But for Henry, in full friendship with his brother, to hold a corner of Normandy as a fief of his brother was a partition of Normandy of quite another kind from such a partition as had been when William, as Robert’s enemy, hemmed in Robert in his capital. Rule of William in Normandy. There can be no doubt that the exchange from Robert to William was an unspeakable gain to the duchy. During the remainder of the life of Rufus Normandy had a stern master; but, after the anarchy of Robert, what the land most needed was a master of almost any kind. Synod of Rouen. 1096. The kind of work which was needed is shown in the acts of a synod which had been gathered at Rouen by Archbishop William, while Robert still nominally ruled, almost immediately after the greater gathering at Clermont. Three Norman bishops had been at Clermont in person, Odo of Bayeux, Gilbert of Evreux, and Serlo of Seez. They brought back the decrees of the council to their brethren, who forthwith assembled to accept and enforce in their own province all that had been ordered at Clermont for the Church and the world in general. Truce of God confirmed. They confirmed the Truce of God[1547] with all its enactments on behalf of the more useful and helpless members of society. They drew up an oath to be taken under pain of anathema by all men, which bound them to observe the Truce in their own persons, and to give the help of the temporal arm to the efforts of the ecclesiastical powers against those who should break it.[1548] In those days at least peace could be had only through war, and the Truce of God itself became the occasion of more fighting against those who scorned its wholesome checks. Other decrees. Other anathemas were pronounced against robbers, false moneyers, and buyers of stolen goods, against those who gathered themselves together in castles for purposes of plunder, and against the lords who sheltered such men in their castles. Such castles were put under an interdict; no Christian rite might be done in them.[1549] In going on to pronounce further anathemas against the invaders of ecclesiastical rights, against the unlawful occupiers of Church lands, against laymen who claimed to have a right in tithes and other Church dues,[1550] the synod uses a formula which shows how keenly Normandy felt the difference between the great William and his eldest son. The days of King William. What the days of the Confessor were in England, the days of the Conqueror were in his own duchy. The synod decreed that all churches should enjoy their goods and customs as they had been in the time of King William, and that no burthens should be laid upon them but such as King William had allowed.[1551]
It would be too much to think that William the Red at once brought back the Norman duchy to the state in which it had been in those golden days of William the Great. And it is still less needful to stop to prove that even the days of William the Great would not have seemed golden days as compared with the state of any well-governed land in our own time. But there can be no doubt that the coming of the new ruler wrought a real reform. And a reform was grievously needed. Small results of the synod. We read that very little came of the well-intentioned decrees of the synod. The bishops, Odo among them, did what they could—it is Odo’s last recorded act in the lands with which we have to deal, and it is something that he leaves us in the shape of a reformer and not in that of an oppressor. But very little came of the efforts of the prelates. The Duke did nothing to help them—his mind was perhaps too full of the crusade—and things were at the moment of William’s coming in almost greater confusion than ever.[1552] William’s rule in Normandy. He at least gave the land the advantage of a strong rule; he kept the luxury of oppression to himself. The lesser scourges of mankind were thoroughly put down. We hear no more of that private warfare which had torn the land in pieces in the days of Robert. William recalled many of the lavish grants of Robert; what his father had held, he would hold.[1553] Even in ecclesiastical matters Rufus is not painted in such dark colours in Normandy as he is in England. His appointments to prelacies. He is not charged with keeping ecclesiastical benefices vacant in order that he might enjoy their revenues. He found two great abbeys vacant, those of Jumièges and Saint Peter-on-Dives; and he at once supplied them with abbots. They were abbots of his own choosing, but it is not said that they bought their places.[1554] Tancard Abbot of Jumièges. 1096–1101. Tancard, the new abbot of Jumièges, may lie under some suspicion, as a few years after he was deposed on account of a shameful quarrel with his monks.[1555] Saint Peter’s was vacant, not by the death, but by the deposition and banishment—unjust we are told—of its abbot Fulk. Etard Abbot of Saint Peter’s. 1096–1107. William appointed a monk of Jumièges called Etard or Walter, who ruled well, we are told, for eleven years, till Fulk came back with letters from the Pope, on which his successor cheerfully made way for him again.[1556] No Norman bishopric was vacant at the time of William’s entry, nor did any become vacant for more than a year. February, 1098. Then in the midst of events which are to be told hereafter, the news came that the throne of Bayeux was vacant by the death of Odo far away at Palermo. William at once bestowed the staff on Turold the brother of Hugh of Evermouth, seemingly the same Hugh who figures in the legend of Hereward as his son-in-law and successor.[1557] Turold Bishop of Bayeux. 1098–1195. This prelate sat for seven years, and then, for reasons of his own, gave up his see, and became a monk at Bec.[1558]
§ 7. The Last Dispute between William and Anselm.
