Interview between Anselm and the King at Rochester. By this time Anselm had received the letters from Normandy which were to make him free to accept the archbishopric; but the letters to the King from the same parties had not yet come. At this stage then Anselm wished for an interview with the King, the first—unless they met at Easter at Winchester—since they had parted in the sick room at Gloucester. William was on his way back from his meeting with the Count of Flanders at Dover; he came to Rochester, where Anselm was then staying with Bishop Gundulf. There Anselm took the King aside, and laid the case before him as it then stood.
Anselm’s position. Anselm was at this moment, in his own view, a private man. He was no longer Abbot of Bec. His monks had released him from that office, and he had formally resigned it by sending back to them the pastoral staff.[1149] He was not yet Archbishop of Canterbury; he was not yet, in his own view, even Archbishop-elect; all that had been done at Gloucester he counted for null and void. But he was now free to accept the archbishopric, and, though he still did not wish for the post, he had got over the scruples which had before led him to refuse it. In such a case he deemed it his duty to be perfectly frank with the King, and to tell him on what terms only he would accept the primacy, if the King still persisted in offering it to him.
His conditions with the King. The conditions which Anselm now laid before William Rufus were three. The first of them had to do with the temporal estates of the archbishopric. I have elsewhere spoken of the light in which we ought to look at demands of this kind.[1150] Restoration of the estates of the see. We may be sure that Anselm would gladly have purchased the peace of the land, the friendship of the King, or anything that would profit the souls or bodies of other men, at the cost of any temporal possessions which were strictly his own to give up. But, if he became Archbishop of Canterbury, he would become a steward of the church of Canterbury, a trustee for his successors, the guardian of gifts which had been given to God, His saints, and His Church. In any of these characters, it would be a sin against his own soul and the souls of others, if he willingly allowed anything which had ever been given to his church to be taken from her or detained from her. If the King chose to keep the see vacant and to turn its revenues to his own use, that would be his sin and not Anselm’s; but Anselm would be a sharer in the sin, if he accepted the see without requiring full restitution of everything to which the see had a lawful claim. In the private conference at Rochester, he therefore demanded, as a condition of his accepting the see, that he should receive all that Lanfranc had held, without delay or dispute or process in any court. As for lands to which his church had an ancient claim, but which Lanfranc had been unable to win back, for those he demanded that the King should do him justice in his court.[1151] The second demand touched the ancient relations between the crown and the archbishopric. The sheep, about to be yoked with the wild bull, sought to make terms with his fierce comrade. He demands to be the King’s spiritual guide. Anselm demanded that, in all matters which touched God and Christianity, the King should take him as his counsellor before all other men; as he acknowledged in the King his earthly lord, so let the King acknowledge in him his ghostly father and the special guardian of his soul.[1152]
Acknowledgement of Popes. To these two requests Anselm added a third, one which touched a point on which the Red King seems to have been specially sensitive. It had been the rule of his father’s reign that no Pope should be acknowledged in England without his consent.[1153] William Rufus seems to have construed this rule in the same way in which he construed some others. From his right to nominate to bishoprics and abbeys he had inferred a right not to nominate to them; so, from his right to judge between contending popes, he inferred the right to do without acknowledging any pope at all. And, if the King acted in this way for his own ends, the country at large seems to have shown a remarkable indifference to the whole controversy. To Englishmen and to men settled in England it was clearly a much greater grievance to be kept without an Archbishop of Canterbury than it was to be left uncertain who was the lawful pope. Schism in the papacy. Victor the Third. 1086–1087. Urban the Second. 1088–1099. Urban and Clement. At this moment the Western Church was divided between the claims of Wibert or Clement, the Imperial anti-pope of the days of Hildebrand, and those of Urban, formerly Odo of Ostia, who, after the short reign of Victor, stepped into Hildebrand’s place. In the eyes of strict churchmen Urban was the true Vicar of Christ, and Wibert was a wicked intruder and schismatic. Yet it will be remembered that Lanfranc himself had, when the dispute lay between Wibert and Hildebrand, spoken with singular calmness and caution of a question which to more zealous minds seemed a matter of spiritual life and death.