Chapter IV: The Primacy of Anselm and the Acquisition of Normandy.903 (4)

The King’s answer was unsatisfactory, but not openly hostile. He was however beginning to be on his guard; he called to his side the two subtlest advisers that the Church and realm of England could supply. The one was Count Robert of Meulan, at home alike in England, Normandy, and France. The other was William Bishop of Durham, once the strong assertor of ecclesiastical claims, who had appealed to the Pope against the judgement of the King and his Witan. He had indeed both learned and forgotten something in his exile. He had come back to be the special counsellor of Rufus, the special enemy of Anselm, the special assertor of the doctrine that it was for the King alone to judge as to the acknowledgement of Popes. The King, having listened to Anselm, sent for these two chosen advisers. He bade Anselm say over again in their hearing what he had before said privately. He then, by their advice, answered that he would restore to the see everything that had been held by Lanfranc; on other points he would not as yet make any positive engagement.[1161]

[Sidenote: The letters come from Normandy.]

[Sidenote: The King prays Anselm to take the archbishopric.]

[Sidenote: He asks for the confirmation of grants made by him during the vacancy.]

[Sidenote: Anselm refuses.]

Up to this time the King had not yet received his expected letters from Normandy. They presently came, and Rufus evidently thought that some step on his part ought to follow. He had asked the Duke, the Archbishop, and the monks of Bec, to set Anselm free to accept the archbishopric. They had done so at his request. Unless then he wished to make fools of himself and of everybody else, he could not help again offering the see to the man whom he had himself chosen, and who was now free to take it. He sent for Anselm to Windsor, where he now was; he prayed him no longer to refuse the choice of the whole realm;[1162] but in so doing, he fell back somewhat from the one distinct promise which he had made at Rochester. When the estates of the see came into his hands on the death of Lanfranc, he had granted out parts of them on tenure of knight-service. These grants he asked Anselm, as a matter of friendship to himself, to allow.[1163] Was William merely seeking an excuse for backing altogether out of his offer of the archbishopric, or did he feel himself bound in honour to the men to whom he had made the grants? If so, his scruple of honour was met by Anselm’s scruple of conscience. Anselm would not be a party to any alienation of the goods of the Church; above all, he would not make any agreement about such matters before he was invested with any part of them.[1164] The point clearly is that so to do would be more than wasting the estates of the Church; it would be obtaining the archbishopric by a corrupt bargain. To agree to give up the estates of the see to the King’s grantees would be the same thing as obtaining the see by a bribe to the King. Anselm therefore refused to consent to the grants which the King had made during the vacancy. The whole matter thus came to a standstill. Rufus refused the investiture unless his grants were to stand good. Anselm went away rejoicing.

[Sidenote: Anselm’s statement of the case.]

[Sidenote: Nature of the King’s grants.]

[Sidenote: The King’s case.]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s argument.]

[Sidenote: The King’s _advocatio_ of the archbishopric.]

The whole case was set forth at length by Anselm in a letter to his friend Hugh Archbishop of Lyons, the head prelate of his native Burgundy.[1165] The alienation to which Anselm was asked to consent was called by the King a “voluntary justice,” a phrase which has a technical sound, but the meaning of which is not very clear.[1166] The King’s argument was that, before the Normans invaded England, the lands in question had been held of the archbishopric by English thegns, that those thegns had died without heirs, and that it was open to the King to give them what heirs he would.[1167] It was certainly strange, if, on the one hand, not one of these thegns had been constrained to make way for a Norman successor, and if, on the other hand, not one of them had left a son to succeed him. But we must take the fact as it is stated. Rufus seems to mean that, during Lanfranc’s incumbency, the lands which these thegns had held of the see had fallen back to the lord for lack of heirs, and had become demesne lands of the archbishopric. The King asserts his right, during the vacancy of the see, to grant out such lands by knight-service, service to be paid of course to the King as long as the vacancy lasted, but seemingly to the Archbishop, as soon as there should be an archbishop in possession. If this was the argument, an argument which savours of the subtlety of Flambard, there is, from Flambard’s point of view, a good deal that is plausible about it. The King, as temporary lord, claims to deal with the land as any other lord might do, and, when his temporary lordship comes to an end, he calls on the incoming lord to respect his acts. The legal question would seem to be whether the new doctrine which gave the King the temporary profits of the archbishopric gave him any right to turn its demesne lands into fiefs. Anselm’s argument seems to be that anyhow the possessions of the archbishopric were practically lessened, as they undoubtedly were. Experience showed that such a lordship as the see would keep over the lands so granted out would be both hard to enforce and of little value if enforced.[1168] Practically the grants were an alienation of the lands of the see. And to this Anselm could not consent. Open robbery from some quarter which owed no special duty to the archbishopric he might bear, and in such a case there would be more hope of gaining back what was lost by the help of the law.[1169] But for the King, the advocate of the see, and for himself, its guardian, to come to an agreement whereby the see would be damaged, was a thing to which Anselm would never consent.[1170] In this argument we hear the word _advocate_, the equivalent of the modern _patron_, in its elder sense. The _advocatio_, the _advowson_, of an ecclesiastical benefice carries with it, not only the right to name the incumbent of that benefice, but also the duty of acting as its protector.[1171] For the King, the advocate of the see of Canterbury, to do anything against its rights was a greater crime than if another man did the same. For the Archbishop to betray the rights of his church and his successors was a greater crime still. And if King and Archbishop agreed to any such spoliation, all other men would naturally hold that the act could not be questioned. On these grounds Anselm refused to consent to the King’s grants. He left the royal presence trusting that he was now free from the burthen of ecclesiastical rule in any shape. He had been set free from the abbatial rule of Bec; he had escaped being loaded with the primatial rule of Canterbury. He was, as he wished to be, a private man.[1172]

[Sidenote: Public feeling since the nomination at Gloucester.]

