Saint Anselm

X

NEW COLLEGE,
LONDON

(Formerly HACKNEY AND NEW COLLEGE)

LIBRARY
5? . ARn COIVKI

X

I

BY R. W. CHURCH,

RECTOR OF WHATLEV.

col ? 5

NOTICE.

THE following pages make no pretension to be
anything more than a very slight sketch of the history
of one who, as a thinker, a Christian leader, and a
man, was one of the most remarkable and most at
tractive characters of the Middle Ages. In him are
combined, in a singular degree, with the interest grow
ing out of a pure and noble religious life, governed by
an unswerving purpose and fruitful in varied goodness,
the scientific and literary interest attaching to one
who opened a new line of thought in philosophy, and
the historical interest attaching to one who took a
leading and decisive part in the events of his time ;
and what we behold in him is not the less impressive,
when it is observed that this prominent part in high
affairs of Church and State in a great nation was in
the strongest contrast with his plan of life, with his
cherished pursuits, and with what seemed to be his
special gifts and calling. Others are to be met with
in the Middle Ages who were Anselm s equals, or his
superiors, in the separate aspects of his character;
but it would not be easy to find one who so joined

b

vi XOTICE.

the largeness and daring of a powerful and inquiring
intellect, with the graces and sweetness and unselfish
ness of the most loveable of friends, and with the
fortitude, clear-sightedness, and dauntless firmness of
a hero, forced into a hero s career in spite of himself,
and compelled, by no seeking of his own, to control
and direct the issues of eventful conflicts between the
mightiest powers of his time.

I have told the story before. I wish I could tell it
as it ought to be told with due justice to one who
impressed permanently on the traditions of Christen
dom fresh and higher conceptions of Christian saint-
liness, Christian philosophy, and the obligations of a
Christian teacher ; with a due sense of what is acci
dental, imperfect, or belonging to a particular and an
early social stage, and likewise with due allowance for
it; with an adequate and equitable perception of what
is rudimentary or uncouth in a character developed
in times so far from our own, and so unlike them,
but also of what it has of a rare beauty and com
pleteness, which all times must feel and admire and
revere ; not raising its imperfections into patterns
and standards, or giving them an unreal aspect and
colour, to recommend them to the judgment of our
own time, nor warped by what is of our own time
to miss, in what at first sight is uncongenial and
strange, the essential notes of goodness, truth, and
strength, or, what is worse, to distort and disfigure
them. But it is a difficult task, the difficulty of which

NOTICE. vii

does not diminish with the increase of our knowledge,
for the men of one age to enter into the conditions of
another, removed far from them not only by time, but
still more by vast revolutions in history, and sweep
ing changes in society; to catch and understand what
is real, with all its surrounding circumstances, in long
past times ; to be fair to them, and to be fair also to
ourselves.

The plan of this series of works allows but few
footnotes, or references to authorities. My materials
are to be found chiefly in the memoirs of Eadmer,
Anselm s friend and companion in days of peace and
days of trouble, and in the contemporary chroniclers,
Orderic of St. Evroul in Normandy, Florence of Wor
cester, the English Chronicle, and William of Malms-
bury in England. I have made free use, wherever I have
found it convenient, of what I have written before. I
need hardly say that I have had before me constantly
the history which Sir Francis Palgrave, unfortunately,
left half finished, and that later one, soon, we may
hope, to be complete, in which Mr. Freeman has
taught all students of history so great a lesson, and
has shown how the most exact care in the use of
materials and the most inexorable criticism of
evidence may be united with philosophical breadth
and boldness, with generous sympathies, with clear
ness of narrative, and vigorous eloquence. The ori
ginality and charm of Anselm s character, and the
interest of his history and of his philosophical writings,

viii NOTICE.

have been more appreciated on the Continent than
in England. He has attracted much notice among
scholars in France and Germany ; and I have to ac
knowledge my obligations to several. The essay
on St. Anselm by the eminent Roman Catholic Pro
fessor Mohler, a short and imperfect but interesting
one, was translated into English in 1842. The Pro
testant Professor Hasse, of Bonn (Anselm von Can
terbury : Bonn, 1843, l %5 2 )> h as treated both Anselm s
history and his scientific position with the care and
knowledge of a German. There is also a work by Pro
fessor Franck, of Tubingen (1842), which I do not know.
*

The late Emile Saisset discussed Anselm s philosophy,
and, incidentally, his genius and fortunes, in a short
paper, marked with his warmth of sympathy, fair
ness, and temperateness, which was published first
in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and has since been
republished in a volume of Miscellanies (Melanges
d Histoire, de Morale ct de Critique : Paris, 1859).
Anselm has also been the subject of an admir
able work, admirable in its spirit as well as in its
ability, by M. Charles de Remusat (Saint Anselme
de Cantorbery : Paris, 1853; 2nd edition, 1868). M. de
Montalembert published a short fragment on Anselm
(Paris, 1844), which was to be part of an introduction
to his history of St. Bernard, and which, like all
that he wrote, was written with power and eloquence
and bore the marks of the warfare in which he
passed his life. There are also two unpretending

NOTICE. ix

but very careful and useful studies on Lanfranc
and on Anselm, published at Caen in 1853, by
M. Charma, a professor in the Faculty of Letters
at Caen ; it is to be regretted that they have not
been reprinted. In English, there are fair notices
of him in the Biographia Britannica Literaria
(London, 1846), by Mr. T. Wright; and by Mr.
Scratchley in the Biographical Dictionary (London,
1843). I have referred for some local matters to
Aubert s Vallee d Aoste, and to a work on St. Anselm
by M. Crozet-Mouchet, Professor of Theology at Pigne-
rol (Paris and Tournai, 1859), who writes with the
enthusiasm and something of the credulity of one
who feels himself St. Anselm s countryman. Anselm s
philosophy has of itself been the subject of several
elaborate works. The Proslogion and Monologion
were translated into French, and commented on by
M. Bouchitte (Le Rationalisme Chretien: Paris, 1842).
Other works, German, Italian, and Spanish, will be
found referred to in Hasse and De Remusat. I must
add that an entirely different estimate of Anselm s
character from what is given in these pages, and an
opposite judgment on his career, are to be found in
Dean Hook s important contribution to our Church
history, his " Lives of the Archbishops of Can
terbury."

R. W. C.

WHATLEY, June 26, 1870.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

t>AC,B

ANSICLM OF AOSTA . , , I

CHAPTER II.

FOUNDATION OF THE MONASTERY OF BEG l6

CHAPTER III.

DISCIPLINE OF A NORMAN MONASTERY 43

CHAPTER IV.

ANSELM AT BEG 69

CHAPTER V.

ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER 94

CHAPTER VI.

ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION OF WILLIAM I 15

CHAPTER VII.

CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH 14!

CHAPTER VIII.

ANSELM, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY 169

xii CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IX.

PACK

THE MEETING AT ROCKINGH^M 195

CHAPTER X.

THE FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM 212

CHAPTER XL

ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT 22 7

CHAPTER XII.

ANSELM AND HENRY I. 2 47

CHAPTER XIII.
ANSELM S LAST DAYS 286

ILLUSTRATIONS.

CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL Frontispiece

ST. ANSELM S WINDOW . Vignette on title-page

N f -

^LIBRARY

4$f>

ST ANSEL M.

CHAPTER I.

ANSELM OF AOSTA.

" Far off the old snows ever new
"With silver edges cleft the blue

Aloft, alone, divine ;
The sunny meadows silent slept,
Silence the sombre armies kept,
The vanguard of the pine.

In that thin air the birds are still,
No ring-dove murmurs on the hill,

Nor mating cushat calls ;
But gay cicalas singing sprang,
And waters from the forest sang

The song of waterfalls."

F. W. H. MYERS.

DIFFERENT ages have had their different ways of
attempting to carry out the idea of a religious life.
The aim of such a life, in those who have been true in
their pursuit of it, has always been the same, to
know God and His will, to learn to be like Him and
to love Him ; to understand and realize that law of

life of which our Lord is the example ; to shake off
S.L. x.

2 AN S ELM OF AOSTA. [CHAP.

the yoke of evil, to face temptation and overcome it,
and to rise out of it to that service which is perfect
freedom. But though the general principles and
motives have been the same, the rules and ordering

o

of life have been various. Social conditions, and the
level of cultivation and knowledge, have gone through
numberless changes ; men have found by experience
that what was reasonable in one age alters by the
alteration of circumstances into what is unwise and
mischievous in another; and that which was inconceiv
able and impossible in an earlier time turns into the
natural course of life in a later one. In the eleventh
century, as in those immediately before and after it,
the natural form of religious life that which of itself
presented itself to the thoughts of a man in earnest,
wishing not only to do right, but to do the best he
could to fulfil God s purpose and his own calling by
self-improvement was the monastic profession.

So strong a tendency must have had a reasonable
cause. Many things of various character had con
tributed to brin^ this about. But one thing must ever

o

be borne in mind if we would understand why monasti-
cism in those times so completely appropriated to itself
the name of religion. To comprehend the feelings and
thoughts that made it so natural, we must keep in vie\v
what was the state of society and life in the world at the
time. Since the Gospel had been preached and the
Church founded, human society had presented, in the
main, but two great aspects : there had been the
decaying and infinitely corrupt civilization of the
Roman Empire ; and then, gradually extinguishing
and replacing it, the confused and wild barbarism,
full of noble germs for the future, which for ages

I.] AN S ELM OF AOSTA.

followed the triumph of the new nations in Europe.
Thus there was the loftiest moral teaching, based on
the most overwhelming doctrines which the world
had ever known, confronted with an evil and hope
less condition of things in real life, to which it
formed a contrast of which it is impossible for us
*now even to imagine the magnitude. For eighteen
centuries Christianity has been acting on human
society ; we know but too well how far it is from
having really made the world Christian ; but though
there must always be much question as to degree,
no one can seriously doubt that it has done a great
deal. But for the first ten of those centuries it
can hardly be said to have leavened society at all.
Its influence on individuals, so vast and astonish
ing, was no measure at all of its influence on society
at large. It acted upon it doubtless with enormous
power ; but it was as an extraneous and foreign agent,
which destroys and shapes, but does not mingle or
renew. It turned the course of events, it changed
worship, it built churches, it suppressed customs and
institutions, it imposed punishments and penances,
it affected language, it introduced powers, it revolu
tionized policy, it let loose eventful tendencies ; but
to the heart of society, to the common life of common
men, the ideas, the moralities, the instincts, the
assumptions reigning in business or intercourse in the
general direction of human activity, to the unpre
tending, the never-ceasing occupations of family life,
the awful visitant from on high, which had conquered an
empire and put a bridle into the mouth of barbarians,
and transformed, one by one, sinners into saints, had
not yet found its way. That ordinary daily routine

B 2

4 ANSELM OF AOSTA. [CHAP.

of life, in which we have learned to see one of its
noblest and most adequate spheres, seemed then
beneath its notice, or qut of its reach. The house
hold, the shop, the market, the school, the farm,
the places of law and conversation and amusement,
never, or but seldom, appeared as the scenes and
trial places of a Christian life : other traditions kept
hold of the m, and, good or bad, they were of times
when there was no Christianity. Society was a long
time unlearning heathenism ; it has not done so yet ;
but it had hardly begun, at any rate it was only just
beginning, to imagine the possibility of such a thing
in the eleventh century. Thus that combination of
real and earnest religion with every-day pursuits of life,
which, in idea at least, is so natural and so easy to
us, and is to a very real degree protected and assisted
by general usages and ways of thinking, was then
almost inconceivable. Let a man throw himself
into the society of his day then, and he found him
self in an atmosphere to which real religion, the
religion of self-conquest and love, was simply a thing
alien or unmeaning, which no one imagined himself
called to think of; or else amid eager and over
mastering activities, fiercely scorning and remorse
lessly trampling down all restraints of even common
morality. And in this state of society, the baseness
and degradation of Latin civilization, or the lawless
savagery of its barbarian conquerors, a man was called
to listen to the Sermon on the Mount, and to give
himself up to the service of the Son of God, who had
died for him and promised him His Holy Spirit ; to
believe, after this short life of trouble was over, in an
immortality of holiness, and now to fit himself for it.

LIBRARY ST. MARY S COLLEGE

I.] ANSELM OF AOSTA. 5

If we can see what that contemporary society as a
whole was like, and no one has much doubt of its
condition, what would be the effect of it on those
whose lot was to be born in it, and whose heart God
had touched ? They could not help the sharp line by
which any serious and real religious life in it seemed
to be excluded : their natural thought would be that
to live- such a life they must keep as much out of it as
they could. That was the principle of monasticism,
the best expedient that then seemed to present itself,
by which those who believed in Christ s teaching
might be honest in following it : to leave the un
manageable and uncontrollable sczculum to follow its
own way, and to secure posts of refuge and shelter out
of its wild tumult, where men might find the religion
which the conditions of actual society seemed to
exclude. That it was a most natural expedient is
shown by the fact that, wherever religious convictions
have been unusually keen and earnest in the face of
carelessness and scandals in general society, there,
even among those who have most hated the monks,
as the Puritans of the seventeenth, and the Metho
dists and Evangelicals of the eighteenth century, the
strong disposition to draw a sharp line between
religion and the world has shown itself. That such
attempts, in the long run, are vain to exclude the
evils they fear, and are but very partial means to
secure the good they aim at, religious people, in so
early a stage of the experience of the Church, were
less able to perceive than we who have seen the
results of much wider and more varied trials. But we
have no right to expect those who had not our oppor
tunities of seeing things worked out to the end to

6 ANSELM OF AOSTA. [CHAP.

know as much as we do, to whom time and changes
and issues then unimaginable have taught so much.

Any high effort, therefore, in those days to be
thorough in religion took the shape of monastic
discipline and rule. When we call it narrow and
imperfect, and when we dwell on its failures and cor
ruptions, we must remember, first, the general con
dition of society of which this irresistible tendency to
monasticism was the natural and not unreasonable
result ; and next, that if we have learned better,
we have come later on the stage of life. When
all things are taken into account, it is hard to re
sist the conclusion that the monks made the best
of their circumstances. If they were too sanguine
in one direction, not sanguine and trustful enough
in another, they had not seen so many illusions dis
pelled as we have ; and, on the other hand, they had
not yet come to know the wonderful and unexpected
openings for a true service of God, the unthought-of
possibilities of character and goodness, which have
been shown to men in states of life where of old
such service seemed impossible.

In writing of any eminently religious man of this
period, it must be taken almost as a matter of course
that he was a monk. St. Anselm, one of the most
remarkable men and most attractive characters, not
only of the Middle Ages but of the whole Christian
history, can never be understood or judged of fairly,
except it be kept in mind that the conditions under
which he lived shaped the forms under which religious
effort and earnestness showed themselves, and left
no religious life conceivable but the monastic one.
The paths of life were then few, sharply defined,

L] ANSELM OF AOSTA. 7

and narrow. A man who wanted to be active in the
world had little choice but to be a soldier ; a man who
wanted to serve God with all his heart had little choice
but to be a monk.

Anselm, therefore, was a monk throughout, and in
all his thoughts and ways, just as a soldier who is
loyal to his profession can nowhere be uninfluenced
by its rules and habits. But he was much more than
a monk. A great teacher, a great thinker, a great
kindler of thought in others, he was also an example of
gallant and unselfish public service, rendered without
a thought of his own convenience or honour, to fulfil
what seemed a plain duty, in itself very distasteful,
and not difficult to evade, if he had wished to evade it.
Penetrated, too, as he was by the unflinching austerity
of that hard and stern time, he was remembered
among men, less as the great sage who had opened
new paths to thought, or as the great archbishop who
had not been afraid of the face of kings, or as the
severe restorer of an uncompromising and high aiming
discipline, than as the loving and sympathizing Chris
tian brother, full of sweetness, full of affection, full of
goodness, full of allowances and patience for others,
whom men of all conditions liked to converse with,
and whom neither high nor low ever found cold in his
friendship, or unnatural and forced in his condescension.

There is naturally not much to say about his early
life. The chroniclers of those days were not in the
habit of going back to a man s first days ; they were
satisfied with taking him when he began to make
himself known and felt in the world. It is a point of
more than ordinary interest as regards Anselm, that
we have some authentic information about the times

8 ANSELM OF AOSTA. [CHAP.

when no one cared about him. He had the fortune to
have a friend who was much with him in his later
life, loyal, affectionate, simple-hearted, admiring, who,
more than most of his contemporaries among literary
monks, was alive to points of character. Eadmer, the
Englishman, a monk of Canterbury, who was Anselm s
pupil and then his follower and attendant in banish
ment, saw something else worth recording in his great
archbishop besides the public passages of his life and
his supposed miracles. He observed and recorded
what Anselm was as a man, and not merely what he
was as an ecclesiastic. We owe to him the notice that
Anselm was fond of talking about his boyhood to his
friends ; and we owe to him, on good authority, cir
cumstances about Anselm s first years, which in other
cases we only get from later Hearsay.

