Thursday, October 15, 1097. The next morning came; as so often before, Anselm and his friends sat waiting the royal pleasure. Some bishops and lords came out and asked Anselm what his purpose now was about the affair of yesterday. He had not, he answered, agreed to the adjournment Anselm and the bishops and lords. because he had any doubt as to his own purpose, but only lest he should seem to set no store by the opinion of others. He was in the same mind in which he had been yesterday; he would again crave the King’s leave to go. Go he must, for the sake of his own soul’s health, for the sake of the Christian religion, for the King’s own honour and profit, if he would only believe it.[1587] The bishops and lords asked if he had anything else to say; as for leave to go to Rome, it was no use talking; the King would not grant it. Anselm answers that, if the King will not grant it, he must follow the scripture and obey God rather than man. We here see that Anselm had brooded over his griefs till he had reached the verge of fanaticism. Such language would have been exaggerated, had it been used when he was forbidden to go for the pallium according to ancient custom; it was utterly out of place when no clear duty of any kind, no law of eternal right, no positive law of the Church, bade him to go to Rome in defiance of the King’s orders.
Speech of Bishop Walkelin. At this stage we again meet a personal spokesman on the other side; Bishop Walkelin of Winchester speaks where doubtless William of Saint-Calais would have spoken, had he still lived. Walkelin’s argument was one hardly suited to the mind of Anselm. The King and his lords knew the Archbishop’s ways; they knew that he was a man not easily turned from his purpose; but it was not easy to believe that he would be firm in his purpose of casting aside the honour and wealth of the great office which he held, merely for the sake of going to Rome.[1588] Anselm’s face lighted up, and he fixed his keen eyes on Walkelin, with the words, “Truly I shall be firm.” This answer was taken to the King, and was debated for a long while in the inner council. Anselm and the bishops. At last Anselm bethinks him that his suffragans ought rather to be advising him than advising the King; he sends and bids them to come to him. Three of them come at the summons, Walkelin, the ritualist Osmund, the cunning leech John of Bath. They sat down on each side of their metropolitan. Anselm called on them, as bishops and prelates in the Church of God. If they were really willing to guard the right and the justice of God as they were ready to guard the laws and usages of a mortal man,[1589] they will let him tell them in full his reason for the course which he is taking, and they will then give him their counsel in God’s name.[1590] The three bishops chose first to confer with their brethren; Walkelin and Robert were then sent in to the King, and the whole body of bishops came once more to Anselm. The bishops’ portrait of themselves. We now see the portrait of the prelates of the Red King’s day, as it is drawn by their own spokesman. Anselm they knew to be a devout and holy man who had his conversation in heaven. But they were hindered by the kinsfolk whom they sustained, by the manifold affairs of the world which they loved; they could not rise to the loftiness of Anselm’s life or trample on this world as he did.[1591] But if he would come down to them, and would walk in their way,[1592] then they would consult for him as they would consult for themselves, and would help him in his affairs as if they were their own. If he would persist in standing alone and referring everything to God,[1593] they would not go beyond the fealty which they owed to the King. This was plain speaking enough; the doctrine of interest against right has seldom, even in these later times, been more openly set forth. One would think that the bishops simply meant to strengthen Anselm’s fixed purpose; they could not hope to move him with arguments which certainly did not do justice to their own case. Anselm’s answer. Anselm’s scholastic training always enabled him to seize an advantage in argument. “You have spoken well,” he answered; “go to your lord; I will cleave to God.”[1594] They did as he bade them; they went, and Anselm was left almost alone; the few friends who clave to him sat apart at his bidding, and prayed to God to bring the matter to a good ending.[1595]