[Sidenote: Gemót at Winchester.]

[Sidenote: The King renews his promises.]

[Sidenote: Anselm receives the archbishopric, and does homage.]

But a private man Anselm was not to remain. After the scene in the sick room at Gloucester, neither William nor Anselm could act exactly as if that scene had never taken place. The momentary repentance of the King, and the acts done during the time of that repentance, had given a strength to public opinion which even William Rufus could not despise. The old abuses, the old oppressions, began again; but men were now less disposed to put up with them than they had been before. They would no longer go on without an archbishop, after an archbishop, and Anselm as that archbishop, had been more than promised, after he had been given to them. The general murmur became so loud that the King had to give way.[1173] He could no longer help giving the archbishopric to Anselm, and that on Anselm’s own terms. And what he did, he did in the most solemn and, as far as outward appearances went, the most thorough manner. An extraordinary Gemót of the kingdom――for the season was neither Christmas, Easter, nor Pentecost――was summoned to Winchester. In the presence of the assembled Witan, William Rufus, in full health, renewed the promises which he had made in his sickness. The wrongs done in his kingdom, above all, the wrongs done to the Church, were a second time to come to an end.[1174] Anselm was exhorted, and at last persuaded, to accept the archbishopric. He received it, seemingly without scruple, according to the ancient use of England; he became the man of the King.[1175] Anselm kneeling before Rufus, with his pure hands between the polluted hands of the King, pledging himself as the King’s man for all earthly worship, makes a scene which it is strange to think of.[1176] The deed was now done, and it could not be recalled. Bishop in the spiritual sense Anselm was not as yet; but he was the legal possessor of all the temporal estates and temporal jurisdiction of the see of Canterbury.

[Sidenote: The King’s writ.]

[Sidenote: The Archbishop’s thegns.]

[Sidenote: Clauses in favour of the monks.]

[Sidenote: The city of Canterbury and abbey of Saint Alban’s.]

[Sidenote: Anselm and Saint Alban’s.]

[Sidenote: Death of Abbot Paul. 1093.]

[Sidenote: Vacancy of the abbey.]

The act which had just been done had now to be announced to the whole nation in the ancient form. The writ of King William went forth, announcing to all the King’s faithful men, French and English, that he had granted to Anselm the archbishopric of Canterbury, with all the rights, powers, and possessions――rights, powers, and possessions, recited in the English tongue――which belonged to the see, with all liberties over all his men, within boroughs and without. And words were added which seemed meant expressly to enforce Anselm’s view of the point last in dispute. The new archbishop was to have all these liberties over as many thegns as King Eadward the King’s kinsman had granted to the see of Christ Church. This can hardly mean anything except the annulling of the grants which the King had made during the vacancy.[1177] Anselm was to have all such temporal rights as had been lawfully held by Lanfranc, as had been before him unlawfully held by Stigand. The writ further contains provisions on behalf of the metropolitan monastery. The estates of the convent were distinct from those of the see; still, in such a time of unlaw, it is likely that some excuse had been found to do them some wrong also. To the monks of Christ Church therefore the King confirms all their rights and possessions, with all the tolls and dues from the haven of Sandwich; no man, French or English, should meddle with them or their servants.[1178] Our Canterbury guide speaks also of a renewed grant, on more favourable terms than before, of the city of Canterbury and of the abbey of Saint Alban’s.[1179] These possessions were at least not granted by the writ which announces the grant of the archbishopric. Of one of them the local patriotism of Saint Alban’s naturally knew nothing, though we hear of the friendship which Anselm showed to the house and to its abbot Paul. This friendship could hardly have been shown in the character of archbishop, as Paul died during the year of Anselm’s appointment.[1180] And it is not wonderful that Anselm’s friendship for the abbey did not avail to save it from the usual fate. For four years after the death of Paul, the church of Saint Alban remained without an abbot, while the King held the lands of the abbey, cut down its woods, and found many ingenious excuses, such as Flambard knew how to devise, for wringing money out of its tenants.[1181]

[Sidenote: The question as to the Pope left unsettled.]

[Sidenote: No reference to the Pope in English episcopal appointments.]

