Chapter IV: The Primacy of Anselm and the Acquisition of Normandy.903 (7)

Meanwhile things were taking a new turn in the outer place of assembly. There a state of mind very unlike that of the King’s inner council began to show itself. There were those, as there will always be in every gathering of men, whose instinct led them to insult and trample on one who seemed to be falling. By such men threats, revilings, slanders of every kind, were hurled at the Archbishop, as he sat peacefully waking and sleeping, while William of Saint-Calais marched to and fro at the head of his episcopal troop. But threats and revilings were not the only voices that Anselm heard. The feeling of the great mass of the assembly was with him. Well might it be so. Englishmen still abiding on their own soil, Normans who on English soil were growing into Englishmen, men who had brought with them the spirit which had made the Conqueror himself pause on the day of Lillebonne, were not minded to see the assembly of the nation turned into a mere tool to carry out a despot’s will. They were not minded that the man whose cause they had come together to judge according to law should be judged without law by a time-serving cabal of the King’s creatures. English thegns, Norman knights, were wrought in another mould from the simoniacal bishops of William’s court. A spirit began to stir among them like the spirit of the old times, the spirit of the day which called back Godwine to his earldom and drove Robert of Jumièges from his archbishopric. When Anselm spoke and William of Saint-Calais stood abashed and speechless, the general feeling of the assembly went with the man who was ready to trust his cause to the event of a fair debate, against the man who could do nothing but take for granted over and over again the very question which they had come there to argue. There went through the hall that deep, low murmur which shows that the heart of a great assembly is stirring and that it will before long find some means of clearer utterance. But for a while no man dared to speak openly for fear――it is Eadmer’s word――of the tyrant.[1372] At last a spokesman was found. A knight――we should gladly know his name and race and dwelling-place――stepped forth from the crowd and knelt at the feet of Anselm,[1373] with the words, “Father and lord, through me your suppliant children pray you not to let your heart be troubled at what you have heard; remember how the blessed Job vanquished the devil on his dunghill, and avenged Adam whom he had vanquished in paradise.” Anselm received his words with a pleased and cheerful look; for he now knew that the heart of the people was with him. And his true companions rejoiced also, and grew calmer in their minds, knowing the scripture――so our guide tells us――that the voice of the people is the voice of God.[1374] While a native English heart was thus carried back to the feelings of bygone times, the voice of the stranger King, to whom God was as a personal enemy, was speaking in another tone. His hopes had utterly broken down; his loyal bishops had made promises to him which they had been unable to fulfil. When he heard how popular feeling was turning towards Anselm, he was angered beyond measure, to the very rending asunder of his soul.[1375] He turned to his bishops in wrath. “What is this? Did you not promise that you would deal with him altogether according to my will, that you would judge him, that you would condemn him?” The boasted wisdom, the very flow of speech, of their leader the Bishop of Durham now failed him; he spoke as one from whom all sense and reason had gone away.[1376] All that he could say who had so lately with curses and threats refused Anselm’s plea for an adjournment was to propose an adjournment himself. It was night; let Anselm be bidden to go to his own quarters; they, the bishops, would spend the night in thinking over what Anselm had said, and in devising an answer on the King’s behalf.[1377] The assembly was accordingly prorogued till the next morning, and Anselm went to his own quarters, uncondemned, with his cause as yet unheard and unanswered, but comforted doubtless that he had put his enemies to silence, and that he had learned that the hearts of the people were with him.

[Sidenote: March 13, 1095.]

[Sidenote: Debates in the inner council.]

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

[Sidenote: The lay nobles refuse.]

[Sidenote: Speech of the King.]

[Sidenote: Speech of Robert of Meulan.]

Tuesday morning came, and Anselm and his companions took their seats in the accustomed place,[1378] awaiting the King’s bidding. That bidding was slow in coming. The debates in the King’s closet were perplexed. The King and his inner counsellors were working hard to find some excuse for the condemnation of Anselm. The King asked the Bishop of Durham how he had passed the night;[1379] but the night thoughts of William of Saint-Calais, sleeping or waking, did not bring much help to the royal cause. He confessed that he could find no way to answer Anselm’s argument, all the more because it rested on holy writ and the authority of Saint Peter. We must always remember that the texts which Anselm quoted, and the interpretation which he put upon them, were in no way special to himself. Every one acknowledged them; William of Saint-Calais had appealed to them when it suited his purpose to do so. But the bishop who had once laid the lands of northern England waste could recommend force when reason failed. He whose dealings towards the King in whose cause he was now working had been likened to the deed of Judas was now ready to play Judas over again towards the Patriarch of all the nations beyond the sea. “My counsel,” he said in plain words, “is that he be put down by force;[1380] if he will not consent to the King’s will, let the ring and staff be taken from him, and let him be driven from the kingdom.” This short way of dealing with the Archbishop, proposed by the man who had once argued that none but the Pope could judge any bishop, suited the temper of the King; it did not suit the temper of the lay nobles. Many of them had great crimes of their own to repent of; but they could see what was right when others were to practise it. Besides Anselm was in one way their own chief; if they were great feudatories of the kingdom, so was he, the highest in rank among them. The doctrine that the first vassal of the kingdom was to be stripped of his fief at the King’s pleasure might be dangerous to earls as well as to bishops. The lay nobles refused their consent to the violent scheme of the Bishop of Durham. The King turned fiercely on them. “If this does not please you, what does please you? While I live, I will not put up with an equal in my kingdom.” Speaking confusedly, it would seem, to bishops and barons alike, he asked, “If you knew that he had such strong grounds for his cause, why did you let me begin the suit against him? Go, consult, for, by God’s face, if you do not condemn him according to my will, I will condemn you.”[1381] The common spokesman was found in him whose counsel was held to be as the oracle of God.[1382] Count Robert of Meulan spoke, and his speech was certainly a contrast to that of Bishop William, though both alike, these two special counsellors, confessed that Anselm had been too much for them. “All day long were we putting together counsels with all our might, and consulting how our counsels might hang together, and meanwhile he, thinking no evil back again, sleeps, and, when our devices are brought out, with one touch of his lips he breaks them like a spider’s web.”[1383]

