Chapter IV: The Primacy of Anselm and the Acquisition of Normandy.903 (9)

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.]

At this stage we again meet a personal spokesman on the other side; Bishop Walkelin of Winchester speaks where doubtless William of Saint-Calais would have spoken, had he still lived. Walkelin’s argument was one hardly suited to the mind of Anselm. The King and his lords knew the Archbishop’s ways; they knew that he was a man not easily turned from his purpose; but it was not easy to believe that he would be firm in his purpose of casting aside the honour and wealth of the great office which he held, merely for the sake of going to Rome.[1588] Anselm’s face lighted up, and he fixed his keen eyes on Walkelin, with the words, “Truly I shall be firm.” This answer was taken to the King, and was debated for a long while in the inner council. At last Anselm bethinks him that his suffragans ought rather to be advising him than advising the King; he sends and bids them to come to him. Three of them come at the summons, Walkelin, the ritualist Osmund, the cunning leech John of Bath. They sat down on each side of their metropolitan. Anselm called on them, as bishops and prelates in the Church of God. If they were really willing to guard the right and the justice of God as they were ready to guard the laws and usages of a mortal man,[1589] they will let him tell them in full his reason for the course which he is taking, and they will then give him their counsel in God’s name.[1590] The three bishops chose first to confer with their brethren; Walkelin and Robert were then sent in to the King, and the whole body of bishops came once more to Anselm. We now see the portrait of the prelates of the Red King’s day, as it is drawn by their own spokesman. Anselm they knew to be a devout and holy man who had his conversation in heaven. But they were hindered by the kinsfolk whom they sustained, by the manifold affairs of the world which they loved; they could not rise to the loftiness of Anselm’s life or trample on this world as he did.[1591] But if he would come down to them, and would walk in their way,[1592] then they would consult for him as they would consult for themselves, and would help him in his affairs as if they were their own. If he would persist in standing alone and referring everything to God,[1593] they would not go beyond the fealty which they owed to the King. This was plain speaking enough; the doctrine of interest against right has seldom, even in these later times, been more openly set forth. One would think that the bishops simply meant to strengthen Anselm’s fixed purpose; they could not hope to move him with arguments which certainly did not do justice to their own case. Anselm’s scholastic training always enabled him to seize an advantage in argument. “You have spoken well,” he answered; “go to your lord; I will cleave to God.”[1594] They did as he bade them; they went, and Anselm was left almost alone; the few friends who clave to him sat apart at his bidding, and prayed to God to bring the matter to a good ending.[1595]

[Sidenote: Part of the lay lords.]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s promise to obey the customs.]

[Sidenote: He is charged with breach of promise.]

[Sidenote: Alternative given to him.]

In all these debates it is the bishops who play the worst part. They seem to say in calm earnest the same kind of things which the King said in wrath or in jest. After a short delay, they come back, accompanied by some lay barons, and the tone of their discourse is at once raised. Anselm has no longer the laity on his side, as he had at Rockingham; nor can we wonder at the change. The speech which is now made is harsh, perhaps captious; but at all events the stand is now taken on direct legal grounds, no longer on the base motives confessed to by the bishops. The King sent word that Anselm had troubled him, embittered him, tortured him, by his complaints.[1596] The Archbishop is reminded that, after the suit at Rockingham and the reconciliation which followed at Windsor――a reconciliation which is now attributed to the earnest prayers of Anselm’s friends[1597]――he had sworn to obey the laws and customs of the realm, and to defend them against all men.[1598] After this promise the King had believed that Anselm would give him no more trouble.[1599] But he had already broken his oath――the charge is delicately worded――when he threatened to go to Rome without the King’s leave.[1600] For any of the great men of the realm so to do was utterly unheard of; for him most of all. Anselm’s enemies had now the advantage of him; he certainly had uttered words which might be not unfairly construed as an intended breach of the law. They therefore called on him to make oath that he would never appeal to the Holy See in any shape in any matter which the King might lay upon him; otherwise he must leave the kingdom with all speed, on what conditions he already knew. And if he chose to stay and take the oath, he must submit to be fined at the judgement of the court for having troubled the King so much about a matter in which he had after all not stuck firm to his own purpose.[1601] This last condition seems hard measure; there was surely no treason in making a request to the King which it rested with the King to grant or to refuse. With regard to the alleged breach of promise they undoubtedly stood on firmer ground.