[1154] Our own Chronicler seems to have measured popes, as well as English feeling on the subject. kings and bishops, by the standard of possession; he found it hard to conceive a pope that “nothing had of the settle at Rome.”[1155] Even Anselm’s own biographer speaks very quietly on the point. Two rival candidates claimed the popedom; but which was the one rightly chosen no one in England, we are told, knew—or seemingly cared.[1156] Another of our guides describes Urban and Clement as alike men of personal merit, and looks on the controversy as one in which there was much to be said on both sides. The chief argument for Urban was that his supporters seemed to increase in number; otherwise no one really knew on which side the divine right was. In England opinion was divided; but fear of the King—so we are told—made it lean on the whole to Clement.[1157] Earlier in the reign we have heard Bishop William of Durham talk a great deal about going to the Pope; but he had taken care not to say to which pope he meant to go, and in the end he had not gone to either.[1158] Anselm requires to be allowed to acknowledge Urban. With Anselm the matter was more serious. Urban was his pope. All the churches of Gaul had acknowledged him; Bec and the other churches of Normandy had acknowledged him along with the rest.[1159] From the obedience which he had thus plighted he could not fall back. He told the King that, though he, King William, had not acknowledged Urban, yet he, Anselm, must continue to acknowledge him and to yield him such obedience as was his due.[1160] To be allowed freely to do so must be one of the conditions of his accepting the archbishopric.
The King’s answer was unsatisfactory, but not openly hostile. The King’s counsellors; Count Robert and Bishop William. He was however beginning to be on his guard; he called to his side the two subtlest advisers that the Church and realm of England could supply. The one was Count Robert of Meulan, at home alike in England, Normandy, and France. The other was William Bishop of Durham, once the strong assertor of ecclesiastical claims, who had appealed to the Pope against the judgement of the King and his Witan. He had indeed both learned and forgotten something in his exile. The Bishop’s new policy. He had come back to be the special counsellor of Rufus, the special enemy of Anselm, the special assertor of the doctrine that it was for the King alone to judge as to the acknowledgement of Popes. The King, having listened to Anselm, sent for these two chosen advisers. He bade Anselm say over again in their hearing what he had before said privately. The King’s answer. He then, by their advice, answered that he would restore to the see everything that had been held by Lanfranc; on other points he would not as yet make any positive engagement.[1161]
The letters come from Normandy. Up to this time the King had not yet received his expected letters from Normandy. They presently came, and Rufus evidently thought that some step on his part ought to follow. He had asked the Duke, the Archbishop, and the monks of Bec, to set Anselm free to accept the archbishopric. They had done so at his request. Unless then he wished to make fools of himself and of everybody else, he could not help again offering the see to the man whom he had himself chosen, and who was now free to take it. He sent for Anselm to Windsor, where he now was; The King prays Anselm to take the archbishopric. he prayed him no longer to refuse the choice of the whole realm;[1162] but in so doing, he fell back somewhat from the one distinct promise which he had made at Rochester. When the estates of the see came into his hands on the death of Lanfranc, he had granted out parts of them on tenure of knight-service. He asks for the confirmation of grants made by him during the vacancy. These grants he asked Anselm, as a matter of friendship to himself, to allow.[1163] Was William merely seeking an excuse for backing altogether out of his offer of the archbishopric, or did he feel himself bound in honour to the men to whom he had made the grants? If so, his scruple of honour was met by Anselm’s scruple of conscience. Anselm refuses. Anselm would not be a party to any alienation of the goods of the Church; above all, he would not make any agreement about such matters before he was invested with any part of them.[1164] The point clearly is that so to do would be more than wasting the estates of the Church; it would be obtaining the archbishopric by a corrupt bargain. To agree to give up the estates of the see to the King’s grantees would be the same thing as obtaining the see by a bribe to the King. Anselm therefore refused to consent to the grants which the King had made during the vacancy. The whole matter thus came to a standstill. Rufus refused the investiture unless his grants were to stand good. Anselm went away rejoicing.
