Chapter IV: The Primacy of Anselm and the Acquisition of Normandy.903 (10)

[Sidenote: The Witenagemót;]

[Sidenote: its constitution becomes gradually less popular.]

[Sidenote: Lessened freedom of speech.]

As for the cases themselves and the tribunals before which they were heard, we must always remember that our reports, though very full, are not official. Their authors therefore use technical or non-technical language at pleasure. They assume familiarity with the nature of the court and its mode of procedure; they do not stop to explain many things which we should be very glad if they had stopped to explain. But it is clear that the nature of the proceedings was not exactly the same in the three cases. And it is singular that, in point of mere procedure, there seems more likeness between the case of Anselm and the case of Thomas than there is between either and the case of William of Saint-Calais. William of Saint-Calais and Thomas were both of them, in the strictest sense, summoned before a court to answer a charge. The charges were indeed of quite different kinds in the two cases. William of Saint-Calais was charged with high treason. Thomas, besides a number of demands about money, was charged only with failing to appear in the King’s court in answer to an earlier summons. Anselm, on the other hand, cannot be said to have been really charged with anything, though the King and his party tried to treat him as though he had been. The assembly at Rockingham was gathered at Anselm’s own request, to inform him on a point of law. The King and his bishops tried to treat Anselm as a criminal; but they found that the general feeling of the assembly would not allow them to do so. At Winchester again, Anselm was not summoned to answer any charge, for the charge about the troops in the Welsh war had been dropped at Windsor. The charges, such as they are, which are brought against him turn up as it were casually in the course of the proceedings. Yet the order of things seems much the same in the case of Anselm and in the case of Thomas, while in the case of William of Saint-Calais it seems to be different. In the case of William of Saint-Calais everything is done in the King’s presence. The Bishop himself has more than once to leave the place of meeting, while particular points are discussed; but there is not that endless going to and fro which there is in the other two cases. In the case of Thomas, as in the case of Anselm, we see plainly the inner room where the King sits with his immediate counsellors, while the Archbishop waits in an outer place with the general body of the assembly. At Northampton we see the architectural arrangement more clearly than either at Rockingham or at Winchester. Thomas enters the great hall, and goes no further, while the King’s inner council is held in the solar.[1627] It is possible, as indeed I have already hinted,[1628] that there was a difference in the nature of the assembly in the case of William of Saint-Calais and in the two cases of Anselm and Thomas. We must remember that in the reign of William Rufus the judicial and administrative system was still only forming itself, and that many things were then vague and irregular, both in fact and in name, which had taken a definite shape in the time of Henry the Second. Between the case of Anselm and the case of Thomas came the justiciarship of Roger of Salisbury and the chancellorship of Thomas himself. I am inclined to think that, at Rockingham, at Winchester, at Northampton, the assembly was strictly the great assembly of the nation, the ancient Witenagemót, with such changes in its working as had taken place between the days of the Confessor and the days of William Rufus, and again between the days of William Rufus and the days of Henry the Second. Each of these periods of change would of course do something towards taking away from the old popular character of the assembly. At Rockingham that popular character is by no means lost. We are not told where the line, if any, was drawn; but a multitude of monks, clerks, and laymen were there.[1629] At Northampton we hear of no class below the lesser barons; and they, with the sheriffs, wait in the outer hall, till they are specially summoned to the King’s presence. At Rockingham too and at Winchester there seems much greater freedom of speech than there is at Northampton. The whole assembly shouts and cheers as it pleases, and a simple knight steps forth to speak and to speak boldly.[1630] At Northampton, as at Rockingham and at Winchester, the Archbishop is allowed the company of his personal followers. William Fitz-Stephen and Herbert of Bosham sit at the feet of Thomas, as Eadmer and Baldwin sit at the feet of Anselm. But at Northampton the disciples are roughly checked in speaking to their master, in a way of which there is no sign in the earlier assemblies. At Rockingham and Winchester again, though the Archbishop stays for the most part outside in the hall, yet he more than once goes unbidden into the presence-chamber, and is even followed thither by his faithful monks. At Northampton Thomas is never admitted to the King’s presence, and no one seems to go into the inner room who is not specially summoned. This may be merely because, as is likely enough, strictness of rule, form, and etiquette had greatly advanced between William Rufus and Henry the Second. Or it may have been because Thomas was strictly summoned to answer a charge, while Anselm was really under no charge at all, but came as a member of the assembly.

[Sidenote: The inner and outer council;]

[Sidenote: foreshadowing of lords and commons.]

[Sidenote: Thomas tried before the Witan;]

[Sidenote: William before the _Theningmannagemót_.]

Another point here arises. I cannot but think that in these great assemblies, consisting of an inner and an outer body, we must see the same kind of distinction which we saw on the great day of Salisbury between the Witan and the landsitting men. That is, I see in the inner and outer bodies the foreshadowing of Lords and Commons. To this day there is one chamber in which the King’s throne is set; there is another chamber whose occupants do not enter the presence of that throne, except by special summons. I am inclined therefore to see, both in the case of Anselm and in the case of Thomas, a true gathering of the Witan of the realm. Thomas comes, like Strafford or Hastings, to answer a charge before the Court of our Lord the King in Parliament,[1631] that court, which from an assembly of the whole nation, gradually shrank up into an assembly of the present peerage. In the case of Anselm I see the same body acting, not strictly as a court, but rather as the great inquest of the nation, but at the same time fluctuating somewhat, as was but natural in that age, between its judicial and its legislative functions. But in the tribunal which sat on William of Saint-Calais I am, as I have already said, inclined to see, not the _Mickle Gemót_ of the whole nation, but rather the King’s court in a narrower sense, the representative of the ancient _Theningmannagemót_, the more strictly official body.[1632] Here we have no division of chambers; the proceedings are strictly those of a court trying a charge, and the King, as chief judge, is present throughout.