[Sidenote: The King and the bishops.]

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

[Sidenote: He withdraws his protection.]

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

[Sidenote: Anselm’s answer.]

When the temporal lords, the subtlest of counsellors among them, thus failed him, the King again turned to his lords spiritual. “And you, my bishops, what do you say?” They answered, but their spokesman this time is not mentioned; Bishop William, it would seem, had tried and had failed. They were grieved that they could not satisfy the pleasure of their lord. Anselm was Primate, not only of the kingdom of England, but of Scotland, Ireland, and the neighbouring islands――lands to which William’s power most certainly did not reach at that moment. They were his suffragans;[1384] they could not with any reason judge or condemn him, even if any crime could be shown against him, and now no crime could be shown. “What then,” asks William, “can be done?” The question was answered by a suggestion of his own, one which sounds as if it really were his own, and not the device of Bishop William or Count Robert. If the bishops could not judge him, could they not withdraw from him all obedience and brotherly friendship? This, they said, if he commanded it, they could do. It is not clear by what right they could withdraw their obedience from a superior whom they could not judge; but both king and bishops were satisfied. The bishops were to go and do the business at once; when Anselm saw that he was left alone, he would be ashamed, and would groan that he had ever forsaken his lord to follow Urban.[1385] And, that they might do this the more safely, the King added that he now withdrew from Anselm all protection throughout his Empire, that he would not listen to or acknowledge him in any cause,[1386] that he would no longer hold him for his archbishop or ghostly father. Though the King’s commandment was urgent, the bishops still stayed to devise other devices against Anselm; yet found they none. At last the bishops, now taking with them the abbots, a class of whom we have not hitherto heard in the story, went out and announced to Anselm at once their own withdrawal of obedience and friendship and the King’s withdrawal of protection. The Archbishop’s answer was a mild one. They did wrong to withdraw their obedience and friendship where it was due, merely because he would not withdraw his where it was also due. But he would not deal by them as they dealt by him. He would still show them the love of a brother and a father; he would do what he could for them, as brethren and sons of the church of Canterbury, to bring them back from their error into the right way. And whereas the King withdrew from him all protection and would no longer acknowledge him as father and archbishop, he would still discharge to the King every earthly duty that lay upon him, and, so far as the King would let him,[1387] he would still do his duty for the care of the King’s soul. Only he would, for God’s service, still keep the name, power, and office, of Archbishop of Canterbury, whatever might be the oppression in outward things that it might bring upon him.

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

[Sidenote: The lay lords support Anselm.]

[Sidenote: The King’s difficulties.]

[Sidenote: Shame of the bishops.]

[Sidenote: The King further examines the bishops.]

[Sidenote: His treatment of them.]