1097.
Christmas, 1096–1097. The year which followed William’s acquisition of Normandy was a busy year in many ways. The King passed the winter in the duchy; the greater part of the year he spent in England. He was largely occupied with the affairs of Wales and Scotland, and in this year came the last dispute between the King and the Archbishop, and the first departure of Anselm from England. Since their reconciliation at Windsor two years before, there had been no open breach between them. State of Wales at the end of 1096. The first difference arose out of the events of the Welsh war. At the end of the year which saw William master of Normandy, he seemed to have wholly lost his hold on Wales. Except Glamorgan and the one isolated castle of Pembroke, the Britons seemed to have won back their whole land.[1559] The affairs of Wales brought the King Easter, April 5, 1097.
William comes to England. back from Normandy, and he designed to hold the Easter Gemót in its usual place at Winchester. Stress of weather however hindered him from reaching England in time for the festival. He landed at Arundel on Easter eve, and thence went to Windsor, where the Assembly Assembly of Windsor.was therefore held, somewhat later than the usual time.[1560] The meeting was followed by a great expedition into Wales, Seeming conquest of Wales.and by a submission of the country which events a few months later proved to be very nominal indeed.[1561] But there was at last an apparent success. William seemed to be greater than ever; he had, by whatever means, won Normandy and recovered Wales. And, more than this, the beginnings of his Norman government had been good; he had thus far shown himself a better nursing-father of the Church in his duchy than his brother Robert had done. Good hopes for the future. A hope therefore arose in many minds that the days of victory and peace might be days of reformed government in England also, and that King and Primate might be able to join in some great measure for the improvement of discipline and manners.[1562] In this hope they were disappointed, as they were likely to be, especially if they reckoned on any long time of peace with the Britons. But the first renewed breach between the King and the Archbishop arose from quite a new cause. William complains of Anselm’s contingent to the Welsh war. When the King came back from the Welsh war, he sent a letter to Anselm, angrily complaining of the nature of the Archbishop’s military contingent to his army. The knights whom Anselm had sent had been so badly equipped and so useless in war that he owed him no thanks for them but rather the contrary.[1563] This story is commonly told as if Anselm had been the colonel of a regiment whose men were, through his fault, utterly unfit for service. Anselm had indeed, as we have seen, once held somewhat of a warlike command, but it had been of a passive kind; Estimate of the complaint. he was certainly not expected to go to the Welsh war himself. In truth the complaint is against knights; doubtless, if the knights were bad, their followers would be worse; but it is of knights that the King speaks. Position of the Archbishop’s knights. If I rightly understand the relation between the Archbishop and his military tenants, these knights were men who held lands of the archbishopric by the tenure of discharging all the military service to which the whole estates of the archbishopric were bound.[1564] It was doubtless the business of their lord to see that the service was paid, that the proper number of knights, each with his proper number of followers, went to the royal standard. But one can hardly think that it was part of the Archbishop’s business to look into every military detail, as if he had been their commanding officer. It was not Anselm’s business to find their arms and accoutrements; they held their lands by the tenure of finding such things for themselves. The King was dissatisfied with the archiepiscopal contingent, and, from his point of view, most likely not without reason. Anselm’s troops might be expected to be among the least serviceable parts of the army. Gentlemen and yeomen of Kent—we may begin to use those familiar names—could have had no great experience of warfare; there were no private wars to keep their hands in practice; they could not be so well fitted for war in general or specially for Welsh war, either as the picked mercenaries of the King or as the tried followers of the Earl of Chester and the Lord of Glamorgan. William, as a military commander, might naturally be annoyed at the poor figure cut by the Archbishop’s knights; but there is every reason to think that, in point of law, his complaint against the Archbishop was unjust. It seems to be shown to be so by the fact that the charge which the King brought against Anselm on this account was one which in the end he found it better to drop. Anselm summoned to the King’s court. But he now bade Anselm to be ready to do right to him, according to the judgement of his court, whenever he should think fit to summon him for that end.[1565]