It would seem that, of the three points which had been insisted on by Anselm at Rochester, two were left out of sight in the public assembly at Winchester no less than in the private conference at Windsor. The question about the grants of the archiepiscopal lands was settled, at least in name and for the time, in favour of Anselm; but nothing was said either about William’s obligation to take Anselm as his spiritual guide or about the acknowledgement of Urban as Pope. The former of these two was in truth a matter for the King’s private conscience; it was hardly a matter to be discussed and legislated about in an assembly of the kingdom. And even the matter of the Pope did not touch Anselm’s conscience in exactly the same way as the question of the grants. If Anselm had allowed the grants, it would have been, in his view, an alienation of the rights of his see, and therefore a personal crime. But he might, without in any way giving up his position, receive the investiture without saying anything about the papal question at all. It was not yet held that the Bishop of Rome was entitled to any voice as to the election, investiture, or consecration, of any English bishop. In the case of a diocesan bishop, there was no need for any reference to the Pope at any stage; in the case of a metropolitan, the pallium had to be asked for; but it was not asked for till after consecration. Anselm had given fair warning to the King that he meant to acknowledge Urban. But at no stage of the business which had yet been reached was there any need for any formal acknowledgement of any Pope. Anselm might therefore fairly hold that his first warning was enough, and that he was not called upon to raise the question again, till the time came when it would be his duty to seek for the pallium from one Pope or the other. When that time came, he would be ready to do or suffer as the circumstances of that yet future day might dictate.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Order of episcopal appointments.]

[Sidenote: Opposite present practice.]

[Sidenote: Theories of the two systems.]

[Sidenote: Present process.]

Before the time for any dealings with Rome should come, there were still two more ceremonies to be done in England. The process of making a bishop was, then as now, a long one; but the order of the several stages was different then from what it now is. Anselm had done homage and had received restitution of the temporalities; but he was not yet enthroned, still less consecrated. The order then was, homage, enthronement, consecration. The present order is the exact opposite. The bishop-elect is consecrated; then he takes corporal possession of the see by enthronement; last of all, he does homage to the King and receives restitution of the temporalities. In the elder state of things the spiritual office was bestowed on one who was already full bishop for all temporal purposes. By the later rule the temporal rights are bestowed on one who is already full bishop for all spiritual purposes. The difference in order seems to arise from the different theory of the episcopate which has prevailed since the restoration of ecclesiastical elections was fully established by the Great Charter. In the irregular practice of the eleventh century, the notion of investiture of a benefice by the king had come to the front. The king had in his hands a great fief, which he granted to whom he would; that fief was chargeable with certain spiritual duties. It was therefore for the Church, by her spiritual rite of consecration, to make the king’s nominee, already invested with his temporal rights, capable of discharging his spiritual duties. Such was clearly the established view of the days of Rufus, and the order of the process is in harmony with it. The office is treated as an appendage to the benefice. In the theory which is both earlier and later the benefice is treated as an appendage to the office. The order of the process is therefore reversed. The spiritual office is first filled by the three ecclesiastical processes of election, confirmation, consecration――the last of course being needless when the person chosen is already a bishop. The bishop then takes personal possession of his church by installation or enthronement. The spiritual functions over, the bishop, now in full possession of his office, lastly receives the attached benefice by homage to the king and restitution of the temporalities at his hands. That elections were hardly ever really free at any time, that the royal leave was needed for the election, that kings recommended, that popes “provided,” that the later law requires the electors to choose only the king’s nominee and requires the metropolitan to confirm the person so chosen, makes no difference to the theory. The royal power is kept in the background; it is the ecclesiastical power which formally acts. The king’s hand pulls the wires of the ecclesiastical puppets; but the ecclesiastical puppets play their formal part. The whole is done according to a theory which naturally places the formal act of the temporal power last. In the days of Rufus the whole was done according to another theory which, as naturally, placed the formal act of the temporal power first of all.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Enthronement of Anselm. September 25, 1093.]

[Sidenote: Flambard brings a suit against Anselm on the day of enthronement.]

The next stage then was for Anselm, still only a presbyter, but already invested with all the temporal powers and possessions of the archbishopric, to take personal possession of his see in the metropolitan church. It was the only time that such a rite was performed in the short eastern limb of the new church of Lanfranc. Anselm’s own later days were to see the removal of the patriarchal throne of Britain to be the centre of the more stately apse of Conrad, as later days saw it again removed to be the centre of the yet more stately apse of the two Williams. On that throne, Anselm, chosen to be Pope of the island Empire, was placed on one of the later days of September in the presence of a rejoicing crowd of monks, clergy, and lay folk. Well might they rejoice; the Church had again a shepherd; the nation had again a defender. But even that day of joy did not pass without signs that the favour of the temporal lord of the island Empire was already turned away from its new pontiff. The King’s sense of personal honour required him to carry out the promise made at Gloucester, to allow, even to compel, Anselm to become archbishop. But he had no sense of Christian or kingly duty to keep him from insulting and harassing the man whom he had promoted, or to constrain him to keep the promises contained in his own proclamation. Those things had not been done in the character of _probus miles_, of knight and gentleman. It was quite consistent with chivalrous honour to send Flambard to disturb the joyful day of enthronement by the announcement of a hostile suit against the new archbishop. We are not told what was its exact nature, only that it was something which, in the eyes of strict churchmen at least, wholly concerned the affairs of the Church, and with which the King’s court had nothing to do.[1182] In the older days of England such a distinction could hardly have been drawn; after the separation of the jurisdictions under the Conqueror, it may have been fair enough. Whatever the actual matter in dispute was, we can understand the general indignation at the choice of such a moment for the serving of the notice, at the malice which would not let even the first day of the Primate’s new dignity pass unmolested. We can also easily picture to ourselves the fierce swagger of Flambard, graphically as it is set before us.[1183] And we can listen also to the mild grief of Anselm, inferring from such treatment on the first day of his primacy what the troubles of his future life were likely to be.[1184]

[Sidenote: Other events of the year.]

