William persuaded to refuse the money. What followed showed that William Rufus had counsellors about him who were worse than himself, or who at any rate were not ashamed to play upon the worst parts of his character to obtain their own ends. In this case they are nameless. Are we to fill up the blank with the names of the Bishop of Durham and the Count of Meulan? Or is it safer to lay any evil deed the doer of which is not recorded on the broad back of Randolf Flambard? At any rate, some malignant persons, whoever they were, came about the King, and persuaded him that the gift of the Archbishop was a contemptible sum which he ought to reject. One whom he had exalted and enriched above the other great men of England ought, in such need as that in which the King found himself, to have given him two thousand pounds, or one thousand at the very least. To offer so little as five hundred was mere mockery. Let the King wait a little, let him change his face towards the Archbishop, and Anselm would presently come, delighted to win back the King’s favour with the gift of five hundred pounds more.[1210] Thus the Primate’s enemies, whoever they were, sought to frighten him, and to get more money out of him for the King’s use. But their schemes were disappointed.[1211] Anselm was presently surprised by a message to say that the King refused his gift—the gift which he had already cheerfully accepted.[1212] Anselm prays Rufus to take the money. He then sought an audience, and asked the King whether such a message was really of his sending. Some tyrants might have seen in this question an escape from a difficulty. It would have been easy for Rufus to have denied his own act; but his pride was up, and direct lying was never in his vein. He avowed his message. Then Anselm prayed him not to refuse his gift; it was the first that he had offered; it should not be the last. It would be better for the King to receive a smaller sum from him as a friend, than to wring a larger sum from him as a slave.[1213] Of the alternative of increasing the amount of the gift he said not a word. One motive was that he could not raise a greater sum without doing wrong to his tenants—the wrong which he had declared Ælfheah to be a true martyr for refusing to do.[1214] Rufus refuses it.The King was now in the mood for short and wrathful speeches. “Keep your money and your jaw to yourself; I have enough of my own. Get you gone.”[1215] Anselm obeyed, remembering that at his enthronement the Gospel had been read which said that no man could serve two masters. He rejoiced that no one now could deem that he had been guilty of any corrupt bargain with the King. Yet he tried once more through messengers to persuade the King to take his gift, but, as he steadily refused to double it, it was still thrust aside with scorn. The assembly broke up; the Archbishop, still in the King’s disfavour, went away, and the money which the King had despised was given to the poor.
This business over, Anselm had now a few weeks, but a few weeks only, to give to his immediate pastoral work. Even those weeks were disturbed by a dispute with one of his suffragans. Dispute with the Bishop of London. The point at issue was the right of the Archbishop to consecrate churches and do other episcopal acts in such of his manors as were locally in other dioceses. This right was denied by Bishop Maurice of London, who sent two of his canons to forbid the Archbishop to consecrate the newly built church of Harrow.[1216] The matter was settled by an appeal to one who knew the ancient laws of England better than either Maurice or Anselm. Judgement of Wulfstan. Wulfstan of Worcester, now “one and alone of the ancient fathers of the English,” wrote back his judgement in favour of the Primate’s right.[1217] The question was thus decided; Maurice did not dare to set up his judgement on such a matter against that of the venerable saint, the relic of a state of things which had passed away.[1218]
Those of the great men of England who had come to the Gemót at Gloucester from the more distant parts of the kingdom could hardly have reached their homes when they were again summoned to give the King the benefit of their counsels. William Rufus was so strong upon his throne that in his days assemblies were sure to be frequent. He was moreover planning a campaign beyond the sea, so that it was very doubtful whether he would be able this year to wear his crown in England at the usual times of Easter and Pentecost. Assembly at Hastings. February 2, 1094. The Easter Gemót was therefore in some sort forestalled. As the starting-point for his second invasion of Normandy the King had chosen the spot which had been his father’s head-quarters in the great invasion of England. At Pevensey he had once beaten back the invasion of his Norman brother; at Hastings he now gathered the force which was for the second time to avenge that wrong. The chief men of England were again brought together. We may perhaps see in this assembly a case of the military Gemót. Anselm and several other bishops were there; but it is said that their presence was required to give their blessing to the King and his army before they crossed the sea.[1219] The fleet delayed by the wind. But that final blessing could not be given till many weeks after the army or assembly first came together. When the younger William sought to invade Normandy, he was kept lingering at Hastings, as the elder William had been kept lingering at Saint Valery when he sought to invade England. For six weeks the north wind refused to blow. While thus kept back from warfare, the King seems to have amused himself with ecclesiastical business and ecclesiastical ceremonies, and he further brought on himself the sharpest of ecclesiastical rebukes.[1220]