Anselm was born about 1033 at Aosta, or in its
neighbourhood. The old cantonment of Terentius
Varro, the conqueror, under Augustus, of the wild
hill-tribes of the Alps, at the foot of the two famous
passes which now bear the name of St. Bernard
of Menthon, still keeping the shape of a camp
given to it by the Roman engineers, and still show
ing many remains of the grand masonry of the
Roman builders, had then become a border city
and an ecclesiastical centre in the Alpine valleys
which parted the great races of the north and
south, and through which the tides of their wars
rolled backwards and forwards. In its middle age
towers built of the squared ashlar of the Roman
ramparts, in the rude crypts of its two churches, in
the quaint colonnades of its cloisters, in the mosaic
pavements of its cathedral choir, half Pagan half

I.] ANSELM OF AOSTA. 9

Christian, in which what looks at first sight like a
throned image of our Lord, turns out to be only an
allegory of the year and its seasons nay, in its very
population, in which, side by side with keen Italians
from the plains and stalwart mountaineers from the
Alps, a race diseased in blood for long centuries and
degraded to a degeneracy of human organization as
hopeless, as in Europe it is without parallel, grins and
gibbers about the streets Aosta still bears the traces
of what it was, in its civilization as in its position ;
the chief place of a debateable land, where Chris
tianity and heathenism, Burgundians and Lombards,
Franks and Italians, had met and fought and mixed.
The bishopric, founded, it is:.said, in the fifth century
from the see of Vercelli, had been at one time a
suffragan see of Milan ; its name was written on one
of the episcopal thrones which were ranged right and
left of the marble chair of St. Ambrose, in the semi
circle at the eastern apse of the church which bore his
name : on the right, the seats and names of Vercelli,
Novara, Lodi, Tortona, Asti, Turin, Aosta, Acqui,
and Genoa ; on the left, those of Brescia, Bergamo,
Cremona, Vintimiglia, Savona, Albenga, Pavia, Pia-
cenza, and Como. But later it had followed the
political changes of the Alpine valleys ; the Bishop
of Aosta is found with those of Geneva and Lausanne
figuring at the consecration of a Burgundian king at
St. Maurice in the Valais ; he received the dignity and
feudal powers of a count, and even still he is said to
bear the title of Count of Cogne, one of the neigh
bouring valleys. The district had had its evangelizing
saints, St. Gratus, St. Ursus, and St. Jucundus, names
little known elsewhere, but meeting us still everywhere

io ANSELM OF AOSTA. [CHAP.

round Aosta. Eadmer describes it as lying on the
confines of Lombardy and Burgundy one of those
many Burgundies which so confuse historians ; at
this time, that kingdom of Burgundy or Aries which
had ceased to be an independent kingdom the year
before Anselm s birth, by the death of Rudolf III.,
1032, and had become part of the Empire. It included
Provence, Dauphiny, South Savoy, and the country
between the Saone and Jura (Regnum Provincial), with
Burgundia Transjurana ; North Savoy, and Switzer
land between the Reuss and Jura. The valley had
formed part of the dominions of the thrice-married
Adelaide, the heiress of the Marquises of Susa and
Turin, the "most excellent Duchess and Marchioness
of the Cottian Alps," as she is styled at the time : her
last husband was Odo or Otto, the son of Humbert of
the White Hands, Count of Maurienne. From this
marriage is descended the house of Savoy and the
present line of Italian kings ; and of the heritage of
this house Aosta henceforth always formed a part,
and its name continues among their favourite titles.

The scenery of Anselm s birthplace, " wild Aosta
lulled by Alpine rills," is familiar to the crowds who
are yearly attracted to its neighbourhood by the
love of Alpine grandeur and the interest of Alpine
adventure, and who pass through it on their way to
and from the peaks and valleys of the wonderful
region round it. The district itself is a mountain
land, but one with the richness and warmth of the
South, as it descends towards the level of the river, the
Dora Baltea, which carries the glacier torrents from the
mountains round Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn to
the plains where they meet the Po. Great ridges,

I.] ANSELM OF AOSTA. n

masking the huge masses of the high Alps behind
them, flank its long valley as it runs straight from
east to west. Closely overhanging the city on the
south, rises rapidly a wall of sub-alpine mountain,
for great part of the day in shadow, torn by ravines,
with woods and pastures hanging on its steep flanks and
with white houses gleaming among them, but tower
ing up at last into the dark precipices of the Becca di
Nona and the peak of Mont Emilius. At the upper
end of the valley towards the west, seen over a vista
of walnuts, chestnuts, and vines, appear high up in
the sky, resting as it were on the breast of the great
hills, the white glaciers of the Ruitor, bright in sun
shine, or veiled by storms : and from the bridge over
the torrent which rushes by the city from the north,
the eye goes up to the everlasting snows of the
"domed Velan," and the majestic broken Pikes of
the Grand Combin. It is a region strongly and cha
racteristically marked. The legends of the valley
have not forgotten Anselm : they identify the village
where he lived, the tower which was the refuge or the
lair of his family, 1 the house in the suburbs of the
city where he was born ; in the sacristy of the cathe
dral they show his relics along with those of the local
Saints, St. Gratus and St. Jucundus. These legends
are not in themselves worthless ; there is no reason
why tradition should not have preserved real re
collections : but no documentary evidence appears for
them, and it is quite possible that they grew up only
because in regions far distant Anselm became a
famous man and a saint of the Church. Aosta and

1 The village with the ruined tower is Gressan, a few miles S. W. of
Aosta.

12 ANSELM OF AOSTA. [CHAP.

its scenery after all has little to do with the events
of Anselm s life, and had probably little influence in
shaping his mind and character. We only know, on
his own authority through Eadmer, or from his letters,
that his father Gundulf was a Lombard settler at
Aosta, and that he married Ermenberga, who was
related to the Counts of Maurienne, the upper lords
of the valley. Anselm bore a name which was
common at that time in North Italy, and is met
with three times in the lists of the bishops of Aosta
in the tenth and eleventh centuries. His parents
were accounted noble, and had property, for which
they paid homage as vassals to the Count of Mauri
enne. His father was an unthrifty and violent man,
who on his deathbed took the monastic habit. His
mother, a good woman and a prudent housewife, used
to talk to her child, as mothers do, about God, and
gained his love and reverence. From Anselm s let
ters we learn that he had uncles who had been kind
to him, and an only sister, married in the district, who
did not forget, in after-times, that her brother had
become the Primate of distant and famous England.
We know nothing more of his family.

The only trace of the influence on him of the
scenery in the midst of which he grew up is found
in the story of a boyish dream which made an impres
sion on him, as it is one of the few details about
his life at Aosta which, doubtless from his own
mouth, Eadmer has preserved. The story is not
without a kind of natural grace, and fits in, like a
playful yet significant overture, to the history of his
life. "Anselm," it says, "when he was a little child,
used gladly to listen, as far as his age allowed, to his

I.] ANSELM OF AOSTA. ^3

mother s conversation ; and having heard from her
that there is one God in heaven above, ruling all
things, and containing all things, he imagined, like
a boy bred up among the mountains, that heaven
rested on the mountains, that the palace of God was
there, and that the way to it was up the mountains.
His thoughts ran much upon this ; and it came to
pass on a certain night that he dreamed that he ought
to go up to the top of the mountain, and hasten to
the palace of God, the Great King. But before he
began to ascend he saw in the plain which reached
to the foot of the mountain women reaping the corn,
who were the King s maidens ; but they did their
work very carelessly and slothfully. The boy, grieved
at their sloth and rebuking it, settled in his mind to
accuse them before the Lord, the King. So having
pressed on to the top of the mountain, he came into
the palace of the King. There he found the Lord,
with only his chief butler : for as it seemed to him,
all the household had been sent to gather the har
vest ; for it was autumn. So he went in, and the Lord
called him ; and he drew near and sat at his feet. Then
the Lord asked him with gracious kindness, who he
was, and whence he came, and what he wanted. He
answered according to the truth. Then the Lord
commanded, and bread of the whitest was brought to
him by the chief butler ; and he ate and was refreshed
before the Lord. Therefore, in the morning, when
he recalled what he had seen before the eyes of his
mind, he believed, like a simple and innocent child,
that he really had been in heaven, and had been re
freshed by the bread of the Lord ; and so he declared
publicly before others."

14 ANSELM OF AOSTA. [CHAP.

From his boyhood he seems to have been a student,
and he early felt the common attraction of the age
for the monastic life. "He was not yet fifteen, when
he began to consider how he might best shape his life
according to God ; and he came to think with himself
that nothing in the conversation of men was better
than the life of monks. He wrote therefore to a
certain abbot who was known to him, and asked that
he might be made a monk. But when the abbot
learned that Anselm was asking without his father s
knowledge, he refused, not wishing to give offence to
his father." Anselm then, according to a common idea
so often met with in the records of mediseval religion,
prayed that he might be struck with sickness, in order
that the repugnance of his friends to his proposed
change of life might be overcome. He fell sick ; but
even then the fear of his father hindered his reception,
and he recovered. "It was not God s will," says his
biographer, " that he should be entangled in the con
versation of that place."

Then came the time of reaction ; renewed health
and youth and prosperity were pleasant, and put the
thoughts of a religious life oat of his mind : he looked
forward now to entering the ways of the world."
Even his keen love of study, to which he had been so
devoted, gave way before the gaieties and sports of his
time of life. His affection for his mother was a partial
restraint on him ; but when she died, " the ship of his
heart lost its anchor, and drifted off altogether into
the waves of the world." But family disagreements
sprung up. His biographer, perhaps he himself too in
after life, saw the hand of Providence in his father s
harshness to him, which no submission could soften,

I.] ANSELM OF AOSTA. 15

and which at last drove him in despair to leave his
home, and after the fashion of his countrymen to seek
his fortune in strange lands. Italians, especially Lom
bards, meet us continually in the records and letters
of this time as wanderers, adventurers, monks, in Nor
mandy and even England. He crossed Mont Cenis
with a single clerk for his attendant, and he did not
forget the risk and fatigue of the passage. He spent
three years partly in what was then called Burgundy,
the portions of modern France corresponding roughly
with the valley of the Saone and Rhone, and the
upper valley of the Seine, partly in France proper,
the still narrow kingdom of which Paris and Rheims
and Orleans were the chief cities ; then, following
perhaps the track of another Italian, Lanfranc of
Pavia, he came to Normandy, and remained for a
time at Avranches, where Lanfranc had once taught.
Finally, he followed Lanfranc, now a famous master,
to the monastery where he had become prior, the
newly-founded monastery of Bee. Bee was a school
as well as a monastery, and there Anselm, along with
other young men whom the growing wish to learn and
the fame of the teacher had drawn thither, settled
himself, not as a monk but as a student, under Lan
franc. The monastery of .Bee was so characteristic a
growth of the time, and in its short-lived but brilliant
career of glory exercised so unique and eventful an
influence, that a few words may be properly given
to it.

CHAPTER II.

^OUNDATION OF THE MONASTERY OF EEC.

"There is a day in spring
When under all the earth the secret germs
Begin to stir and glow before they bud :
The wealth and festal pomps of midsummer
Lie in the heart of that inglorious day,
Which no man names with blessing, though its work
Is blest by all the world."

The Story of Queen Isabel, by M. S.

IN the end of the tenth and the beginning of the
eleventh century the waste caused by the great inva
sion which had made Normandy was beginning to be
repaired. The rapidity with which the Normans took
the impress of their new country, and assimilated
themselves to the Latin civilization round them, is
one of the most remarkable points in the character of
this remarkable race. Churches and monasteries had
perished among the other desolations of Rollo s Pagan
sea-kin^s : but the children of Rollo s Pagan sea-

o o

kings had become the settled lords of lands and
forests and towns ; and though the taint of heathenism
was still among them, even in their creed, and much
more in their morality, the most important portion of
them had come to feel about their new faith as if it
was the one which all their forefathers had ever held.
Churches and monasteries were beginning to rise

CHAP. II.] THE MONASTERY OF BEC. 17

again. The famous house of Jumie ges, which Hasting
the pirate had destroyed, had been restored by Rollo s
son, William Longsword, about 940 ; another of
Hasting s ruins, St. Wandrille at Fontanelle, was re
stored by Richard the Good (1008). Fecamp, Mont St.
Michel, St. Ouen, ascribed their foundation or renova
tion to his father, Richard the Fearless, still, like Wil
liam Longsword, a "Duke of Pirates" to the French
chronicler Richer (943-996). At Fecamp, where he had
a palace, he built or rebuilt an abbey and minster in
prospect of the sea, from which his fathers had come ;
minster and palace, as at Westminster, Holyrood,
and the Escurial, were in close neighbourhood. The
church, one of the first of which we have any details,
was costly and magnificent for the time ; an architect
was carefully sought out for it, and it was " constructed
of well-squared masonry by a Gothic hand, the
Goth being unquestionably a master mason from
Lombardy or the Exarchate." " It was adorned by
lofty towers, beautifully finished without and richly
ornamented within." "There was one object, how
ever, which excited much speculation. It was a large
block of stone placed right across the path which led
to the transept doorway, so close to the portal as to
be beneath the drip of the eaves. . . . Fashioned and
located by Duke Richard s order, the stone was hol
lowed out so as to form a huge strong chest, which
might be used as a coffin or a sarcophagus. Its present
employment, however, was for the living and not for
the dead. On the eve of every Lord s-day the chest,
or whatever it might be called, was filled to the brim
with the finest wheat-corn then a cate or luxury,
as it is now considered in many parts of France. To

S.L. X. C

18 FOUNDATION OF THE [CHAP.

this receptacle the poor resorted, and each filled his
measure of grain." They also received a dole of
money, and an almoner carried the gift to the sick.
When Richard died, * then the purpose of the chest
was made clear. " His last instructions were, that the
chest should contain his corpse, lying where the foot
should tread, and the dew descend, and the waters of
heaven should fall." l He

" Marked for his own,

Close to those cloistered steps, a burial-place,
That every foot might fall with heavier tread,
Trampling his vileness."

Richard the Good favoured still more the increasing

o

tendency to church building and the restoration of
monasteries ; and the Norman barons began to follow
the example of their chiefs. They rivalled one another,
says Ordericus, the chronicler of St. Evroul, in the
good work and in the largeness of their alms ; and a
powerful man thought that he laid himself open to
mockery if he did not help clerks or monks on his
lands with things needful for God s warfare. Roger
de Toeni built the Abbey of Conches, and brought
a monk from Fecamp to be its first abbot (1035).
Goscelin, Count of Aroues, founded that of the
"Trinite du Mont"(iO3O), on that Mount St. Cathe
rine which looks down on Rouen, and brought a
German monk from St. Wandrille to govern it ; and
from this house, again, William, Count of Eu, or his
widow, called another German, Aimard, to be the
abbot of their new foundation at St. Pierre sur Dive
(1046). About the same time William Fitz-Osbern,
soon to be a famous name, founded an abbey at Lire

1 Palgrave, iii. 21 27.

II.] MONASTERY OF J5EC. 19

(1046), and later another at Cormeilles (1060). At
Pont Audemer two houses, one for men and another
for women, were founded by Humphrey de Vieilles.
Two brothers of the famous house of Grentmaisnil
began on their lands a foundation which was after
wards transferred, at the instance of their relative,
William the son of Geroy, to a site anciently hal
lowed, then made desolate by war, and lately
again occupied for its old purpose in the humblest
fashion ; the spot on which arose the important
monastery of St. Evroul or Ouche (1056). William,
son of Geroy, who had first thought of restoring St.
Evroul, was the son of a father who, fierce warrior
as he was, is said by Orderic to have "built six
churches in the name of the Lord out of his own
means" in different parts of his estates. This must
have been in the early part of the eleventh century.

But along with the account of this remarkable
movement are deep and continual complaints of the
character both of clergy and monks. Restoring
churches was one thing ; having fit men to serve in
them was another. The change was so great between
the end of the century and the beginning, between
the religious feeling of the men who lived with
William the Conqueror and Lanfranc, and those who
lived when Richard the Good built Fecamp, that some
allowance must be made for the depreciating and
contemptuous tone in which a strict age is apt to
speak of the levity and insensibility of an easier one
before it. Such judgments are often unjust and
always suspicious. All was not godless and cold in
the last century, though the more decided opinions or
greater zeal of this often makes it a proverb of reproach.

C 2

20 FOUNDATION OF THE [CHAP.

But still it is clear that the Norman clergy as a whole
were rude, ignorant, and self-indulgent, to a degree
which seemed monstrous and intolerable fifty years
later. The chief ecclesiastical dignity of the duchy, the
great Archbishopric of Rouen, was occupied for a hun
dred and thirteen years by three prelates, of whom the
least scandalous part of their history was that two of
them wer^ bastards of the ducal house, and who in their
turbulence and licence were not to be distinguished
from the most unscrupulous of the military barons
round them. Marriage was common, even among
bishops ; it may not always have been marriage, but
there plainly was a connection which was not yet
looked upon, as it came to be at the end of this
century, as concubinage ; and even a writer like
Orderic, who of course condemns it unreservedly
in the general, speaks of it incidentally in men
whom he respects, and without being much shocked.
The clergy were not only easy in their lives ; they
were entirely without learning ; and the habit prevailed
of their holding lay fees by military service, and
of bearing arms without scruple. The old Danish
leaven was still at work. In 1049 a council at Rheims,
held under Pope Leo IX., formally forbade clerics to
wear warlike weapons or to perform military service.
The standard was low among churchmen, according
to the ideas of the age, both as to knowledge and
morality. Attempts were made from time to time to
raise it. The example of the great abbeys in France,
Cluni and Marmoutier, was appealed to. A colony
of monks from one of them was introduced into a
Norman house to reform it. Strangers of high
character, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, were placed

II.] MON ASTER Y OF BEC.

21

at the head of abbeys, as Duke Richard invited St.
William of Dijon to Fecamp. These things were
probably not without their effect. But a real move
ment of wholesome and solid change, though the
stimulus may come from without, must begin and
grow up at home. It must spring out of native feel
ings and thought, and an understanding of necessities
on the spot, and it must shape itself amid the circum
stances in which it is to act.

And so, in fact, the reform came ; influenced by
external example, directed by foreign experience,
but of home growth in the will to begin it, and in
the heart to carry it out. The monasteries which we
have read of were founded or restored by great and
powerful men ; their motives probably were mixed,
but among these motives, there is no reason to doubt,
was the wish to help the side of goodness and peace ;
to strengthen it by the efforts of men who under
took to live for it ; to give it stability and even
grandeur in the w r orld a grandeur not dispropor
tionate to its own claims, and to the grandeur which
was realized in the secular state. But there was one
thing which these foundations had not ; the founder
was not the occupant of the house which he founded ;
he founded it for others to live and work in, and
not himself. The life and vigour which come when
a man throws himself with all his soul into a work
or an institution and nothing less could suffice to
give success to an undertaking like the monastic rule
were wanting. The genuine impulse, coming not
from patronage, but from enthusiasm, not from the
desire to see others do a hard and important thing,
but to do it oneself; the impulse, not from above and

22 FOUNDATION OF THE [CHAP.

outside, but from below and from the heart of society
itself, was first seen in the attempt, plain, humble,
homely, unpretending, without the faintest thought
or hope of great results, which led to the growth
its actual foundation was in the last degree insig
nificant of the famous abbey of Bee.