[Sidenote: Anselm and the King.]

[Sidenote: Qualifications and distinctions.]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s discourse; duty to God always excepted.]

The King’s messengers did not wait for an answer. Anselm therefore rose; followed by his companions, he went in to the King, and, according to custom, sat down beside him.[1602] He asked whether the message which he had just heard had really come from the King, and he received for answer that it had. Anselm then said that he had undoubtedly made the promise to observe the laws, but that he made it only in God’s name, and so far as the laws were according to right, and could be obeyed in God’s name.[1603] The King and his lords answered that in the promise there had been no mention of God or of right.[1604] We should be well pleased to have the actual words of the promise; but we need not suppose any direct misstatement of fact on either side; the forms of oaths and promises are commonly capable of more than one interpretation. Words which one side looks on as surplusage another side looks on as the root of the whole matter. But the form of the answer gave Anselm, if not a logical, at least a rhetorical, advantage. If there was no mention of God or right, what was there mention of? No Christian man could be bound to observe laws which were contrary to God and right. We have here reached the beginning of those distinctions and qualifications which play so great a part in the debates of the next century; but with Anselm the appeal is simply to God and right; there is not a word about the privileges of his order. His hearers murmured and wagged their heads, but said nothing openly.[1605] So the Primate went on to lay down at some length the doctrine that every promise of earthly duty involved in its own nature a saving of duty to God. Faith was pledged in earthly matters according to the faith due to God; faith to God was therefore excepted by the very terms of the promise.[1606] The argument is doubtless sound, as regards the individual conscience; it leaves out of sight, and any argument of that age would probably have left out of sight, the truth that men may differ as to what is duty towards God, and that no lawgiver or administrator of the law can possibly listen to every scruple which may be urged on such grounds in favour of disobedience. To Anselm’s mind the case was clear. A custom which hindered him from going to consult the Vicar of Saint Peter for his own soul’s health and for the good of the Church was a custom contrary to God and right, a custom which ought to be cast aside and disobeyed. No man who feared God would hinder him from going to the head of Christendom on God’s service. He ended with a parable. The King would not think himself well served if any powerful vassal of his should by terrors and threatenings hinder any other of his subjects from doing his duty and service to him.

[Sidenote: Answer of Count Robert.]

[Sidenote: The barons against Anselm.]

[Sidenote: He ends his discourse.]

It was perhaps not wholly in enmity that the Count of Meulan, who at Rockingham had frankly professed his admiration of Anselm, joined the King at this stage in trying to turn off the matter with a jest. The Primate, he said, was preaching them a sermon; but prudent people could not admit his line of argument.[1607] And certainly Anselm’s present line of argument, the assertion of individual conscience against established law, could not be admitted by any legislative or judicial assembly. A disturbance followed; the barons who had stood by the Archbishop when he lay under a manifestly unjust charge joined in the clamour against him when he declared that the law of the land was something to be despised and disobeyed. But Anselm’s conscience was not disturbed; he sat quiet and silent, with his face towards the ground, till the clamour wore itself out.[1608] He then finished his sermon, as Count Robert called it. No Christian man ought to demand of him that he would never appeal to the blessed Peter or his Vicar. So to swear would be to abjure Peter, and to abjure Peter would be to abjure Christ who had set Peter as the chief over his Church. He then turned to the King with a kind of gentle defiance; “When I deny Christ, O King, for your sake, then will I not be slow to pay a fine at the judgement of your court for my sin in asking your leave.” Half in anger, half in mockery, Count Robert said, “You will present yourself to Peter and the Pope; but no Pope shall get the better of us, to our knowledge.”[1609] “God knows,” answered Anselm, “what may be in store for you; He will be able, if He thinks good, to guide me to the threshold of his apostles.” With these words the Archbishop rose, and went again into the outer chamber.