In all these debates it is the bishops who play the worst part. They seem to say in calm earnest the same kind of things which the King said in wrath or in jest. Part of the lay lords. After a short delay, they come back, accompanied by some lay barons, and the tone of their discourse is at once raised. Anselm has no longer the laity on his side, as he had at Rockingham; nor can we wonder at the change. The speech which is now made is harsh, perhaps captious; but at all events the stand is now taken on direct legal grounds, no longer on the base motives confessed to by the bishops. The King sent word that Anselm had troubled him, embittered him, tortured him, by his complaints.[1596] Anselm’s promise to obey the customs. The Archbishop is reminded that, after the suit at Rockingham and the reconciliation which followed at Windsor—a reconciliation which is now attributed to the earnest prayers of Anselm’s friends[1597]—he had sworn to obey the laws and customs of the realm, and to defend them against all men.[1598] After this promise the King had believed that Anselm would give him no more trouble.[1599] But he had already broken his oath—the charge is delicately worded—when He is charged with breach of promise. he threatened to go to Rome without the King’s leave.[1600] For any of the great men of the realm so to do was utterly unheard of; for him most of all. Anselm’s enemies had now the advantage of him; he certainly had uttered words which might be not unfairly construed as an intended breach of the law. They therefore called on him to make oath that he would never appeal to the Holy See in any shape in any matter which the King might lay upon him; Alternative given to him. otherwise he must leave the kingdom with all speed, on what conditions he already knew. And if he chose to stay and take the oath, he must submit to be fined at the judgement of the court for having troubled the King so much about a matter in which he had after all not stuck firm to his own purpose.[1601] This last condition seems hard measure; there was surely no treason in making a request to the King which it rested with the King to grant or to refuse. With regard to the alleged breach of promise they undoubtedly stood on firmer ground.
The King’s messengers did not wait for an answer. Anselm therefore rose; followed by his companions, he went in to the King, and, according to custom, sat down beside him.[1602] He asked whether the message which he had just heard had really come from the King, and he received for answer that it had. Anselm and the King. Anselm then said that he had undoubtedly made the promise to observe the laws, but that he made it only in God’s name, and so far as the laws were according to right, and could be obeyed in God’s name.[1603] Qualifications and distinctions. The King and his lords answered that in the promise there had been no mention of God or of right.[1604] We should be well pleased to have the actual words of the promise; but we need not suppose any direct misstatement of fact on either side; the forms of oaths and promises are commonly capable of more than one interpretation. Words which one side looks on as surplusage another side looks on as the root of the whole matter. But the form of the answer gave Anselm, if not a logical, at least a rhetorical, advantage. If there was no mention of God or right, what was there mention of? No Christian man could be bound to observe laws which were contrary to God and right. We have here reached the beginning of those distinctions and qualifications which play so great a part in the debates of the next century; but with Anselm the appeal is simply to God and right; there is not a word about the privileges of his order. His hearers murmured and wagged their heads, but said nothing openly.[1605] Anselm’s discourse; duty to God always excepted. So the Primate went on to lay down at some length the doctrine that every promise of earthly duty involved in its own nature a saving of duty to God. Faith was pledged in earthly matters according to the faith due to God; faith to God was therefore excepted by the very terms of the promise.[1606] The argument is doubtless sound, as regards the individual conscience; it leaves out of sight, and any argument of that age would probably have left out of sight, the truth that men may differ as to what is duty towards God, and that no lawgiver or administrator of the law can possibly listen to every scruple which may be urged on such grounds in favour of disobedience. To Anselm’s mind the case was clear. A custom which hindered him from going to consult the Vicar of Saint Peter for his own soul’s health and for the good of the Church was a custom contrary to God and right, a custom which ought to be cast aside and disobeyed. No man who feared God would hinder him from going to the head of Christendom on God’s service. He ended with a parable. The King would not think himself well served if any powerful vassal of his should by terrors and threatenings hinder any other of his subjects from doing his duty and service to him.