The whole case was set forth at length by Anselm in a letter to his friend Hugh Archbishop of Lyons, the head prelate of his native Burgundy.[1165] Anselm’s statement of the case. The alienation to which Anselm was asked to consent was called by the King a “voluntary justice,” a phrase which has a technical sound, but the meaning of which is not very clear.[1166] The King’s argument was that, before the Normans invaded England, the lands in question had been held of the archbishopric by English thegns, that those thegns had died without heirs, and that it was open to the King to give them what heirs he would.[1167] It was certainly strange, if, on the one hand, not one of these thegns had been constrained to make way for a Norman successor, and if, on the other hand, not one of them had left a son to succeed him. But we must take the fact as it is stated. Nature of the King’s grants. Rufus seems to mean that, during Lanfranc’s incumbency, the lands which these thegns had held of the see had fallen back to the lord for lack of heirs, and had become demesne lands of the archbishopric. The King asserts his right, during the vacancy of the see, to grant out such lands by knight-service, service to be paid of course to the King as long as the vacancy lasted, but seemingly to the Archbishop, as soon as there should be an archbishop in possession. If this was the argument, an argument which savours of the subtlety of Flambard, there is, from Flambard’s point of view, a good deal that is plausible about it. The King’s case. The King, as temporary lord, claims to deal with the land as any other lord might do, and, when his temporary lordship comes to an end, he calls on the incoming lord to respect his acts. The legal question would seem to be whether the new doctrine which gave the King the temporary profits of the archbishopric gave him any right to turn its demesne lands into fiefs. Anselm’s argument. Anselm’s argument seems to be that anyhow the possessions of the archbishopric were practically lessened, as they undoubtedly were. Experience showed that such a lordship as the see would keep over the lands so granted out would be both hard to enforce and of little value if enforced.[1168] Practically the grants were an alienation of the lands of the see. And to this Anselm could not consent. Open robbery from some quarter which owed no special duty to the archbishopric he might bear, and in such a case there would be more hope of gaining back what was lost by the help of the law.[1169] But for the King, the advocate of the see, and for himself, its guardian, to come to an agreement whereby the see would be damaged, was a thing to which Anselm would never consent.[1170] The King’s advocatio of the archbishopric. In this argument we hear the word advocate, the equivalent of the modern patron, in its elder sense. The advocatio, the advowson, of an ecclesiastical benefice carries with it, not only the right to name the incumbent of that benefice, but also the duty of acting as its protector.[1171] For the King, the advocate of the see of Canterbury, to do anything against its rights was a greater crime than if another man did the same. For the Archbishop to betray the rights of his church and his successors was a greater crime still. And if King and Archbishop agreed to any such spoliation, all other men would naturally hold that the act could not be questioned. On these grounds Anselm refused to consent to the King’s grants. He left the royal presence trusting that he was now free from the burthen of ecclesiastical rule in any shape. He had been set free from the abbatial rule of Bec; he had escaped being loaded with the primatial rule of Canterbury. He was, as he wished to be, a private man.[1172]
Public feeling since the nomination at Gloucester. But a private man Anselm was not to remain. After the scene in the sick room at Gloucester, neither William nor Anselm could act exactly as if that scene had never taken place. The momentary repentance of the King, and the acts done during the time of that repentance, had given a strength to public opinion which even William Rufus could not despise. The old abuses, the old oppressions, began again; but men were now less disposed to put up with them than they had been before. They would no longer go on without an archbishop, after an archbishop, and Anselm as that archbishop, had been more than promised, after he had been given to them. The general murmur became so loud that the King had to give way.[1173] He could no longer help giving the archbishopric to Anselm, and that on Anselm’s own terms. And what he did, he did in the most solemn and, as far as outward appearances went, the most thorough manner. Gemót at Winchester. An extraordinary Gemót of the kingdom—for the season was neither Christmas, Easter, nor Pentecost—was summoned to Winchester. The King renews his promises. In the presence of the assembled Witan, William Rufus, in full health, renewed the promises which he had made in his sickness. The wrongs done in his kingdom, above all, the wrongs done to the Church, were a second time to come to an end.[1174] Anselm receives the archbishopric, and does homage. Anselm was exhorted, and at last persuaded, to accept the archbishopric. He received it, seemingly without scruple, according to the ancient use of England; he became the man of the King.[1175] Anselm kneeling before Rufus, with his pure hands between the polluted hands of the King, pledging himself as the King’s man for all earthly worship, makes a scene which it is strange to think of.[1176] The deed was now done, and it could not be recalled. Bishop in the spiritual sense Anselm was not as yet; but he was the legal possessor of all the temporal estates and temporal jurisdiction of the see of Canterbury.