[Sidenote: Estimate of the three cases.]

[Sidenote: Behaviour of Rufus;]

[Sidenote: of Henry the Second.]

[Sidenote: Comparison with Henry the First.]

As for the matter of the three cases, the trial of William of Saint-Calais was in itself the perfectly fair trial of a rebel who, in the end, after the custom of the age, came off very lightly for his rebellion. There really seems nothing to blame William Rufus for in that matter――William Rufus, that is, still largely guided by Lanfranc――except some characteristic pettinesses just towards the end of the story.[1633] Towards Anselm William appears――save under one or two momentary touches of better feeling――simply as the power of evil striving, by whatever means, to crush the power of good. He seems none the less so, even when on particular points his own case is technically right. Henry the Second, acting honestly for the good of his kingdom, both technically and morally right in his main quarrel, stoops to the base and foolish course of trying to crush his adversary by a crowd of charges in which the King seems to have been both morally and technically wrong, and which certainly would never have been brought if the Archbishop had not given offence on other grounds. William Rufus again, and Henry the Second also, each forsook his own position by calling in, when it suited their momentary purposes, the very power which their main position bade them to control and to keep out of their kingdom. Not so the great king who came between them. The Lion of Justice knew, and he alone in those days seems to have known, how to carry on a controversy of principle, without ever forsaking his own position, without ever losing his temper or lowering his dignity, without any breach of personal respect and friendship towards the holy man whom his kingly office made it his duty to withstand.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Effect on Anselm of his foreign sojourn.]

[Sidenote: Change in him.]

The three years of Anselm’s first sojourn beyond sea concern us for the most part only indirectly. Of their most important aspect, as concerns us, I have spoken elsewhere,[1634] and we shall again see their fruit before the present work is ended. In his journeyings to Lyons, to Rome, to Bari, Anselm learned a new doctrine which he had never found out either at Bec or at Canterbury. It was not for his good that he, who had, like the Primates who had gone before him, received his staff from the King’s hands, and placed his own hands in homage between them, should hear the anathema pronounced against the prince who should bestow or the clerk who should receive any ecclesiastical benefice in such sort as no prince had scrupled to give them, as no clerk had scrupled to receive them, in the days of King Eadward and in the days of King William.[1635] When Anselm came back to England, he came, as we shall see, the same Anselm as of old in every personal quality, in every personal virtue. But in all things which touched the relations of popes, kings, and bishops, he came back another man.

[Sidenote: His journey.]

[Sidenote: Alleged scheme of Odo Duke of Burgundy [1078-1102] against Anselm.]

[Sidenote: Anselm at Rome.]

[Sidenote: Council of Lateran.]

But in the course of Anselm’s adventures, in his foreign journeys, there are details here and there which no Englishman can read without interest. We come across constant signs of the place which England and her Primate held in the minds of men of other lands. We read how no less a prince than Odo Duke of Burgundy, already a crusader in Spain and afterwards a crusader in Palestine, was tempted by the report of the wealth of the great English see to sink into a common robber, and to set forth for the purpose of plundering the Primate as he passed through his land. We read how he was turned from his purpose, when he saw the white hair, the gentle and venerable look, of the Archbishop, the look which won all hearts. Instead of harming him, Odo received his kiss and sought his blessing, and sent him under a safe guard to the borders of his duchy.[1636] We read how the likeness of that venerable face had been painted by cunning limners in the interest of Clement, that the robbers who were sent to seize the faithful follower of Urban might better know their intended victim. We read with some national pride how, at his first interview with Urban, when Anselm bowed himself at the Pontiff’s feet, he was raised, received to his kiss, and seated by him as one of equal rank, the Pope and Patriarch of another world. We read how, in the great gathering in the head church of the city and of the world, when no man knew what was the fitting place in a Roman council for a guest such as none had ever seen before, the English Archbishop was placed at the papal bidding in a seat of special honour. Anselm took his seat in that apse which was spared when papal barbarism defaced the long arcades of Constantine, when the patriarchal throne of the world was cast forth as an useless thing,[1637] but which the more relentless havoc of our own day, eager, it would seem, to get rid of all that is older than the dogmas of modern Rome, has ruthlessly swept away. We read how visitors and pilgrims from England bowed to kiss the feet of Anselm, as they would have kissed those of Urban himself, and how the humble saint ever refused such unbecoming worship.[1638] And we are most touched of all to hear how, among all these honours, Anselm was commonly spoken of in Rome, not by his name, not by the titles of his office, but simply as “the holy man.”[1639] At Rome, that name might have a special meaning. It was well deserved by the one suitor at the Roman throne who abstained from the use of Rome’s most convincing argument.

[Sidenote: Council of Bari.]

[Sidenote: Anselm pleads for Rufus.]

[Sidenote: The cope of Beneventum.]

[Sidenote: Dealings between Canterbury and Beneventum.]

[Sidenote: Emma buys the arm of Saint Bartholomew.]

[Sidenote: Æthelnoth’s gift of the cope.]

[Sidenote: Eadmer recognises the cope.]