Answer of Count Robert. It was perhaps not wholly in enmity that the Count of Meulan, who at Rockingham had frankly professed his admiration of Anselm, joined the King at this stage in trying to turn off the matter with a jest. The Primate, he said, was preaching them a sermon; but prudent people could not admit his line of argument.[1607] And certainly Anselm’s present line of argument, the assertion of individual conscience against established law, could not be admitted by any legislative or judicial assembly. The barons against Anselm. A disturbance followed; the barons who had stood by the Archbishop when he lay under a manifestly unjust charge joined in the clamour against him when he declared that the law of the land was something to be despised and disobeyed. But Anselm’s conscience was not disturbed; he sat quiet and silent, with his face towards the ground, till the clamour wore itself out.[1608] He then finished his sermon, as Count Robert called it. He ends his discourse. No Christian man ought to demand of him that he would never appeal to the blessed Peter or his Vicar. So to swear would be to abjure Peter, and to abjure Peter would be to abjure Christ who had set Peter as the chief over his Church. He then turned to the King with a kind of gentle defiance; “When I deny Christ, O King, for your sake, then will I not be slow to pay a fine at the judgement of your court for my sin in asking your leave.” Half in anger, half in mockery, Count Robert said, “You will present yourself to Peter and the Pope; but no Pope shall get the better of us, to our knowledge.”[1609] “God knows,” answered Anselm, “what may be in store for you; He will be able, if He thinks good, to guide me to the threshold of his apostles.” With these words the Archbishop rose, and went again into the outer chamber.
The King and his counsellors seem to have been moved by the calm resolution of Anselm, even when the letter of the law was on their own side. Either Rufus was not in his most savage mood, or his wily Achitophel contrived to keep him in some restraint. Nothing could be gained by keeping Anselm in the kingdom. He had already had the choice set before him. Anselm to be allowed to go, but the archbishopric to be seized if he went. He might go; but, if he went, the archbishopric would be seized into the King’s hands. He had made his choice, and he should be allowed to carry it out without hindrance; only he knew on what conditions. The decision was on the whole not altogether unfair; but the inherent pettiness of the magnanimous King could not help throwing in an insult or two by the way. If Anselm chose to go, all that he had, in Rufus’ version of the law, at once passed to the King. Anselm allowed to go, but the archbishopric to be seized. He was therefore told, in the message which was sent out to him, that he might go, but that he might take nothing with him which belonged to the King.[1610] Anselm did not, like William of Saint-Calais, bargain for the means of crossing in state with dogs, hawks, and servants.[1611] He seems tacitly to raise a point of law. The lands of the archbishopric might pass to the King; but that could not take from him his mere personal goods. “I have,” he said, “horses, clothes, furniture, which perhaps somebody may say are the King’s. But I will go naked and on foot, rather than give up my purpose.” When these words were reported to Rufus, for a moment he felt a slight sense of shame.[1612] He did not wish the Archbishop to go naked and barefoot. But within eleven days he must be ready at the haven to cross the sea, and a messenger from the King would be there to tell him what he and his companions would be allowed to take with them. The King’s bidding was announced to the Archbishop, and Anselm’s companions wished, now the matter seemed to be settled, to go at once to their own quarters. But Anselm would not leave the man who was his earthly lord, who had once been, in form at least, his friend, to whom he held himself to stand in so close an official and personal relation, without one word face to face. Anselm’s last interview with the King. He entered the presence-chamber, and once more the saint sat down side by side with the foulest of sinners. “My lord,” said Anselm, “I am going. If I could have gone with your good will, it would have better become you, and it would have been more pleasing to every good man. But since things are turned another way, though it grieves me as regards you, as regards myself I will, according to my power, bear it with a calm mind. And not even for this will I, by the Lord’s help, withdraw myself from the love of your soul’s health. Now therefore, not knowing when I may again see you, I commend you to God, and, as a ghostly father speaking to a beloved son, as an Archbishop of Canterbury speaking to a King of England, I would, before I go, give you my blessing, if you do not refuse it.” For a moment Rufus was touched; his good angel perhaps spoke to him then for the last time. He blesses Rufus. “I refuse not your blessing,” was his answer. The man of God arose; the King bowed his head, and Anselm made the sign of the cross over it. He then went forth, leaving the King and all that were with him wondering at the ready cheerfulness with which he spoke and went.[1613]