Anselm’s distress. Anselm seems to have been thoroughly disheartened by this fresh blow. And yet it was no more than what he had been looking for. Over and over again he had said that between him and William there could be no lasting peace, that under such a king as William there could be no real reform.[1566] And the new grievance was a personal one; whether the charge was right or wrong, it had nothing to do with the interests of the Church or with good morals; it simply touched his relations to the King as his temporal lord. Since the meeting at Windsor two years before, though William had given Anselm no kind of help in his plans, he does not seem to have openly thwarted them, except, as seems implied throughout, by still refusing his leave for the holding of a synod. His weariness of England. At the same time there had been quite enough to make Anselm thoroughly weary of England and her King and of everything to do with her. And the visits of the Cardinal of Albano and the Abbot of Saint Benignus had done Anselm no good. Change in Anselm’s feelings. From this time we mark the beginning of a certain change in him which, without in any way morally blaming him, we must call a change for the worse. Left to himself, he seems not to have had the faintest scruple as to the customs which were established alike in England and in Normandy. He was unwilling to accept the metropolitan office at all; but he made no objection to the particular way of receiving it which was the use of England and of Normandy. He had, without scruple or protest, received the staff of Canterbury from the son as he had received the staff of Bec from the father. His wish to go to Rome to receive the pallium was fully according to precedent, and it was only the petty captiousness of the King that turned it into a matter of offence. His yearnings towards Rome. But the mere talking about Rome and the Pope which the discussion had led to was not wholesome; and everything that had since happened had tended to put Rome and the Pope more and more into Anselm’s head. The coming of the Legate, the rebukes of the Legate, even the base insinuations of his undutiful suffragans against the validity of his appointment, would all help to bring about a certain morbid frame of mind, a craving after Rome and its Bishop as the one centre of shelter and comfort among his troubles. The very failure of Walter’s mission, the unworthy greediness and subserviency into which the Legate had fallen, the utter break-down of the later mission of Abbot Jeronto, would all tend the same way. Anselm would hold, not that the Pope was corrupt, but that none but the Pope in his own person could be trusted. He would have nothing more to do with his unfaithful agents; he would go himself to the fountain-head which could not fail him. And he to whom he would go was not simply the Pope, any Pope; it was Urban the Second, the reformer, the preacher of the crusade. Personal position of Urban. Since Anselm’s work had begun, the world had been filled with the personal fame of the Pontiff in whose cause he had striven. In the same council which had stirred the common heart of Christendom Urban had denounced those customs of England to which Anselm had conformed in his own appointment and which he had promised to defend against all men. The rules laid down at Clermont against the acceptance of ecclesiastical benefices from lay hands not only condemned his own appointment, made before those decrees were issued; it condemned also the consecrations to the sees of Hereford and Worcester which he had himself performed since they had been issued. Amid the reign of unlaw, amid the constant breaches of discipline, the frightful sins against moral right, which he had daily to behold and which he was kept back from duly censuring, with none to support him outwardly, none but a few chosen ones to understand his inward thoughts, it is not wonderful if distant Rome seemed to him a blessed haven of rest from the troubles and sorrows of England. Let him flee thither at any cost, and have peace. Let him seek the counsel of the ghostly superior to whom he looked up in faith, and to whom he had been so faithful; to him he would open his soul; from him he would receive guidance, perhaps strength, in a course which was beset with so many difficulties on all sides. Ideal aspect of Rome. Rome, seen far away, looked pure and holy; its Pontiff seemed the one embodiment of right and law, the one shadow of God left upon earth, in a world of force and falsehood and foulness of life, a world where the civil sword was left in the hands of kings like William and Philip, and where an Emperor like Henry still wielded it in defiance of anathemas. At such a distance he would not see that the policy of Popes had already learned to be even more worldly and crooked than that of kings and emperors. He had not learned, what Englishmen had already learned, that gold was as powerful in the counsels of the Holy See as ever it was in the closet of the Red King. The Pope’s agents and messengers might take bribes; the Pope himself, the holy College around him, would never sink to such shame. The majestic and attractive side of the Roman system was all that would present itself to his eyes. He would flee to the blessed shelter and be at peace. He had had enough of the world of kings and courts, the world where men of God were called on to send men to fight the battles of this life, and were called in question if swords were not sharp enough or if horses were not duly trained and caparisoned. Weary and sick at heart, he would turn away from such a scene and from its thankless duties; he would, for a while at least, leave the potsherds of the earth to strive with the potsherds of the earth; he would go where he might perhaps win leave to throw aside his burthen, or where, failing that, he might receive renewed strength to bear it.