[Sidenote: Consecration of Anselm at Canterbury. December 4, 1093.]

[Sidenote: Thomas of York.]

[Sidenote: Other bishops present.]

[Sidenote: Absence of Herbert,]

[Sidenote: Wulfstan,]

[Sidenote: and Osbern.]

After the enthronement more than two months still passed before the final rite of consecration admitted Anselm to the fulness of his spiritual office. They were months of no small moment in the history of Britain. They beheld the last invasion of Malcolm, his death,[1185] the death of his saintly wife, the uprising of Scottish nationality against the foreign innovations or reforms which Malcolm and Margaret represented in the eyes of their native subjects. The affairs of Scotland, of Wales, of Normandy, were all on the Red King’s mind at the same moment, as well as the affairs of Anselm. But it is these last that we have to follow for the present. Early in December, on the second Sunday in Advent, the more part of the bishops of England came together at Canterbury for the consecration of the new metropolitan. At their head was the Archbishop of York, Thomas of Bayeux. It was the privilege of his see――so the loyal historian of the church of York takes care that we should know――when Canterbury was without an archbishop, to consecrate bishops and to put the crown on the king’s head within the vacant province.[1186] Whether the one available suffragan of the northern province came along with Thomas, in the form of William of Durham, we are not distinctly told. But of the bishops of the province of Canterbury eight must have been there. Robert Bloet was the elect of Lincoln; but he, like Anselm, was himself awaiting consecration. Of the rest three were absent, and among those three were the only two who were English either by birth or by adoption, the two whom we could have most wished to have a share in the work. Herbert of Thetford must now have been on his penitential journey to Rome or on his way back.[1187] The holy Wulfstan, the one Englishman by descent as well as by birth who was left among the bishops of England, the only one who had been a bishop in the old days of King Eadward, was still in the land, but was kept away by age or sickness. So was Osbern of Exeter, the only one of the foreign stock who had thoroughly made himself an Englishman by adoption. These two sent letters of consent instead of their personal presence.[1188] The others gathered round the high altar of Lanfranc’s rearing at Christ Church. Most of them are men with whose names we are familiar; Maurice of London, Walkelin of Winchester, Gundulf of Rochester, Osmund of Salisbury, Robert of Hereford, John who had moved from Wells to Bath, Robert of Lichfield or of Chester, who had moved in a fiercer sort to Earl Leofric’s Coventry. All of them, whatever they were in other ways, were mighty builders. If William of Durham, whose church had just begun to rise on the height above the Wear,[1189] was really in their company, there was indeed the master-builder of all, whose heart might already swell to think how the work which he had begun would surpass the work of Lanfranc under whose roof they were met. These eight came together in the new metropolitan church to perform the rite which should make Anselm at once their brother and their father.

[Sidenote: Position of Thomas.]

[Sidenote: Thomas objects to the description of Anselm as “Metropolitan of Britain.”]

[Sidenote: His objection admitted.]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s consecration.]

But, before the rite could be gone through, an old question was stirred again, by no means for the last time. The leader of the episcopal band was fully minded that the rank to which they were about to admit the prelate elect should be clearly defined. Thomas of York had doubtless not forgotten the day when he had himself gone away unconsecrated from the spot where they were now met, because he could not bring himself to make such a submission to the higher dignity of Canterbury as Anselm’s predecessor had required of him.[1190] He now had his opportunity of raising his voice with greater success on behalf of the dignity of his own church. Before the consecrating prelates went on to the examination of the bishop-elect, it was the business of the Bishop of London to read the formal document declaring the cause why they had come together.[1191] Bishop Maurice handed over this duty to the Bishop of Winchester. Walkelin began to read how the church of Canterbury, the metropolitan church of all Britain, was widowed of its pastor. The Archbishop of York stopped him; “Metropolitan church of all Britain? Then the church of York, which all men know to be a metropolitan church, is not metropolitan. We all know that the church of Canterbury is the primatial church of all Britain; metropolitan church of all Britain it is not.”[1192] This was not a distinction without a difference. To allow the claim of Canterbury to be the metropolitan church of all Britain would have been to admit that the church of York was a mere suffragan see of Canterbury. The other form simply asserted the precedency of Canterbury as the higher in rank of the two metropolitan sees of Britain. So Anselm’s correspondent at Lyons was Primate of all the Gauls, without endangering the metropolitan rank of Rheims and Rouen. But William the Good Soul would have been stirred to wrath had it been hinted that Lyons was the metropolitan church of all Gaul, and Rouen simply its suffragan. A zealot for the rights of Canterbury admits that the objection of Thomas was a good one.[1193] The wording of the document was at once changed;[1194] the rite went on, and Anselm was consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of all Britain. If the more northern suffragans of York had any objections to make, they were just then less likely than ever to be at Canterbury to make them.