But in the record of Anselm’s wanderings there is one tale which comes home more than any other to the hearts of Englishmen, a tale which carries us back, if not strictly to the days of English freedom, at least to the days when we had a conqueror whom we had made our own. The fathers are gathered at Bari, in the great minster of the Lykian Nicolas, where the arts of northern and southern Christendom, the massiveness of the Norman, the finer grace of the Greek, are so strangely blended in the pile which was then fresh from the craftsman’s hand. There, in his humility, the pilgrim from Canterbury takes to himself a modest place amongst the other bishops, with the faithful Eadmer sitting at his feet.[1640] The Pope calls on his father and master, Anselm Archbishop of the English, to arise and speak. There, in the city so lately torn away from Eastern Christendom, Anselm is bidden to justify the change which Latin theology had made in that creed of the East which changeth not. The Pope harangues on the sufferings of the Church in various lands, and, above all, on the evil deeds of the tyrant of England. The assembled fathers agree with one voice that the sword of Peter must be drawn, and that such a sinner must be smitten in the face of the whole world. Then Anselm kneels at the feet of Urban, and craves that no such blow may be dealt on the man who had so deeply wronged him.[1641] But, while these high debates were going on, the curious eye of Eadmer had lighted on an object which spoke straight to his heart as an Englishman and a monk of Christ Church. Among the assembled prelates the Archbishop of Beneventum appeared clad in a cope of surpassing richness. Eadmer knew at once whence it came; he knew that it had once been one of the glories of Canterbury, worn by Primates of England before England had bowed either to the Norman or to the Dane. Eadmer, brought up from his childhood in the cloister of Christ Church, had been taught as a boy by aged monks who could remember the days of Cnut and Emma. Those elders of the house, Eadwig and Blæcman and Farman, had told him how in those days there had been a mighty famine in the land of Apulia, how the then Archbishop of Beneventum had travelled through foreign lands to seek help for his starving flock, how he brought with him a precious relic, the arm of the apostle Bartholomew, and how, having passed through Italy and Gaul, he was led to cross the sea by the fame of the wealth of England and of the piety and bounty of Emma its Lady. She gave him plenteous gifts for his people, and he asked whether she would not give yet more as the price of the precious relic. The genuineness of the treasure was solemnly sworn to;[1642] a great price was paid for it by the Lady, and, by the special order of King Cnut, it was added as a precious gift to the treasures of the metropolitan church. For in those days, says Eadmer, it was the manner of the English to set the patronage of the saints before all the wealth of this world. The Archbishop of Beneventum went back, loaded with the alms of England, and bearing with him, among other gifts from his brother Primate Æthelnoth, this very cope richly embroidered with gold with all the skill of English hands. Eadmer, taught by the tradition of his elders, knew the vestment as he saw it in that far land on the shoulders of the successor of the prelate who had come to our island for help in his day of need. He saw it with joy; he pointed it out to Father Anselm, and, feigning ignorance, he asked the Beneventan Archbishop the history of the splendid cope which he wore. He was pleased to find that the tradition of Beneventum was the same as the tradition of Canterbury.[1643] Now that we have made our way into other times and other lands, it is pleasing to look back for a moment, with our faithful Eadmer, to days when England still was England, even though she had already learned to bow to a foreign King and a foreign Lady.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Position of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Possible effect of excommunication on him.]

[Sidenote: Papal excommunications not yet despised.]

[Sidenote: The Emperor Henry.]

[Sidenote: Philip of France.]

[Sidenote: Boleslaus of Poland. 1079.]

[Sidenote: The case of Harold.]

[Sidenote: Probable effect of an excommunication on the people.]

More important in a general view than the details of Anselm’s journey are the negotiations which went on during this time between William, Urban, and Anselm. The Red King’s day of grace was now over. The last touch of feeling recorded of him is when he bowed his head to receive Anselm’s blessing. Henceforth he stands out, in a more marked way than ever, in the character which distinguishes him from other kings and from other men. We have had evil kings before and after him; but we have had none other who openly chose evil to be his good, none other who declared himself in plain words to be the personal enemy of the Almighty. Yet, as we have already noticed, the bolts of the Church never lighted on the head of this worst of royal sinners. We have just seen how once at least he was spared by the merciful intercession of his own victim. We are tempted to stop and think how a formal excommunication would have worked on such an one as William Rufus had now become. We must remember that the weight of papal excommunications of princes had not yet been lowered, as it came to be lowered afterwards, either by their frequency or by their manifest injustice. The cases which were then fresh in men’s minds were all striking and weighty. The excommunication of the Emperor was, from the papal point of view, a natural stage of the great struggle which was still raging. Philip of France had been excommunicated for a moral offence which seemed the darker because it involved the mockery of an ecclesiastical sacrament. And no man could wonder or blame when, in the days of Hildebrand, Boleslaus of Poland was put out of the communion of the faithful for slaying with his own hands before the altar the bishop who had rebuked him for his sins.[1644] The case most akin to the wanton excommunications of later times had been when Alexander the Second in form, when Hildebrand in truth, had denounced Harold without a hearing for no crime but that of accepting the crown which his people gave him. But men are so apt to judge by results that the fall of Harold and of England may by this time, even among Englishmen, have begun to be looked on as a witness to the power of the Church’s thunders. In the days of Rufus a papal excommunication was still a real and fearful thing at which men stood aghast. It might not have turned the heart of Rufus; it might even have hardened his heart yet further. But among his people, even among his own courtiers, the effect would doubtless have been such that he must in the end, like Philip, have formally given way. As it was, the bolt never fell; the hand of Anselm stopped it once; other causes, as we shall soon see, stopped it afterwards. And, instead of the formal excommunication of Rome, there came that more striking excommunication by the voice of the English people, when, by a common instinct, they declared William the Red to have no true part in that communion of the faithful from which he had never been formally cut off.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Anselm writes to the Pope from Lyons.]

[Sidenote: His new tone.]

[Sidenote: Anselm at Rome.]

[Sidenote: Letters to the King.]

[Sidenote: His reception of the letters.]