But one of the ceremonies which filled up the time of enforced leisure must have been something more than a matter of amusement to William the Red. Whatever traces of good feeling lingered in his heart gathered round the memory of his parents. And he was now called on to join in a rite which was the crowning homage to his father’s name, the most speaking memorial of his father’s victory and his father’s bounty. Again was a William encamped at Hastings called on to make his way to the hill of Senlac. But this time he could make his way thither in peaceful guise. The The Abbey of Battle. place was no longer a wilderness or a camp, no longer the hill of the hoar apple-tree, no longer bristling with the thickset lines of battle, no longer heaped with the corpses of the conquerors and the conquered. The height which had once been fenced in by the palisade of the English host was now fenced in by the precinct wall of a vast monastery; its buildings, overhanging the hill side, covered the spot where Gyrth had fallen by the hand of William;[1221] its church, fresh from the hands of the craftsman, covered the ground which had beheld the last act of the day of slaughter; its high altar, blazing doubtless with all the skill of Otto and Theodoric,[1222] marked the spot where Harold, struck by the bolt from heaven, had fallen between the Dragon and the Standard. Completion of the building. After so many years had passed since the Conqueror had bidden that the memorial of the Conquest should rise on that spot and on no other, the minster of Saint Martin of the Place of Battle stood ready for consecration. Moved by the prayer of Abbot Gausbert, prompted too by his own reverence for the memory and the bidding of his father, William the younger bade that his father’s church should at once be hallowed in his own presence.[1223] Consecration of the church. February 11, 1094. On a Saturday then in the month of February, in the twenty-eighth year since the awful Saturday of Saint Calixtus, the two who were so unequally yoked together to draw the plough of the Church of England made their way to the place of Battle. A crowd of nobles and commons came together to the sight; and with them, besides the Primate, were seven Bishops present; Ralph of Coutances. bishops of three different provinces. There was Ralph of Chichester, bishop of the diocese, whose jurisdiction within the favoured abbey was so zealously denied by every monk of Battle.[1224] There were Walkelin of Winchester, Osmund of Salisbury, John of Bath, and Gundulf of Rochester. There was the Primate’s great northern enemy, William of Durham. And there too was a suffragan of Rouen, the immediate successor of one of the fierce prelates who had blessed the Conqueror’s host on the morning of the great battle.[1225] Death of Geoffrey Bishop of Coutances. February 3, 1093. Geoffrey of Mowbray, Bishop and once Earl, had died a year before, and the episcopal chair of Coutances was now filled by his successor Ralph.[1226] How, it may be asked, came a Norman bishop in the court, almost in the army, of a king who was about to invade Normandy? The answer is easy. The Côtentin was now again in the hands of Henry,[1227] and the presence of its bishop at the court of William was a sign of the good understanding which now reigned between the two younger sons of the Conqueror. William and Anselm at Battle. But on such a day as this all interest gathers round the two main figures in the assembly, the two of highest rank in their several orders. William the Red, strange assistant in any religious rite, seems less out of place than usual as assistant in the rite which was to dedicate the work of his father. And if prayers and offerings were to go up on that spot for those who had fallen there on the defeated as well as on the victorious side, there was no mouth in which we should more gladly put them than in the mouth of him who was the chief celebrant on that day. Anselm, standing at the head of his foreign suffragans—English Wulfstan stood not by him—before the altar of Saint Martin of the Place of Battle, seemed like a representative of universal Christendom, of universal peace and love. The holy man from Aosta sang his mass in honour of the holy man of Tours. And he sang it on the spot where Harold of England had stood by his standard in the morning, where William of Normandy had held the feast of victory in the evening, the morning and evening of the most memorable day in the history of our island since England became one kingdom.