[Sidenote: Question of acknowledging the Pope.]

[Sidenote: Thomas claims jurisdiction over Lincoln.]

[Sidenote: Robert Bloet’s consecration delayed.]

The position of the newly-consecrated Primate within his own island was thus settled to the satisfaction of the man who thought that he had a special interest in the matter. It was perhaps more difficult to settle his relation to the ecclesiastical powers beyond his own island. Anselm had warned the King that, if he became archbishop, he must yield obedience to Urban. But, as the King had not acknowledged Urban, it would have been deemed unlawful to speak of Urban as Pope in any public act. The difficulty seems to have been got over by Anselm making a profession of obedience to the Roman Church, without mentioning the name of any particular pontiff.[1195] Thus passed the day of the consecration; but, on the morrow, Thomas of York, successful thus far, found yet another point to assert on behalf of the alleged rights of his church. He had, it will be remembered, striven to hinder Remigius from transferring the see of Dorchester to a spot which he deemed to be in his own province and diocese.[1196] Since that time, notwithstanding his remonstrances, the minster of Lincoln had arisen; but it remained unconsecrated, and its builder was dead. To the mind of Thomas these facts perhaps seemed to be signs as clear in their meaning as any which the Bishop of Hereford would find out from the lore of the stars.[1197] Thus emboldened, on the day after he had consecrated Anselm to the see of Canterbury, Thomas warned the new Primate against proceeding, as he had purposed, to consecrate Robert Bloet to the see of Lincoln. He might consecrate him, if he would, to the ancient see of Dorchester; but not to Lincoln or to any other place in that land of Lindesey which belonged to the jurisdiction of York.[1198] Anselm seems to have yielded; at least the matter remained unsettled, and the elect of Lincoln remained unconsecrated for two months longer.

[Sidenote: Christmas Gemót at Gloucester. 1093-1094.]

[Sidenote: Anselm received by the King.]

Anselm now, after so many difficulties, was at last fully Archbishop. He remained in his metropolis for eight days only after his consecration. He then set forth for the Christmas Assembly of the realm, to be held at Gloucester.[1199] The prayer which he had drawn up at the assembly held there twelve months before had indeed been answered. The King’s heart had been stirred; the Archbishop had been appointed. Unhappily also the King’s heart had been stirred back again. William was again the king who had mockingly bidden his bishops to pray as they thought good, not the king who had passionately called on Anselm to step in between him and eternal death. The breach between King and Primate had begun before Anselm was fully Primate, when Flambard had insolently summoned him in his own church on the day of his enthronement. Whatever the matter of the summons was, Anselm was now ready in the King’s court to answer it. But of that dispute we hear no more. The Archbishop came to Gloucester, and was courteously and cheerfully received, not only by the assembled nobles, but by the King himself.[1200] But the Witan were not to depart from the place of meeting till new grounds of quarrel had arisen between the two unequal yokefellows who were at last fully coupled together.

§ 3. _The Assembly at Hastings and the Second Norman Campaign._ 1094.

[Sidenote: Events of the year 1094.]

[Sidenote: Affairs of Normandy; their connexion with Anselm.]

The events of the year on which we have now entered consist partly of warlike movements in Normandy and Scotland, partly of matters directly touching ecclesiastical questions, above all touching Anselm. Of these, the affairs of Scotland and the affairs of Anselm have hardly any bearing on one another. But the affairs of Normandy and the affairs of Anselm have a close connexion. They were discussed in the same assemblies; and one ground of quarrel between King and Primate arose directly out of the discussion of Norman affairs. Some of the details of the two stories are so mixed up with one another that it would be hard to keep them apart. Again, the Scottish warfare of this year is part of a continuous series of Scottish events spread over several years. But the Norman warfare is a kind of episode. It is connected by the laws of cause and effect with things which went before and with things which came after; but, as a story, it stands by itself or is mixed up with the story of Anselm. It cannot be dealt with, like the King’s first Norman war, as a distinct chapter of our history. It will therefore be better, during the year which follows the consecration of Anselm, to keep Scottish affairs apart from the history of the ecclesiastical dispute, but to treat the Norman campaign as something filling up part of the time between two great stages in Anselm’s history.

[Sidenote: Robert’s challenge of William. 1093-1094.]

[Sidenote: Form of the message.]

[Sidenote: War decreed.]

The chief business of the assembly which now met at Gloucester was the reception of a hostile message from the Duke of the Normans. This fact makes us wish to know more in detail what Count William of Eu had suggested, and what King William of England had done. It is certain that King William needed no pressing to make him inclined for another attempt on his brother’s dominions; but it is clear that the coming of Count William had led to some special action which had given Duke Robert special ground of complaint. The Norman embassy came, and challenged one brother in the name of the other, almost as an earlier Norman embassy had challenged Harold in the name of the father of both of them.[1201] The diplomacy of those days was clear and outspoken. The _bodes_ of Duke Robert seem to have spoken to King William in the midst of his Witan, much as the bodes of the Athenian commonwealth spoke, with a greater amount of personal deference, to King Philip on his throne. They told the King of the English that their master renounced all peace and treaty with him, unless he would do all that was set down in the treaty; they declared him forsworn and truthless, unless he would hold to the treaty, or would go and clear himself at the place where the treaty had been made and sworn to.[1202] Such a message as this was hardly wise in Robert, whatever it might have been in a prince who had the resources of his dominions more thoroughly at his command. It was in some sort an appeal to arbitration; but it was put in a shape which was sure to bring on war. William had no doubt made up his mind for a Norman enterprise in any case; the message of Robert would really help him by turning a certain amount of public feeling to his side. An expedition was decreed; Normandy was to be a second time invaded by the Red King.