New position taken by Anselm. In all this we can thoroughly enter into Anselm’s feelings, nor are we called upon to pronounce any censure upon either his feelings or his conduct. But it is plain that he was now taking up a wholly different position from that which he had taken at Rockingham, a position in which he could not expect to meet with, and in which he did not meet with, the same support which he had met with at Rockingham. At Gillingham and at Rockingham Anselm did nothing which could be fairly construed as a defiance of the law or an appeal to the Pope against any lawful authority of the King. All that he did was to ask the King’s leave to go for the pallium, that is to do what all his predecessors had done, to obey what might be as fairly called a custom of the realm as any other. Aspect of his conduct. In the discussions which now began, his conduct would, to say the least, have, in the eyes of any but the most friendly judges, another look. He was asking leave to go to Rome, not to discharge an established duty, but, as it might be not unfairly argued, simply to gratify a caprice of his own. He might rightly ask for such leave; but it rested with the King’s discretion to grant or to refuse it, and no formal wrong would be done to him by refusing it. And to ask leave to go and consult the Pope, not because of any meddling with his spiritual office, not on account of any religious or ecclesiastical difficulty, but because the King had threatened him with a suit, just or unjust, in a purely temporal matter, had very much the air of appealing from the King’s authority to the Pope. We must remember throughout that Anselm nowhere makes the claim which Odo and William of Saint-Calais made before him, which Thomas of London made after him, to be exempt from temporal jurisdiction on the ground of his order. As such claims had no foundation in English law, neither was it at all in the spirit of Anselm to press them. All that he wanted was to be allowed to seek help in his troubles in the only quarter where he believed that help might be found. Causes of his loss of general support. But the petition for leave to seek it was put in a form and under circumstances which might well have awakened some distrust, some unwillingness, in minds far better disposed towards him than that of the Red King. We may not for a moment doubt the perfect singlemindedness of Anselm, his perfect righteousness from the point of view of his own conscience. But we cannot wonder that, in the new controversy, he failed to have the barons and people of England at his side, as he had had them on the day of trial at Rockingham and on the day of peace-making at Windsor.
The belief that the supposed season of peace might be a season of reform had been shared by Anselm himself. Anselm’s continued demands of reform. He had more than once urged the King on the subject; but William had always answered that he was too busy dealing with his many enemies to think about such matters.[1567] Such an answer was a mere put-off; yet a more discouraging one might have been given. Anselm had therefore fully made up his mind to make the most of this special opportunity, and to make yet one more urgent appeal to the King to help him in his work.[1568] He determines not to answer the new summons.And now, at the meeting where he trusted to make this attempt, he was summoned to appear as defendant on a purely temporal charge. To that charge he determined to make no answer. But surely the reason which is given is rather the reason of Eadmer afterwards than of Anselm at the time. Working of the King’s court. Anselm is made to say that in the King’s court everything depended on the King’s nod, and that his cause would be examined in that court, without law, without equity, without reason.[1569] He had not found it so at Rockingham, nor did he find it so now. But we can quite understand that, with his mind full of so much greater matters, he might think it better to let his judges settle matters as they might, for or against him, in questions as to horses and weapons and military training. The worst that could happen would be another payment of money.[1570] Anselm believed that the charge was a mere pretence, devised simply to hinder him from making the appeal to the King which he designed.[1571] He therefore made up his mind to make no answer to the summons, and to let the law, if there was any law in the matter, take its course.[1572] When he looked around at the spoliation of the Church, at the evils of all kinds which had crept in through lack of discipline, he feared the judgement of God on himself, if he did not make one last effort.[1573] His heart indeed sank when he saw that, of all the evil that was done, the King either was himself the doer or took pleasure in them that did it. He determines on a last effort. But he would strive once more; if his last effort failed, he would appeal to a higher spiritual power than his own; he would see what the authority and judgement of the Apostolic See could do.[1574]
Whitsun Gemót. May 24, 1097. The Whitsun festival came, and Anselm went to the Assembly. The place of meeting is not mentioned; according to usage it would be Westminster. Though the suit was hanging over Anselm, he went, not as a defendant in a suit, but as a chief member of the Gemót. He seems to have been graciously received by the King; Anselm favourably received; his last appeal. at least we hear of him at the royal table, and he had opportunities of private access to the royal ear. Of these chances he did not fail to take advantage for his purpose; but all was in vain; nothing at all tending to reform was to be got out of William Rufus.[1575] In this way the earlier days of meeting, the days of the actual festival, were spent. Then, as usual, the various matters of business which had to be dealt with by the King and his Witan were brought forward.[1576] Surmises as to the charge against Anselm. Among other questions men were eagerly asking what would become of the charge against the Archbishop as to the bad equipment of his knights in the late Welsh campaign. Would he have to pay some huge sum of money, or would he have to pray for mercy, and be thereby so humbled that he could never lift up his head again?