Anselm was known as the friend of Lanfranc. He had been a welcome guest at the court of the Conqueror and in the cloisters at Canterbury. His character stood high above all contemporaries in England or Normandy. Anselm was surely the right man to be made archbishop, and so put an end to a state of things which even to the turbulent barons was discreditable to the country.
The Red King bade Anselm come to his court, and received him with great display of honour. Then came a private interview, and Anselm at once told the king how men spoke ill of his misrule: “Openly or secretly things were daily said of him by nearly all the men of his realm which were not seemly for the king’s dignity.” They parted, and Anselm was busy for some time in England. When the abbot wished to return to Bec William refused him leave to quit the country.
At the beginning of Lent, March, 1093, the king was lying sick at Gloucester. It was believed the sickness was mortal. Certainly the king thought himself dying. Anselm was summoned to minister to him, and on his arrival bade the king “make a clean confession of all that he knows that he has done against God, and promise that, should he recover, he will without pretence amend in all things. The king at once agreed to this, and with sorrow of heart engaged to do all that Anselm required, and to keep justice and mercy all his life long. To this he pledged his faith, and made his bishops witnesses between himself and God, sending persons in his stead to promise his word to God on the altar. An Edict was written and sealed with the king’s seal that all prisoners should be set free in all his dominions, all debts forgiven, all offences heretofore committed pardoned and forgotten for ever. Further, good and holy laws were promised to the whole people, and the sacred upholding of right and such solemn inquest into wrongdoing as may deter others.”
Thus Eadmer.
Florence of Worcester puts the matter more briefly. “When the king thought himself about to die he vowed to God, as his barons advised him, to amend his life, to sell no more churches nor farm them out, but to defend them by his kingly might, and to end all bad laws and to establish just laws.”
There was still the vacant archbishopric to be filled, and the king named Anselm for Canterbury.
In vain Anselm pleaded that he was an old man—he was then sixty—and unfit for so great a responsibility, that he was a monk and had shunned the business of the world.
The bishops assembled round the sick king’s bed would not hear the refusal. Here was religion well nigh destroyed in England, and evil rampant, and the Church of God stricken almost to death, and at such a time was Anselm to prefer his own ease and quiet to the call to deliver Canterbury from its bondage? By main force they placed a pastoral staff within his hands, and while the crowd shouted “Long live the bishop!” he was “carried rather than led to a neighbouring church.” The king at once ordered that Anselm should be invested with all the temporal rights of the see, as Lanfranc had held them, and in September, 1093, Anselm was enthroned at Canterbury, and in December he was consecrated.
Anselm warned the bishops and nobles when they forced the archbishopric upon him that they were making a mistake. “You have yoked to the plough a poor weak sheep with a wild bull,” he said. “This plough is the Church of God, and in England it has been drawn by two strong oxen, the king and the Archbishop of Canterbury, one to do justice and to hold power in the things of this world, the other to teach and govern in the things eternal. Now Lanfranc is dead, and with his untamed companion you have joined an old and feeble sheep.”
That the king and the archbishop were unevenly yoked was manifest on William’s recovery, but it was no poor sheep with whom Rufus had to deal, but a man as brave and steadfast as he was gentle and wise.