It is hardly too much to say that the character
of the Abbey of Bee influenced not merely Norman
monasticism, but the whole progress of learning, educa
tion, and religious thought and feeling in Normandy,
more than any other institution. Orderic, the chro
nicler of Normandy and Norman life, whose praise
of other monasteries is very warm, but usually
rather vague and undiscriminating, is in the case of
Bee, in spite of the exaggeration of his high-flown
eulogies, unusually distinct in what he fixes upon as
characteristic. It is the intellectual activity of Bee
on which he dwells, as marking it out from all other
houses. The men of Bee were excellent monks ;
he praises especially their cheerfulness among one
another, and he cannot say enough of their hospi
tality : " Burgundians and Spaniards, strangers from
far or near, will answer foi it how kindly they have
been welcomed. . . The door of Bee is open to every
traveller, and to no one who asks in the name of
charity is their bread denied." But the thing which
above all strikes him in them, as different from other
communities round, is their unique eminence as a
school of study and teaching. He dwells at great
length and with much satisfaction on the pursuits fol
lowed at his own monastery, St. Evroul ; he mentions
the names of its distinguished members ; and he him
self is a proof that its cloister was not an idle or care-

ii.] MONASTERY OF BEC. 23

less one : but the things which were cultivated and were
of repute at St. Evroul, were the art of copying books
and church music. But what he notes at Bee was a
spirit of intellectual vigour in the whole body which
does not appear elsewhere. Bee first opened to
Normandy the way of learning. " Under Lanfranc the
Normans first fathomed the art of letters ; for under the
six dukes of Normandy scarce any one among the
Normans had applied himself to liberal studies, nor
was there any teacher found, till God, the Provider of
all things, brought Lanfranc to Normandy." There
is perhaps a touch of sly half-unconscious banter in
the remark that the monks of Bee " seem almost all
philosophers," and " from their conversation, even
that of those who seem illiterate among them, and are
called rustics, even pompous men of letters (spumantes
grammatici) may learn something worth knowing."
It is something like the half-compliment, half-sneer,
of the nickname which used to be applied in Oxford
to one of its most famous colleges, in days when it
led the way in revived religious and intellectual
earnestness, and opened the march of university
reform. But it is not the less a proof of the way
in which Bee was regarded. Yet no monastery in
Normandy started from humbler beginnings, or less
contemplated what it achieved.

" The tale of the early days of Bee," says Mr. Free
man, " is one of the most captivating in the whole
range of monastic history and monastic legend. It
has a character of its own. The origin of Bee differs
from that of those earlier monasteries which gradually
grew up around the dwelling-place or the burial-place
of some revered bishop or saintly hermit. It differs

24 FOUNDATION OF THE [CHAP.

again from the origin of those monasteries of its own
age, which were the creation of some one external
founder. Or rather, it united the two characters in
one. It gradually rose* to greatness from very small
beginnings ; but gradual as the process was, it took
place within the lifetime of one man ; and that man
was at once its founder and first ruler. The part of
Cuthberht at Lindisfarne, the parts of William and of
Lanfranc a.. Caen, were all united in Herlwin, Knight,
Founder, and Abbot."

The Abbey of Bee, or, as it should be properly
written, " the Bee" (Lc Bee], took its name from no
saint, from no previously existing designation of place
or mountain, but from the nameless rivulet, or Beck,
which flowed through the meadows where it was at
last built, and which washed the abbey wall. These
fields were on the skirts of the forest of Brionne:
and the Beck, on which were originally two or three
mills, flowed through a little valley into one of the
streams of eastern Normandy, the Rille. The Rille
springs from the high ground where the chief rivers of
Normandy all rise near to another, the Eure, the Iton,
the Touque, the Dive, the Orne ; and it flows from
north to south, by Pont Audemer, into the great
mouth of the Seine, below Quillebceuf. The map
shows us, marked on its course, many names, since
become familiar and illustrious in England : Mont-
fort, Harcourt, Beaumont, Romilly. Two castles on
its banks were very famous in the history of Nor
mandy the Eagle s Castle, Castrum Aquilce, L Aigle,
in its upper course ; and Brionne, half-way to the sea.
Brionne, the " noble castle," not the fortress on the
rock, of which the ruins remain now, but one on an

ii.] MONASTERY OF EEC. 25

island in the river, was one of the keys of the land,
a coveted trust and possession among the rival lords
of Normandy ; often exchanging masters, often be
sieged, won and lost. In the days of Duke Robert, the
Conqueror s father (1028-1035), it was held by Count
Gilbert, himself of the ducal house ; who, when Duke
Robert went on the Eastern pilgrimage from which he
never came back, was left one of the guardians of his
young son. Among Count Gilbert s retainers was
Herlwin, a soldier of the old Danish stock, but with
noble Flemish blood in his veins from his mother.
Herlwin, a brave knight, wise in council, and famous
after he became abbot for his thorough familiarity
with the customs and legal usages of the Normans,
was high in favour and honour both with Count Gilbert
and Duke Robert. There was a natural nobleness
and generosity too about him, that did not always
go together with the stout arm and strong head. His
biographer tells that once, when he thought he had
been ill-used by his lord, he absented himself from his
service ; but after a while he heard that Count Gilbert
was engaged in a quarrel with a powerful neighbour
whom he had challenged, and that a battle was at
hand. On the day fixed for the battle, when Count
Gilbert was anxiously measuring his strength, a band
of twenty men was seen approaching behind him. It
was Herlwin, who, with unlooked-for generosity, had
come, in spite of his sense of injury, to help his lord
at his need. The battle was stopped by the Duke s
officers, and the quarrel referred to his court ; and
Herlwin was reconciled with Count Gilbert. But in
this wild society and wild household, Herlwin was a
man whose heart was touched with the thoughts and

26 FOUNDATION OF THE [CHAP.

claims of another world. He tried in his way, and
with such light as he had, to lead a pure and Christian
life ; he tried, in many uncouth and perhaps absurd
ways, to be true to his conscience ; he tried, in spite
of mockery and jeers from his rough fellows, who in
those days, we are told, could not understand any one
in a whole skin thinking of religion. The ways of a
Norman military family were more and more dis
tasteful to him ; and, in spite of his lord s reluctance
to part with so faithful a vassal, his mind was set
more and more on getting free in the only way which
seemed open to him. A story is told by the chronicler
of the neighbouring house of St. Evroul, in introducing
his name and foundation, which does not appear in
the traditions of Bee, that Herlwin s final resolution
was the result of a vow made in a moment of imminent
peril in battle. He had accompanied Count Gilbert
in a great expedition into a neighbouring land, the
Vimeu, the district of the Lower Somme ; but things
" fell not out to Count Gilbert according to his desire.
For Ingelram, Count of Ponthieu, met him with a strong
force, and engaging him, put him to flight with his
men, and of the fugitives many were taken, and many
slain, and many disabled with wounds. Then a certain
soldier there named Herlwin, fearing the danger, and
flying with all his might for his life, vowed to God
that, if he got off safe from so present a danger, he
would henceforth be soldier to none but God. By
God s will he honourably escaped, and, mindful of his
vow, left the world, and in his patrimony, in a place
called Bee, founded a monastery to St. Mary, Mother
of God." The story may be true, as it is characteristic
of the time, and is not meant to reflect on Herlwin s

II.] MONASTERY OF BEC.

27

/

courage ; but it is not inconsistent with the accounts
which represent Herlwin s change as arising from
deeper and more serious feelings.

Herlwin had no thought of anything but following
the leading of a simple and earnest heart, which
impressed on him with ever-increasing force that a life
of strife, greed, and bloodshed, a life of pride and sen
suality the life which he saw all round him was no
life for a Christian. He knew but one way of escaping
from it ; and the one motive of all that led to the
creation of his monastery was the resolution to escape.
No project of foundation, no ideas, however vague, of
general reform, crossed his mind. He found himself
living where prayer seemed a mockery, where selfish
ness and hatred ruled, where God was denied at every
step ; and he sought a shelter, the humblest and most
obscure he could find, where he might pray and
believe and be silent. That alone, but that in the
most thorough and single-minded earnestness, led
him to give up his place, a favoured and honoured
one, in the society round him, for the most unpre
tending form of monastic devotion. He could live
with a few companions on his property, where he
could build them a humble dwelling and a church,
and where they could make it their employment to
worship and praise God. He was about thirty-seven
years old when his thoughts turned to this change of
life. Herlwin was a genuine Norman, resolute, in
flexible in purpose, patient in waiting his time, wholly
devoted to his end, daunted by no repulse, shrewd,
sturdy, and sure of his ground, and careless of appear
ances in comparison with what was substantial in his
object. The time had not yet come for the enthu-

28 FOUNDATION OF THE [CHAP.

siasm and the fashion among Normans for the monastic
life, the life, as we should call it, of strict and serious
religious profession. Priest and bishop still kept up the
old Norse habit of wearing arms, and lived very much
like their military brethren. Herlwin went through
the ordeal of jeers, annoyances, and frowns, which a
profession of strictness, probably coarse and rude in
its form, was likely to meet with from the coarse and
mocking fighting men collected about a powerful
Norman chief. It was not easy for a brave soldier
and a useful vassal to get leave to quit his lord s
service, and it was not safe to offend him by quitting
it without leave. Herlwin tried long in vain : at last
the tie broke under the strain. Herlwin would not
execute some service for his lord which he thought
unjust, and his lord s vengeance fell on Heii win s
lands and tenants, and threatened himself. He was
summoned to the lord s court ; but he only pleaded
for his poor tenants, and asked nothing for himself.
His lord was touched, and sent for him and asked
what he really wanted. "By loving this world,"
he answered, with many tears, " and in obeying thee,
I have hitherto too much neglected God and myself;
I have been altogether intent on training my body,
and I have gained no education for my soul : if ever I
have deserved well of thee, let me pass what remains
of my life in a monastery. Let me keep your love,
and with me give to God what I had of you." And
he had his wish.

He set to work at once to build his retreat, and he
sought to gain some knowledge of the practice of
monastic discipline. His first attempts led to some
rude experiences. " The manners of the time were

II.] MONASTERY OF BEC. 29

still barbarous all over Normandy/ says his bio
grapher, who tells, with a kind of sly gravity, how
while Herlwin was once watching, with the deepest
admiration and reverence, the grave order of some
monks seated in their cloister, he suddenly found him
self saluted by a hearty cuff on the back of his neck
from the fist of the custodian, who had taken him
for a thief, and who dragged him by his hair out
of doors ; and how this " solace of edification " was
followed at a monastery of greater name, by seeing
the monks in their Christmas procession laughing and
joking to the crowd, showing off their rich vestments
to the bystanders, and pushing and fighting for places,
till at last one monk knocked down another, who was
hustling him, flat on his back on the ground. But,
undiscouraged, Herlwin went on.

He first established his house on his patrimony at
Bonneville, a place a short distance from Brionne. He
himself dug the foundations for his church, carried
away the rubbish, and brought on his shoulders the
stones, sand, and lime ; and when he had ended the
day s work, he learned the psalter at night, which he
had not time for by day. At forty years old he
learned his letters and taught himself to read. At
length his church was built; and in 1034, he, with two
companions, was made a monk by the Bishop of
Lisieux. Three years after, he was ordained priest,
and made abbot of the new house, " because, it being
so poor, no one else would take the government."
" He ruled most strictly, but in the manner of the
pious fathers. You might see the abbot, when the
office was done in church, carrying the seed-corn on
his shoulder, and a rake or mattock in his hand, going

30 FOUNDATION OF THE [CHAP.

forth to the field. The monks were busy with labour
all day ; they cleaned the land from thorns and
brambles; others brought dung on their shoulders and
spread it abroad. They hoed, they sowed ; no one
ate his bread in idleness ; and at each hour of prayer
they assembled for service at the church." Herlwin s
mother, a lady of noble blood from Flanders, made
over all her lands, and served the community as their
handmaid, washing their clothes, and fulfilling to the
utmost whatever was enjoined her.

The new house had its troubles. It was burned
down, and the report, as it first reached Herlwin, was
that his mother had perished. Lifting up his eyes
with tears to God, he cried out, " Thanks be to Thee,
O God, that my mother has been taken away in the
work of ministry to Thy servants." The report, how
ever, was a false one. But the place was inconvenient.
It wanted the two great necessities of a monastery
wood and water. This, reinforced by a vision, made
him change his abode. He removed to a spot about
a mile from the castle of Brionne, where he had
property called, from the stream that flowed there,
" The Beck," Bcccus. " This place," says the bio
grapher, " is in the wood itself, in the bottom of the
valley of Brionne, shut in on each side by wooded
hills, convenient for human use, from the thickness of
the wood and the refreshment of the stream. It was
a haunt of game. There were only the buildings of
three mills there, and but a moderate space of habit
able ground. What then should he do ? In one of
the mills he had no interest, and in the other two
only a third part, and there was not as much of free
space as his house needed. Count Gilbert, too, had

jr.] MONASTERY OF EEC. 3 i

nothing that he valued more than that wood. But
Herlwin put his trust in God. He began to work,
and God evidently to work with him, for his co-pro
prietors and neighbours, either by sale or free gift,
gave up to him each his portion; and in a short
time he obtained the whole wood of Brionne which
was around." He built in the course of a few years
a new church. He settled his brotherhood in a
cloister with wooden columns. A great storm, in
which the fury of the devil was seen, shattered the
work : " The devil deeply grudged these beginnings
of good things ; he rose with great violence on
the roof of the dormitory ; thence gathering him
self for his utmost effort, he leaped down on the
new covering of the new built walls, and overthrew all
in ruins to the ground." " But," continues the bio
grapher, " that was not the seed which falls on stony
ground and withers away, because it has no moisture,
but which, received on good ground, brings forth fruit
with patience. In the morning, Herlwin showed to the
brethren that an enemy hath done this Cheering up
their downcast hearts, he began to rebuild the cloister ;
and this time he built of stone."

" A wooded hill," says Mr. Freeman, " divides the
valley of the Risle, with the town and castle of
Brionne, from another valley watered by a small
stream, or in the old Teutonic speech of the Normans,
a beck. That stream gave its name to the most famous
of Norman religious houses, and to this day the name
of Bee is never uttered to denote that spot without the
distinguishing addition of the name of Herlwin. The
hills are still thickly wooded ; the beck still flows
through rich meadows and under trees planted by the

32 FOUNDATION OF THE [CHAP.

water-side, by the walls of what was once the renowned
monastery to which it gave its name. But of the
days of Herlwin no trace remains besides these im
perishable works of nature. A tall tower, of rich and
fanciful design, one of the latest works of mediaeval
skill, still attracts the traveller from a distance ; but of
the mighty minster itself, all traces, save a few small
fragments, have perished. The monastic buildings,
like those of so many other monasteries in Normandy
and elsewhere in Gaul, had been rebuilt in the worst
days of art, and they are now applied to the degrading
purpose of a receptacle of French cavalry. The
gateway also remains, but it is, like the rest of the
buildings, of a date far later than the days of Herlwin.
The truest memorial of that illustrious abbey is now
to be found in the parish church of the neighbouring
village. In that lowly shelter is still preserved the
effigy with which after-times had marked the resting-
place of the founder. Such are all the traces which
now remain of the house which once owned Lanfranc
and Anselm as its inmates."

Bee would probably have run its course like many
other houses, great and small, in Normandy, perhaps
continuing in the same humble condition in which it
began, perhaps attracting the notice of powerful and
wealthy patrons, but for an event which shaped its
character and history. Herlwin was no scholar ; but
with the quick shrewdness of his race a shrewdness
which showed itself in his own life by the practical
skill which he had brought with him in the legal
customs of his land, and which stood him in good
stead in resisting the encroachments of greedy neigh
bourshe understood the value of scholarship. He

II.] MONASTERY OF BEC. 33

wished for a companion who knew more than him
self; but such men as yet were rare in Normandy.
An accident he looked upon it as God s providence
fulfilled his desire and determined the fortunes of
Bee. This w r as the chance arrival of an Italian
stranger, Lanfranc.

Lanfranc was a Lombard from Pavia. He is sai d
to have been of a noble family, and to have taught
and practised law in his native city. He was, at any
rate, according to the measure of the time, a scholar,
trained in what was known of the classic Latin lite
rature, in habits of dialectical debate, and especially
in those traditions of Roman legal science which yet
lingered in the Italian municipalities. For some un
known reason, perhaps in quest of fame and fortune,
he left Italy and found his way northwards. It
was a fashion among the Lombards. At Avranches,
in the Cotentin, he had opened a sort of school, teach
ing the more advanced knowledge of Italy among
people who, Norse as they were in blood, were rapidly
and eagerly welcoming everything Latin, just as the
aspiring and ambitious half-civilization of Russia tried
to copy the fuller civilization of Germany and France.
After a time, for equally unknown reasons, he left
Avranches.