[Sidenote: Contributions collected for the war.]

[Sidenote: Anselm unwilling to contribute.]

[Sidenote: He gives five hundred pounds.]

And now came the question how ways and means were to be found for the new war. That some of the ways and means which were employed were unworthy of all kingly dignity[1203] is not wonderful in this reign. But the only one of which we distinctly hear seems in itself less unworthy than some others, though the particular form which it took is eminently characteristic of Rufus. The great men who had come together to the assembly made presents to the King, forerunners of the benevolences of later times. The great men of Normandy had, twenty-eight years before, made contributions of ships for the invasion of England.[1204] Now the great men of England, some of them the same persons, made contributions of money for the invasion of Normandy. This was at least less unworthy of the kingly dignity than some of the tricks by which Flambard wrung money out of more helpless victims. But the Red King’s way of dealing with such gifts shows the mixture of greed and pride which stands out in all his doings. If the sum offered was less than he thought it ought to be, he cast it aside with scorn; nor would he ever again admit the offerer to his friendship, unless he made amends by a second offer of such a sum as the King might think becoming.[1205] To this custom Anselm now conformed, with the other nobles and prelates; but it was with some pains that his friends persuaded him to conform to it.[1206] With his usual fear of being misconstrued, he dreaded that if, so soon after his consecration, he gave the King any sum which the King would think worth taking, it might have the air of a simoniacal bargain.[1207] He might also hold that the goods of the Church ought not to be applied to worldly, least of all to warlike, uses; he might even feel some scruple in helping towards a war against a prince who had so lately been his own worldly lord. But he was won over by the argument that a gift in season might win the King’s favour for ever, and that he might be allowed to give his mind with less disturbance to the spiritual duties of his office.[1208] He brought himself therefore to offer the King five hundred pounds of silver. William was satisfied with the amount, and received the gift with courteous thanks.[1209]

[Sidenote: William persuaded to refuse the money.]

[Sidenote: Anselm prays Rufus to take the money.]

[Sidenote: Rufus refuses it.]

What followed showed that William Rufus had counsellors about him who were worse than himself, or who at any rate were not ashamed to play upon the worst parts of his character to obtain their own ends. In this case they are nameless. Are we to fill up the blank with the names of the Bishop of Durham and the Count of Meulan? Or is it safer to lay any evil deed the doer of which is not recorded on the broad back of Randolf Flambard? At any rate, some malignant persons, whoever they were, came about the King, and persuaded him that the gift of the Archbishop was a contemptible sum which he ought to reject. One whom he had exalted and enriched above the other great men of England ought, in such need as that in which the King found himself, to have given him two thousand pounds, or one thousand at the very least. To offer so little as five hundred was mere mockery. Let the King wait a little, let him change his face towards the Archbishop, and Anselm would presently come, delighted to win back the King’s favour with the gift of five hundred pounds more.[1210] Thus the Primate’s enemies, whoever they were, sought to frighten him, and to get more money out of him for the King’s use. But their schemes were disappointed.[1211] Anselm was presently surprised by a message to say that the King refused his gift――the gift which he had already cheerfully accepted.[1212] He then sought an audience, and asked the King whether such a message was really of his sending. Some tyrants might have seen in this question an escape from a difficulty. It would have been easy for Rufus to have denied his own act; but his pride was up, and direct lying was never in his vein. He avowed his message. Then Anselm prayed him not to refuse his gift; it was the first that he had offered; it should not be the last. It would be better for the King to receive a smaller sum from him as a friend, than to wring a larger sum from him as a slave.[1213] Of the alternative of increasing the amount of the gift he said not a word. One motive was that he could not raise a greater sum without doing wrong to his tenants――the wrong which he had declared Ælfheah to be a true martyr for refusing to do.[1214] The King was now in the mood for short and wrathful speeches. “Keep your money and your jaw to yourself; I have enough of my own. Get you gone.”[1215] Anselm obeyed, remembering that at his enthronement the Gospel had been read which said that no man could serve two masters. He rejoiced that no one now could deem that he had been guilty of any corrupt bargain with the King. Yet he tried once more through messengers to persuade the King to take his gift, but, as he steadily refused to double it, it was still thrust aside with scorn. The assembly broke up; the Archbishop, still in the King’s disfavour, went away, and the money which the King had despised was given to the poor.

[Sidenote: Dispute with the Bishop of London.]

[Sidenote: Judgement of Wulfstan.]