The negotiations, if we may so call them, which followed the departure of Anselm may be looked on as beginning with a letter written by Anselm to the Pope from Lyons.[1645] The Archbishop, once out of England, seems to take up a new tone. His language with regard to the King’s doings is still singularly mild;[1646] but he now begins to speak, not only of God and right, but of the canons of the Church and the authority of the Pope, as something to which the arbitrary customs of England must give way.[1647] To those customs he cannot agree without perilling his own soul and the souls of his successors. He comes to the Apostolic See for help and counsel.[1648] When he had reached Rome, he again set forth his case more fully, as it had been set forth in the letter from Lyons. Letters both from Anselm and from the Pope were sent to the King by the same messenger, letters which unluckily are not preserved. The summary of the papal letter seems to point to a lofty tone on the part of the Pontiff. He moves, he exhorts, he at last commands, King William, to leave the goods of the Archbishop free, and to restore everything to him.[1649] Anselm’s own letter was doubtless in a milder strain. The messenger came back, to find both Urban and Anselm again at Rome after the synod at Bari. The letter from Urban had been received, though ungraciously; the letter from Anselm was sent back. As soon as the King knew that the bearer was a man of the Archbishop’s, he had sworn by the face of Lucca that, unless the messenger speedily got him away out of his lands, he would have his eyes torn out without fail.[1650]

[Sidenote: Mission of William of Warelwast.]

[Sidenote: William on the continent. November, 1097-April, 1099.]

[Sidenote: Affairs of Southern Italy.]

[Sidenote: Siege of Capua.]

[Sidenote: Anselm at Schiavia.]

[Sidenote: He writes “Cur Deus Homo.”]

[Sidenote: Anselm and Urban before Capua.]

[Sidenote: Anselm and the Saracens.]

[Sidenote: Count Roger forbids conversions.]

The Pope however could hardly be left wholly without some answer, however scornfully William might deal with the letter of his own subject. But the answer was not speedy in coming. Its bearer was the trusty clerk William of Warelwast, of whom we have already heard more than once. The King’s business did not now call for the same haste as it had done when the same man was sent to find out who was the true Pope.[1651] Much happened before he came. Amongst other things, not a few travellers came from England and Normandy, bringing with them fresh and fresh reports of the evil doings of the King, some of which we have already heard of. William was now in Normandy. He crossed at Martinmas,[1652] and spent the whole of the next year in the wars of France and Maine. He did not come back to England till the Easter of the year following that.[1653] It was now that he played at Rouen the part of a missionary of the creed of Moses.[1654] But he kept his eye upon England also; for to this time is assigned the story of the fifty Englishmen who so enraged the blaspheming King by proving their innocence by the ordeal.[1655] Nor was it merely rumours of William’s doings at home which found their way into Italy from Normandy and England. While the King was devising his answer to the Pope, his emissaries were busy in other parts of the peninsula. The affairs of the Normans in their two great settlements are always joining in one stream. While Bohemund and Tancred were on their Eastern march, the reigning princes of their house, Roger of Apulia and Roger of Sicily, were carrying on their schemes of advancement west of Hadria. Their armies now lay before Capua. Meanwhile Anselm had withdrawn with John Abbot of Telesia to seek quiet in a town of the Abbot’s on the upper Vulturnus, whose name of Schiavia may suggest some ethnological questions.[1656] Our guide specially marks that this journey was a journey into Samnium; he may not have fully taken in how truly Telesia was the heart of Samnium, alike in the days of the Pontius of the Caudine Forks and in the days of the Pontius of the Colline Gate.[1657] Here, in his Samnite retreat, Anselm was moulding the theology of all later times by his treatise which told why God became Man.[1658] Meanwhile William of England, at war with righteousness in all its forms, held Helias in his prison at Bayeux,[1659] and plotted against Anselm in his hermitage at Schiavia. When Duke Roger’s army was so near, the master of Normandy deemed that something might be done for his purpose by Norman arms or Norman craft. He sent letters――his letters could go speedily when speed was needed――to stir up Duke Roger to do some mischief to the man whom he hated.[1660] The plot was in vain. Anselm was invited to the Duke’s camp; he was received there with all honour during a sojourn of some time, as he was at every other point of the Duke’s dominions to which he went.[1661] The Pope and Anselm, patriarchs of two worlds, were Duke Roger’s guests at the same time. But only the rich dared to present themselves in the presence of the Pope of the mainland, while the shepherd of the nations beyond the sea welcomed men of all kinds lovingly.[1662] The very Saracens whom Count Roger had brought from Sicily to the help of his nephew pressed to visit the holy man of another faith, to be received and fed at his cost, to kiss his hands, and to cover him with prayers and blessings. Not a few of them were even ready to embrace Anselm’s creed;[1663] but proselytism among his soldiers formed no part of the policy of the conqueror of Sicily. Count Roger was ready enough to extend the territorial bounds of Christendom by his sword; but he found, as his great-grandson found after him, that in war no followers were to be trusted like the misbelievers. Once enlisted in his service, they had no motive to forsake him for any other Christian leader, while they had no hope of restoring the supremacy of their own faith. With them too neither Clement nor Urban, nor any votary of Clement or Urban, had any weight. So useful a class of warriors was not to be lessened in number. Whatever might be his missionary zeal at Palermo or Syracuse, Count Roger allowed no conversions in the camp before Capua. The men who were ready to hearken to Anselm’s teaching had to turn away at the bidding of their temporal lord, and the father of Christian theology was forbidden the rare glory of winning willing proselytes to the Christian faith among the votaries of Islam.[1664]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Anselm wishes to resign the archbishopric.]

[Sidenote: Urban forbids him.]

Meanwhile the tales of William’s misdoings in Normandy and England were brought in day by day. The heart of Anselm was moved ever more and more; he saw that, come what might, he and such a king could never agree; the only course for him was to cast aside the grievous burthen and responsibility of his archbishopric. He earnestly craved the Pontiff’s leave to resign it into his hands.[1665] Urban was far too wary for this. He enjoined Anselm, by virtue of holy obedience, to do no such thing. The King, in his tyranny, might seize his temporalities and might keep him out of the land; but in the eye of the Church he remained none the less the Archbishop of the English kingdom, with his power of binding and loosing as strong as ever.[1666] Anselm was not only not to give up his office; he was to make a point of always appearing with the full badges of his office.[1667] Even now Anselm seems to have been in some difficulties how to reconcile his two duties to God and to Cæsar, difficulties which he would doubtless have got rid of altogether by resigning the archbishopric.[1668] But he submits to the Pontiff’s will, and he is bidden to meet him again at Bari, where judgement will be given in the matter of the King of the English and of all others who interfere with the liberties of the Church.[1669]

[Sidenote: Council of Bari. October 1, 1098.]