Anselm at Canterbury. Rufus and Anselm never met again. From Winchester the Archbishop went to his own home at Canterbury.[1614] The day after he came there, he gathered together his monks, and addressed them in a farewell discourse.[1615] He takes the pilgrim’s staff. Then, in the sight of a crowd of monks, clerks, and lay folk, he took the staff and scrip of a pilgrim before the altar. He commended all present to Christ, and set forth amidst their tears and wailings. The same day he and his comrades reached Dover. There he found that the passing current of better feeling which had touched the King’s heart as he bowed his head for Anselm’s blessing had been but for a moment. Rufus had gone back to his old mind, to the spirit of petty insult and petty gain. William of Warelwast at Dover. The King’s obedient clerk, William of Warelwast, one day to be the builder of the twin towers of Exeter, was there already. For fifteen days Anselm and his companions were kept at Dover, waiting for a favourable wind. Meanwhile William of Warelwast went in and out with Anselm; he ate at his table, and said not a word of the purpose which had brought him.[1616] On the fifteenth day the wind changed, and the sailors urged the Archbishop’s party to cross at once. When they were on the shore ready to start, William stopped the Archbishop as if he had been a runaway slave or a criminal escaping from justice,[1617] and in the King’s name forbade him to cross, till he had declared everything that he had in his baggage. In hope of finding money, all Anselm’s bags and trunks were opened and ransacked, in the sight of a vast crowd that stood by wondering at so unheard of a deed, and cursing those who did it.[1618] The bags were opened and ransacked in vain. Nothing was found that the King’s faithful clerk thought worth his master’s taking. Anselm crosses to Whitsand. The Archbishop, with Baldwin and Eadmer, was then allowed to set sail, and they landed safely at Whitsand.
The archbishopric seized by the King. As soon as the King heard that Anselm was out of the kingdom, he did as he had said that he would do; he again seized all the estates of the archbishopric into his own hands. This was only what was to be looked for; it was fully in accordance with the doctrines of Flambard, and better kings than William Rufus would have done the like in the like case. But Rufus or his agents went much further. Our guide implies that he acted as if Anselm had been an intruder in the archbishopric. Anselm’s acts declared null. All the acts and orders of Anselm during his four years’ primacy—that is, we must suppose, all leases, grants, and legal transactions of every kind—were declared null and void.[1619] Much loss and wrong must have been thus caused to many persons. A man who had, in the old phrase, bought land of the archbishopric for a term or for lives[1620] would lose his land, and, we may be sure, would not get back his money. A clerk collated by the Archbishop might be turned out of his living to make room for a nominee of the King. It is no wonder then that the wrongs which were done now were said to be greater than the wrongs which had been done when the archiepiscopal estates had before been seized after the death of Lanfranc.[1621] For at any rate the acts of Lanfranc were not reversed. One feels a certain desire to know what became of the Archbishop’s knights whose array had so displeased the King earlier in the year. But we hear nothing of them or of any particular class; all is quite general. In one case indeed it is quite certain that the rule that all Anselm’s acts should be treated as invalid was not carried out. The monks keep Peckham. The monks of Christ Church clearly kept their temporary possession of the manor of Peckham. For they spent the whole income of it on great architectural works which Anselm himself had begun. The metropolitan church, so lately rebuilt by Lanfranc, had already become small in the eyes of a younger generation, as indeed it was smaller than many minsters of the same date. The church of Lanfranc had followed the usual Norman plan; the short eastern limb, the monks’ choir, was under the tower.[1622] Rebuilding of the choir of Christ Church. The arrangements of the minster were now recast after a new pattern which did not commonly prevail till many years later. The eastern limb was rebuilt on a far greater scale, itself forming as it were a cruciform church, with its own transepts, its own towers, one of which in after days received the name of Anselm. Ernulf Prior 1096? Abbot of Peterborough, 1107; Bishop of Rochester, 1115. This work, begun by Anselm before his banishment, was carried on in his absence by the prior of his appointment, Ernulf—Earnwulf—a monk of his old house of Bec, but perhaps of English birth, who rose afterwards to be Abbot of Peterborough and Bishop of Rochester.[1623] In marked contrast to the speed with which Lanfranc had carried through his work, the choir begun by Ernulf and carried on by his successor Prior Conrad was not consecrated till late in the days of Henry.[1624]