The story which was handed down at Bee in after
days, when he had become one of the most famous
men of his day, was, that he was on his way to Rouen
v/hen he was spoiled by robbers and left bound to a
tree, in a forest near the Rille. Night came on, and
he tried to pray ; but he could remember nothing
Psalm or Office. " Lord," he cried, " I have spent
all this time and worn out body and mind in learning ;

S.L. X. )

34 FOUNDATION OF THE [CHAP.

and now, when I ought to praise Thee, I know not
how. Deliver me from this tribulation, and with Thy
help, I will so correct and frame my life that hence
forth I may serve Thee." Next morning when some
passers-by set him free, he asked his \vay to the
humblest monastery in the neighbourhood, and was
directed to Bee. Another story is told in the Chronicle
of Bee of his adventure with the robbers. He was
travelling, with a single scholar as his attendant, to
Rouen, when he fell among robbers, who stripped
him, leaving him only an old cloak. Then he remem
bered a story in the dialogues of Gregory the Great,
of a saint \vho was robbed of his horse by Lombard
thieves, and who, as they were departing, with mani
fest reference to the words of the Sermon on the
Mount, about giving the cloak to him who had taken

away the coat, offered them the only thing they had
left, his whip " You will want it," he said, "to drive the
horse ; " and then he turned to his prayer. When the
robbers came to a rapid river, the Vulturous, they
could in no wise cross it ; and then they bethought
them that they had offended by spoiling so completely
the man of God, and they went back and restored
what they had taken. Lanfranc thought that he
would imitate the holy man hoping that the same
effect might follow ; and so he offered to the robbers
what they had left him, his old cloak. But it only
brought on him worse treatment : and he deserved it,
he used to say : " for the saint did it with one intention
and I with another; he did it honestly that they might
keep what he gave ; I with cunning and craft, that they
might restore and not keep." And so he was punished;
for when he offered them the cloak, they turned upon

ii.] MONASTERY OF BEC. 35

him, thinking themselves mocked, and after beating
him well, tied him naked to a tree, and his scholar to
another. Then follows the account of his turning to
God ; and the story ends with his liberation, not at the
hands of passers-by, but by a miracle.

To this place, as to the poorest and humblest of
brotherhoods, Lanfranc came. The meeting between
him and Herlwin is thus told. " The abbot happened
to be busy building an oven, working at it with his
own hands. Lanfranc came up and said, God save
you. God bless you, said the abbot; are you
a Lombard ? I am/ said Lanfranc. What do you
want ? I want to become a monk, Then the abbot
bade a monk named Roger, who was doing his own
work apart, to show Lanfranc the book of the Rule ;
which he read, and answered that with God s help he
would gladly observe it. Then the abbot, hearing
this, and knowing who he was and from whence he
came, granted him what he desired. And he, falling
down at the mouth of the oven, kissed Herlwin s
feet."

In welcoming Lanfranc, Herlwin found that he had
welcomed a great master and teacher. Lanfranc,
under his abbot s urging, began to teach ; the mon
astery grew into a school : and Bee, intended to be
but the refuge and training-place of a few narrow and
ignorant but earnest devotees, thirsting after God and
right amid the savagery of a half-tamed heathenism,
sprung up, with the rapidity with which changes were
made in those days, into a centre of thought and
cultivation for Western Christendom. It was the
combination, more than once seen in modern Europe,
where Italian genius and Northern strength have

D 2

36 FOUNDATION OF THE [CHAP.

been brought together; where the subtle and rich
and cultivated Southern nature has been braced
and tempered into purpose and energy by contact
with the bolder and more strong-willed society of
the North. Lanfranc supplied to the rising religious
fervour of Normandy just the element which it wanted,
and which made it fruitful and noble.

It need not be remarked that in the accounts
written of these times we meet with endless exaggera
tion. Every great movement carries with it exaggera
tion : things, too, were undoubtedly pitched high, and
a heroic grandeur was aimed at, in what men thought
and attempted in this time when a new spirit seemed to
be abroad, and new hopes were stirring in the world
and in the Church. And in this case the exaggeration
appears the greater, because men wrote not in their
own language, but in a foreign one, which they only
half knew how to use. But all is in keeping, all is
consistent and moves together ; grotesque and absurd
as these exaggerations appear to us now, they were
part of the temporary and accidental vesture of men
who, in their rude fashion, with little to help them, and
hedged in by limits as yet immoveable, were fighting
their way out of ignorance and debasement, and who
did great things. Thus Lanfranc s victory over him
self, when the lawyer and the scholar cast in his lot
with men with whom he had nothing in common but
the purpose to know and serve God better, is specially
dwelt upon by his biographer in instances which must
with us provoke a smile, but in which the homely or
childish detail is after all but as the dress of the
day, which may disguise or set off the man beneath
it. Simple men in that twilight of learning were

II.] MONASTERY OF EEC. 37

struck with admiration at the self-command shown by
a teacher, famous for what others valued, when he
humbled himself before an illiterate Norman abbot,
saint as he seemed to be ; or when he patiently took
the conceited and ignorant rebuke of not so saintly
a Prior. "You might see," says the biographer of
Lanfranc, "a godly rivalry between Herlwin and
Lanfranc. The abbot, a lately made clerk, who
had grown old as a layman, regarded with awe the
eminence of such a teacher placed under him. Lan
franc, not puffed up by his great knowledge, was
humbly obedient in all things, observed, admired, bore
witness to the grace which God had granted Herlwin
in understanding the Scriptures. When I listen to
that layman/ he used to say (layman, I suppose, in
the sense of one not brought up to letters), I know
not what to say, but that "the Spirit breatheth where

, Ml > "

it Will.

He remained three years in retirement, giving an
example of monastic subordination and humility.
" He would not, as it is said, read a lesson in church
unless the cantor had first heard him read it. One
day when he was reading at table, he pronounced a
word as it ought to be pronounced, but not as seemed
right to the person presiding, who bade- him say it
differently ; as if he had said docere, with the middle
syllable long, as is right, and the other had cor
rected it into docerCy with the middle short, which is
wrong: for that Prior was not a scholar. But the wise
man, knowing that he owed obedience rather to Christ
than to Donatus the grammarian, gave up his pro
nunciation, and said what he was wrongly told to
say ; for to make a short syllable long, or a long one

38 FOUNDATION OF THE [CHAP.

short, he knew to be no deadly sin ; but not to obey
one set over him on God s behalf was no light trans
gression."

Again, they tell a story of Lanfranc being met
travelling to an outlying house of the abbey, carrying
a cat tied up in a cloth behind him on his saddle, "to
keep down the fury of the mice and rats " which in
fested the place. What they mean is the same thing
as people mean now, when they talk of a bishop
going on foot carrying his carpet-bag, or a duke
travelling in a third-class carnage ; but the mag
niloquent and clumsy Latin in which the story is
told gives it an indescribable absurdity of colour, and
we forget that after all it is an instance, proportionate
to the day, of that plainness and simplicity of de
meanour which is a common quality where men s
hearts are really great.

But Lanfranc was not to remain in this unnatural
obscurity. Gradually, it is not said how, Bee became a
school, became famous, became the resort of young
men thirsting for instruction, not only in Normandy,
but in the countries round it. It is not easy for us to
understand how, in those difficult and dangerous days,
communication was so extensive, and news travelled so
widely, and the character of a house of monks and its
teacher in the depths of Normandy produced such an
impression in Europe, as was in fact the case. The style
of the time was exaggerated ; but exaggeration was
of things that were really great ; and it is impossible to
doubt that during the time that Lanfranc taught at
Bee (1045- -i 063 - ? ) ne established a name as a refor
mer of life and a restorer of learning, which made him
seem to the men of his time, at least in the West, as

II.] MONASTERY OF EEC. 39

without an equal ; he was to them all that later times
have seen in their great reformers and great men of
letters. He brought to Bee the secular learning which
was possible then ; he learned there divine knowledge ;
and for both, he infused an ardour which was almost
enthusiasm in those under his influence. It would be
interesting if we knew something more of his method
of study and teaching ; but, as usual, such details were
not thought worth preserving by those to whom they
were matters of every day. We have little more than
generalities. Latinist (perhaps with some knowledge
of Greek) and dialectician, he taught his scholars the
best that could then be taught, in rousing thought, in
making it exact and clear, and in expressing it fitly
and accurately. It is not improbable that his old
knowledge of jurisprudence was turned to account in
his lecturing at Bee. As a theologian, he was espe
cially a student of St. Paul s Epistles. The only
divinity known at the time in the West was contained
in the works of the great Latin Fathers ; and of this
he was master, and his use of it gave a new impulse
to the study of it a study which was to produce
results of vast importance both to religion and to
philosophy. The value which restorers of learning
like Lanfranc set on the Latin Fathers led their suc
cessors step by step to raise up the great fabric, so
mingled of iron and clay, of the scholastic systems.

Lanfranc, as may be supposed, had a battle to fight
to establish his footing in such a community as he would
find round Herlwin. Herlwin, with the nobleness and
simplicity of a superior nature, recognized the differ
ence between himself and Lanfranc, and saw, without
grudging or jealousy, that in all matters of mind,

AO FOUNDATION OF THE [CHAP.

Lanfranc must be supreme ; and he left to Lanfranc
the internal government of the house, while he himself
looked after its affairs, and guarded it in the law courts
by his intimate knowledge of Norman customs. But
the brethren whom Lanfranc had found there " were
not very well lettered, nor much trained in religion :"
and " seeing their idleness, the frowardness of their
ways, their transgressions of the Rule, and the jealousy
of some, who feared that he would be put over them"
a curious contrast this to the picture elsewhere given
of the devotion of Herlwin s first companions Lan
franc lost heart, and meditated a second retreat ; a
retreat from Bee, into some hermitage in the wilderness.
But he was stopped as usual, it is said by a vision ;
and Lanfranc entered on his office as Prior, about
1045. From this time, till he was appointed Abbot of
Duke William s monastery of St. Stephen at Caen,
Lanfranc was busy, with some intervals of other im
portant work, filling what we should call the place of a
great professor at Bee. Gradually, as his name became
attached to it, its numbers swelled its numbers of
monks, and also of students not members of the
house. Gifts poured in upon it ; for the age was an
open-handed one, as ready to give as to take away,
and friends and patrons among the lords of Normandy
and the conquerors of England endowed the house
with churches, tithes, manors, on both sides of the
Channel. A saying arose which is not yet out of
men s mouths in France :

"De quelque part que le vent vente
L abbaye du Bee a rente." .

(" Let the wind blow from where the wind will,
From the lands of Bee it bloweth still.")

II.] MONASTERY OF BEC. \\

All this had come to pass in the lifetime of Herlwin ;
and all this had come with Lanfranc. His pupils
were numerous, and many of them were famous , in
their generation : among these was one, an Italian like
himself, who became Pope Alexander II. (1061
1073). But the greatest glory of Lanfranc and the
school of Bee was to have trained the Italian Anselm
to quicken the thoughts and win the love of Normans
and Englishmen.

With Lanfranc s position outside of Bee we have
here no concern. The great Norman ruler, whose
mind was so full of great thoughts both in Church and
State, and whose hand was to be so heavy on those
whom he ruled and conquered, soon found him out,
and discovered that in Lanfranc he had met a kindred
soul and a fit companion in his great enterprise of
governing and reducing to order the wild elements of
his age. Lanfranc, scholar, theologian, statesman, and
perhaps also, and not least, Italian, was employed on
more than one commission at the court of Rome,
which was then rising into new importance and
power, under the inspiration of the master-spirit of
Hildebrand. He mingled in the controversial disputes,
which were once more beginning as the time became
influenced by new learning and new zeal ; and he was
reputed to have silenced and confounded Berengar,
both by word of mouth and by his pen. But all this
lay without his work as the Prior of Bee its creator
as a school, its director as a teacher ; and it is only
in this respect that he is here spoken of.

The glory and influence of Bee were great, but they
declined as rapidly as they had risen. They depended
on the impulse given by great characters ; and when

42 THE MONASTERY OF EEC. [CHAP. n.

these passed away, the society which they had ani
mated gradually sank to the ordinary level. Bee
continued a great foundation : in time it became one
of the rich and dignified preferments of the Church
of France. In the i6th century the abbacy was held
by great aristocratic bishops and cardinals, Dunois. Le
Veneur, D Annebaut, Guise ; in the i/th by a Colbert,
a Rochefoucault, and a Bourbon Conde. But the "irony
of fate had something more in store. The last
abbot of Bee, of the house founded by Herlwin,
and made glorious by Lanfranc and Anselm, was
M. de Talleyrand. 1

1 Emile Saisset, Melanges, p. 8.

CHAPTER III.

DISCIPLINE OF A NORMAN MONASTERY.

" And what are things eternal ? powers depart,
Possessions vanish, and opinions change,
And passions hold a fluctuating seat ;
But by the storms of circumstance unshaken,
And subject neither to eclipse nor wane,
Duty exists ; immutably survive,
For our support, the measures and the forms
Which an abstract intelligence supplies ;
Whose kingdom is, where time and space are not."

WORDSWORTH, Excursion, b. iv.

THE order of life at Bee was modelled according- to
the strict discipline of the Benedictine order. To
enter fairly into its spirit and into the meaning of
many of its minute and technical regulations, it has
to be remembered that in those ages there was little
trust in individual self-management ; and it was a
fundamental assumption that there was no living an
earnest Christian life without a jealous and pervading
system of control and rule. Civil life, as we know
it, hardly existed : all that was powerful, all that was
honoured, was connected with war ; the ideas of the
time more or less insensibly took a military colour ;
men s calling and necessity were in one way or another
to fight ; and to fight evil with effect needed com
bination, endurance, and practice. The governing

4A DISCIPLINE OF [CHAP.

thought of monastic life was that it was a warfare,
militia, and a monastery was a camp or barrack : there
was continual drill and exercise, early hours, fixed
times, appointed tasks, hard fare, stern punishment;
watchfulness was to be incessant, obedience prompt
and absolute ; no man \vas to have a will of his own,
no man was to murmur. What seems to us trifling
or vexatious must be judged of and ^allowed for by
reference to the idea of the system ; training as
rigorous, concert as ready and complete, subordination
as fixed, fulfilment of orders as unquestioning as in
a regiment or ship s crew which is to do good service.
Nothing was more easy in those days to understand
in any man, next to his being a soldier, than his being
a monk ; it was the same thing, the same sort of life,
but with different objects. Nothing, from our altered
conditions of society, is more difficult in ours.

The life and discipline of a Norman monastery of the
revived and reformed sort, such as Bee, are put before
us in the regulations drawn up by Lanfranc, when Arch
bishop of Canterbury, for the English monasteries
under his government. They are based of course on the
rule of St. Benedict ; but they are varied and adapted
according to the judgment of the great monastic re
former, and represent no doubt in a great measure the
system carried on at Bee, under which he and then An-
selm had lived and worked. They are of course as
minute and peremptory as the orders of a book of drill ;
but what is more remarkable is the recognition in them
of the possible desirableness of modifications in their
use. There is nothing of stiff blind clinging to mere
usage, no superstitious jealousy of alterations, in the
spirit in which they are drawn up and imposed. Lan-

in.] A NORMAN MONASTERY. 45

franc, great man as he was, knew that it was idle and
foolish to lay down fixed laws, even for monasteries,
without making provision and allowance for the
necessities of different circumstances and the changes
of the future. " We send you," he says, addressing
Henry the Prior of the Cathedral monastery at
Canterbury, " the written customs of our order,
which we have selected from the customs of those
houses which, in our day, are of highest authority in
the monastic rule. In these we mean not to tie down
either ourselves who are here, or those who are to
come after us, from adding or taking away, or in any
way changing, if, either by the teaching of reason or
by the authority of those who know better, anything
is seen to be an improvement. Foe be a man as far
advanced as he may, he can have no greater fault than
to think that he can improve no further ; for changes
in the numbers of the brethren, local conditions, dif
ferences of circumstances, which are frequent, varieties
of opinions, some understanding things in this way
and others in that way, make it necessary for the
most part that things which have been long observed
should be differently arranged : hence it is that no
Church scarcely can in all things follow any other.
But what is to be most carefully attended to is,
that the things without which the soul cannot be saved
should be maintained inviolate ; I mean faith, con
tempt of the world, charity, purity, humility, patience,
obedience, sorrow for faults committed, and their
humble confession, frequent prayers, fitting silence,
and such like. Where these are preserved, there most
rightly may the rule of St. Benedict and the order
of the monastic life be said to be kept, in whatever

46 DISCIPLINE OF [CHAP.

way other things vary, as they are appointed according
to different men s judgment in different monasteries."
And he proceeds to enumerate instances of variety
of usage very small ones, it must be confessed, and
somewhat in contrast to the breadth of the general
principles laid down : whether on certain occasions
the leaders of the choir should chant certain parts of
the service in their tunics, or as they call them "frocks,"
or in albs and copes ; whether albs alone should be
used, or, as elsewhere, copes as well ; or whether,
on Maundy Thursday, the feet-washing should be by
twenties or thirties in a common trough, or each one
singly in a basin by himself. But the contrast
between general principles and their applications,
between the major propositions of our practical reason
ings and their minors, is not peculiar to Lanfranc s age.
The minors are always the difficulty, and sometimes
they are as strange and unaccountable ones for our
selves as any were then. But it is not always that
we give Lanfranc s age credit for acknowledging the
principle itself, or for stating it so well.