[Sidenote: Anselm at Rome.]

[Sidenote: William of Warelwast and Urban.]

[Sidenote: Urban’s answer.]

[Sidenote: Excommunication threatened.]

[Sidenote: April 12, 1099.]

Then came the meeting at Bari, the disputation against the Greeks, the excommunication of Rufus stopped by Anselm’s intercession.[1670] That Anselm was playing an arranged part we cannot believe for a moment; but we may believe, without breach of charity, that Urban threatened the excommunication of Rufus in the full belief that Anselm would intercede for him. Urban and Anselm then went back to Rome; and thither presently came the messenger from Normandy, who had to tell of the King’s frightful threats towards himself. Soon after came William of Warelwast, with a message from the King to the Pope. The diplomacy of the future bishop of Exeter was at least straightforward. “My lord the King sends you word that he wonders not a little how it can have come into your mind to address him for the restitution of the goods of Anselm.” He added, “If you ask the reason, here it is. When Anselm wished to depart from his land, the King openly threatened him that, if he went, he should take the whole archbishopric into his demesne. Since Anselm then would not, even when thus threatened, give up his purpose of going, the King deems that his own acts were right, and that he is now wrongfully blamed.”[1671] The Pope asked whether the King had any other charge against Anselm. “None,” answered the envoy. Urban had gained an advantage. He poured forth his wonder at a thing so unheard of in all time as that a king should spoil the primate of his kingdom of all his goods merely because he would not refrain from visiting the Roman Church, the mother of all churches.[1672] William of Warelwast might go back to his master, and might tell him that the Pope meant to hold a council at Rome in the Easter-week next to come, and that, if by that time Anselm was not restored to all that he had lost, the sentence of excommunication should go forth.[1673]

[Sidenote: William of Warelwast’s secret dealings with Urban.]

[Sidenote: The excommunication respited.]

[Sidenote: April-September, 1099.]

Brave words were these of Pope Urban, but William the Red knew how to deal with mere bravery of words, even in the Pope whom he had acknowledged. Walter of Albano had once outwitted William and his counsellors; but Walter of Albano had in the end yielded to William’s most powerful argument. William of Warelwast was not the least likely to outwit Urban; but he had it in commission from his master to overcome the Pope by the same logic by which his Legate had been overcome. We may copy the words of our own Chronicler four-and-twenty years later; “That overcame Rome that overcometh all the world, that is gold and silver.”[1674] To Urban’s well conceived speech the answer of William of Warelwast was pithy and practical; “Before I go away, I will have some dealings with you more in private.”[1675] He went to work prudently, as the Red King’s clerks knew how to do; he made friends here and there; the Pope’s advisers were blinded; the Pope himself was blinded; a respite from Easter to Michaelmas was granted to King William of England.[1676]

[Sidenote: Position of Anselm.]

[Sidenote: Urban’s treatment of Anselm.]

[Sidenote: Anselm made to stay for the Council of Lateran, April 12, 1099.]

[Sidenote: Protest of Reingar of Lucca.]

This adjournment was a heavy blow for Anselm. He had in no way stirred up the Pope to any action against the prince whom he still acknowledged as his sovereign. At Bari, when no answer had as yet been received from the King, Anselm had pleaded for him; it was indeed only common justice to give him that one more chance. But, when the answer had come, and had proved to be of such a kind as we have seen, Anselm most likely thought that the time for action had come. He might indeed fairly deem that the excommunication would in truth be an act of kindness towards William. All other means of reclaiming the sinner had failed; that final and most awful means might at last succeed. At all events, Anselm’s soul was grieved to the quick at the thought that the Pope’s sentence, whatever it might be, could be changed or delayed by the power of filthy lucre. He had borne every kind of grief, he had borne insults and banishment and the spoiling of his goods, for the sake of Rome and the Pope, and he had now found out what Rome and the Pope were. He had found that the master was no better than his servants. He had found Rome to be what Rome was ever found to be by every English bishop, by every Englishman by birth or adoption, who ever trusted in her. Urban proved the same broken reed to Anselm which Alexander in after days proved to Thomas. Anselm had gone through much in order to have the counsel and help of the Pope. But no counsel or help had he found in him.[1677] He craved leave to depart from Rome, and again to tarry at Lyons with a friend in whom he could better trust, the Primate of all the Gauls.[1678] The request was refused. Urban had still to make use of Anselm for his own purposes. He had to show his guest and the Church’s confessor――the guest and confessor whom he had sold for William’s gold――to the whole world in his Lateran Council. The special honours which were there paid to Anselm must have been felt by him as little more than a mockery. It may have been a preconcerted scene, it may have been a burst of honest indignation, when Reingar, Bishop of Lucca, bore an emphatic witness on Anselm’s side. Reingar, chosen on account of his lofty stature and sounding voice to announce the decrees of the Council, broke forth in words of his own declaring the holiness and the wrongs of the Archbishop of the English, and thrice smote his staff on the floor with quivering lips and teeth gnashed together.[1679] The Pope checked him; Reingar protested, and renewed his protest. Anselm simply wondered; he had never said a word to the Bishop of Lucca on any such matter, nor did he believe that any of his faithful followers had done so either.[1680]

[Sidenote: End of the Council.]

[Sidenote: Anselm goes to Lyons.]

[Sidenote: Death of Urban. July. 29, 1099.]

[Sidenote: William’s words on his death.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Ascalon. August 12, 1099.]

[Sidenote: Paschal the Second, Pope. August 13, 1099-January 21, 1118.]

[Sidenote: William’s words on Paschal’s election.]