The King’s writ. The act which had just been done had now to be announced to the whole nation in the ancient form. The writ of King William went forth, announcing to all the King’s faithful men, French and English, that he had granted to Anselm the archbishopric of Canterbury, with all the rights, powers, and possessions—rights, powers, and possessions, recited in the English tongue—which belonged to the see, with all liberties over all his men, within boroughs and without. And words were added which seemed meant expressly to enforce Anselm’s view of the point last in dispute. The Archbishop’s thegns. The new archbishop was to have all these liberties over as many thegns as King Eadward the King’s kinsman had granted to the see of Christ Church. This can hardly mean anything except the annulling of the grants which the King had made during the vacancy.[1177] Anselm was to have all such temporal rights as had been lawfully held by Lanfranc, as had been before him unlawfully held by Stigand. Clauses in favour of the monks. The writ further contains provisions on behalf of the metropolitan monastery. The estates of the convent were distinct from those of the see; still, in such a time of unlaw, it is likely that some excuse had been found to do them some wrong also. To the monks of Christ Church therefore the King confirms all their rights and possessions, with all the tolls and dues from the haven of Sandwich; no man, French or English, should meddle with them or their servants.[1178] The city of Canterbury and abbey of Saint Alban’s. Our Canterbury guide speaks also of a renewed grant, on more favourable terms than before, of the city of Canterbury and of the abbey of Saint Alban’s.[1179] These possessions were at least not granted by the writ which announces the grant of the archbishopric. Anselm and Saint Alban’s. Of one of them the local patriotism of Saint Alban’s naturally knew nothing, though we hear of the friendship which Anselm showed to the house and to its abbot Paul. Death of Abbot Paul. 1093. This friendship could hardly have been shown in the character of archbishop, as Paul died during the year of Anselm’s appointment.[1180] And it is not wonderful that Anselm’s friendship for the abbey did not avail to save it from the usual fate. Vacancy of the abbey. For four years after the death of Paul, the church of Saint Alban remained without an abbot, while the King held the lands of the abbey, cut down its woods, and found many ingenious excuses, such as Flambard knew how to devise, for wringing money out of its tenants.[1181]
It would seem that, of the three points which had been insisted on by Anselm at Rochester, two were left out of sight in the public assembly at Winchester no less than in the private conference at Windsor. The question about the grants of the archiepiscopal lands was settled, at least in name and for the time, in favour of Anselm; The question as to the Pope left unsettled. but nothing was said either about William’s obligation to take Anselm as his spiritual guide or about the acknowledgement of Urban as Pope. The former of these two was in truth a matter for the King’s private conscience; it was hardly a matter to be discussed and legislated about in an assembly of the kingdom. And even the matter of the Pope did not touch Anselm’s conscience in exactly the same way as the question of the grants. If Anselm had allowed the grants, it would have been, in his view, an alienation of the rights of his see, and therefore a personal crime. But he might, without in any way giving up his position, receive the investiture No reference to the Pope in English episcopal appointments. without saying anything about the papal question at all. It was not yet held that the Bishop of Rome was entitled to any voice as to the election, investiture, or consecration, of any English bishop. In the case of a diocesan bishop, there was no need for any reference to the Pope at any stage; in the case of a metropolitan, the pallium had to be asked for; but it was not asked for till after consecration. Anselm had given fair warning to the King that he meant to acknowledge Urban. But at no stage of the business which had yet been reached was there any need for any formal acknowledgement of any Pope. Anselm might therefore fairly hold that his first warning was enough, and that he was not called upon to raise the question again, till the time came when it would be his duty to seek for the pallium from one Pope or the other. When that time came, he would be ready to do or suffer as the circumstances of that yet future day might dictate.