His words were reported to the King.[1388] We are again admitted to witness the scene in the presence-chamber. The bishops had proved broken reeds; William would make one more appeal to the lay nobles. “Everything that he says,” began the King, “is against my pleasure, and no one shall be my man who chooses to be his.[1389] Wherefore, you who are the great men of my kingdom, do you, as the bishops have done, withdraw from him all faith and friendship, that he may know how little he gains by the faith which he keeps to the Apostolic See in defiance of my will.” But the lay lords were not like the bishops; one would like to know by what mouth they made their calm and logical answer. They drew a clear distinction between spiritual and temporal allegiance. The King had told them that no one could be his man and the Archbishop’s at once, and he had bidden them to withdraw their faith――clearly using the word in the feudal sense――from the Archbishop. They answered that they were not the Archbishop’s men, that they could not withdraw from him a fealty which they had never paid to him. This of course was true of the lay nobles as a body, whatever questions there might be about Tunbridge castle or any other particular fief. But they went on to say that, though Anselm was not their lord, yet he was their archbishop, that it was he who had to “govern Christianity” in the land; that, as Christian men, they could not, while in that land, decline his mastership, all the more as there was no spot of offence in him which should make the King treat him in any other way.[1390] Such an answer naturally stirred up William’s wrath; but the earls and great barons of his kingdom were a body with whom even he could not dare to trifle. He was stronger than any one among them; he might not be stronger than all of them together, backed as they now were, as the events of the day before had shown, by popular feeling. He had once beaten the Norman nobles at the head of the English people; he might not be able to beat the Norman nobles and the English people together. He therefore made an effort, and kept down any open outburst of the wrath that was in him.[1391] But the bishops were covered with confusion; they felt that all eyes were turned on them, and that their apostasy was loathed of all.[1392] This and that bishop was greeted, seemingly by this or that earl or baron, with the names usual in such cases, Judas, Pilate, and Herod.[1393] Then the King put the trembling bishops through another examination. Had they abjured all obedience to Anselm, or only such obedience as he claimed by the authority of the Roman Pontiff?[1394] The question was hard to answer. Anselm does not seem to have claimed any obedience by virtue of the authority of the Pope; he had simply refused to withdraw his own obedience from the Pope. Some therefore answered one way, some another. But it was soon plain which way the King wished them to answer. The real question in William’s mind had nothing to do with the Pope; any subtlety about acknowledging this or that Pope was a mere excuse. It was Anselm himself, as the servant of God, the man who spake of righteousness and temperance and judgement to come, that Rufus loathed and sought to crush. Those bishops therefore who said that they had abjured Anselm’s obedience utterly and without condition were at once bidden to sit down as his friends in seats of honour.[1395] Those who said that they had abjured only such obedience as was claimed by the Pope’s authority, were sent, like naughty children, into a corner of the room, to wait, as traitors and enemies, for their sentence of condemnation.[1396] But they debated among themselves in their corner, and soon found the means of winning back the royal favour. A heavy bribe, paid at once or soon after, wiped out even the crime of drawing distinctions while withdrawing their obedience from a metropolitan whom the King hated.[1397]

[Sidenote: Anselm wishes to leave England.]

[Sidenote: Perplexity of the King.]

[Sidenote: Another adjournment.]

While his suffragans were undergoing this singular experience of the strength of the secular arm, Anselm sent a message to the King. He now asked that, as all protection within the kingdom was withdrawn from him, the King would give him and his companions a safe-conduct to one of his havens, that he might go out of the realm till such a time as God might be pleased to put an end to the present distress.[1398] The King was much troubled and perplexed. He wished of all things for Anselm to leave the kingdom; but he feared the greater scandal which would arise if he left the kingdom while still in possession of the archbishopric, while he saw no way of depriving him of it.[1399] He again took counsel; but this time he did not trouble the bishops for their advice. Of them he had had enough; it was their counsel which had brought him into his present strait.[1400] He once more turned to the lay lords. They advised yet another adjournment. The Archbishop should go back to his own quarters in the King’s full peace,[1401] and should come again in the morning to hear the King’s answer to his petition. Many of the King’s immediate courtiers were troubled; they groaned at the thought of Anselm’s leaving the land.[1402] But he himself went gladly and cheerfully to his lodgings, hoping to cross the sea and to cast off all his troubles and all the burthens of the world.[1403]

[Sidenote: Wednesday, March 14, 1095.]

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

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

[Sidenote: Adjournment till May 20.]

The fourth day of the meeting came, and the way in which its business opened marks how the tide was turning in Anselm’s favour. A body of the nobles came straight from the King, asking the Primate to come to the royal presence.[1404] Anselm was tossed to and fro between the hope of leaving the kingdom and the fear of staying in it. Eadmer was eager to know what would be the end of the whole matter.[1405] They set forth and reached the castle. They were not however, at first at least, admitted to the presence-chamber, but sat in their wonted place. Before long the lay nobles, accompanied by some of the bishops, came to Anselm. They were grieved, they said, as old friends of his, that there had been any dispute between him and the King. Their object was to heal the breach, and they held that the best means towards that object was to agree to an adjournment――a truce, a peace[1406]――till a fixed day, during which time both sides should agree to do nothing which could be counted as a breach of the peace. Anselm agreed, though he said that he knew what kind of peace it would be.[1407] But it should not be said of him that he preferred his own judgement to that of others. To all that his lord the King and they might appoint in the name of God he would agree,[1408] saving only his obedience to Pope Urban. The lords approved; the King agreed; he pledged his honour to the observance of the peace till the appointed day, the octave of Pentecost. The day seems to have been chosen in order that the other business of the Whitsun Gemót might be got over before the particular case of Anselm came on. If matters had not been brought to an agreement before that time, the case was to begin again exactly at the stage in which it had left off at Rockingham.[1409] It is not clear whether, even at this last moment, William and Anselm again met face to face. But the Archbishop, by the King’s leave, went to Canterbury, knowing that the truce was but an idle and momentary veiling of hatred and of oppression that was to come.[1410]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Importance of the meeting at Rockingham.]