The King at Hastings. From the hill of Battle William went back to the hill of Hastings, now crowned by the castle into which the hasty fortress of his father had grown.[1228] William of Saint-Calais. Six years earlier the Bishop of Durham, charged with treason, had in answer, pleaded that he had kept Hastings and its castle in the King’s obedience.[1229] Notwithstanding that answer, he had been banished; he had been recalled, and he now stood, with all his former authority, chief counsellor of the King, chief enemy of the Archbishop. Consecration of Robert Bloet to Lincoln. February 12, 1094. On the morrow of the dedication of Saint Martin’s, William of Saint-Calais joined with Anselm in the long-delayed consecration of the elect of Lincoln. The rite was done in the church of Our Lady within the castle of Hastings, by the hands of the same prelates who had the day before dedicated the church of Battle. It was to the see of Lincoln, not to the see of Dorchester, that Robert Bloet was consecrated. Thomas of Bayeux was not there to repeat his protest. He would have been there in vain. The bishop-elect had, in the course of his chancellorship, got together the means of settling such questions. His bishopric, granted at the time of the King’s repentance, had cost him nothing. It was now a matter of regret with Rufus that it had cost him nothing; Robert had therefore to pay all the more for the establishment of the rights of his see. Robert’s gift to the King. One who had the means of knowing says that he gave the King the great sum of five thousand pounds to decide the cause in favour of Lincoln.[1230] This was done, the York writer complains, without the consent of the Archbishop of York and without the knowledge of his chapter.[1231] The case must have been settled either at Gloucester or now at Hastings. It was most likely at Hastings, as we can hardly fancy Thomas keeping away from the great Christmas gathering. Our Canterbury guide tells us a not very intelligible story which may show us how the claim of Thomas was spoken of in the southern metropolis. The cause of York had found at least professing friends among the great men at Hastings, though it met with no favour from the King himself. Plot against Anselm. Not knowing perhaps with what weighty arguments the elect of Lincoln had proved his case, certain unnamed bishops and lords deemed that they would please the King by anything which could annoy or discredit Anselm. They therefore insidiously tried to persuade the Archbishop to consecrate Robert without his making due profession to the church of Canterbury.[1232] Anselm stood firm. The King, when he heard of the plot, took to his magnanimous vein. His personal quarrel with Anselm should never lead him to do anything against the dignity of the Church of Canterbury his mother.[1233] The King and Flambard perhaps enjoyed the joke together. But Robert Bloet made the needful profession, and was consecrated as Bishop of Lincoln by Anselm and the assembled prelates. Compromise with York. The controversy with York was at last formally settled, by a compromise which was announced in a royal charter. By this the Archbishop of York accepted the patronage of the new abbey of Selby in his own diocese, and that of the church of Saint Oswald at Worcester—the city and diocese so long connected with York—in exchange for his claims over Lindesey.[1234] The isle and city of Lindum has ever since remained an undisputed member of the southern province.