This business over, Anselm had now a few weeks, but a few weeks only, to give to his immediate pastoral work. Even those weeks were disturbed by a dispute with one of his suffragans. The point at issue was the right of the Archbishop to consecrate churches and do other episcopal acts in such of his manors as were locally in other dioceses. This right was denied by Bishop Maurice of London, who sent two of his canons to forbid the Archbishop to consecrate the newly built church of Harrow.[1216] The matter was settled by an appeal to one who knew the ancient laws of England better than either Maurice or Anselm. Wulfstan of Worcester, now “one and alone of the ancient fathers of the English,” wrote back his judgement in favour of the Primate’s right.[1217] The question was thus decided; Maurice did not dare to set up his judgement on such a matter against that of the venerable saint, the relic of a state of things which had passed away.[1218]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Assembly at Hastings. February 2, 1094.]

[Sidenote: The fleet delayed by the wind.]

Those of the great men of England who had come to the Gemót at Gloucester from the more distant parts of the kingdom could hardly have reached their homes when they were again summoned to give the King the benefit of their counsels. William Rufus was so strong upon his throne that in his days assemblies were sure to be frequent. He was moreover planning a campaign beyond the sea, so that it was very doubtful whether he would be able this year to wear his crown in England at the usual times of Easter and Pentecost. The Easter Gemót was therefore in some sort forestalled. As the starting-point for his second invasion of Normandy the King had chosen the spot which had been his father’s head-quarters in the great invasion of England. At Pevensey he had once beaten back the invasion of his Norman brother; at Hastings he now gathered the force which was for the second time to avenge that wrong. The chief men of England were again brought together. We may perhaps see in this assembly a case of the military Gemót. Anselm and several other bishops were there; but it is said that their presence was required to give their blessing to the King and his army before they crossed the sea.[1219] But that final blessing could not be given till many weeks after the army or assembly first came together. When the younger William sought to invade Normandy, he was kept lingering at Hastings, as the elder William had been kept lingering at Saint Valery when he sought to invade England. For six weeks the north wind refused to blow. While thus kept back from warfare, the King seems to have amused himself with ecclesiastical business and ecclesiastical ceremonies, and he further brought on himself the sharpest of ecclesiastical rebukes.[1220]

[Sidenote: The Abbey of Battle.]

[Sidenote: Completion of the building.]

[Sidenote: Consecration of the church. February 11, 1094.]

[Sidenote: Bishops present; Ralph of Coutances.]

[Sidenote: Death of Geoffrey Bishop of Coutances. February 3, 1093.]

[Sidenote: William and Anselm at Battle.]

But one of the ceremonies which filled up the time of enforced leisure must have been something more than a matter of amusement to William the Red. Whatever traces of good feeling lingered in his heart gathered round the memory of his parents. And he was now called on to join in a rite which was the crowning homage to his father’s name, the most speaking memorial of his father’s victory and his father’s bounty. Again was a William encamped at Hastings called on to make his way to the hill of Senlac. But this time he could make his way thither in peaceful guise. The place was no longer a wilderness or a camp, no longer the hill of the hoar apple-tree, no longer bristling with the thickset lines of battle, no longer heaped with the corpses of the conquerors and the conquered. The height which had once been fenced in by the palisade of the English host was now fenced in by the precinct wall of a vast monastery; its buildings, overhanging the hill side, covered the spot where Gyrth had fallen by the hand of William;[1221] its church, fresh from the hands of the craftsman, covered the ground which had beheld the last act of the day of slaughter; its high altar, blazing doubtless with all the skill of Otto and Theodoric,[1222] marked the spot where Harold, struck by the bolt from heaven, had fallen between the Dragon and the Standard. After so many years had passed since the Conqueror had bidden that the memorial of the Conquest should rise on that spot and on no other, the minster of Saint Martin of the Place of Battle stood ready for consecration. Moved by the prayer of Abbot Gausbert, prompted too by his own reverence for the memory and the bidding of his father, William the younger bade that his father’s church should at once be hallowed in his own presence.[1223] On a Saturday then in the month of February, in the twenty-eighth year since the awful Saturday of Saint Calixtus, the two who were so unequally yoked together to draw the plough of the Church of England made their way to the place of Battle. A crowd of nobles and commons came together to the sight; and with them, besides the Primate, were seven bishops of three different provinces. There was Ralph of Chichester, bishop of the diocese, whose jurisdiction within the favoured abbey was so zealously denied by every monk of Battle.[1224] There were Walkelin of Winchester, Osmund of Salisbury, John of Bath, and Gundulf of Rochester. There was the Primate’s great northern enemy, William of Durham. And there too was a suffragan of Rouen, the immediate successor of one of the fierce prelates who had blessed the Conqueror’s host on the morning of the great battle.[1225] Geoffrey of Mowbray, Bishop and once Earl, had died a year before, and the episcopal chair of Coutances was now filled by his successor Ralph.[1226] How, it may be asked, came a Norman bishop in the court, almost in the army, of a king who was about to invade Normandy? The answer is easy. The Côtentin was now again in the hands of Henry,[1227] and the presence of its bishop at the court of William was a sign of the good understanding which now reigned between the two younger sons of the Conqueror. But on such a day as this all interest gathers round the two main figures in the assembly, the two of highest rank in their several orders. William the Red, strange assistant in any religious rite, seems less out of place than usual as assistant in the rite which was to dedicate the work of his father. And if prayers and offerings were to go up on that spot for those who had fallen there on the defeated as well as on the victorious side, there was no mouth in which we should more gladly put them than in the mouth of him who was the chief celebrant on that day. Anselm, standing at the head of his foreign suffragans――English Wulfstan stood not by him――before the altar of Saint Martin of the Place of Battle, seemed like a representative of universal Christendom, of universal peace and love. The holy man from Aosta sang his mass in honour of the holy man of Tours. And he sang it on the spot where Harold of England had stood by his standard in the morning, where William of Normandy had held the feast of victory in the evening, the morning and evening of the most memorable day in the history of our island since England became one kingdom.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The King at Hastings.]