So it soon proved; yet the scene at Rockingham was a victory, not only for a moment but for ever. No slight step had been taken in the great march of English freedom, when Anselm, whom the King had sought to condemn without trial or indictment, went back, with his own immediate case indeed unsolved, but free, uncondemned, untried, with the voice of the people loud in his favour, while the barons of the realm declared him free from every crime. It was no mean day in English history when a king, a Norman king, the proudest and fiercest of Norman kings, was taught that there were limits to his will. It is like a foreshadowing of brighter days to come when the Primate of all England, backed by the barons and people of England――for on that day the very strangers and conquerors deserved that name――overcame the Red King and his time-serving bishops. The day of Rockingham has the fullest right to be marked with white in the kalendar in which we enter the day of Runnymede and the day of Lewes.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: William keeps faith to Anselm personally.]

[Sidenote: He oppresses his friends.]

The honour of the chivalrous King was pledged to the peace with Anselm. But the honour of the chivalrous King was construed after a truly chivalrous fashion. William doubtless thought that he was doing all that a true knight could be expected to do, if he kept himself from any personal injury to the man to whom he had personally pledged his faith. Anselm was unhurt; he was free; he went whither he would; he discharged the ordinary duties of his office undisturbed; it does not appear that he was in any way personally molested, or that any of the property of his see was taken into the King’s hands. But William knew full well how to wreak his malice upon Anselm without breaking the letter of the faith which he had pledged. He knew how to grieve Anselm’s loving heart far more deeply than it could be grieved by any wrong done to himself. The honour of the good knight was pledged to Anselm personally; it was not pledged to Anselm’s friends and tenants. Towards them he might, without breach of honour, play the greedy and merciless king. A few days after Anselm had reached Canterbury, Rufus sent to drive out of England the Archbishop’s cherished friend and counsellor the monk Baldwin of Tournay,[1411] and two of his clerks. Their only crime was standing by their master in the trial which still stood adjourned.[1412] The Archbishop’s chamberlain was seized in his master’s chamber before his master’s eyes; false charges were brought against his tenants, unjust imposts were laid upon them, and other wrongs of many kinds done to them.[1413] The church of Canterbury, it was said, began to doubt whether it had not been better off during the vacancy than now that the archbishopric was full.[1414] And all this while, heavy as William professed to deem the crime of so much as giving Urban the title of Pope, William’s own dealings with Urban were neither slight nor unfriendly.

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

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

[Sidenote: Assemblies of the year.]

The months of truce between the King and the Archbishop were, as our next chapter will show, busy months in other ways. William Rufus was all this time engaged in another dispute with a subject of a rank but little below that of the Primate, a dispute in which, at least in its early stages, the King appears to much greater advantage than he commonly does. A conspiracy against William’s throne and life was plotting; Robert of Mowbray was making ready for revolt, and his refusal to appear, when summoned, at the Easter and Whitsun assemblies of this year was the first overt act of his rebellion. We may conceive that Anselm did not attend either of those gatherings; that of Whitsuntide we know that he did not. It might be more consistent with the notion of the truce that he should keep away from the King’s presence and court till the time which had been fixed for the controversy formally to begin again. At Easter and for some time after, Anselm seems to have stayed at Canterbury, and, while he was there, the metropolitan city received an unexpected visitor, who did not allow himself to be treated as a guest.

[Sidenote: Position of Urban.]

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

[Sidenote: Its decrees.]

[Sidenote: No mention of English affairs.]

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

The year which we have reached was one of the most memorable in the history of the papacy. Urban, though not in full possession of Rome, had kept his Christmas there a year before, and his cause was decidedly in the ascendant throughout the year of the Red King’s second Norman campaign.[1415] At the beginning of the next year, after keeping Christmas in Tuscany, Urban went on into Lombardy, where the Emperor still was, though his rebel son Conrad, crowned and largely acknowledged as King of Italy, was far more powerful than his father.[1416] Almost on the same days as those which in England were given to the council of Rockingham, Urban held his great council of Piacenza, a council so great that no building could hold its numbers; the business of the assembly was therefore done, as we have seen it done in our own land, in the open fields.[1417] There the Empress Praxedes told her tale of sorrow and shame; there the cry of Eastern Christendom, set forth in the letters of the Emperor Alexios, was heard and heeded; there the heresy of Berengar, already smitten by Lanfranc,[1418] was again condemned; there a new set of anathemas were hurled at the married clergy,[1419] and a more righteous curse was denounced against the adulterous King of the French. But no mention seems to have been made of English affairs; one is a little surprized at the small amount of heed which the dispute between the King and the Archbishop seems to have drawn to itself in foreign lands. Yet, next to the ups and downs of the Emperor himself, one would have thought that no change could have so deeply affected the Roman see as the change from William the Great to William the Red. It is part of the same general difficulty which attaches to the Red King’s career, the strange fact that the worst of all crowned sinners, the foulest in life, the most open in blasphemy, the most utter scorner of the ecclesiastical power, never felt the weight of any of those ecclesiastical censures which so often lighted on offenders of a less deep dye. But if Urban was not thinking about William, William was certainly thinking about Urban. It was at this stage that we light on the curious picture which we have before seen, showing us England in a state of uncertainty, and seemingly of indifference, between the rival Pontiffs.[1420] But just now it suited William to acknowledge some Pope, because he thought that his only chance of carrying out his purposes against Anselm was by the help of a Pope. He had found that no class of men in his kingdom, except perhaps some of the bishops, would support him in any attempt to deprive the Primate of his own arbitrary will. Mere violence of course was open to him; but his Witan would not agree to any step against Anselm which made any pretence to legal form, and, with public feeling so strongly on Anselm’s side, with a dangerous rebellion brewing in the realm, the King might well shrink from mere violence towards the first of his subjects. His new device was to acknowledge a Pope, and then to try, by his usual arts, arts which Rome commonly appreciated, to get the Pope whom he acknowledged to act against the Archbishop. To see Anselm deprived, or in any way humbled, by an exercise of ecclesiastical power, would be to wound Anselm in a much tenderer point, and would therefore be a much keener satisfaction to his own spite, than anything that he could himself do with the high hand.