Comparison of the trials of William of Saint-Calais, Anselm, and Thomas. After reading the accounts of these two great debates or trials, at Rockingham and at Winchester, it is impossible to avoid looking both backwards and forwards. The story of these proceedings must be told, as I have throughout tried to tell it, with an eye to the earlier proceedings against William of Saint-Calais, to the later proceedings against Thomas of London. The three stories supply an instructive contrast. In each case a bishop is arraigned before a civil tribunal; in each case the bishop appeals to the Pope; but beyond that the three men have little in common. Comparison of the men. William and Thomas were both of them, though in widely different senses, playing a part; it is Anselm alone who is throughout perfectly simple and unconscious. Through the whole of Anselm’s life, we feel that he never could have acted otherwise than as he did act. He never stopped to think what was the right thing for a saintly archbishop to do; he simply did at all times what his conscience told him that he ought to do. Position of Thomas; Thomas, perfectly sincere, thoroughly bent on doing his duty, was still following a conscious ideal of duty; he was always thinking what a saintly archbishop ought to do; above all things, we may be sure, he was thinking what Anselm, in the like case, would have done. Thus, while Anselm acts quite singly, Thomas is, consciously though sincerely, playing a part. of William of Saint-Calais. William of Saint-Calais is playing a part in a far baser sense; he appeals to the Pope, he appeals to ecclesiastical privileges in general, simply to serve his own personal ends. He appealed to those privileges more loudly than anybody else, when he thought that by that appeal he might himself escape condemnation. He trampled them under foot more scornfully than anybody else, when he thought that by so doing he might bring about the condemnation of Anselm and his own promotion. But it is curious to see how in some points the sincere acting of Thomas and the insincere acting of William agree as distinguished from the pure single-mindedness of Anselm. Both William and Thomas distinctly appeal to the Pope from the sentence of the highest court in their own land. Anselm does not strictly appeal to the Pope. We cannot say that Anselm did this; he does not refuse the sentence of the King’s court; he does not ask the Pope to set aside the sentence of the King’s court; the utmost that he does is to say that it is his duty to obey God rather than man, and that his duty to God obliges him to go to the Pope. To the Pope therefore he will go, even though the King forbids him; but he is ready at the same time to bear patiently the spoiling of his goods as the penalty of going. This is assuredly not an appeal to the Pope in the same sense as the appeals made by William and Thomas.
Among the marks of difference in the cases is that both William and Thomas strongly assert the privileges of their order; none but the Pope may judge a bishop. Anselm does not assert clerical privileges. Anselm never once, during his whole dispute with William Rufus, makes the slightest claim to any such privilege; he never breathes a word about the rights of the clerical order. The doctrine that none but the Pope may judge the Archbishop of Canterbury—nothing is said about other priests or other bishops—is heard of only once during the whole story.[1625] And then it is not put forth by Anselm; it is not openly put forth by anybody; it is merely mentioned by Eadmer as something which came into the minds of the undutiful bishops as a kind of after-thought. This most likely means that it was not really thought of at the time, either by the bishops or by anybody else, but that Eadmer, writing by fresh lights learned at Rome and at Bari, could no longer understand a state of things in which it was not thought of by somebody. The truth doubtless is that in Anselm’s day the doctrine of clerical exemption from temporal jurisdiction was a novelty which was creeping in. It was well known enough for Odo and William of Saint-Calais to catch at it to serve their own ends; it was not so fully established that it was at all a matter of conscience with Anselm to assert it. By the time of Thomas every doctrine of the kind had so grown that its assertion had become a point of conscience with every strict churchman. Question of observing the customs. But there is another point in which the case of Anselm and the case of Thomas agree as distinguished from the case of William of Saint-Calais. In this last case nothing turned on any promise of the Bishop to obey the customs of the realm. Much in the case of Anselm, much more in the case of Thomas, turned on such a promise. In each case the Archbishop pleads a certain reservation expressed or understood; but there is a wide difference between the reservation made by Anselm and the reservation made by Thomas. The favourite formula with Thomas, the formula which he proposes, the formula which he is at Clarendon with difficulty persuaded to withdraw and on which he again falls back,[1626] is “saving my order.” Anselm has nothing to say about his order; he is not fighting for the privileges of any special body of men; he is simply a righteous man clothed with a certain office, the duties of which office he must discharge. It is not his order that he reserves; he reserves only the higher and more abiding names of God and right.