[Sidenote: William of Saint-Calais.]

[Sidenote: Consecration of Robert Bloet to Lincoln. February 12, 1094.]

[Sidenote: Robert’s gift to the King.]

[Sidenote: Plot against Anselm.]

[Sidenote: Compromise with York.]

[Sidenote: Character of Robert Bloet.]

[Sidenote: His offices.]

[Sidenote: His death. 1123.]

[Sidenote: Local legends about him.]

From the hill of Battle William went back to the hill of Hastings, now crowned by the castle into which the hasty fortress of his father had grown.[1228] Six years earlier the Bishop of Durham, charged with treason, had in answer, pleaded that he had kept Hastings and its castle in the King’s obedience.[1229] Notwithstanding that answer, he had been banished; he had been recalled, and he now stood, with all his former authority, chief counsellor of the King, chief enemy of the Archbishop. On the morrow of the dedication of Saint Martin’s, William of Saint-Calais joined with Anselm in the long-delayed consecration of the elect of Lincoln. The rite was done in the church of Our Lady within the castle of Hastings, by the hands of the same prelates who had the day before dedicated the church of Battle. It was to the see of Lincoln, not to the see of Dorchester, that Robert Bloet was consecrated. Thomas of Bayeux was not there to repeat his protest. He would have been there in vain. The bishop-elect had, in the course of his chancellorship, got together the means of settling such questions. His bishopric, granted at the time of the King’s repentance, had cost him nothing. It was now a matter of regret with Rufus that it had cost him nothing; Robert had therefore to pay all the more for the establishment of the rights of his see. One who had the means of knowing says that he gave the King the great sum of five thousand pounds to decide the cause in favour of Lincoln.[1230] This was done, the York writer complains, without the consent of the Archbishop of York and without the knowledge of his chapter.[1231] The case must have been settled either at Gloucester or now at Hastings. It was most likely at Hastings, as we can hardly fancy Thomas keeping away from the great Christmas gathering. Our Canterbury guide tells us a not very intelligible story which may show us how the claim of Thomas was spoken of in the southern metropolis. The cause of York had found at least professing friends among the great men at Hastings, though it met with no favour from the King himself. Not knowing perhaps with what weighty arguments the elect of Lincoln had proved his case, certain unnamed bishops and lords deemed that they would please the King by anything which could annoy or discredit Anselm. They therefore insidiously tried to persuade the Archbishop to consecrate Robert without his making due profession to the church of Canterbury.[1232] Anselm stood firm. The King, when he heard of the plot, took to his magnanimous vein. His personal quarrel with Anselm should never lead him to do anything against the dignity of the Church of Canterbury his mother.[1233] The King and Flambard perhaps enjoyed the joke together. But Robert Bloet made the needful profession, and was consecrated as Bishop of Lincoln by Anselm and the assembled prelates. The controversy with York was at last formally settled, by a compromise which was announced in a royal charter. By this the Archbishop of York accepted the patronage of the new abbey of Selby in his own diocese, and that of the church of Saint Oswald at Worcester――the city and diocese so long connected with York――in exchange for his claims over Lindesey.[1234] The isle and city of Lindum has ever since remained an undisputed member of the southern province. The new Bishop of Lincoln, the first prelate consecrated to that see, has left a doubtful character behind him. He held his bishopric for thirty years, living on far into the reign of Henry, and keeping the royal favour till just before his death. Chancellor under both Williams, he, as usual, resigned that post on his consecration; but under Henry he ruled with great power in the higher office of Justiciar.[1235] Bountiful in his gifts to his see and to his church, the number of whose prebends he doubled, splendid and liberal in his manner of life, bountiful to the poor, winning the hearts of all around him, not himself a scholar, but a promoter of scholars, skilful in worldly business of every kind, he does not show us the best, but neither does he show us the worst type of the prelates of his day. He was charged with looseness of life; but his chief accuser found it wise to strike out the charge, and his son Simon, Dean of his own church, was born while he was Chancellor to the Conqueror, quite possibly in lawful wedlock. His last days form a striking incident in the next reign; here he chiefly concerns us as being in some sort, however strangely, bracketted with Anselm, as the other bishop whom the Red King named during his short time of repentance.[1236] Anyhow it was hard on him to tell in after days how his ghost hindered anybody from praying or giving alms near his tomb in the minster, and that only because he removed the monks of Stow to Eynsham, because he subjected his see to the gift of a precious mantle to the King, or because he agreed to the wise measure which lessened the extent of his vast diocese.

[Sidenote: Return of Herbert of Thetford.]

[Sidenote: He is deprived by the King.]