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

[Sidenote: Their commission.]

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

As soon therefore as William found, by the issue of the meeting at Rockingham, that Anselm could not be bent to his will, and that he could practically do nothing against Anselm, he sent two trusty clerks of his chapel and chancery on a secret and delicate errand. They were men of the usual stamp, both of whom afterwards rose to those high places of the Church which were just then commonly reserved for men of their stamp. They were Gerard, afterwards Bishop of Hereford and Archbishop of York, and William of Warelwast, afterwards Bishop of Exeter. As we read our account of their commission, it would almost seem as if they were empowered to go to Rome, to examine into the state of things, and to acknowledge whichever seemed to be the true Pope, or rather whichever Pope was most likely to suit their master’s purpose. But practically they had no choice but to acknowledge Urban. Local English feeling might indeed set little store by one who simply “hight Pope, though he nothing had of the settle at Rome;”[1421] but Urban was plainly the stronger Pope, the Pope acknowledged by all who were not in the immediate interest of the Emperor. And, what was more, Urban was the only Pope who could carry out William’s purpose. A censure from Urban would be a real blow to Anselm and to Anselm’s partisans; a censure from Clement would in their eyes go for nothing, or rather it would be reckoned as another witness in their favour. Practically Gerard and William of Warelwast went to acknowledge Urban, and to see what they could make of him. They went secretly. Anselm knew nothing of their going. Most likely nothing was known of their errand by any man beyond the innermost cabal of the King’s special counsellors.[1422]

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

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

[Sidenote: The Sicilian “Monarchy.”]

[Sidenote: Relations between England and Sicily.]

Their mission is said to have been to Rome; but the name Rome must be taken in a conventional sense for any place where the Pope might be. It is not likely that they really reached the Eternal City. In the former part of April Urban was at Cremona, and was received there with great state by the rebel King Conrad.[1423] The momentary effort of Henry which followed, his vain attempt on Nogara, only raised the position of Urban and the Great Countess yet higher.[1424] It was most likely at Cremona that the ministers from England met Urban. They were to try, if possible, to win over the Pontiff, by gifts, by promises, by any means, to send a pallium to England for the King to bestow on the Archbishop of Canterbury, without mentioning the name of Anselm. They were, it seems, to try to obtain for the King a legatine authority like that which, then or later, had been granted to the Norman princes of Sicily.[1425] A Norman king of England was surely as worthy of such powers as a Norman Great Count of Sicily; and throughout these disputes we ever and anon see the vision of the “Sicilian Monarchy,” as something at which kings of England were aiming, and which strict churchmen condemned, whether in Sicily or in England.[1426] It is even possible that Gerard and William of Warelwast may have discussed the matter with some members of the Sicilian embassy which about this time brought the daughter of Count Roger to Pisa as the bride of King Conrad.[1427] Close intercourse between the Norman princes of the great Oceanic and the great Mediterranean island is now beginning to be no small element in European politics. Some commission of this kind from the Pope was what William’s heart was set upon; he thought he had good right to it; he thought that his hope of it could not be doomed to disappointment.[1428] Did the proudest of men look forward, as an addition to royal and imperial power, to a day when he might fill a throne in the mother church of England, looking down on the patriarchal chair, as the empty thrones of later Williams still look down on the lowlier metropolitan seats of Palermo and Monreale?

[Sidenote: Gerard and William come back,]

[Sidenote: and bring Cardinal Walter as Legate.]

[Sidenote: He brings a pallium.]

[Sidenote: Secrecy of his errand.]

[Sidenote: His interview with the King.]

[Sidenote: William acknowledges Urban.]

[Sidenote: Walter refuses to depose Anselm.]