The council broke up. The great general anathema was pronounced which would take in William along with the other princes of the earth;[1681] but nothing was said or done directly for Anselm or his cause.[1682] Anselm now at last left Rome for Lyons. He there heard of the deaths both of him who was to issue the excommunication and of him against whom it was to be issued. Urban did not live to hear how his preaching at Clermont was crowned by the deliverance of the Holy City. Yet the work was done while he still lived. Fourteen days after the storm of Jerusalem, seven days after the election of King Godfrey, Pope Urban died. The news of his death was brought to William while he was in the midst of his last warfare for Le Mans. Let God’s hate, he answered, be upon him who cares whether he be dead or alive.[1683] Fourteen days after Urban’s death, the hosts of Egypt were smitten at Ascalon; and the city which had just been won was again made safe. The next day a fresh Pope was chosen, Paschal, who, in the course of a long reign, had to strive alike with a Henry of Germany and with a Henry of England. The news of his election was brought to William, and he asked what manner of man the new Pope might be. He was told that he was a man in many things like Archbishop Anselm. “Then by God’s face,” said the Red King, “if he be such an one, he is no good.” But William felt that his wished for time was now come. Now at least there should be no trouble about acknowledging Popes against his will. “Let the Pope be what he will, he and his popedom shall not this time come over me by little and little. I have got my freedom again, and I will use it.”[1684] The time fixed for the excommunication passed unmarked over the head of the living Rufus. But before a full year had passed from Paschal’s election, the dead Rufus was excommunicated by the voice of his own kingdom.

* * * * *

We leave Anselm at Lyons; we shall meet him again when he comes back in all honour to crown and to marry a king and a queen who filled the English throne by the free call of the English people. Meanwhile we must take up the thread of our story, and see more fully what has been happening in the other lands which come within the Red King’s world, while Anselm was so long and so wearily striving for righteousness. The tale of Normandy, the tale of Jerusalem, so far as it concerned us to tell it, could hardly be kept apart from the tale of Anselm. But we have still to tell the tale of Scotland, of Northumberland, of Wales, of France, above all the tale of Maine and its noble Count, during the years through which we have tracked the history of Anselm. We have to go back to the beginning of the story through which we have just passed, and to begin afresh while Rufus in his short day of penitence lies on his sick-bed at Gloucester.

[1] See N. C. vol. iv. p. 692.

[2] Will. Malms. iv. 306.

[3] Tac. Hist. iv. 59.

[4] There is not much to say about the authorities for this
chapter. The main sources are those with which we have long
been familiar, the Peterborough Chronicle, Orderic,
Florence, William of Malmesbury. The last three of these
increase in value at every step, as they become more and
more strictly contemporary. So Henry of Huntingdon,
beginning his seventh book in the second year of Rufus,
formally puts on the character of a contemporary writer.
Hitherto he had written from his reading or from common
fame; “nunc autem de his quæ vel ipsi vidimus, vel ab his
qui viderant audivimus, pertractandum est.” But he still
wisely kept the Chronicle before him. He is himself largely
followed by Robert of Torigny (or _De Monte_――that is Abbot
of Saint Michael’s Mount) in his chronicle. From Robert we
have also the so-called eighth book of William of Jumièges,
which may pass as a History of Henry the First. He is not
strictly contemporary for any part of our immediate story.
Eadmer, so precious a few years later, gives us as yet only
a few touches and general pictures. The French riming
chroniclers are of some value later in the reign of Rufus;
but we have hardly anything to do with them as yet. A crowd
of accessory, occasional, and local writings have to be
turned to as usual.

[5] See N. C. vol. iii. p. 583.

[6] See N. C. vol. iv. pp. 228, 795. So Will. Neub. i. 3;
“Filiorum quidem Willelmi Magni ordine nativitatis
novissimus, sed prærogativa primus. Quippe, aliis in ducatu
patris natis, solus ipse ex eodem jam rege est ortus.” This
is noteworthy in a writer in whom (see Appendix A) we see
the first sign of a notion of Robert’s hereditary right. The
author of the Brevis Relatio (9) goes yet further, and seems
to assert that a party at least was for Henry’s immediate
succession; “Sicut postea multi dixerunt, justum fuit ut
ipse rex Angliæ post patrem suum esset qui de patre rege et
matre regina genitus extitisset.”

[7] See N. C. vol. iv. p. 706, note 3.

[8] See N. C. vol. iv. p. 706, note 3.

[9] See Appendix A.

[10] See Appendix A.

[11] Will. Malms. iv. 305. “Eum nutrierat et militem
fecerat.” So Matthew Paris, Hist. Ang. i. 35.

[12] Orderic has two statements as to the port from which
William set sail. In his account of the Conqueror’s death
(659 D), he makes him sail from Witsand. But afterwards (763
D), when speaking of Robert Bloet, he says, “Senioris
Guillelmi capellanus fuerat, eoque defuncto de portu Tolochæ
cum juniore Guillelmo mare transfretaverat, et epistolam
regis de coronanda prole Lanfranco archiepiscopo detulerat.”
This latter is to be preferred, as the more circumstantial
account. Touques moreover is at once the more likely haven
to be chosen by one setting out from Rouen, and the one less
likely to come into the head of a careless narrator. Robert
of Torigny also (Cont. Will. Gem. viii. 2) makes the place
Touques.

[13] Ord. Vit. 659 D. “Ibi jam patrem audivit obiisse.”

[14] Fl. Wig. 1087. “Willelmus … Angliam festinato adiit,
ducens secum Wlnothum et Morkarum.”

[15] See N. C. vol. iv. p. 517.

[16] See N. C. vol. iv. p. 315.

[17] Fl. Wig. 1087. “Robertus … Ulfum, Haroldi quondam regis
Anglorum filium, Dunechaldumque regis Scottorum Malcolmi
filium a custodia laxatos et armis militaribus honoratos,
abire permisit.”

[18] See N. C. vol. iv. p. 76.