[Sidenote: Anselm to be allowed to go, but the archbishopric to be seized if he went.]

[Sidenote: Anselm allowed to go, but the archbishopric to be seized.]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s last interview with the King.]

[Sidenote: He blesses Rufus.]

The King and his counsellors seem to have been moved by the calm resolution of Anselm, even when the letter of the law was on their own side. Either Rufus was not in his most savage mood, or his wily Achitophel contrived to keep him in some restraint. Nothing could be gained by keeping Anselm in the kingdom. He had already had the choice set before him. He might go; but, if he went, the archbishopric would be seized into the King’s hands. He had made his choice, and he should be allowed to carry it out without hindrance; only he knew on what conditions. The decision was on the whole not altogether unfair; but the inherent pettiness of the magnanimous King could not help throwing in an insult or two by the way. If Anselm chose to go, all that he had, in Rufus’ version of the law, at once passed to the King. He was therefore told, in the message which was sent out to him, that he might go, but that he might take nothing with him which belonged to the King.[1610] Anselm did not, like William of Saint-Calais, bargain for the means of crossing in state with dogs, hawks, and servants.[1611] He seems tacitly to raise a point of law. The lands of the archbishopric might pass to the King; but that could not take from him his mere personal goods. “I have,” he said, “horses, clothes, furniture, which perhaps somebody may say are the King’s. But I will go naked and on foot, rather than give up my purpose.” When these words were reported to Rufus, for a moment he felt a slight sense of shame.[1612] He did not wish the Archbishop to go naked and barefoot. But within eleven days he must be ready at the haven to cross the sea, and a messenger from the King would be there to tell him what he and his companions would be allowed to take with them. The King’s bidding was announced to the Archbishop, and Anselm’s companions wished, now the matter seemed to be settled, to go at once to their own quarters. But Anselm would not leave the man who was his earthly lord, who had once been, in form at least, his friend, to whom he held himself to stand in so close an official and personal relation, without one word face to face. He entered the presence-chamber, and once more the saint sat down side by side with the foulest of sinners. “My lord,” said Anselm, “I am going. If I could have gone with your good will, it would have better become you, and it would have been more pleasing to every good man. But since things are turned another way, though it grieves me as regards you, as regards myself I will, according to my power, bear it with a calm mind. And not even for this will I, by the Lord’s help, withdraw myself from the love of your soul’s health. Now therefore, not knowing when I may again see you, I commend you to God, and, as a ghostly father speaking to a beloved son, as an Archbishop of Canterbury speaking to a King of England, I would, before I go, give you my blessing, if you do not refuse it.” For a moment Rufus was touched; his good angel perhaps spoke to him then for the last time. “I refuse not your blessing,” was his answer. The man of God arose; the King bowed his head, and Anselm made the sign of the cross over it. He then went forth, leaving the King and all that were with him wondering at the ready cheerfulness with which he spoke and went.[1613]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Anselm at Canterbury.]

[Sidenote: He takes the pilgrim’s staff.]

[Sidenote: William of Warelwast at Dover.]

[Sidenote: Anselm crosses to Whitsand.]

Rufus and Anselm never met again. From Winchester the Archbishop went to his own home at Canterbury.[1614] The day after he came there, he gathered together his monks, and addressed them in a farewell discourse.[1615] Then, in the sight of a crowd of monks, clerks, and lay folk, he took the staff and scrip of a pilgrim before the altar. He commended all present to Christ, and set forth amidst their tears and wailings. The same day he and his comrades reached Dover. There he found that the passing current of better feeling which had touched the King’s heart as he bowed his head for Anselm’s blessing had been but for a moment. Rufus had gone back to his old mind, to the spirit of petty insult and petty gain. The King’s obedient clerk, William of Warelwast, one day to be the builder of the twin towers of Exeter, was there already. For fifteen days Anselm and his companions were kept at Dover, waiting for a favourable wind. Meanwhile William of Warelwast went in and out with Anselm; he ate at his table, and said not a word of the purpose which had brought him.[1616] On the fifteenth day the wind changed, and the sailors urged the Archbishop’s party to cross at once. When they were on the shore ready to start, William stopped the Archbishop as if he had been a runaway slave or a criminal escaping from justice,[1617] and in the King’s name forbade him to cross, till he had declared everything that he had in his baggage. In hope of finding money, all Anselm’s bags and trunks were opened and ransacked, in the sight of a vast crowd that stood by wondering at so unheard of a deed, and cursing those who did it.[1618] The bags were opened and ransacked in vain. Nothing was found that the King’s faithful clerk thought worth his master’s taking. The Archbishop, with Baldwin and Eadmer, was then allowed to set sail, and they landed safely at Whitsand.