The dates show that the journeys must have been hasty, and that the business was got through with all speed. The two clerks could not have left England before the middle of March, and May was not far advanced before they were in England again, and a papal Legate with them. This was the Cardinal Walter, Bishop of Albano, whose good life is witnessed by our own Chronicler.[1429] His Italian subtlety showed itself quite equal to the work of outwitting the King and his counsellors whenever he chose; but his Roman greediness could not always withstand their bribes. He came, bringing with him a pallium, but the whole affair was, by the King’s orders, shrouded in the deepest mystery. Not a word was said about the pallium; indeed the Legate was not allowed to have any private discourse with any man. His two keepers, Gerard and William, watched him carefully; they passed in silence through Canterbury, and took care not to meet the Archbishop.[1430] A few days before Whitsuntide, Cardinal Walter had an interview with the King. He spoke so that William understood him to be willing to abet all his purposes. Some special privilege was granted to William, which amounted at the least to this, that no legate should be sent into England but one of the King’s own choosing.[1431] Not a word did Cardinal Walter say on behalf of Anselm, not a word that could make peace between him and the King, not a word that could give Anselm any comfort among all the troubles that he was enduring on behalf of the Christian religion and of the authority of the Holy See.[1432] Many who had looked for great good from the Legate’s coming began to murmur, and to say, as Englishmen had learned to say already and as they had often to say again, that at Rome gold went for more than righteousness.[1433] To King William everything seemed to be going as he wished it to go. Fully satisfied, he put out a proclamation that throughout his Empire――through the whole patriarchate of Anselm――Urban should be acknowledged as Pope and that obedience should be yielded to him as the successor of Saint Peter.[1434] Walter had now gained his point; William fancied that he had gained his. He at once asked that Anselm might be deprived of his archbishopric by the authority of the Pope whom he had just acknowledged. He offered a vast yearly payment to the Roman See, if the Cardinal would only serve his turn in this matter.[1435] But Walter stood firm; he had done the work for which he had come; England was under the obedience of Urban. And, much as gold might count for at Rome, neither the Pope nor his Legate had sunk to the infamy of taking money to oppress an innocent man and a faithful adherent. Anselm was indeed treated by them as Englishmen, whether by race, by birth, or by adoption, whether Edmund, Thomas, or Anselm, commonly were treated by Popes. He was made a tool of, and he got no effectual support; but Urban was not prepared for such active wickedness as the Red King asked of him.

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

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

William was now thoroughly beaten at his own weapons. The craft and subtlety of Randolf Flambard, of William of Saint-Calais, of the Achitophel of Meulan himself, had proved of no strength before the sharper wit of Walter of Albano. The King complained with good right that he had gained nothing by acknowledging Urban.[1436] In truth he had lost a great deal. He had lost every decent excuse for any further attack upon Anselm. The whole complaint against Anselm was that he had acknowledged Urban. But the King had now himself acknowledged Urban, and he could not go on persecuting Anselm for simply forestalling his own act. In legal technicality doubtless, if it was a crime to acknowledge Urban when the King had not yet acknowledged him, that crime was not purged by the King’s later acknowledgement of him. Rufus himself might have been shameless enough to press so pettifogging a point; but he had learned at Rockingham that no man in the land, save perhaps a few servile bishops, would support him in so doing. There was nothing to be done but for William to make up his quarrel with Anselm, to make it up, that is, as far as appearances went, to make it up till another opportunity for a quarrel could be found. But till such opportunity was found, Anselm must be openly and formally received into the King’s favour.[1437] The thing had to be done; only if some money could be squeezed out of Anselm in the process of doing it, the chivalrous King would be the better pleased.

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Anselm and William reconciled.]

[Sidenote: Their friendly discourse.]

The feast of Pentecost came, and with it the second of the assemblies at which the rebellious Earl of Northumberland refused to show himself. The King and his Witan were at Windsor; the Archbishop was keeping the feast at his manor of Mortlake. On the octave he was himself, according to the truce made at Rockingham, to appear at Windsor. In the course of the Whitsun-week a message was brought to him from the King, bidding him go to Hayes, another of his manors nearer to Windsor, in order that messages might more easily go to and fro between him and the King.[1438] He went, and Eadmer went with him. The next day nearly all the bishops came to him; some of them, it will be remembered, had kept the King’s favour throughout, and the others who had lost it had bought it again. Their object was to try to persuade the Archbishop to give money to the King for the restoration of his favour. Anselm answered stoutly, as before, that he would not so dishonour his lord as to treat his friendship as something which could be bought and sold.[1439] He would faithfully discharge every temporal duty to his lord, on the one condition of being allowed to keep his obedience to Pope Urban. If that was not allowed, he would again ask for a safe-conduct to leave the kingdom. They then told him――the secret must have been still kept, though Urban was acknowledged――that the Bishop of Albano had brought a pallium from the Pope; they did not scruple to add that he had, at the King’s request, brought it for Anselm.[1440] Would not the Archbishop pay something for so great a benefit?[1441] Would he not at least, now that the pallium had come to him instead of his going for the pallium, pay the sum which the journey to Rome would otherwise have cost him?[1442] Anselm would pay nothing. The King had thus to make the best of a bad bargain. As Anselm would not pay for either friendship or pallium, there was nothing to be done but to let him have both friendship and pallium without paying. The King once more consulted his lay nobles, and, by their advice,[1443] he restored Anselm to his full favour, he cancelled all former causes of quarrel, he received him as archbishop and ghostly father, and gave him the fullest licence to exercise his office throughout the realm. One condition only seems to have been made; Anselm was to promise that he would observe the laws and customs of the realm and would defend them against all men.[1444] The promise was made, but with the express or implied reservation of duty to God.[1445] That was indeed the reservation which William most hated; but in his present frame of mind he may have brought himself to consent to it. Anselm came to Windsor, and was admitted by the King to his most familiar converse in the sight of the lords and of the whole multitude that had come together.[1446] Cardinal Walter came in at the lucky moment, and was edified by the sight. He quoted the scripture, “Behold, how good and joyful it is brethren to dwell together in unity.” He sat down beside the friendly pair; he quoted other scriptures, and expressed his sorrow that he himself had not had any hand in the good work of bringing them together.