For the objects in view r , the organization was simple
and reasonable. The buildings were constructed, the
day was arranged, the staff of officers was appointed,
in reference to the three main purposes for which a
monk professed to live worship, improvement, and
work. There were three principal places which were the
scenes of his daily life : the church, and in the church
especially the choir ; the chapter-house ; and the
cloister ; and for each of these the work was carefully
laid out. A monk s life at that period was eminently
a social one : he lived night and day in public ; and
the cell seems to have been an occasional retreat, or

III.] A NORMAN MONASTERY. 47

reserved for the higher officers. The cloister was the
place of business, instruction, reading, and conversa
tion, the common study, workshop, and parlour of all
the inmates of the house the professed brethren ; the
young men whom they were teaching or preparing for
life, either as monks or in the world ; the children (in
fantes) who formed the school attached to the house,
many of whom had been dedicated by their parents to
this kind of service. In this cloister, open apparently
to the weather but under shelter, all sat, when they were
not at service in church, or assembled in the chapter,
or at their meals in the refectory, or resting in the
dormitory for their mid-day sleep ; all teaching, read
ing, writing, copying, or any handicraft in which a
monk might employ himself, went on here. Here the
children learned their letters, or read a<loud, or prac
tised their singing under their masters ; and here,
when the regular and fixed arrangements of the day
allowed it, conversation was carried on. A cloister of
this kind was the lecture-room where Lanfranc taueht

o

"grammar," gave to Norman pupils elementary no
tions of what an Italian of that age saw in Virgil
and St. Augustin, and perhaps expounded St. Paul s
Epistles : where Anselm, among other pupils, caught
from him the enthusiasm of literature; where, when
Lanfranc was gone, his pupil carried on his master s
work as a teacher, and where he discussed with sympa
thising and inquisitive minds the great problems which
had begun to open on his mind. In a cloister like this
the news, the gossip of the world and of the neigh
bourhood was collected and communicated : rumours,
guesses, and stories of the day, the strange fortunes of
kings and kingdoms, were reported, commented on,

48 DISCIPLINE OF [CHAP.

picturesquely dressed up and made matter of solemn
morals or of grotesque jokes, as they might be now
in clubs and newspapers. Here went on the literary
work of the time ; here,* with infinite and patient toil,
the remains of classical and patristic learning were
copied, corrected, sometimes corrupted, ornamented ;
here, and here almost alone, were the chronicles and
records kept year by year, so scanty, often so imper
fect and untrustworthy, yet on the whole so precious,
by which we know the men and their doings who
turned and governed the course of English and Euro
pean history ; here too, when the true chronicles did
not speak as people wished, or did not tell enough,
were false ones invented and forged. This open-air,
sedentary life was a hard one ; it was well enough
when the weather was fine and warm, but even
monks, though they were trained to endure hard
ness, found their fingers nipped by the frost, and had
to give over their work when the winter came round.
The indefatigable story-teller Orderic, like Eadmer,
an Englishman, at least by birth, with a Norman
training, who has preserved for us such a profusion
of curious touches of his time, and who is so severe
on the negligence of his brethren in not committing to
writing what they knew of the remarkable events
around them, was obliged to confess the numbing
effects of winter, and to put by his writing to a more
genial season. He breaks off in his account of the
quarrels between the sons of William, and lays aside
his fourth book for the winter with this reason for
the interruption :

"Many disasters are impending over mankind,
which, if they should all be written, would fill huge

A NORMAN MONASTERY. 49

volumes. Now, stiffened with the winter cold, I
shall employ myself in other occupations, and, very
weary, I propose to finish this present book. But
when the fine weather of the calm spring returns, I
will take up again what I have imperfectly related, or
what yet remains unsaid, and, by God s help, I will
fully unfold with a truthful pen the chances of war
and peace among our countrymen."

In another place he gives the same reason for the
abridged narrative which he inserts of a certain St.

o

William with the Sliort-nose, whose life, in the hands of
a pious chaplain, interested and edified the fierce re
tainers of one of the fiercest of the Conqueror s barons,
Hugh the Wolf, Earl of Chester. " The story is not
often found," he says, " in this province, and a truthful
narrative may be acceptable to some. It was brought
to us recently by Antony, a monk of Winchester ; we
were thirsting to see it, and he showed it to us. There
is a ballad about it commonly sung by the minstrels ;
but the authentic narrative is much to be preferred,
which has been carefully drawn up by religious
teachers, and reverently recited by serious readers in
the common hearing of the brethren. But because
the bearer of it was in a hurry to go, and the winter
frost hindered me from writing, I noted down a brief
but faithful abridgment of it in my tablets, which
I will now endeavour to commit succinctly to my
parchment."

Certain religious services, but services having refer
ence to those outside the monastery, had their place
in the cloister. Thus it was there, that on Maundy
Thursday, the Dies Mandati, the abbot and his bre
thren fulfilled the old custom, and, as they considered

S.L. x. E

50 DISCIPLINE OF [CHAP.

it, the commandment of the Gospel, by washing the
feet of the poor after they washed one another s feet
The ceremony is thus ordered by Lanfranc : " While
this is going on, the "cellarer, and the almoner, and
others to whom it is enjoined, are to bring the poor
men into the cloister, and make them sit in order one
by another. Before they come into the cloister they
are to wash their feet with common water supplied to
them by the chamberlains. Everything is to be pre
pared in its proper place, necessary for performing
the commandment (mandatum, St. John xiii. 14, 15) ;
as warm water in fitting vessels, towels for the feet,
napkins for the hands, cups and drink and such like ;
and the chamberlain s servants are to be ready to do
what is wanted. Then when these things are in order,
the abbot shall rise, and the rest of the brethren
rising shall make their due obeisance, and, passing
forth from the refectory, the children shall go aside
into their school with their masters and stand with
them before their poor men ; and the rest of the bre
thren shall likewise come and stand before their poor
men, each one according to his order before one of
them ; but the abbot shall have two. Then the prior,
at the abbot s command, shall strike the board with
three blows, and bowing down on their bent knees to
the earth, they shall worship Christ in the poor." Then
the abbot is to wash and wipe the feet of the poor men
before him, "kissing them with his mouth and his eyes,"
and so the rest of the brethren ; then he is to minister
a cup of drink to them ; and at the signal given by the
prior, by knocking three times on his board, the other
brethren are in like manner each of them to give a cup
of drink to the poor man before him, and receiving back

in.] A NORMAN MONASTERY. 51

the cup, to put in his hand twopence, or whatever
money the abbot may have ordered. " The brethren
also who have died in the course of the year are to
have each their own poor for the fulfilment of the
commandment/ and also those friends of the house for
whom the abbot shall order poor men to be set for
this commandment. Then, when all is over, they
kneel down and say some versicles and a collect
having reference to the commandment and example
which have given occasion to the ceremony, and then
proceed to the church chanting the Miserere Psalm (li.).
The mandatum is then to be fulfilled by the brethren
to one another, but in the chapter-house ; and after
the feet-washing, a cup of drink, the " loving-cup," the
potits charitatis, or the char it as > as it was technically
called, was distributed. And it enjoined on the abbot
that he should, if he were able to do so, by himself
wash the feet of all his brethren on this day ; " for,
according to St. Benedict s witness, he bears the
part of Christ in the monastery, and especially in this

service."

The cloister was the place of ordinary life and work.
The chapter-house was the council chamber of the
monastery. The word chapter (capituluni] denoted
both the room of assembly and the assembly itself.
It was the place of business for the whole commu
nity; and for its members, it was the place for mutual
instruction, for hearing advice, maintaining discipline,
making complaints, confessing faults, passing judg
ment, accepting punishment. Every morning, in
ordinary seasons, after the prayers of the third hour
and the morning mass, the community "held a
chapter." A bell rang, and all the brethren, whatever

E 2

52 DISCIPLINE OF [CHAP.

they were doing, gathered in the choir, and proceeded
to the chapter-house.

"Every day," saysLanfranc s order, "as soon as
the sound of the little bell begins for the chapter,
all the brethren who are sitting in the choir are at
once to rise, and meanwhile to stand facing to the
east ; the brethren also, who are elsewhere in the
minster, are to come into the choir. No one is to
hold a book ; no one is to be reading anything, or to
look into a book ; no one is to remain sitting in the
cloister on any pretext whatever ; and when the bell
stops, with the prior going before them, the rest are to
follow in the order of their conversion, two and two,
the elders first, the children (infantes) after them."

The children, too, "held their separate chapter,"
under their masters, where all matters of discipline
were looked after. The brethren having taken their
seats on the steps round the wall, the business began
by readings and by addresses. Portions of the rule of
St. Benedict were read ; and then was the time when
the monks received general instruction on religion and
their special duties. Scripture was explained and dis
courses made, more in the way of familiar exposition
than of set sermons. When a stranger of note
happened to be in the monastery, he would be asked
to say something in chapter to the brethren ; and
what we have of Anselm s homilies, so far as they are
genuine, seem to be short sermons of this kind to
monks in chapter, such as we read of his addressing
to them in his visits to different monasteries in Nor
mandy and England. When this work of instruction
and general counsel was done, which of course varied
much, the daily inquiry about discipline began, with

in.] A NORMAN MONASTERY. 53

the formula, " Let us speak touching our order ; "
(loquamur de ordine nostro.) This was the time for
the daily reports, and for complaints that were
to be made of personal failure of duty. Anyone, it
would seem, might complain of any fault that he had
observed ; and the course of proceeding is character
istic of the stern ideas under which the monastic life
grew up and was passed.

"When the words are said, l Loquamur de ordine
nostro} if anyone is accused (clamatur^ the technical
word) who has a name common with another or with
several, then unless the accuser (damans) makes it so
clear who is meant that there can be no doubt, all
who are of the same name are to stand up at once,
and humbly present themselves to ask pardon, until
the accuser (clamator) distinctly points out of whom
he speaks ; and this indication should be, if pos
sible, by the person s order or his office, as Dommts
Eduardns, priest, deacon, or secretary, master of the
children, &c., and not archdeacon, or of London
or from any surname of the world. The accuser
(clamator) is not to do judgment on him whom he
accuses in the same chapter. The accused, who is
prostrate, being asked in the customary way, is at
each asking of pardon to say meet culpa. . . If he is to
receive judgment, he is to be beaten with one larger
rod on his shirt, as he lies prostrate, or with several
thinner rods as he sits with his body bare, at the
discretion of him who presides, according to the
character and magnitude of his fault. While cor
poral discipline is inflicted, all the brethren are to
hold their heads down, and to have compassion with
him with tender and brotherly affection. During this

54 DISCIPLINE OF [CHAP.

time in the chapter, no one ought to speak, no one
ought to look at him, except grave persons to whom
it is allowed to intercede for him. The accused may
not make a complaint of his accuser in the same
chapter. The discipline is to be inflicted by whoever
is commanded to do it by the abbot or prior ; so that
this be never commanded to the children, or the young-
men, or the novices. No one is to speak in secret to
one or more ; whatever is said must be said so as to be
heard by the person presiding and the whole assembly.
All speaking must be about things useful, and things
that pertain to the order. When one is speaking, all
others are to be silent ; no one is to interrupt the
speaker s words but the person presiding, who may
command the speaker to be silent, if what is said
seem to him irrelevant or unprofitable. When the
president of the assembly begins to speak, anyone
else who is speaking must stop, and perfect silence be
observed by all." This discipline of scourging was
undergone, as one of the ordinary w r ays of showing sor
row for having done wrong. It was submitted to in so
matter-of-course a fashion by kings and great men,
that Anselm in one of his letters lays down a dis
tinction between the monastic scourging inflicted by
the judgment of the chapter, and the self-imposed
chastisement, which, he says, kings and proud rich
men command to be inflicted on themselves, and to
which he gives a special name, regale judicium, the
royal judgment."

The punishment awarded in chapter might go
beyond this. A brother "adjudged to the satisfaction
of a light fault" (the expression appears as technical
as " being under arrest ") was separated from the rest

Hi.] A NORMAN MONASTERY. 55

of his brethren in the refectory, and sat last of all
in choir, and he was forbidden to take certain parts in
the divine service. One who, after examination be
fore the abbot, was, by the common sentence of the
brethren, "ordered to be in the satisfaction of. a grave
fault," besides the severe corporal chastisement inflicted
in chapter, was also adjudged to solitary confinement
under the custody of one of the brethren. He was
only seen by the rest prostrate, and with his head
covered ; and when he received pardon, after coming
into the chapter, and confessing his fault and asking
for mercy, "being ordered to rise, he shall yet
frequently prostrate himself, and say again the same
or like words, ceasing when the abbot says to him
it is enough; and then he shall be commanded to
strip, and to submit to the judgment of corporal disci
pline." Only then was he restored. For rebellious
contumacy and resistance to the sentence of- the
chapter, there was sterner dealing. " Such a person,
the brethren who were present were to arise and
violently seize, and drag him or else bear him to the
prison appointed for such arrogant persons, and being
there confined, he was, with due discretion, to be
afflicted, until he had laid aside his haughty temper
and owned his fault, and humbly promised amend
ment." Expulsion was the last penalty. The run
away monk was not refused a return, but he was
received with the tokens of ignominy upon him,
befitting a deserter. He came to sue for pardon,
Carrying his forsaken monastic dress on one arm, and
in the other hand a bundle of rods. All these judg
ments and vindications of discipline took place in the
chapter, in the presence of the whole community, and

56 DISCIPLINE OF [CHAP.

under the sanction of the whole. In the same way,
discipline was administered among the children who
formed the school of the monastery. They had
their special chapter, in which they received their
punishments ; " in capitulo suo vapulent" is the concise
order, "sicnt majores in majore capitulo" "let them
be whipped in their own chapter, as the elders in the
older chapter."

In the chapter, all admissions \vere made of
novices, of professing monks, and of strangers who
were received into the society and "confraternity"
of the house. -The novice, on his petition to be
received, was warned of the seriousness of what he
was undertaking. " Let there be declared to him the
hard and stern things which in this order they endure,
who wish to live piously and according to the rule ;
and then, again, the yet harder and sterner things
which may befall him, if he behaves himself unrulily.
Which things having heard, if he still persists in his
purpose, and promises that he is prepared to bear
yet harder and harsher things, let the president of the
chapter say to him : The Lord Jesus Christ so per
form in you what far PI is loves sake you promise, that
you may have His grace and life eternal f and all
answering, Amen he shall add, And we for His
loves sake by this grant to you what so humbly and
so constantly you promise! The rule of the order,
according to the common practice, was to be read
to him, with the form of warning : " Here is the law
under which you desire to serve ; if you can keep it,
enter in ; but if you cannot, freely depart." (Ecce lex-
sub qua viilitare vis : si potes observare, ingrederc ; si
vero non potcs, libere discede.) The novice was kept

III.] A NORMAN MONASTERY. 57

apart, only associating with his master, or speaking
with such of the brethren as might be inflamed with
zeal for his improvement. He was fully subject to
the discipline of the monastery, and received his judg
ment and stripes in chapter like the rest. If, " after
certain days," he persisted, he was again warned
and told of the hard and heavy things which were
appointed by the holy fathers for this order of life ;
and then, if he undertook to bear them humbly and
patiently, and yet harder and heavier things still, he
was received, and made his profession. His profession
was made in writing ; the " cantor " was to provide
parchment and ink (membranam et encaustum\ and a
writer, if the novice could not write. In this case the
novice was to sign his profession with the mark of the
cross ; but he w r as to write it out himself, if he could ;
.and then at the mass to read it aloud and lay it on the
altar. For three days from his reception and " bene
diction " he is to observe absolute silence ; the cowl
with which the abbot covers his head is not to be re
moved, and he is to sleep in it ; and each day he is to
receive the communion. Then in chapter his master
is to ask leave for him to read and to sing as the rest
of the brethren ; and the abbot grants it with the words,
" Let him do so with the blessinsr of God." A stranee

o o

monk asking " confraternity" is to be led into the
chapter, and the abbot is to ask him, as he prostrates
himself, what he has to say. He is to answer : " I ask,
by the mercy of God, your fellowship and that of all
tJiese elders, and the benefit of this monastery ;" and
the abbot to answer, " The Almighty Lord grant you
what you seek, and Himself give you the fellowship
of His elect;" "and then being bidden to rise, he

58 DISCIPLINE OF [CHAP.

receives from him, by the emblematic delivery to him
of the book of rules, the fellowship of the monastery."

Among the various things to be done in the chapter
house, one is worth noticing. On the first Monday in
Lent every year, there was to be a general restoring
and changing of books. " Before the brethren come
into chapter, the keeper of the books is to have the
books collected in the chapter-house, and spread on
a carpet, except those which have been given out
for use during the past year. These last, the brethren
coming into chapter are to bring with them, each one
having his book in his hand, of which they ought to
have had notice from the keeper of the books in the
chapter of the day before. The rule of St. Benedict
about the observance of Lent is to be read. Then,
when there has been a discourse out of it, the keeper
of the books is to read a note (breve] as to how the
brethren have had books in the last year. As each
one hears his name mentioned, he is to return the
work which was given him to read the last year. And
he who is aware that he has not read through the
book which he received, is to prostrate himself and
declare his fault and ask indulgence. Then again the
keeper of the books is to give to each of the brethren
another book to read, and when the books have been
distributed in order, the keeper is to record in a note
(imbreviei) the names of the books, and of those who
have received them."

The daily service in the church took the first place,
and governed all the other arrangements. Lanfranc s
regulations go with much detail into the order to be
observed for the day s prayers at each season ot the
ecclesiastical year, for the special ceremonies at the

in.] A NORMAN MONASTERY. 59

chief solemnities and festivals, and for the various
rites and grades of the divine service. They con
tain an elaborate directory, following what had
become by this time the ordinary course of com
mon prayer and the fixed cycle of holy times in
the Latin Church ; its order exhibits a general agree
ment with that which is still represented in the bre
viaries ; but this order was not then stereotyped in
the degree in which it gradually became fixed, in the
usages of the Western Church before the Reformation;
and Lanfranc, in this matter as in others, exercises
his discretion in his arrangements. The divisions
of the year are appointed, and marked by various
changes in the order of prayer and living. The festivals
of different classes, to be kept in the monastery, are
enumerated. The rules, as we have them, were meant
by Lanfranc for English monasteries ; and the only
festivals of more recent saints which he admits into
his second class, containing days which come below the
highest feasts, days connected with events of the Gospel
history like the Epiphany, the Annunciation, and the
Ascension, and with the memory of St. John the Baptist,
St. Peter, and St. Paul, and of All Saints, are, with
the exception of that commemorative of the great
monastic patriarch St. Benedict, days in honour
of three persons in whom Englishmen would feel
special interest : St. Gregory, " because he is the
apostle of our, that is, of the English nation;" St.
Augustin, "the Archbishop of the English;" and
St. Alfege the martyr ^Elfheah, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, slain by the heathen Danes, whose claim
to a high place among martyred saints, thus empha
tically admitted, was the subject, as we shall find, of

60 DISCIPLINE OF [CHAP.

a remarkable conversation between Lanfranc and
Anselm ; and the place which he fills in Lanfranc s
monastic calendar was the effect of that conversation.
It is worth mentioning that the holy days enumerated
are comparatively few: besides the names just men
tioned, and those of Scripture personages, the only
names found are St. Vincent, St. Lawrence, St.
Augustin of Hippo, and St. Martin.