[1577] Anselm’s thoughts meanwhile were set upon quite other matters. He had made his last attempt on the King’s conscience, and he had failed. There was nothing more to be done by his own unaided powers. He determines to ask leave to go to Rome. He must seek for the counsel and help of one greater than himself. He called together a body of nobles of his own choice, those doubtless in whom he could put most trust, and he bade them carry a message from him to the King, to say that he was driven by the He declares his purpose to a chosen body. utmost need to ask his leave to go to Rome.[1578] We ask why he who had been on such intimate terms with the King during the earlier days of the meeting, was now forced to send a message instead of speaking to the King face to face. We may suppose that the arrangement was the same as at Rockingham, that there was an outer and an inner chamber, and that, while the suit against the Archbishop was pending, he was not allowed to take his natural place among the King’s counsellors. During the days of festival, he had been a guest and a friend; now that the days of business had come, he had changed into a defendant. We are not told what the lords of his choice said or thought of the message which he put into their hands. Aspect of the demand. Unless it was accompanied by a rather full explanation, it must have been startling. With the help of Eadmer we can follow the workings of Anselm’s mind; but to one who heard the request suddenly it must have had a strange sound. Did the Archbishop wish to complain to the Pope because the King was displeased with the trim and conduct of his military contingent? The King at least, when the message was taken to him, was utterly amazed. But William was not in one of his worst moods; he was sarcastic, but not wrathful. He refused the licence. The King’s answer. There could be no need for Anselm to go to the Pope. He would never believe that Anselm had committed any sin so black that none but the Pope could absolve him. And as for counsel, Anselm was much better fitted to give it to the Pope than the Pope was to give it to Anselm. Anselm took the refusal meekly. “Power is in his hands; he says what pleases him. What he refuses now he may perhaps grant another day. I will multiply my prayers.”[1579] Anselm had therefore to stay in England. The charge against Anselm withdrawn. But the formal charge against him was withdrawn. Perhaps the King had merely made it in a fit of ill humour, and had long given up any serious thought of pressing it. And, if he really wished to annoy Anselm, he had now a way in which he might annoy him far more thoroughly and with much greater advantage than by any mere temporal suit.
Affairs of Wales. June-August, 1097. This year was a year of gatherings, alike for counsel and for warfare. The seeming submission of Wales was soon found to be utterly hollow. From Midsummer till August William was engaged in another British expedition, one which brought nothing but immediate toil and trouble, but of whose more distant results we shall have again to speak. Another assembly. On his return he summoned, perhaps not a general Gemót, but at any rate a council of prelates and lords, to discuss grave matters touching the state of the kingdom.[1580] We would fain hear something of their debates on other affairs than those of Anselm; but that privilege is denied us. Anselm’s request again refused. We only know that, when the council was about to break up, when all its members were eager to get to their homes, Anselm earnestly craved that his request to go to Rome might be granted, and that the King again refused.[1581]
William Rufus seems never to have been happy save when he was himself moving and keeping everybody else in motion. It must have been in his days as in the days of Constantius, when the means of getting from place to place broke down through the multitude of bishops who were going to and fro for the endless councils.[1582] In the month of October the bishops and great lords at least, if no one else, were brought together for the fourth time this year. Assembly at Winchester. October 14, 1097. This time the place of meeting was Winchester; the day was the day of Saint Calixtus, the thirty-first anniversary of the great battle. We hear nothing of any other business, but only of the renewed petition of Anselm. It is clear that the idea of going to the Pope had seized on Anselm’s mind to an unhealthy degree. He could not help pressing it in season and out of season, clearly to the weakening both of his influence and of his position. Anselm renews his request. He made his request to the King both with his own lips—this time he was no defendant—and by the lips of others. The King was now thoroughly tired of the subject; he was now not sarcastic, but thoroughly annoyed and angry. He was weary of Anselm’s endlessly pressing a request which he must by this time know would not be granted. Anselm had wearied him too much; he now directly commanded that he should cease from his importunity, that he should submit to the judgement of the court and pay a fine for the annoyance which he had given to his sovereign.[1583] The King had an undoubted right to refuse the licence; but it is hard to see why the Archbishop was to be fined for asking for it. Anselm again impleaded. By this turn Anselm was again made a defendant. Anselm now offers to give good reasons, such as the King could not gainsay, for the course which he took. Alternative given to Anselm. The King refuses to hear any reasons, and, with a mixture of licence, threat, and defiance, he gives the Archbishop a kind of alternative. Anselm must understand that, if he goes, the King will seize the archbishopric into his own hands, and will never again receive him as archbishop.[1584] There was some free expression of feeling in these assemblies; for this announcement of the King’s will was met by a storm of shouts on different sides, some cheering the King and some the Archbishop.[1585] The meeting adjourned. Some at last, the moderate party perhaps, proposed and carried an adjournment till the morrow, hoping meanwhile to settle matters in some other way.[1586]