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

[Sidenote: He refuses.]

[Sidenote: Assent of the Assembly.]

The wild bull and the feeble sheep thus seemed for a moment to pull together as friendly yokefellows. But a Norman king did not, in his character of wild bull, any more than in his character of lion, altogether cast aside his other character of fox. He, or Count Robert for him, had one shift left. Or it might almost seem that it was not the King’s own shift, but merely the device of flatterers who wished to win the royal favour by proposing it. Would not the Archbishop, for the honour of the King’s majesty, take the pallium from the King’s hand?[1447] Anselm had made no objection to receiving the staff from the King’s hand, for such was the ancient custom of England. But with the pallium the King had nothing to do; it belonged wholly to the authority of Saint Peter and his successor.[1448] Anselm therefore refused to take the pallium from the King. The refusal was so clearly according to all precedent, the proposal the other way was such a manifest novelty, that nothing more was said about the matter. It was settled that, on a fixed day, the pallium should be laid on the altar of Christ in the metropolitan church, and that Anselm should take it thence, as from the hand of Saint Peter himself.[1449] The expression used is remarkable, as showing that the popular character of these assemblies had not utterly died out. “The whole multitude agreed.”[1450] They agreed most likely by a shout of Yea, Yea, rather than by any more formal vote; but in any case it was that voice of the people which Eadmer at least knew to be the voice of God.

[Sidenote: Anselm absolves two repentant bishops.]

[Sidenote: Robert and Osmund.]

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

The Archbishop and his faithful comrade now set out for Canterbury. But he was called on to do some archiepiscopal acts by the way. They had hardly left Windsor when two bishops came to express their repentance for the crime of denying their metropolitan at Rockingham.[1451] These were the ritualist Osmund of Salisbury, and Robert of Hereford, the friend of Wulfstan. It was believed that, besides the visit at the moment of his departure, the saint of Worcester had again appeared to Bishop Robert. He had warned him of divers faults in his life and in the administration of his diocese, giving him however good hopes if he mended his ways.[1452] Notwithstanding this voice from the dead, Robert had consented to the counsel and deed of them at Rockingham; he now came with Osmund to ask pardon. Anselm turned into a little church by the wayside, and gave them absolution. Then and there too he did another act of archiepiscopal clemency to a more distant suffragan. Wilfrith Bishop of Saint David’s had been――we are not told when――suspended for some fault――we are not told what. Anselm now restored him to his episcopal office.[1453]

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

The Archbishop went on to Canterbury, and there awaited the coming of the Roman Cardinal. On the appointed day, a Sunday in June, Bishop Walter came. He was met with all worship by the convents of the two monasteries, Christ Church and Saint Augustine’s, by a great body of clergy, and by a vast crowd of layfolk of both sexes. The Bishop of Albano bore the precious gift in a silver casket. As they drew near to Christ Church, Anselm, with bare feet, but in the full dress of his office, supported on either side by the suffragans who had come to the ceremony, met the procession. The pallium was laid on the altar; it was taken thence by the hand of Anselm, and reverently kissed by those who were near him.[1454] The Archbishop was then clothed with his new badge of honour; nothing was now wanting to his position. Already invested, consecrated, clothed with full temporal and spiritual powers within his own province by the King and the bishops of England, he now received the solemn recognition of the rest of the Western Church, in the person of its chief Pontiff.[1455] Anselm and England were again in full fellowship with the lawful occupier of the apostolic throne. Nothing now was wanting. The Archbishop, clad in his pallium, sang the mass. But, as at his consecration, men found an evil omen in part of the words of the service. The gospel of the day told of the man who made a great supper and bade many, but whose unthankful guests began to make excuse.[1456]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Death of Bishop Robert of Hereford. June 26, 1095.]

[Sidenote: The Legate stays in England.]

[Sidenote: Objects of Walter’s mission.]

[Sidenote: His dealings with Anselm.]