The course of an ordinary day is thus laid out
for the autumn season. The community rose for
matins, which were sung at night, and then returned
to their beds ; as the day began to dawn, a small
bell gave the signal, and they rose, and, in the
dress in which they slept, sang the service for the
first hour, with the penitential Psalms and Litanies,
and then passed into the cloister, where they sat
at their various occupations. The children were
employed reading aloud or singing. At the bell
which sounded for the third hour, they went to the
dormitory and dressed themselves for the day ; then
they went to the lavatory and washed and combed
their hair ; and proceeding to the church remained
bowing down to the ground, till the children were ready
and joined them. Then the third hour service was
performed and the morning mass. When it was over,
the whole community gathered in the choir, and pro
ceeded two and two to the chapter-house ; when the
business there was over, they went into the cloister,
and might talk till the sixth hour, and the mass which
followed it. Twice a week on the fast days, Wed
nesday and Friday, there was a procession in which
all walked barefoot round the cloister. In the summer
portion of the year, when the days were longer, the

in.] A NORMAN MONASTERY. 61

community took a noon-day rest (incridiand] in the
dormitory ; it is especially ordered that during the
mid-day rest the children and youths were not to
read or write or do any work in their beds, but to lie
perfectly still. After the mid-day mass, the brethren
were to sit in the choir, and those who would might
read, till the service of the ninth hour. As the time
of the great festivals came on, from Advent to Whit
suntide, the religious services became much longer and
took up more time. After the ninth hour they went to
the refectory, and they might speak in the cloister. On
ordinary days, they " refreshed " themselves twice a
day, after the third hour, and again after the ninth,
except on fast days, when all, except the children and
the sick, " refreshed " themselves (reficiunt) only once ;
and restrictions as to the quality of the food are
laid down for the great solemnities. But little is said
about food, compared with the general minuteness of
the directions relating to the ceremonial by which the
significance and importance of each high service was
marked. There appears a sternness and severity
running through them, such as there might be in the
regulations of a military life, but no privation simply
for privations sake, at least no pushing of privation
to extravagant excess. The children, the sick, the
weak, and those who, according to the custom of the
time, were undergoing their periodical blood-letting,
an operation which was done according to rule,
and with a religious service, were to be treated
with indulgence, and all discretion granted to their
superiors for this end. Rules were laid down about
the time and usage of shaving and washing ; before
the great festivals there was a general bathing, and

62 DISCIPLINE OF [CHAP.

much of the washing is ordered to be with hot
water. The chamberlain, whose business it was to
provide the dress of tl\e brethren, is ordered also to
provide razors and napkins for shaving ; towels to
hang in the cloister ; he is to provide and repair
glass windows for the dormitory ; and once a year
he is to have the hay changed in the beds and the
dormitory cleaned.

The government of the monastery was arranged
with good sense and simplicity according to the habits
of the time, and the objects of the institution as a
school of discipline. The various offices were laid
out with the same distinctness and regularity as,
according to an analogy which has already been
noticed, and which is continually recurring, in a regi
ment or a man-of-war. The abbot was elected by
the community, or by the majority and " better
part." The abbot was often, perhaps more often
than not, chosen from some other monastery, where
he had already gained reputation for learning or
discipline. This was the theory. But in Nor
mandy, in Duke William s time, the election, at least
in the larger houses, required the duke s assent and
confirmation, if the office was not his direct and sole
appointment ; and the abbot received from him the
investiture of the temporalities of the house by the
formal delivery of a pastoral staff. The abbot s
authority was, in idea and in terms, absolute and
never to be questioned. " Let the whole order of
the monastery depend on what he thinks fit." His
paramount position was marked by a strict etiquette,
and all kinds of marks of exceptional honour ; all
orders came from him, all power was derived from

in.] A NORMAN MONASTERY. 63

him ; he was the source of pardon and indulgence, and
in his presence all other authority was suspended.
But he was as much subject as the rest to the
regulations and laws of his service; and further, he
was controlled and limited directly by acknowledged
concurrent rights in the community, as in admission
of new members, or in the judgment and sentence of
faults, and still more, indirectly, by the opinions and
leanings of the body, often an active, and sometimes
a troublesome one, over which he presided. A monas
tery exhibited the mixture, so common everywhere
at the time, of great personal and concentrated power
with a great amount of real liberty round it ; and the
force of an abbot s rule depended much less on the
despotic supremacy assigned to him by regulations
or current ideas than on his own fitness for governing.
Under him, and next to him in office and honour,
was the prior (a " greater prior," and a " prior of
cloister," are specified and distinguished), who was
the working hand and head in the interior administra
tion of the house. The servants were specially under
his control ; he was to "hold the chapter" for the
judgment of their behaviour, and for the infliction of
necessary punishment. And the police of the house
was under his special charge ; he was to observe
behaviour in choir and in the cloister, and at stated
times of day and night by night with a dark lantern
(absconsd) he was to go round the house, the crypt
and aisles of the minster, the cloister, the chapter
house, the infirmary, and the dormitory, to see that
there was no idling or foolish gossip. At night he
was to take care that all was well lighted in the house.
In this work of going his rounds, he was assisted by

64 DISCIPLINE OF [CHAP.

officers specially appointed for the purpose (circumi-
tores, quos alio nomine circas vocant\ elected from
the more discreet of the brethren, men who would
act without favour or malice, who from time to time
were to pass through the monastery, observing every
thing, but never speaking till they made their report
in the chapter. " While they are going their rounds
they .are to make no sign to any one ; to no one on
any occasion are they to speak, but only watchfully
notice all negligence and all offences, and silently
passing by, afterwards make their complaint in
chapter. If they find any of the brethren talking
outside the cloister, one of the speakers is at once to
rise up to them, and say, if it be the case that they
have leave to be talking. The officers of the rounds
are not to answer by word or sign, but quietly passing
on, to listen carefully whether the talk is unprofitable
and what ought not to be said." All the offices
and rooms of the house were under their continual
superintendence.

The service of the choir was under the charge
of the Cantor. He arranged everything relating
to the reading and singing. " Every one," it is
said, a necessary precaution where reading was
an accomplishment, and right pronunciation more
precarious than even now, " every one who is to
read or sing anything in the minster, is bound, if
necessary, before he begins, to listen to the passage
read or sung by the cantor It was his duty to take
care that nothing careless and slovenly was done in any
religious service. " If any one from forgetfulness does
not begin at his proper place in the responses and
antiphon, or goes wrong in it, the cantor must be on

in.] A NORMAN MONASTERY. 65

his guard and ready without delay to begin what should
be begun, or to set the other right where he has made
a mistake. At his direction the chant is to begin, to
be raised, to be lowered : no one is to raise the chant
unless he first begins." He is to choose those who
are to help him in the choir ; he is to sit among them
on the right side of the choir, on which side the sing
ing is to begin. He also is to have the care of the
books of the monastery. Other officers attended to
the outward or domestic concerns of the house. The
Sccretarius or Sacrista had the charge of the church
ornaments, the bells, and the sacred vessels ; and it
was his business to overlook the making of the "Hosts"
for the Mass, which was done with great solemnity.
The Chamberlain was charged with everything relating
to the dress of the brethren and the good order of
their rooms. "He was to have horse-shoes for the
horses of the abbot and prior and their guests, and
to provide the brethren going on a journey with
cloaks, leggings, and spurs;" for whose behaviour while
travelling very careful and elaborate rules are given.
The Cellarer looked after the housekeeping. There
is a touch of warmth in the dry, stern rule, in de
scribing his office, which speaks of the feeling with
which he was looked upon even at Bee. " He ought
to be the father of the whole congregation ; to have
a care both of those in health, and also, and especially,
of the sick brethren." On the day on which the rule
of his office \vas to be read in chapter, he was to take
care that all should be prepared, so that his service
in the refectory to the brethren might be done in an
honourable and festive manner : he was solemnly to
ask pardon in chapter for the imperfect manner in

S.L. X. F

66 DISCIPLINE OF [CHAP.

which he had discharged his "obedience," and was to
receive forgiveness for it from the community ; and
then after a recital for him of the Miserere Psalm, he
was to provide an " honourable refection " for the
brethren. There was a separate house for strangers,
over which a brother was set who was to provide
everything necessary of furniture, firing and food for
their entertainment. He was to introduce guests and
visitors, and to show the cloister and offices to those
who desired to see them ; but he was to bring no stran
ger into the cloister while any of the brotherhood was
sitting there, and "no one on any pretence, booted,
spurred, or bare-footed." There was an Almoner,
whose business it was to seek out and relieve the
poor and the sick ; he had two servants to attend
him, and he was to visit the distressed at their houses,
and gently comfort the " sick and offer them the best
that he had and saw that they needed, and if they
needed something that he had not, he was to try and
provide it." And there was an Infinnariiis, who
looked after the sick in hospital, with his own separate
cook and kitchen for their needs, \vho was to provide
freely for all that could comfort them, and also to
take care that no one took advantage of the com
parative indulgence of the infirmary. The regulations
are minute and lengthy about the treatment of the
dying. He was attended with prayers and psalms
to the last ; when he entered into his " agony," a hair
cloth was spread, ashes scattered upon it, and a cross
made on the ashes, and on this the dying brother was
laid. The whole convent was summoned by sharp re
peated blows on a board : all who heard it, whatever
they were about, except they were at the regular service

in.] . A NORMAN MONASTERY. 67

in church, were to run to the bed of the dying, chant
ing in a low tone the Nicene Creed; and they were to
remain about him, saying the Penitential Psalms and
Litanies till he died. So, in the presence of all his
brethren, amid their suffrages and supplications, in
sackcloth and ashes, the monk gave up the ghost.
Such are the descriptions of the last scenes in the
lives of men of this time : so Anselm died, and so
his friend and pupil Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester,
the builder of the Tower of London.

In these regulations, entering frequently into very
minute detail as to the observances of times and sea
sons, it is natural that we should find a great mixture ;
that with things wise and reasonable, and well adapted
to ends deserving of respect, we should find much that
is childish, much that is mischievous, much that is
"simply incomprehensible. So it appears to us now;
and probably with our larger experience we are right
But matters which approach to the nature of form
and etiquette are always things on which a man who
is careful in forming his judgments will be especially
cautious in pronouncing a strong opinion. We find
them in black and white in a book, and there they
look very different from what such things do when
we see them in living action, and surrounded by
circumstances with which they harmonize ; and one
age can never expect to understand and feel with the
forms of another, just as one class of society is often
simply unable to see anything to respect or care for
in what is full of gravity and meaning to another,
above it, or below it, or even co-ordinate with it.
Lawyers, soldiers, doctors, clergymen, are apt to
find much that is strange and unintelligible in one
another s codes and professional ideas. But with all

F 2

68 A NORMAN MONASTERY. [CHAP. in.

shortcomings and fantastic usages and misdirection,
one thing the monasteries were, which was greatly
needed in their day. -In an age when there was so
much lawlessness, and when the idea of self-control
was so uncommon in the ordinary life of man, they
were schools of discipline ; and there were no others.
They upheld and exhibited the great, then almost the
original idea, that men needed to rule and govern
themselves, that they could do it, and that no use
of life was noble and perfect without this ruling.
It was hard and rough discipline like the times, which
were hard and rough. But they did good work then,
and for future times, by impressing on society the
idea of self-control and self-maintained discipline.
And rude as they were, they were capable of nurtur
ing noble natures, single hearts, keen and powerful
intellects, glowing and unselfish affections.

In those days, there were soldiers and soldiers, and
no doubt fewer good ones than bad ones. We have
no reason to suppose that it was otherwise with
monks, or that the general praise which we meet
with of monks as such, means more than the corre
sponding general praise of the military virtues of an
army, who are all supposed to be gallant and high-
minded. But the soldier of knowledge and of re
ligious self-discipline had a noble ideal; and it was not
unfulfilled. In Anselm s life we can see how the man
filled up the formal life of the monk, as he might have
filled up that of the soldier. Through the clumsiness,
the simplicity, the frequent childishness of that time
of beginnings, the shrewdness and fine sympathies and
affection of Anselm s English friend and biographer
show us how high and genuine a life could be realized
in those rude cloisters.

CHAPTER IV.

ANSELM AT EEC.

"Temperance, proof
Against all trials ; industry severe
And constant as the motion of the day ;
Stern self-denial round him spread, with shade
That might be deemed forbidding, did not there
All generous feelings flourish and rejoice ;
Forbearance, charity in deed and thought,
And resolution competent to take
Out of the bosom of simplicity
All that her holy customs recommend."

WORDSWORTH, Excursion, b. vii.

" Servants of God ! or sons
Shall I not call you ? because
Not as servants ye knew
Your Father s innermost mind,
His, who unwillingly sees
One of His little ones lost
Yours is the praise, if mankind
Hath not as yet in its march

Fainted, and fallen, and died !
* * * *

Then in such hour of need
Of your fainting, dispirited race,
Ye, like angels, appear,
Radiant with ardour divine.
Beacons of hope, ye appear !
Languor is not in your heart,
Weakness is not in your word,
Weariness not on your brow."

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

ANSELM came to Bee, as men later on went to
universities, to find the best knowledge and the best

70 ANSELM AT EEC. [CHAP.

teaching of this day. He read indefatigably, and
himself taught others, under Lanfranc. Teacher and
pupil, besides being both Italians, had much to draw
them together; and a friendship began between them,
which, in spite of the difference between the two men,
and the perhaps unconscious reserve caused by it,
continued to the last genuine and unbroken. Lan
franc was a man of strong practical genius. Anselm
was an original thinker of extraordinary daring and
subtlety. But the two men had high aims in com
mon; they knew what they meant, and they under
stood each other s varied capacities for their common
task. They found themselves among a race of men
of singular energy and great ambition, but at a very
low level of knowledge, and with a very low standard
of morality ; illiterate, undisciplined, lawless. To
educate and to reform, to awaken the Normans to
the interest of letters and the idea of duty, to kindle
the desire to learn and to think, and to purify and
elevate the aims of life, were the double object of both
Lanfranc and Anselm, the key to their unwearied
zeal to re-organize and infuse fresh vigour into the
monastic system, which was the instrument which they
found ready to their hand. Opposite as they were
in character, and working in different lines, the great
purpose which they had so sincerely at heart bound
them together.

When Anselm had, as we should say, followed
Lanfranc s lectures for some time, the question pre
sented itself to what use he should devote his life. In
those hard days, the life of a monk was not harder
than that of a student ; each was pinched with cold
and want, each could only get through his day s work

iv.] ANSELM AT EEC. 71

with toil like that of a day-labourer. What was on
the side of the monk s life was its definite aim and its
hope of reward. It was a distinct self-dedication to
the service of the great Master, and it looked for the
great Master s special approval. Anselm had begun
to feel his power, and to reflect on the cost of pri
vation and effort at which the fruits of thought and
knowledge had been bought. How should he best
keep them from being thrown away ? The same
temper which in those days naturally carried other
men to be soldiers, carried him to be a monk ; but
what sort of monk should he be ? Cluni was then the
most famous among monastic organizations ; but Cluni
discouraged learning. Why should he not stay at
Bee ? He confessed to himself afterwards that he
felt that where Lanfranc was so great there was no
room for him, and that he wanted, even as a monk,
a sphere of his own. " I was not yet tamed," as he
said in after times, when he used, in playful mood,
to talk over his early life with his friends " I want a
place, I said to myself, where I can both show what
I know and be of use to others ; I thought my
motive was charity to others, and did not see how
hurtful it was to myself." But self-knowledge came
and an honest understanding with himself, and with
it new plans of life opened : if he was to be a monk,
he was to be one for God, and at Bee as well as any
where ; if rest and God s comfort were his desire, he
would find them there. But with the ever paramount
thought came other thoughts, too. His father s in
heritance had fallen to him, and he considered the
alternative of going back to take it. Should he be a
monk at Bee, a hermit in the wilds, or a noble in his

72 ANSELM A T EEC. [CHAP.

father s house, administering his patrimony for the
poor ? He put himself into Lanfranc s hands. Lan-
franc referred him to the Archbishop of Rouen. The
archbishop advised him to become a monk. It is
hard to see what better advice in those times he
could have given to a man consumed by the passion
at once for knowledge and for the highest ideal of life.
Anselm became a monk at Bee in the twenty-seventh
year of his age ; in three years time he succeeded
Lanfranc as prior ; fifteen years after this Herlwin,
the founder, died, and Anselm was chosen abbot ; and
he governed Bee as abbot for fifteen years more. 1

Lanfranc had set a high example, and to him be
longs the glory of having been the creator of Bee, the
kindler of light and force among the Norman clergy,
the leader of improvement and efforts after worthier
modes of life on a wider stage than Normandy. He
was for his day an accomplished scholar and divine,
a zealous promoter of learning, of order, of regularity
of life, a man of great practical powers, and noble
and commanding character, apparently not without
a tin^e of harshness and craft. He left his scholar

o

Anselm to carry on his work at Bee ; his scholar-
but it would not be easy to find two more different
men. Lanfranc s equal might without much diffi
culty be found among many of the distinguished
churchmen of the Middle Ages. The man who suc
ceeded him was one who, to a child-like singleness
and tenderness of heart, joined an originality and
power of thought which rank him, even to this day,
among the few discoverers of new paths in philo
sophical speculation. Anselm was one of those

1 Monk, 1060 ; Prior, 1063 ; Abbot, 1078 till 1093.

iv.] ANSELM AT SEC. 73

devout enthusiasts after exact truth, who try the
faculties of the human mind to the uttermost, and to
whom the investigation of new ideas, pushed to their
simplest forms and ultimate grounds, takes the place
of the passions and objects of life. He had all that
dialectical subtlety and resource which awakening
mind in half-barbarous times exacts from and ad
mires in its guides ; but he had also, besides this,
which was common enough, the daring and the force
to venture by himself into real depths and difficulties
of thought, such as have been tried by the greatest
of modern thinkers, and in which lie the deepest
problems of our own times. Fixed at Bee, the philo
sophic inquirer settled to his toil, and reverently and
religiously, yet fearlessly, gave his reason its range.
His biographer records the astonishment caused by
his attempts to "unravel the darkest, and before
his time the unsolved or unusual questions con
cerning the Divine Nature and our faith, which
lay hid, covered by much darkness in the divine
Scriptures." " For," adds Eadmer, " he had such
confidence in them, that with immovable trust of
heart he felt convinced that there was nothing in
them contrary to solid truth. Therefore he bent
his purpose most earnestly to this, that according
to his faith it might be vouchsafed to him to per
ceive by his mind and reason the things which were
veiled in them."

