The first campaign against despotism in England was over—the battle was to be renewed when Henry I. wore the crown.
At Rome Pope Urban, with all the goodwill in the world, and with a very real affection and regard for Anselm, could do nothing against the Red King except rebuke his envoys, and do honour to the much-tried archbishop. Anselm himself prevented the excommunication of William when it was proposed at the Council of Bari, October, 1098.
But Pope Urban would not allow Anselm to resign his archbishopric, and this in spite of all Anselm’s entreaties.
In the spring of 1099 came a General Council at Rome—at which Anselm assisted—a council remarkable for its decision against allowing clergy to receive investiture of churches from the hands of laymen, and by so doing to become the vassals of temporal lords. Excommunication was declared to be the penalty for all who gave or received Church appointments on such conditions.
It was at the close of this council that an outspoken Bishop of Lucca called attention to Anselm’s case. “One sits amongst us in silence and meekness who has come from the far ends of the earth. His very silence cries aloud. His humility and patience, so gentle and so deep, as they rise to God should set us on fire. This one man has come here, wronged and afflicted, seeking judgment and justice of the Apostolic See. And now this is the second year, and what help has he found?”
Pope Urban answered that attention should be given, but nothing further was done.
Anselm left Rome and went to Lyons, remaining in France until the death of William in August, 1100. Henry was at once chosen king in his room, and crowned at Westminster three days after his brother’s death. Six weeks later, at Henry’s earnest request—he prayed him “to come back like a father to his son Henry and the English people”—Anselm landed at Dover and returned to take up the task allotted to him on his consecration as archbishop.
Henry at the outset of his reign promised “God and all the people” that the old scandals of selling and farming out the Church lands should be stopped, and “to put down all unrighteousness that had been in his brother’s time, and to hold the best laws that ever stood in any king’s day before him.” That this charter was of value may be taken from the verdict on the king by the Chronicler of the time. “Good man he was and great awe there was of him. No man durst misdo against another in his day. He made peace for man and beast. Whoso carried a burden of gold and silver no man durst do him wrong.”
Two evils that pressed very hardly on the mass of hard-working people, the devastation that attended the king’s progress through the land[8], and the coining of false money, were at Anselm’s instigation checked by the king.
But with all Henry’s desire for the restoration of religion and law in the land, he was the Conqueror’s son, and for Anselm the struggle against absolutism in government was not yet over. Only now the battle was not with a fierce, untamed despot like the Red King, but with an autocrat of an even more formidable type, a stern man of business, in whose person alone must be found the source of all law and order, and who would brook no questioning of the royal will.