[19] Flor. Wig. 1087. “Mox ut Wintoniam venit, illos, ut
prius fuerant, custodiæ mancipavit.”

[20] See N. C. vol. iv. p. 855. The Winchester Annals (1087;
Ann. Mon. ii. 35) give him, like Prior Godfrey, the title of
Earl, and say that he was not released at all. The Conqueror
releases all his prisoners in England and Normandy “exceptis
duobus comitibus Rogero et Wlnodo.” These three captives are
joined together in the signatures to an alleged charter of
Bishop William of Saint-Calais in the Monasticon, i. 237,
and in the Surtees volume, Hist. Dun. Scriptt. Tres, v, of
which I may have to speak again; “Morkaro et Rogerio
[clearly meant for Roger of Hereford] et Siwardo cognomento
Bran et Wlnoto Haraldi regis germano.” They are made to
sign, along with Abbot Æthelwig, who died in 1077, in a
Council in London in 1082. The whole thing is clearly
spurious; but what put the signatures of the captives into
anybody’s head?

[21] See Appendix A.

[22] Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 13 Selden. “Quantus autem mœror
Lanfrancum ex morte ejus perculerit quis dicere possit,
quando nos qui circa illum nuncia morte illius eramus,
statim eum præ cordis angustia mori timeremus?” This seems
to imply that the news reached Lanfranc when he had his
monks about him, that is at Canterbury.

[23] William of Malmesbury (iv. 305) marks the coronation as
being done “die sanctorum Cosmæ et Damiani.” In the
Chronicle it is “þreom dagum ǽr Michaeles mæssedæg;” while
Florence simply gives the day of the month. Wace (14482)
says inaccurately “Li jor de feste saint Michiel;” and the
Chronicon de Bello (40) still more inaccurately, “in
nativitate Christi, intrante anno incarnationis ejusdem
Verbi Dei mlxxxviii.”

[24] See Appendix A.

[25] Chron. Petrib. 1087. “Ealle þa men on Englalande him to
abugon, and him aðas sworon.”

[26] Chron. Petrib. 1087. “Ðisum þus gedone, se cyng ferde
to Winceastre, and sceawode þæt madmehus, and þa gersuman þe
his fæder ǽr gegaderode, þa wæron unasecgendlice ænie man hu
mycel þær wæs gegaderod, on golde and on seolfre and on
faton and on pællan and on gimman and on manige oðre
deorwurðe þingon þe earfoðe sindon to ateallene.” Yet Henry
of Huntingdon (p. 211) knew the exact amount of the silver,
sixty thousand pounds, one doubtless for each knight’s fee.

[27] Florence brings in the books in a list of gifts which
is longer than that of the Chronicler; “Cruces, altaria,
scrinia, _textos_, candelabra, situlas, fistulas, ac
ornamenta varia gemmis, auro, argento, lapidibusque
pretiosis, redimita, per ecclesias digniores ac monasteria
jussit dividi.”

[28] Chron. de Bello, 40. “Regni diadema suscepit. Quod
adeptus, paterni mandati non immemor, patris pallium regale
et feretrum unde supra meminimus, cum cccᵗⁱˢ philacteriis,
sanctorum pignorum excellentia gloriosis, ecclesiæ beati
Martini quantocius delegavit, quæ simul apud Bellum viii
Kalendas Novembris suscepta sunt.”

[29] The Chronicler says, “to ælcen cyrcean uppe land lx.
pæǹ.” But Florence limits it; “ecclesiis in civitatibus vel
villis suis per singulas denarios lx. dari.”

[30] Chron. Petrib. 1087. “Into ælcere scire man seonde
hundred punda feos, to dælanne earme mannan for his saule.”

[31] Flor. Wig. 1087. “Ejus quoque germanus Rotbertus in
Normanniam reversus, thesauros quos invenerat monasteriis,
ecclesiis, pauperibus, pro anima patris sui largiter
divisit.”

[32] Chron Petrib. 1087. “Se cyng wæs on þam midewintre on
Lundene.” So Henry of Huntingdon (211); “Rex novus curiam
suam ad Natale tenuit apud Lundoniam.” He adds a list of
bishops who were present. There were the two Archbishops,
Maurice of London, Walkelin of Winchester, Geoffrey [it
should be Osbern] of Exeter, William of Thetford, Robert of
Chester, William of Durham, as also “Wlnod [sic] episcopus
sanctus Wirecestriæ.” On the presence of Odo, see Appendix
B. Robert of Torigny (1087) writes “Vulnof.” I cannot see
much in his editor’s suggestion that the Geoffrey spoken of
is the Bishop of Coutances, because the so-called Bromton,
of all people, has made a blunder about him; X Scriptt. 984.

[33] N. C. vol. iv. p. 708.

[34] Ord. Vit. 664 D. “Totum in Normannia pristinum honorem
adeptus est, et consiliarius ducis, videlicet nepotis sui,
factus est.”

[35] Will. Malms, iv. 305. “Claves thesaurorum nactus est;
quibus fretus totam Angliam animo subjecit suo.”

[36] Ib. “Reliquo hiemis quiete et favorabiliter vixit.”

[37] Chron. Petrib. 1088. “On þisum geare wæs þis land swiðe
astirad, and mid mycele swicdome afylled; swa þæt þa riceste
Frencisce men þe weron innan þrisan lande wolden swican
heore hlaforde þam cynge, and woldon habban his broðer to
cynge, Rodbeard, þe wæs eorl on Normandige.” The duty of
faithfulness to the lord, whoever he may be, is always
strongly felt; still William Rufus is only “heora hlaford se
cyng,” not “heora cynehlaford.” But the notion that Robert
had any special right as the eldest son seems not to have
come into any purely English mind of that age.

[38] He appears in the list given by Henry of Huntingdon
(see above, p. 19) as “justiciarius et princeps totius
Angliæ.” Simeon of Durham (1088) calls him “secundus rex.”

