some huge sum of money, or would he

have to pray for mercy, and be thereby so humbled that he could never

lift up his head again?[1577] Anselm’s thoughts meanwhile were set

upon quite other matters. He had made his last attempt on the King’s

conscience, and he had failed. There was nothing more to be done by

his own unaided powers. He must seek for the counsel and help of one

greater than himself. He called together a body of nobles of his own

choice, those doubtless in whom he could put most trust, and he bade

them carry a message from him to the King, to say that he was driven

by the utmost need to ask his leave to go to Rome.[1578] We ask why he

who had been on such intimate terms with the King during the earlier

days of the meeting, was now forced to send a message instead of

speaking to the King face to face. We may suppose that the arrangement

was the same as at Rockingham, that there was an outer and an inner

chamber, and that, while the suit against the Archbishop was pending,

he was not allowed to take his natural place among the King’s

counsellors. During the days of festival, he had been a guest and a

friend; now that the days of business had come, he had changed into a

defendant. We are not told what the lords of his choice said or

thought of the message which he put into their hands. Unless it was

accompanied by a rather full explanation, it must have been startling.

With the help of Eadmer we can follow the workings of Anselm’s mind;

but to one who heard the request suddenly it must have had a strange

sound. Did the Archbishop wish to complain to the Pope because the

King was displeased with the trim and conduct of his military

contingent? The King at least, when the message was taken to him, was

utterly amazed. But William was not in one of his worst moods; he was

sarcastic, but not wrathful. He refused the licence. There could be no

need for Anselm to go to the Pope. He would never believe that Anselm

had committed any sin so black that none but the Pope could absolve

him. And as for counsel, Anselm was much better fitted to give it to

the Pope than the Pope was to give it to Anselm. Anselm took the

refusal meekly. “Power is in his hands; he says what pleases him. What

he refuses now he may perhaps grant another day. I will multiply my

prayers.”[1579] Anselm had therefore to stay in England. But the

formal charge against him was withdrawn. Perhaps the King had merely

made it in a fit of ill humour, and had long given up any serious

thought of pressing it. And, if he really wished to annoy Anselm, he

had now a way in which he might annoy him far more thoroughly and with

much greater advantage than by any mere temporal suit.

[Sidenote: Affairs of Wales. June-August, 1097.]

[Sidenote: Another assembly.]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s request again refused.]

This year was a year of gatherings, alike for counsel and for warfare.

The seeming submission of Wales was soon found to be utterly hollow.

From Midsummer till August William was engaged in another British

expedition, one which brought nothing but immediate toil and trouble,

but of whose more distant results we shall have again to speak. On his

return he summoned, perhaps not a general Gemót, but at any rate a

council of prelates and lords, to discuss grave matters touching the

state of the kingdom.[1580] We would fain hear something of their

debates on other affairs than those of Anselm; but that privilege is

denied us. We only know that, when the council was about to break up,

when all its members were eager to get to their homes, Anselm

earnestly craved that his request to go to Rome might be granted, and

that the King again refused.[1581]

[Sidenote: Assembly at Winchester. October 14, 1097.]

[Sidenote: Anselm renews his request.]

[Sidenote: Anselm again impleaded.]

[Sidenote: Alternative given to Anselm.]

[Sidenote: The meeting adjourned.]

William Rufus seems never to have been happy save when he was himself

moving and keeping everybody else in motion. It must have been in his

days as in the days of Constantius, when the means of getting from

place to place broke down through the multitude of bishops who were

going to and fro for the endless councils.[1582] In the month of

October the bishops and great lords at least, if no one else, were

brought together for the fourth time this year. This time the place of

meeting was Winchester; the day was the day of Saint Calixtus, the

thirty-first anniversary of the great battle. We hear nothing of any

other business, but only of the renewed petition of Anselm. It is

clear that the idea of going to the Pope had seized on Anselm’s mind

to an unhealthy degree. He could not help pressing it in season and

out of season, clearly to the weakening both of his influence and of

his position. He made his request to the King both with his own

lips――this time he was no defendant――and by the lips of others. The

King was now thoroughly tired of the subject; he was now not

sarcastic, but thoroughly annoyed and angry. He was weary of Anselm’s

endlessly pressing a request which he must by this time know would not

be granted. Anselm had wearied him too much; he now directly commanded

that he should cease from his importunity, that he should submit to

the judgement of the court and pay a fine for the annoyance which he

had given to his sovereign.[1583] The King had an undoubted right to

refuse the licence; but it is hard to see why the Archbishop was to be

fined for asking for it. By this turn Anselm was again made a

defendant. Anselm now offers to give good reasons, such as the King

could not gainsay, for the course which he took. The King refuses to

hear any reasons, and, with a mixture of licence, threat, and

defiance, he gives the Archbishop a kind of alternative. Anselm must

understand that, if he goes, the King will seize the archbishopric

into his own hands, and will never again receive him as archbishop.[1584]

There was some free expression of feeling in these assemblies; for

this announcement of the King’s will was met by a storm of shouts on

different sides, some cheering the King and some the Archbishop.[1585]

Some at last, the moderate party perhaps, proposed and carried an

adjournment till the morrow, hoping meanwhile to settle matters in

some other way.[1586]

[Sidenote: Thursday, October 15, 1097.]

[Sidenote: Anselm and the bishops and lords.]

The next morning came; as so often before, Anselm and his friends sat

waiting the royal pleasure. Some bishops and lords came out and asked

Anselm what his purpose now was about the affair of yesterday. He had

not, he answered, agreed to the adjournment because he had any doubt

as to his own purpose, but only lest he should seem to set no store by

the opinion of others. He was in the same mind in which he had been

yesterday; he would again crave the King’s leave to go. Go he must,

for the sake of his own soul’s health, for the sake of the Christian

religion, for the King’s own honour and profit, if he would only

believe it.[1587] The bishops and lords asked if he had anything else

to say; as for leave to go to Rome, it was no use talking; the King

would not grant it. Anselm answers that, if the King will not grant

it, he must follow the scripture and obey God rather than man. We here

see that Anselm had brooded over his griefs till he had reached the

verge of fanaticism. Such language would have been exaggerated, had it

been used when he was forbidden to go for the pallium according to

ancient custom; it was utterly out of place when no clear duty of any

kind, no law of eternal right, no positive law of the Church, bade him

to go to Rome in defiance of the King’s orders.

[Sidenote: Speech of Bishop Walkelin.]

[Sidenote: Anselm and the bishops.]

[Sidenote: The bishops’ portrait of themselves.]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s answer.]