[Sidenote: The archbishopric seized by the King.]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s acts declared null.]

[Sidenote: The monks keep Peckham.]

[Sidenote: Rebuilding of the choir of Christ Church.]

[Sidenote: Ernulf Prior 1096? Abbot of Peterborough, 1107; Bishop of Rochester, 1115.]

As soon as the King heard that Anselm was out of the kingdom, he did as he had said that he would do; he again seized all the estates of the archbishopric into his own hands. This was only what was to be looked for; it was fully in accordance with the doctrines of Flambard, and better kings than William Rufus would have done the like in the like case. But Rufus or his agents went much further. Our guide implies that he acted as if Anselm had been an intruder in the archbishopric. All the acts and orders of Anselm during his four years’ primacy――that is, we must suppose, all leases, grants, and legal transactions of every kind――were declared null and void.[1619] Much loss and wrong must have been thus caused to many persons. A man who had, in the old phrase, bought land of the archbishopric for a term or for lives[1620] would lose his land, and, we may be sure, would not get back his money. A clerk collated by the Archbishop might be turned out of his living to make room for a nominee of the King. It is no wonder then that the wrongs which were done now were said to be greater than the wrongs which had been done when the archiepiscopal estates had before been seized after the death of Lanfranc.[1621] For at any rate the acts of Lanfranc were not reversed. One feels a certain desire to know what became of the Archbishop’s knights whose array had so displeased the King earlier in the year. But we hear nothing of them or of any particular class; all is quite general. In one case indeed it is quite certain that the rule that all Anselm’s acts should be treated as invalid was not carried out. The monks of Christ Church clearly kept their temporary possession of the manor of Peckham. For they spent the whole income of it on great architectural works which Anselm himself had begun. The metropolitan church, so lately rebuilt by Lanfranc, had already become small in the eyes of a younger generation, as indeed it was smaller than many minsters of the same date. The church of Lanfranc had followed the usual Norman plan; the short eastern limb, the monks’ choir, was under the tower.[1622] The arrangements of the minster were now recast after a new pattern which did not commonly prevail till many years later. The eastern limb was rebuilt on a far greater scale, itself forming as it were a cruciform church, with its own transepts, its own towers, one of which in after days received the name of Anselm. This work, begun by Anselm before his banishment, was carried on in his absence by the prior of his appointment, Ernulf――Earnwulf――a monk of his old house of Bec, but perhaps of English birth, who rose afterwards to be Abbot of Peterborough and Bishop of Rochester.[1623] In marked contrast to the speed with which Lanfranc had carried through his work, the choir begun by Ernulf and carried on by his successor Prior Conrad was not consecrated till late in the days of Henry.[1624]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Comparison of the trials of William of Saint-Calais, Anselm, and Thomas.]

[Sidenote: Comparison of the men.]

[Sidenote: Position of Thomas;]

[Sidenote: of William of Saint-Calais.]

[Sidenote: Anselm does not strictly appeal to the Pope.]