Character of Robert Bloet. The new Bishop of Lincoln, the first prelate consecrated to that see, has left a doubtful character behind him. He held his bishopric for thirty years, living on far into the reign of Henry, and keeping the royal favour till just before his death. His offices. Chancellor under both Williams, he, as usual, resigned that post on his consecration; but under Henry he ruled with great power in the higher office of Justiciar.[1235] Bountiful in his gifts to his see and to his church, the number of whose prebends he doubled, splendid and liberal in his manner of life, bountiful to the poor, winning the hearts of all around him, not himself a scholar, but a promoter of scholars, skilful in worldly business of every kind, he does not show us the best, but neither does he show us the worst type of the prelates of his day. He was charged with looseness of life; but his chief accuser found it wise to strike out the charge, and his son Simon, Dean of his own church, was born while he was Chancellor to the Conqueror, quite possibly in lawful wedlock. His death. 1123. His last days form a striking incident in the next reign; here he chiefly concerns us as being in some sort, however strangely, bracketted with Anselm, as the other bishop whom the Red King named during his short time of repentance.[1236] Local legends about him. Anyhow it was hard on him to tell in after days how his ghost hindered anybody from praying or giving alms near his tomb in the minster, and that only because he removed the monks of Stow to Eynsham, because he subjected his see to the gift of a precious mantle to the King, or because he agreed to the wise measure which lessened the extent of his vast diocese.
Return of Herbert of Thetford. Another bishop appeared at this gathering, whose coming was, for the time, less lucky for himself than that of Robert Bloet. Herbert of Thetford, struck with penitence for his simoniacal bargain, had, as it will be remembered, gone beyond sea on an errand which of all others was most offensive to the King. He had gone to receive again from the Pope—doubtless from Urban—the bishopric which he had already bought of the King.[1237] He is deprived by the King. For this offence William now took away his staff; that is, he deprived him of his bishopric. With whose advice or consent this was done, and what line Anselm took with regard to such a step, we are not told. At all events the King now deprived a bishop of his office on the ground of what he deemed to be treason done without the realm. This was the converse of the act by which, forty-two years before, the nation had deprived another bishop on the ground of what they deemed to be treason within the realm.[1238] William however did not set up any doubtful Stigand of his own in the church of Thetford. About a year later Herbert was again in possession of his see.[1239] How he was restored to the King’s favour we are not told. He may have deemed it no sin to win it by means which he had learned to look upon as sin when applied to the obtaining of a spiritual office. Next year he removed the seat of the East-Anglian bishopric once more. Herfast had moved it from Elmham to Thetford. With the good will and help of Roger Bigod Herbert now translated it to its final seat at Norwich. He there began the foundation of that vast church and monastery, the creation of which caused his name to be ever since held in at least local honour.
Meanwhile the north wind still refused to blow, and the King with his prelates, lords, and courtiers, still tarried at Hastings. Lent, 1094. Lent began before the fleet had a chance of sailing. The penitential season began with the usual ceremonies. The Archbishop said his mass and preached his sermon in the ears of the multitude who came together on the day of ashes, to receive, according to custom, the ashes of penitence from the hands of the Primate. Among them came the minions and young gallants of the court of Rufus, with their long combed and twined hair, their mincing gait, defying alike the commands of the Apostle and the dictates of common decency and manliness. Anselm rebukes the minions. The voice of Anselm rebuked them, as well he might, when the outward garb was but the sign of the deeper foulness within. Not a few were moved to repentance; they submitted to the loss of their flowing locks, and put on again the form of men.[1240] Others were stubborn; they received neither ashes nor absolution. In this battle with a foolish custom which was in truth far more than a foolish custom, Anselm had not a few forerunners or followers. Saint Wulfstan, Gundulf, Serlo of Seez, all preached and acted vigorously against the long hair which was the symbol of the crying vice of the time.[1241] Anselm deemed that the evil called for something more than a single act of discipline. The man of God felt called on to strike at the root of the mischief; he was moved to make a warning appeal to the conscience, if any conscience was left, of the chief sinner of them all, and he made it, after his wont, at once gently and vigorously.