The men of his day, as we see, recognized in him
something more than common as an inquirer and a
thinker ; but it was reserved for much later times to
discern how great he was. It needed longer and
wider experience in the realms of speculation, and a far

74 ANSELM A T EEC. [CHAP.

higher cultivation than was attainable in his age, to
take the true measure of his original and penetrating
intellect. His first works written at Bee show his
refined subtlety of thought, with the strong effort to
grasp in his own way the truth of his subject. They
exhibit the mind really at work, not amusing itself
with its knowledge and dexterity. They are three
dialogues, in which he grapples with the idea of Truth,
with the idea of Free-will, and with the idea of Sin,
as exhibited in what may be called its simplest form,
the fall of an untempted angelic nature. But the
fruits of his intellectual activity at Bee are shown on
a very different scale in two works, also composed
when he was prior, which have gained him his place
among the great thinkers of Christian Europe two
short treatises on the deepest foundations of all reli
gion, examples of the most severe and abstruse
exercise of mind, yet coloured throughout by the
intensity of faith and passionate devotion of the soul
to the God of Truth which sets the reason to work.
The first of these is the Monologion. He originally
called it " An Example of Meditation on the Reason
of Faith;" and it was meant to represent a person
discoursing secretly with himself on the ground of his
belief in God. It is an attempt to elicit from the
necessity of reason, without the aid of Scripture, the
idea of God, and the real foundation of it ; and to
exhibit it " in plain language and by ordinary argu
ment, and in a simple manner of discussion"- -that is,
without the usual employment of learned proofs ;
and he aims, further, at showing how this idea
necessarily leads to the belief of the Word and the
Spirit, distinguished from, but one with, the Father.

iv.] ANSELM AT BEC. 75

The Monologion is an investigation of what reason
alone shows God to be ; though the inquiry starts
from the assumption of the convictions of faith, and
finds that reason, independently followed, confirms
them. The basis of his method, one of several he
says, but the readiest, is the existence of certain
qualities in man and nature, moral and intellectual
excellences and whatever we call good, which, he
argues, to be intelligibly accounted for, presuppose,
as the ground of their existence, the same qualities in
a perfect and transcendent manner in a Being who
is seen, on further reflection, to be the one without
whom nothing could be, and who Himself depends
on nothing. It is an argument from ideas, in the
sense in which Plato spoke of them, as grounds
accounting to reason for all that is matter of expe
rience. The mode of argument is as old as Plato,
and became known to Anselm through St. Augustin.
But it is thought out afresh and shaped anew with
the originality of genius. A recent French critic,
Emile Saisset, remarks on the " extraordinary bold
ness, which strikes us in every page of the Mono
logion" The clear purpose and the confident grasp
of the question, the conduct of the reasoning from
step to step, calm and almost impassive in appear
ance, but sustained and spirited, the terse yet elabo
rate handling of the successive points, the union in it
of self-reliant hardihood, with a strong sense of what
is due to the judgment of others, make it, with its
companion piece, the Proslogion, worthy of its fame,
as one of the great masterpieces and signal-posts in
the development of this line of thought ; though, like
its great companions and rivals, before and after

76 ANSELM AT BEC. [CHAP.

it, it leaves behind a far stronger impression of the
limitations of the human intellect than even of its
powers.

But he was not satisfied with the argument of
the Monologion, a chain consisting of many links,
a theory requiring the grasp in one view of many
reasonings. Eadmer draws a remarkable picture,
which is confirmed by Anselm s own account, of
the way in which he was tormented with the long
ing to discover some one argument short, simple,
self-sufficing by which to demonstrate in a clear
and certain manner the existence and perfections
of God. Often on the point of grasping what he
sought, and as often baffled by what escaped from his
hold, unable in his anxiety to sleep or to take his meals,
he despaired of his purpose ; but the passionate desire
would not leave him. It intruded on his prayers, and
interrupted his duties, till it came to appear to him
like a temptation of the devil. At last, in the watches
of the night, in the very stress of his efforts to keep off
the haunting idea, "in the agony and conflict of his
thoughts," the thing which he had so long given up
hoping for presented itself, and filled him with joy.
The discovery, Eadmer tells us, was more than once
nearly lost, from the mysterious and unaccountable
breaking of the wax tablets on which his first notes
were written, before they were finally arranged and
committed to the parchment. The result was the
famous argument of the Proslogion, the argument
revived with absolute confidence in it by Descartes,
and which still employs deep minds in France and Ger
many with its fascinating mystery that the idea of
God in the human mind of itself necessarily involves the

iv.] ANSELM AT SEC. 77

reality of that idea. The Proslogion, a very short com
position, is in the shape of an address and lifting up of
the soul to God, after the manner of St. Augustin s
Confessions, or what in French is termed an Eleva
tion, seeking to know the rational foundation of its
faith ; fides qticerens intellectum. The " fool who says in
his heart, there is no God," in his very negation compre
hends the absolutely unique idea of a Being the most
perfect conceivable, an idea without a parallel or like
ness ; but real existence is necessarily involved in the
idea of a Being than whom nothing can be conceived
greater, otherwise it would not be the most perfect
conceivable. He treats the idea of a Being, than
which nothing greater can be conceived, and of which
existence is a necessary part, as if it were as much an
intellectual necessity as the idea of a triangle, or, as
Descartes puts it, a mountain which must have its
valley ; and the denial of the "fool" to be as impos
sible an attempt as the attempt to conceive the non-
existence of the idea of a triangle. The obviously
paradoxical aspect of the argument, in seeming to
make a mental idea a proof of real existence, was
brought out at the time with some vigour, though
with an inadequate appreciation of the subtlety and
depth of the question in debate, by a French monk of
noble birth, Gaunilo of Marmoutier ; and in reply to
this, the argument, which is very briefly stated in the
Proslogion itself, is stated afresh, and Anselm puts
forth the full power of his keen and self-reliant mind
to unfold and guard it. A curious touch of playful
ness occasionally relieves the austere argumentation.
To illustrate the absurdity of Anselm s alleged posi
tion, that what is more excellent than all things in

78 ANSELM A T BEC. [CHAP.

idea must exist in fact, Gaunilo instances the Insula
perdita in the ocean, the lost Atlantis of poets
and philosophers, said to be the most beautiful of all
lands, but inaccessible to man. Gaunilo makes merry
with his parallel, which Anselm rejects. "I speak
confidently," he answers, " fidens loquor if any one
will discover for me anything, either existing in fact
or in thought alone, besides TJiat than wliich no-thing
greater can be thought; to which he can fit and apply
the structure of this my reasoning, I will find and
give him that lost island, never to be lost again." But
this is a passing touch which for once he could not
resist : in the treatment generally of the argument in
this reply, he sacrifices the moral and, so to say, the
probable and imaginative aspect of it, to its purely
scientific form. Until it is expanded by considera
tions which Anselm refuses to take in, it seems but a
rigorous following out of the consequences, which are
inevitably imposed on the reasoner who accepts the
definition of God as " That than which nothing greater
can be thought." But the argument was one which in
its substance approved itself to minds like those of
Descartes, and Descartes great critics, Samuel Clarke,
Leibnitz, and Hegel ; and these bold and soaring
efforts of pure reason, so devout and reverently con
scious of what it had accepted as the certainties of
religion, yet so ardently bent on intellectual discovery
for itself, are the more remarkable when it is con
sidered that in their form and style Anselm had no
model, not even in his chief master, St. Augustin. Nor
was he imitated. The great Schoolmen followed a dif
ferent track, and a different method ; and it is only on
account of their common devotion to abstract thought,

iv.] ANSELM A T EEC. 79

and of the impulse which Anselm doubtless gave to a
more severe and searching treatment of theology, that
he can be classed as one of them, or as their fore
runner. It has been observed with justice, that his
method is much more akin to the spirit of independent
philosophical investigation which began when the age
of the Schools had passed, in the sixteenth century.
It differs from this in the profound convictions of the
certainties of religion, convictions as profound as those
of moral duty, from which it starts and with which
it is combined, and by the spirit of which it is ever
quickened and elevated.

But he was not only a thinker. His passion for
abstruse thought was one which craved, not solitude
but companionship. He was eminently a teacher.
The Middle Ages are full of pictures of great masters
and their scholars ; but few of them exhibit the con
nection in its finest form as a combination of natural
authority with affection, of deep personal interest and
large public aims, of familiarity and associated labour
between the teacher and his circle of pupils, of a guide
who does not impose his opinions or found a school,
but who shows the way and awakens thought, so
clearly as it is seen in the glimpses which are given,
in Anselm s letters and works and in Eadmer s life, of
Anselm s monastic school. His chief care, says his
biographer, was devoted to the younger men, whose
minds were to be formed for work to come, and who
were not too old to learn, or to be kindled with high
purposes, and quickened into fresh enterprises of
thought. " He compared the age of youth to wax
fitly tempered for the seal. For if the wax be too
hard or too soft it receives but imperfectly the im-

8o ANSELM A T EEC. [CHAP.

pression. So is it in the ages of man. You see a man
from childhood to deep old age, busy with the vanities
of this world, minding only earthly things and har
dened in them. Talk to him of the things of the
spirit, of the refined thoughts of divine contemplation,
teach such a man to search out these secrets of heaven,
and you will find that he has not even the power of
knowing what you mean. And no wonder the wax
is hardened ; he has not spent his life in these things,
he has learned to pursue their opposites. Take, on
the other hand, a boy of tender age, not able to
discern either good or evil, not even to understand
you when you talk of such things, and the wax is too
soft and melting it will not retain the impression.
The young man is between the two, fitly tempered of
softness and hardness. Train up him, and you may
mould him to what you will." The turn of hopeful
ness given to the trite image is characteristic. Gifted
with singularly keen insight into men s hearts, and
with quick and wide sympathy ; instinctively divining,
with a sureness which struck even men accustomed, as
monks were, to this kind of faculty, the secret wishes,
trials, sorrows, perils of each, and exercising that attrac
tion which draws men to those who understand and
respect them, Anselrn s influence reached to wherever
he came in contact with men, inside his monastery or
without. The words of Christ and heaven were ever
on his lips ; but they were words for all.

He was not a preacher ; but he was remarkable for
his readiness to address or discourse with lay people
of all conditions in their own language and on their
own ground, as much as to compose Latin homilies
for the chapter-house of his monks. His correspond-

iv.] ANSELM AT EEC. Si

ence alone shows how, as time went on, his relations
with persons of all classes extended ; and he cared for
all and willingly worked for all. Whole days, says
Eadmer, he would spend in giving advice to those
who claimed it ; and then the night would be spent
in correcting the ill-written copies of books for the
library. He was as ready and as unwearied in doing
the work of a nurse in the infirmary or at the
death-bed, as he was to teach and discuss in the
cloister, or to bury himself in contemplation in his
cell. His care and his toil were for all within, his
spiritual household, and flowed over beyond it ; but
his love and his interest were for the younger men ; for
minds not yet dulled to the wonders and great ends of
living, needing as he did answers to its great ques
tions, eager and hopeful as he was to venture on the
"majestic pains" and anxieties ot thought needful to
meet them. Wearied once with his work, he sought to
be relieved of it by the Archbishop of Rouen ; but he
received the answer usual in those days, that he was
to return and prepare for greater and heavier burdens*
" So," says Eadmer, "he went back. He behaved so
that all men loved him as their dear father. He bore
with even mind the ways and the weaknesses of each ;
to each he supplied what he saw they wanted. Oh,
how many given over in sickness has he brought back
to health by his loving care ! You found
Herewald, in your helpless old age when, disabled by
years as well as by heavy infirmity, you had lost all
power in your body except in your tongue, and were
fed by his hand, and refreshed by wine squeezed
from the grapes into his other hand, from which you.
drank it, and were at last restored to health. For no

S.L. X.

82 AXSELM A T EEC. [CHAP.

other drink, as you used to say, could you relish, nor
from any other hand. So it was : Anselm used to be

constantly in the infirmary, inquiring after the bre
thren s sicknesses, and ministering to each what each
needed without delay or trouble. So it was : he was
to those in health a father, to the sick a mother rather,
to healthy and sick, father and mother in one. And so,
whatever secrets anyone had, to Anselm, as to a most
sweet mother, he sought to confide it. But it was the
young men who were most anxious to do so."

Why the -young turned so enthusiastically to one
who thus sympathised with them, may be understood
from the following conversation, in which Anselm s
good sense and freedom of mind appear in contrast with
the current ideas of his time, which were not those of
the eleventh century only. An abbot, says Eadmer,
who was looked upon as a very religious man, was one
day deploring to Anselm the impossibility of making
any impression on the boys who were brought up in
his monastery. "What are we to do with them ?" he
asked in despair : " do what we will they are perverse
and incorrigible ; we do not cease beating them day
and night, and they only get worse." And you
don t cease beating them?" said Anselm; "what do
they turn into when they grow up?" "They turn
only dull and brutal," was the answer. " Well, you
have bad luck in the pains you spend on their
training," said Anselm, " if you only turn men into
beasts." "But what are we to do then?" said the
abbot ; " in every kind of way we constrain them to
improve, and it is no use." " Constrain them ! Tell
me, my lord abbot, if you planted a tree in your
garden, and tied it up on all sides so that it could not

LIBRARY ST. MARY S COLLEGE

iv.] ANSELM A T EEC. 83

stretch forth its branches, what sort of tree would it
turn out when, after some years, you gave it room to
spread ? Would it not be good for nothing, full of
tangled and crooked boughs ? And whose fault would
this be but yours, who had put such constant restraint
upon it ? And this is just what you do with your
boys. You plant them in the garden of the Church,
that they may grow and bear fruit to God. But you
cramp them round to such a degree with terrors and
threats and blows, that they are utterly debarred
from the enjoyment of any freedom. And thus inju
diciously kept down, they collect in their minds evil
thoughts tangled like thorns ; they cherish and feed
them, and with dogged temper elude all that might
help to correct them. And hence it comes that they
see nothing in you of love, or kindness, or goodwill,
or tenderness towards them ; they cannot believe that
you mean any good by them, and put down all you
do to dislike and ill-nature. Hatred and mistrust
grow with them as they grow ; and they go about
with downcast eyes, and cannot look you in the face.
But, for the love of God, I wish you would tell me
why you are so harsh with them ? Are they not
human beings ? Are they not of the same nature as
you are ? Would you like, if you were what they are,
to be treated as you treat them ? You try by blows
and stripes alone to fashion them to good : did you
ever see a craftsman fashion a fair image out of a
plate of gold or silver by blows alone ? Does he not
with his tools now gently press and strike it, now with
wise art still more gently raise and shape it ? So, if
you would mould your boys to good, you must, along
with the stripes which are to bow them down, lift

G 2

84 ANSELM A T BEC. [CHAP.

them up and assist them by fatherly kindness and
gentleness." . . . "But," the abbot insisted, "what
we try to do is to fqrce them into seriousness and
sturdiness of character; what are we to do?" "You
do well," said Anselm ; " but if you give an infant
solid food you will choke it. For every soul, its pro
portionate food. The strong soul delights in strong
meat, in patience and tribulations, not to wish for
what is another s, to offer the other cheek, to pray for
enemies, to love those that hate. The weak and
tender in God s service need milk : gentleness from
others, kindness, mercy, cheerful encouragement, cha
ritable forbearance. If you will thus suit yourselves
both to your weak and your strong ones, by God s
grace you shall, as far as lies in you, win them all for
God." "Alas !" sighed the abbot, "we have been all
wrong. We have wandered from the way of truth,
and the light of discretion hath not shone on us."
And falling at Anselm s feet he confessed his sin, and
asked pardon for the past, and promised amendment
for what was to come.

A strange and touching history in Eadmer strange,
with those ways of thought, which their unquestioned
naturalness then render doubly wonderful now,
touching, from that depth of affection which all times
know and can understand shows how Anselm had
learned his own lesson. When he was made prior,
after only three years profession, over the head
of the older inmates of Bee, a strong feeling of
jealousy was shown, and a party formed against
him in the monastery. With them was one of the
younger monks named Osbern, whose hatred of
Anselm was extreme, and who pursued him with the

ANSELM A T EEC. 85

"savageness of a dog" (canino more). Anselm, who
saw that he had character and talent, began by the
most forbearing and immovable good-humour, and by
giving him in return the fullest indulgence compatible
with the discipline of the house. In time Osbern was
softened, and became deeply attached to him. Then,
gaining influence over him, Anselm step by step with
drew the early indulgences, and accustomed him to
the severities of the monastic life "punishing him
not only with words but with stripes." Osbern stood
the test, and was ripening into manly strength. But
there came a fatal illness. Then Anselm watched and
waited on him like a mother ; "day and night was at
his bedside, gave him his food and drink, ministered
to all his wants, did everything himself that might
ease his body and comfort his soul." When the end
came and Osbern was dying, Anselm gave him a last
charge. He bade him, speaking as friend to friend, to
make known after his death, if it were possible, what
had become of him. " He promised, and passed
away." We need not be surprised that the charge
was believed to have been fulfilled. During the
funeral Anselm sat apart in a corner of the church,
to weep and pray for his friend ; he fell asleep from
heaviness and sorrow, and had a dream. He saw
certain very reverend persons enter the room where
Osbern had died, and sit round for judgment ; and
while he was wondering what the doom would be,
Osbern himself appeared, like a man just recovering
from illness, or pale with loss of blood. Three times,
he said, had the old serpent risen up against him, but
three times he fell backwards, and "the Bearward
of the Lord (Ursarius Domini] had delivered him."