The reception of the pallium by Anselm was the last great ceremony done in the metropolitan church during this his first primacy; it was one of the very few great ceremonies done in the unaltered church of Lanfranc. And, if we are to understand that all the suffragans of Canterbury were present, one of them was soon taken away. Not many days after Anselm first put on the pallium, his late penitent, Bishop Robert of Hereford, left the world, to join for ever, as the charity of Worcester believed, the saintly friend whom he had twice wonderfully seen.[1457] Cardinal Walter meanwhile stayed in England during the greater part of that year, and according to some accounts for some months of the year which followed. Notwithstanding the good life for which the Chronicler gives him credit, he seems, like other Romans, to have been open to the King’s special means of influence, and a foreign writer who had good means of knowing seems to speak of his general conduct in England as having greatly tended to bring his office into discredit.[1458] His commission from Pope Urban was a large one. Among other things, he had to look to the better payment of the Romescot,[1459] which, it will be remembered, had not always flowed regularly into the papal coffers even in the days of the Conqueror,[1460] and which of course did not flow at all in the days when no Pope was acknowledged in England. He had also to enquire generally into the state of things in England, and to consult with Anselm as to the means of reform. It is plain however from most independent testimonies that the Archbishop and the Cardinal were by no means suited to work together. Two letters from Anselm to Walter throw a singular light on some points in the story which are not recorded in any narrative. The personal intercourse of the two prelates was interfered with by a cause which we should hardly have looked for, namely, the occupation of Anselm in the duties of a military command. But it is plain that Anselm did not look for much good from any special intercourse between himself and the Cardinal. He writes that private conferences between the two were of no use; they could do nothing without the King’s consent and help.[1461] But Anselm seems to have taken a more constitutional view of the way by which the King’s consent and help was to be got than the Roman Legate was likely to take. Anselm says that they would meet to no purpose, except when the King, the bishops, and the nobles, were all near to be referred to.[1462] This reads very much as if Anselm was aware of some underhand practices between the King and the Legate, and had no mind to meet the emissary of Rome except when he himself would have the constitutional voice of the nation to back him. But as things stood at the moment, circumstances seem to have hindered the meeting for which Walter seems to have wished and Anselm not to have wished.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The King’s northern march.]

[Sidenote: Anselm entrusted with the defence of Canterbury.]

[Sidenote: Letters between Anselm and Walter.]

[Sidenote: Position of the bishops.]

[Sidenote: The bishops object to Anselm’s position.]

We are now in the thick of the revolt of Earl Robert of Mowbray, the tale of which will be told in full in the next chapter. The King was on his march northward to put down the revolt. King, Archbishop, and Legate, had parted as if the Legate at least was not to see either of the other two again in England.[1463] At such a time the desired conference could not be held; and Anselm himself was bound for the time within a very narrow local range. While the King marched on towards Northumberland, the Archbishop was entrusted with the care of Canterbury, perhaps of Kent generally, against an expected Norman invasion.[1464] If Anselm’s conscience would have allowed him to take part in actual warfare, we can hardly fancy that he would have proved a captain to the liking of the Red King. Yet it does sometimes happen that a simple sense of duty will carry a man with credit through business the most opposite to his own temper and habits. It is more likely however that the duty really laid upon Anselm, as upon Wulfstan at Worcester, was rather to keep the minds of the King’s forces up to the mark by stirring exhortations, while the task of personally fighting and personally commanding was given to others. Still he was, both by the King’s word of mouth and by his writ and seal, entrusted with the care of the district,[1465] and he deemed it his duty not to leave Canterbury, except to go to any point that might be immediately threatened.[1466] Why Walter could not have come to Canterbury is not clear. Anyhow personal communication was hindered, and to that hindrance we owe a letter which gives us a further insight into the almost incredible shamelessness of the King’s courtly bishops. Walter, it is plain, had been rebuking them for their conduct towards Anselm. They were open to ecclesiastical censure for denying their archbishop, and he blames Anselm himself for too great lenity towards them.[1467] Anselm pleads that they had returned to him and had promised obedience for the future.[1468] The others, it would seem, had followed the example of the Bishops of Hereford and Salisbury. But it comes out in the letter that some of these undutiful suffragans had taken up the strangest and most self-condemning line of defence. These men, cringing slaves of the King, who had carried every mean and insulting message from the King to the Primate, who had laid down the rule that neither bishops nor other men had anything to do but to follow the King’s will in all things, were not ashamed to plead that Anselm was no lawful archbishop, that he could claim no duty from them, simply because he had done what they had themselves done in a far greater degree. These faithful servants of King William were not ashamed to urge that their master and his kingdom had been in a state of schism, cut off from the Catholic Church and its lawful head, and that Anselm had been a partaker in the schism. He had received investiture from a schismatic King; he had done homage to that schismatic King, and had received consecration from schismatic bishops. In other words, they plead that Anselm is no lawful archbishop, because he had been consecrated by themselves.

[Sidenote: His answer.]

[Sidenote: Question about the monks of Christ Church.]

[Sidenote: Anselm and his tenants.]