[39] See Florence, 1081; Sim. Dun. Hist. Eccl. Dun. iv. 1.

[40] See N. C. vol. iv. p. 674.

[41] Chron. Petrib. 1088. “Swa wæll dyde se cyng be þam
bisceop þæt eall Englaland færde æfter his ræde and swa swa
he wolde.” So Florence; “Ea tempestate rex prædictus illius,
ut veri consiliarii, fruebatur prudentia; bene enim
sapiebat, ejusque consiliis totius Angliæ tractabatur
respublica.” Cf. Ann. Wint. 1088. “Episcopus Willelmus
Dunelmensis, qui paulo ante quasi cor regis erat.”

[42] Will. Malms, iv. 306. “Immortale in eum [Lanfrancum]
odium anhelans, quod ejus consilio a fratre se in vincula
conjectum asserebat.”

[43] See N. C. vol. iv. p. 680.

[44] Chron. Petrib. 1088. “And þæs unræd wearð gewesen innan
þam Lengtene.” So Florence; “Pars nobiliorum Normannorum
favebat regi Willelmo, sed minima; pars vero altera favebat
Roberto comiti Normannorum, et maxima; cupiens hunc sibi
adsciscere in regnum, fratrem vero aut fratri tradere vivum
aut regno privare peremptum.” Here is the end of a
hexameter.

[45] See Appendix B.

[46] Ord. Vit. 665 D. “Optimates utriusque _regni_
conveniunt, et de duobus _regnis_ nunc divisis, quæ manus
una pridem tenuerat, tractare satagunt.” Cf. the language
used at an earlier time about Normandy, N. C. vol. i. p.
221.

[47] Ib. 666 A. “Labor nobis ingens subito crevit, et maxima
diminutio potentiæ nostræ opumque nobis incumbuit…. Violenta
nobis orta est mutatio et nostræ sublimitatis repentina
dejectio.” It is now that he makes the flourish about
“Saxones Angli” (see N. C. vol. i. p. 542); there is also a
good deal about Jeroboam and Polyneikês.

[48] Ib. “Quomodo duobus dominis tam diversis, et tam longe
ab invicem remotis competenter servire poterimus?”

[49] Ib. B, C. “Inviolabile fœdus firmiter ineamus, et
Guillelmo rege dejecto vel interfecto, qui junior est et
protervus, et cui nihil debemus, Robertum ducem, qui major
natu est et tractabilior moribus, et cui jamdudum vivente
patre amborum fidelitatem juravimus, principem Angliæ ac
Neustriæ ad servandam unitatem utriusque regni
constituamus.”

[50] Ib. C. “Decretum suum Roberto duci detexuit. Ille vero,
utpote levis et inconsideratus, valde gavisus est promissis
inutilibus, seseque spopondit eis, si inchoarent, affaturum
in omnibus, et collaturum mox efficax auxilium ad
perpetrandum tam clarum fecimus.”

[51] See Appendix B.

[52] See N. C. vol. iv. p. 710.

[53] Will. Malms. iv. 306. “Multos eodem susurro infecit
[Odo]; Roberto regnum competere, qui sit et remissioris
animi, et juveniles stultitias multis jam laboribus
decoxerit; hunc delicate nutritum, animi ferocia (quam
vultus ipse demonstret), prætumidum, omnia contra fas et jus
ausurum; brevi futurum ut honores jamdudum plurimis
sudoribus partos amittant; _nihil actum morte patris_, si
quos ille vinxerit iste trucidet.” (Again the ending of a
hexameter.) A good deal of this seems to come from later
experience of Rufus.

[54] Chron. Petrib. 1088. “þæs unræd wærð geræd.”

[55] See N. C. vol. iv. pp. 276, 580, 673.

[56] See Appendix C.

[57] “He þohte to donne be him eall swa Iudas Scarioð dide
be ure Drihtene.”

[58] “Se bisceop of Dunholme dyde to hearme þæt he mihte
ofer eall be norðan.”

[59] See Appendix C.

[60] Mon. Angl. i. 248. “Monstrabo quod Dorobernium et
Hastingas, quæ jam pene perdiderat, in sua fidelitate
detinui, Londoniam quoque quæ jam rebellaverat, in ejus
fidelitate sedavi, meliores etiam duodecim ejusdem urbis
cives ad eum mecum duxi, ut per illos melius ceteros
animaret.”

[61] Mon. Angl. i. 247. “Ipse [rex] te summonuit ut cum eo
equitares; tu vero respondisti ei, te cum septem militibus
quos ibi habebas libenter iturum, et pro pluribus ad
castellum tuum sub festinatione missurum, et postea fugisti
de curia sua sine ejus licentia, et quosdam de familia sua
tecum adduxisti, et ita in necessitate sua sibi defecisti.”

[62] See Appendix C.

[63] Mon. Angl. i. 245. “Præsto sum in curia vestra vobis
justitiam facere convenienti termino, securitate veniendi
accepta.” Cf. N. C. vol. ii. pp. 149, 150.

[64] Mon. Angl. i. 245. “Non est enim omnium hominum
episcopos judicare, et ego vobis secundum ordinem meum omnem
justitiam offero; et si ad præsens vultis habere servitium
meum vel hominum meorum, illud idem secundum placere vestrum
vobis offero.”

[65] Ib. “Rex acceptis et auditis istis litteris episcopi,
dedit baronibus suis terras episcopi, vidente legato quem
sibi miserat episcopus.” I suppose that these barons are no
other than the Counts Alan and Odo, of whose share in the
matter we shall hear much more as we go on.

[66] See Ellis, i. 464. It is there remarked that Ralph’s
lands in Devonshire had largely been Merleswegen’s. This is
equally true in Yorkshire. He must have succeeded Hugh the
son of Baldric as sheriff. See N. C. vol. iv. p. 801.