We may guess that the King had not been present at the ceremonies of Ash-Wednesday; had he been there, his presence would surely have been dwelled upon. It seems that Anselm, though openly out of the King’s favour, still visited him from time to time. Anselm’s interview with the King. One day therefore he went and sat down beside him, and spoke what was in his heart.[1242] The King was setting forth to conquer Normandy. His silence about the war. It is to be noticed that Anselm does not say a word as to the right or wrong of the war. Perhaps, after the challenge of Robert, the cause of Rufus may have seemed, even to him, to be technically just. Perhaps he knew that anything that could be said on that subject would be fruitless. He may even have deemed, a view which had much to be said for it, that a conquest of Normandy by the Red King would be a good exchange for the rule of its present sovereign. And we must remember that wars of all kinds were in those days so constantly going on that they would seem like a necessary evil, a dark side of the economy of things, but one which could not be hindered. Even men like Anselm would come to look with less horror than one might expect on wars which were waged only by those whose whole business might seem to be warfare. Anyhow Anselm said nothing directly against the war, even though it was to be waged against the prince to whom he had lately owed allegiance and against the land which had been to him a second birth-place. He asks for help in his reforms. But he asked the King whether he had any right to look for success in that or any other enterprise, unless he did something to check the evils which had well nigh uprooted the religion of Christ in his realm. He called on William to give him the help of the royal authority in his own schemes of reform. The King asked what form his help was to take,[1243] and Anselm then put forth his views at length.
He asks leave to hold a synod. First and foremost, the King was to help in the work of reform by allowing Anselm to hold a synod of the realm. It will be remembered that, by the laws of the Conqueror, no synod could be held without the King’s licence, and the acts of the synod were of no force without the King’s confirmation.[1244] But under the Conqueror Lanfranc had, on the conditions thus laid down, held his synods without hindrance. That is to say, the elder William, in all causes and over all persons within his dominions supreme, used that supremacy as the chief ruler of the Church from within, while the younger William turned that same supremacy into a weapon wherewith to assault the Church as an enemy from without. It is plain from the earnestness of Anselm one way—one might almost say, from the earnestness of Rufus the other way—that the synod was a real instrument for the reformation of manners. Advantages of the synod. It is plain that the assembled bishops, when they came together in a body, could do more both for ecclesiastical discipline and for moral improvement than they could do, each one in his own diocese. One cause may have been that, in a synod, the assembled prelates might seem to be really speaking as fathers in God, while the exercise of their local jurisdiction was too much mixed up with the petty and not always creditable details of their courts, with those tricks and extortions of archdeacons and other officials of which we have often heard. Anyhow, as the Roman Senate had good enough left in it to call forth the hatred of Nero, so an ecclesiastical synod had good enough left in it to call forth the hatred of William Rufus. No synod held under Rufus. Not one synod had he allowed to be held during the whole time of his reign, now in its seventh year.[1245] Anselm earnestly prayed to be allowed to hold one for the restoration of discipline and the reformation of manners. The King answered; “I will see to this matter when I think good; I will act, not after your pleasure but after my own. And, pray,” added he mockingly, “when you have got your synod, what will you talk about in it?” Anselm’s appeal against the fashionable vices. The man of God did not shrink from going straight to the crying evil of the time. What weighed most on Anselm’s mind was not any mere breach of ecclesiastical rule—such breaches he had to speak of, but he would not speak of them first;[1246] the burthen on his soul was the hideous moral corruption, a new thing on English ground, which had become rife throughout the land. Unless King and Primate, each in his own sphere, each with his own weapons, worked together to root out this plague, the kingdom of England might share the fate of the cities which it had come to resemble. A strict law was needed, the very hearing of which would make the guilty tremble.[1247] The words of Anselm were general; there was no personal charge against William; the Archbishop simply appealed to him as King to stop the sins of others. But all this makes us feel more strongly the wonderful character of such a scene, where two such men could be sitting side by side and exchanging their thoughts freely. But the heart of Rufus was hardened; he answered only by a sneer. “And what may come of this matter for you?” “For me nothing,” said Anselm; “for you and for God I hope much.”[1248]