After reading the accounts of these two great debates or trials, at Rockingham and at Winchester, it is impossible to avoid looking both backwards and forwards. The story of these proceedings must be told, as I have throughout tried to tell it, with an eye to the earlier proceedings against William of Saint-Calais, to the later proceedings against Thomas of London. The three stories supply an instructive contrast. In each case a bishop is arraigned before a civil tribunal; in each case the bishop appeals to the Pope; but beyond that the three men have little in common. William and Thomas were both of them, though in widely different senses, playing a part; it is Anselm alone who is throughout perfectly simple and unconscious. Through the whole of Anselm’s life, we feel that he never could have acted otherwise than as he did act. He never stopped to think what was the right thing for a saintly archbishop to do; he simply did at all times what his conscience told him that he ought to do. Thomas, perfectly sincere, thoroughly bent on doing his duty, was still following a conscious ideal of duty; he was always thinking what a saintly archbishop ought to do; above all things, we may be sure, he was thinking what Anselm, in the like case, would have done. Thus, while Anselm acts quite singly, Thomas is, consciously though sincerely, playing a part. William of Saint-Calais is playing a part in a far baser sense; he appeals to the Pope, he appeals to ecclesiastical privileges in general, simply to serve his own personal ends. He appealed to those privileges more loudly than anybody else, when he thought that by that appeal he might himself escape condemnation. He trampled them under foot more scornfully than anybody else, when he thought that by so doing he might bring about the condemnation of Anselm and his own promotion. But it is curious to see how in some points the sincere acting of Thomas and the insincere acting of William agree as distinguished from the pure single-mindedness of Anselm. Both William and Thomas distinctly appeal to the Pope from the sentence of the highest court in their own land. We cannot say that Anselm did this; he does not refuse the sentence of the King’s court; he does not ask the Pope to set aside the sentence of the King’s court; the utmost that he does is to say that it is his duty to obey God rather than man, and that his duty to God obliges him to go to the Pope. To the Pope therefore he will go, even though the King forbids him; but he is ready at the same time to bear patiently the spoiling of his goods as the penalty of going. This is assuredly not an appeal to the Pope in the same sense as the appeals made by William and Thomas.

[Sidenote: Anselm does not assert clerical privileges.]

[Sidenote: Question of observing the customs.]

Among the marks of difference in the cases is that both William and Thomas strongly assert the privileges of their order; none but the Pope may judge a bishop. Anselm never once, during his whole dispute with William Rufus, makes the slightest claim to any such privilege; he never breathes a word about the rights of the clerical order. The doctrine that none but the Pope may judge the Archbishop of Canterbury――nothing is said about other priests or other bishops――is heard of only once during the whole story.[1625] And then it is not put forth by Anselm; it is not openly put forth by anybody; it is merely mentioned by Eadmer as something which came into the minds of the undutiful bishops as a kind of after-thought. This most likely means that it was not really thought of at the time, either by the bishops or by anybody else, but that Eadmer, writing by fresh lights learned at Rome and at Bari, could no longer understand a state of things in which it was not thought of by somebody. The truth doubtless is that in Anselm’s day the doctrine of clerical exemption from temporal jurisdiction was a novelty which was creeping in. It was well known enough for Odo and William of Saint-Calais to catch at it to serve their own ends; it was not so fully established that it was at all a matter of conscience with Anselm to assert it. By the time of Thomas every doctrine of the kind had so grown that its assertion had become a point of conscience with every strict churchman. But there is another point in which the case of Anselm and the case of Thomas agree as distinguished from the case of William of Saint-Calais. In this last case nothing turned on any promise of the Bishop to obey the customs of the realm. Much in the case of Anselm, much more in the case of Thomas, turned on such a promise. In each case the Archbishop pleads a certain reservation expressed or understood; but there is a wide difference between the reservation made by Anselm and the reservation made by Thomas. The favourite formula with Thomas, the formula which he proposes, the formula which he is at Clarendon with difficulty persuaded to withdraw and on which he again falls back,[1626] is “saving my order.” Anselm has nothing to say about his order; he is not fighting for the privileges of any special body of men; he is simply a righteous man clothed with a certain office, the duties of which office he must discharge. It is not his order that he reserves; he reserves only the higher and more abiding names of God and right.

[Sidenote: Nature of our reports of the trials.]

[Sidenote: Comparison of the proceedings in each case.]

[Sidenote: William and Thomas summoned to answer a charge.]

[Sidenote: Anselm seeks advice on a point of law.]

[Sidenote: Proceedings in the case of William of Saint-Calais.]

[Sidenote: Architectural arrangements.]

[Sidenote: Constitution of the several assemblies.]