86 ANSELM A T EEC. [CHAP.

Then Anselm awoke, and believed that Osbern s sins
were pardoned, and that God s angels had kept off his
foes "as the bearwards keep off the bears." Death
did not seem to break the friendship : Osbern s
memory was in Ansel m s prayers, and his letters
show how deep and tender was the surviving affec
tion. He prays his friends to offer for Osbern the
prayers and masses which they would offer for himself.
"Wherever Osbern is," he writes to his friend Gun-
dulf, "his soul is my soul. Let me, then, while I am
alive, receive in him whatever I might have hoped to
receive from friendship when I am dead ; so that then
they need do nothing for me. Farewell ! farewell !
mi charissime; and that I may recompense you
according to your importunity, I pray, and I pray,
and I pray, remember me, and forget not the soul of
Osbern my beloved. If I seem to burden you too
much, then forget me and remember him." What
ever the shape in which such feelings clothe themselves,
they are not less real for their shape ; and to all who
feel the mystery and obscurity of our condition, that
deep reality will gain their respect and sympathy.

We may trace in such records that remarkable com
bination of qualities which ultimately made Anselm
the object of a love and reverence surpassing even
the admiration excited by his rare genius. What is
striking is that with so much of his age, so powerful
and severe in mind, so stern in his individual life, a
monk of the monks, a dogmatist of the dogmatists,
he yet had so much beyond his age ; he was not only
so gentle and affectionate and self-forgetting, but
he was so considerate, so indulgent, so humane, so
free-spirited, so natural. Austerity was part of the

IV.] ANSELM AT BEC. 87

ordinary religious type of the time ; it went, in
deed, commonly with all loftiness of character and
aim ; the great Conqueror was austere, and of course
a monk with a high estimate of his calling was so.
But Anselm s almost light-hearted cheerfulness, his
winning and unformal nature, his temper of modera
tion and good sense, his interest in all kinds of men,
and power of accommodating himself to all kinds of
characters, his instinctive insight into the substance
of questions of truth and justice, his leaning, in an
age when all trust was placed in unbending rules, to
the side of compassion and liberty, formed a com
bination with personal austerity with which his age
was not familiar. His place of work was among
monks, and he must not be regarded as a popular
teacher of religion. He had gifts which, perhaps,
might have qualified him to exercise a wide popular
influence ; but he lived in times when there was little
thought of direct addresses to the minds of the multi
tude, and when all serious efforts at ordering life on
religious principles were concentrated in a small
body of professed ascetics. The days of the great
preachers were at hand ; but they had not yet come.
A certain number of homilies are found among
Anselm s works ; but they are foi the most part of
doubtful authority, and those which seem genuine
are not sermons, but expositions, meant not for a lay
congregation, but for a chapter-house of monks. Yet
it is clear that Anselm s influence told on numbers
who were not monks ; and the vehicle of his influence
seems to have been, not preaching, but free conver
sation. To his passion for abstract and profound
thought, he joined a taste for simple and natural

88 ANSELM AT EEC. [CHAP.

explanation, an a homely humour in illustration,
which reminds the reader sometimes of Luther or Lati-
mer more truly, perhaps, of St. Francois de Sales, and
of the vein of quaint^and unceremonious amusement
running through some of the later Italian works of
devotion. Eadmer, or some other of his friends, made
a collection of his sayings and comparisons, and
his common modes of presenting moral and religious
topics, very miscellaneous in selection and unequal in
worth, but giving probably an unstudied representa
tion of his ordinary manner of discourse. " He
taught," says Eadmer, " not as is the wont with others,
but in a widely different fashion, setting forth each
point under common and familiar examples, and sup
porting it by the strength of solid reasons, without
any veils or disguises of speech." There is a touch of
grim appreciation of the ludicrous in his comparison
of himself, peacefully living with his monks or going
forth among men of the world, to the fate of the owl
which ventures into the day ; while she sits still with
her " little ones in her cave, she is happy and it is well
with her ; but when she falls among the crows and
rooks and other birds, one attacks her with beak,
another with claws, another buffets her with wings,
and it goes ill with the owl." There is a deeper
touch of sympathy for distress and suffering in the
story of the hare, which, when he was riding one day,
after he had become archbishop, from Windsor to
Hayes, the young men about him started and chased
with their dogs. The hare took refuge under the
feet of his horse. Anselm reined in his horse, and
forbade them to hurt the creature, while, so the story
goes, the dogs surrounded the hare and licked it,

iv.] ANSELM A T EEC. 89

doine it no harm. When the soldiers crowded round

o

with noisy triumph at the capture, Anselm burst into
tears. " You laugh/ he said, * but for the poor un
happy creature there is nothing to laugh at or be glad
for ; its mortal foes are about it, and it flies to us for
life, in its own way beseeching for shelter. You see
the image of the departing soul of man. It goes
forth from the body, and straightway its enemies, the
evil spirits, which have hunted it through the doub
lings of its evil-doings all its life long, cruelly beset it,
ready to tear it in pieces, and plunge it into eternal
death. But it, terrified and affrighted, looks on this
side and on that,, longing with desire that cannot be
uttered for the hand which shall defend and pro
tect it * and the demons laugh and rejoice if they see
it without any aid to help it. Then he rode on, and
with a loud voice forbade that the dogs should touch
the hare ; and the creature, glad and at liberty, darted
off to the fields and woods." The story will remind
some readers of Luther s hunting at the Wartburg,
and the way in which he " theologized " on it.

In the year 1078, Anselm became abbot, and his
connection with England began. Bee, with the other
Norman abbeys, had since the Conquest received
possessions in England, and the new abbot went over
to view the abbey lands and to visit his old master
Lanfranc. At Canterbury he was welcomed at the
great monastery, and became one with the brother
hood of its monks, most of them probably English
men. There he made the acquaintance of Eadmer,
then a stripling ; and Eadmer s first remembrance of
him seems to be of the brotherly way in which he
lived with the English monks, and of the original and

90 ANSELM A T EEC. [CHAP.

unusual way in which, in his discourses in cloister or
in chapter, he put before them the aims and duties
of their state. Lanfranc was then full of the changes
which he wished to introduce in the monastic and
ecclesiastical organization of England ; and Anselm,
though he undoubtedly fully sympathised with his
master s object, used his influence to temper Lan-
franc s sternness and soften his Norman and Latin
prejudices. When Lanfranc rudis Anglus, as
Eadmer calls him, and inclined to disparage even
the saints of the " Barbarians" disputed the claim
of the English Archbishop Elphege (^Elfheah) to
martyrdom, because he had been put to death, not
for religion, but for refusing to ransom his life at the
expense of his tenants, Anselm, with characteristic
but rare generosity and largeness of thought, answered
that one who had died rather than oppress his tenants
had died for righteousness, and that " he who dies for
righteousness dies a martyr for Christ." Anselm, no
Norman, and with a larger heart than the Normans,
warmed towards the English with something of the
love and sympathy which had filled the soul of the
great Roman Pope who sent us St. Augustine ; and
the respect which he shovved to the defeated race
impressed the foreigners who had become their
masters. In his visit, more than once repeated, to
the abbey lands about England, he became known.
He was English monasteries and collegiate houses ;
he was received in the " courts " of some of the
nobles ; and everywhere his earnest and wise counsels
combined, with his frankness and his readiness in
meeting all on their own ground, to throw a singular
charm about him. " In his wonted manner," says

iv.] ANSELM A T EEC. 9 r

Eadmer, speaking of these days, " to all he showed
himself pleasant and cheerful, and the ways of each,
as far as he could without sin, he took upon himself.
For, according to- the Apostle s word, he suited him
self to them that were without law, as if he had been
without law, being not without law to God, but under
the law to Christ, that he might gain those who were
not only without the law, as it was thought, of St.
Benedict, but also who lived, devoted to a worldly
life, in many things without the law of Christ. So
that hearts were in a wonderful manner turned to
wards him, and were filled with hungry eagerness to .
hear him. For he adapted his words to each order of
men, so that his hearers declared that nothing could
have been said to fall in better \vith their ways. To
monks, to clerks, to laymen, according to each man s
purpose, he dispensed his \vords." Eadmer dwells
especially on the contrast between his way of teach
ing and that customary with others, and on his pre
ference for plain reasons, popular illustrations, and
straightforward speech which all could understand.
He was welcome to old and young, rich and poor ; he
touched the hearts of English monks, and won the
respect of Norman soldiers. " There was no count
in England, or countess, or powerful person, who did
not think that they had lost merit in the sight of
God, if it had not chanced to them at that time to
have done some service to Anselm the abbot of Bee."
We must remember, of course, that this is the account
of a friend, in days when friends were easily satisfied
with what made for their friends credit. But the
general account is confirmed by the effect of Anselm s
character on William in his later stern and gloomy

92 ANSELM A T EEC. [CHAP.

days. " To all others so harsh and terrible, in An-
selm s presence he seemed, to the wonder of the
bystanders, another man, so gracious and, easy of
speech." Years after, when King William was on his
forlorn deathbed, Anselm was the man whom he most
wished to see.

There is another feature on which Eadmer remarks.
The monks who retired from the world found it
impossible, after all, to free themselves from the cares
and business of the world. They had property ; and
those who have property must take the chance of law
suits. Lawsuits were frequent in those days. Even
the venerable Abbot Herlwin could not escape them ;
and one of the excellences for which he was re
membered at Bee was the skill with which he used
the knowledge he had gained of the customs and
rules which then made Norman law, for the protection
of his monks in the lords courts. But even at this
time the monks had got a character for knowing and
using unscrupulously legal advantages. Eadmer re
marks, as if it was something to be remembered, that
Anselm steadily set his face against all kinds of
chicane. " For he judged it abominable, if in the
business of the Church any one made his gain
of that which another might lose, by crafty dealing
against the rules of justice. So. that he never would
allow anyone in lawsuits to be taken at advantage
by any of his people, through any unfair practice,
making a conscience not to do to others what he would
not have done to himself." And Eadmer goes on with
a picture, quaint, as so many things are in those days,
but with touches from the life in it. " So it happened
that, sitting among the contending pleaders, while his

IV.] ANSELM AT EEC. 93

opponents were taking counsel by what skill or by
what trick they might help their own cause or damage
his, he, not minding it, was conversing with anyone
\vho wished to address him, either about the Gospel
or some other divine Scripture, or some point of right
conduct. And often, when he had no one to listen of
this kind, quietly at peace in the purity of his heart,
he would close his eyes and sleep. And often it came
to pass that the cunning devices against him, when
they came to his hearing, were at once exposed and
torn to pieces, not as if he had been asleep all the
while, but as if he had been fully awake and keenly
watching. For charity, which envieth not, vaunteth
not itself, seeketh not her own/ was strong in him, by
which he saw at a glance the things that he ought
to see ; for the truth was his guide."

The affairs of the house of Bee brought him to
England more than once after his first coming over.
" England became familiar to him, and, according as
occasions required it, was repeatedly visited by him."
Thus he became well known in England as the great
churchman, who, foremost and without an equal in
learning, with all his reforming austerity and rigour,
showed most signally in word and act the good-will
he bore to Englishmen, and whose influence was not
less remarkable with the strong and fierce strangers
who for the time had become their masters.

CHAPTER V.

ORDERLC THE CHRONICLER.

Oh that our lives, which flee so fast,

In purity were such,
That not an image of the past

Should fear from Memory s touch !

" Retirement then might hourly look

Upon a soothing scene ;
Age steal to his allotted nook,
Contented and serene ;

" With heart as calm as lakes that sleep,

In frosty moonlight glistening :
Or mountain rivers, where they creep
Along a channel smooth and deep,

To their own far-off murmurs listening. "

WORDSWORTH.

OF course all Norman monasteries were not like
Bee, and all their abbots and priors were not like
Herlwin, Lanfranc, and Anselm. Monasteries, like
colleges, like regiments, like other permanent bodies
of men, had each its own spirit, and more or less
distinct type ; uniformity of ends, much less of rules,
does not necessarily make men alike. These dif
ferences of type were not merely differences between
good and bad ; they were differences of character,
bent, and tastes. And that was a time when, more
than ever, a community was apt to reflect the spirit

CHAP, v.] ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. 95

of its leaders. The leaders of the Norman monas
teries were of many kinds. The monastic chroniclers,
though fettered partly by the etiquette of monastic
feelings and respects, partly by the imperfection of
their instruments of expression, were not bad ob
servers of character, and let us see, with much
distinctness, the variety of men who guided these
brotherhoods, and the changes that ensued by the
removal of one and the succession of another. A
good deal is told when we are informed, for instance,
that to Guntard, abbot of Jumieges, a strict ruler,
favourable to the gentle and obedient, but stern to
the perverse, succeeded Tancard, prior of Fecamp,
" savage as a lion " ferns uf leo. Orderic s pages
are full of these vivid touches ; and in contrast to the
students of Bee, with their spirit of keen and bold
speculation, we may set Orderic himself, and the com-
nunity to which he belonged. Orderic, not a thinker
or teacher, but to w r hom we owe most of what we
know of the world in which Anselm and his disciples
lived, spent no idle life; and besides preserving the
picture of his own times, he has, incidentally and
without meaning it, preserved his own portrait the
portrait of a monk who, full of his profession, and
made sympathetic, tender-hearted, and religious by
it, as well as something of a pedant and a mannerist,
looked with curious and often discriminating eye at
the scene of life, and contemplated its facts as others
inquired into its mysteries.

The monastery of which he was a member, St.
Evroul, was situated in a forest near the upper course
of the Rille, surrounded by places famous in Norman
history, L Aigle, Breteuil, Seez, on the borders of the

96 ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. [CHAP.

dioceses of Evreux and Lisieux. It was, in its new
or restored condition, some years younger than Bee ;
but it was a house which, as much as Bee, repre
sented the new zeal of Normandy, and aimed at car
rying out a high religious service. We know about
it mainly from Orderic ; and his account shows what
a stormy existence might be the lot of these places of
religious peace. St. Evroul, as has been already said,
was founded in part by the great house of Grentmaisnil,
one member of which, Robert, a man of some learning,
and still more a keen man of business, and a soldier
he had been Duke William s esquire became a
monk in it about 1050. Its first abbot was Theodoric,
a monk of Jumieges, of great piety and zeal, whose
holiness imposed awe even on the savage lady, Mabel
of Belesme, Countess of Montgomery, the terror of
her neighbourhood, and kept her from doing " either
evil or good to his house. He was blameless as
a spiritual ruler ; he established at St. Evroul a
flourishing school of copyists ; but in managing the
business of the house he was not so successful, and a
party of malcontents clamoured against him. " He
ought not to be abbot a man who knows nothing- of

o o

business and neglects it. How are men of prayer to
live, if men of the plough are wanting ? (imde vivent
oratores, si defecerint aratores f) He is a fool, and
cares more about reading and writing in the cloister
than about providing sustenance for the brethren."
The leader of the party was Robert of Grentmaisnil,
who had helped to found the house, and was now
prior. For a while William of Geroy, one of the
co-founders, supported Abbot Theodoric; but William
died on a journey to his Norman kinsmen in Apulia,

v.] ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. 97

and then the unworldly and simple-minded abbot
was driven by sheer worrying and intrigue from his
place. He attempted to resign, and retired from the
house to one of its dependencies ; but Duke Wil
liam and the Archbishop of Rouen interfered, and
a council of eminent churchmen, including Lanfranc,
were sent to make peace, who exhorted Robert to
" follow the poverty of Christ," and to obey his
superior. For a little time there was quiet ; then
the persecution began again, and the abbot, unable to
endure it, fled from the house and from Normandy,
and died at Cyprus on his way to Jerusalem. Then
Robert was chosen abbot (1059), the monks "reason
ably considering his high birth and his ardent zeal in
the interests and business of the house." " He was,"
says Orderic, " much to be praised for purity of life
and other sacred gifts ; but as nothing, according to
Flaccus, is altogether blessed, he was in some points
blameworthy. For in the good or evil things which
he desired, he was rapid in action and ardent ;
and when he heard or saw what he disliked, he was
swift to wrath ; and he liked better to be uppermost
than to be under, and to command than to obey.
He had his hands open both to receive and to give,
and a mouth ready to satisfy his rage with un
measured words." Robert s way of dealing with
troublesome and refractory tenants of the monastery
is characteristic : he simply transferred them to their
natural feudal lord. " Having taken counsel with
the brethren, he handed over the said rebels, for their
obstinacy, to his kinsman Arnold, that he might crush
their stiffneckedness, who would not peaceably endure
the mildness of the monks, by a soldier s hand, as long

S.L. X. H

98 ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER, [CHAP.

as he lived. Arnold then made their life weary with
many and divers services ... so that they earnestly
entreated Abbot Robert and the monks that they
might be placed again under their power, promising
them all subjection and obedience." The members
and the possessions of St. Evroul increased under him,
and though, as Orderic is fond of repeating, it was
founded in a barren and hungry land, yet the Abbot s
influence with his friends brought to it the revenues
which he needed for his grand designs. But the ener
getic abbot became involved in the quarrels between
Duke William and the house of Grentmaisnil and its
friends. He was accused of using mocking words of
the Duke. He was cited to appear before the Duke s
courts, but he dared not trust himself there, and retired
from Normandy. William filled up his place, and the
monastery was distracted between partisans of the new
abbot Osbern and those who looked on him as an
intruder, and could make his place uncomfortable.
Robert went to Rome, then to his kinsmen in Apulia.
He persuaded the Pope of the goodness of his cause,
and returned with letters and two cardinal legates from
the Pope, to regain his abbey. When William heard
of their coming, he was greatly wroth, and said that
" he would gladly receive the Pope s legates, as from
the common Father, about faith and Christian religion ;
but that if any monk of his land brought any complaint
against him, he would hang him, without ceremony, by
his cowl to the highest oak of the neighbouring wood.""
Robert hastily took himself off; and after excommuni
cating his intruding successor, returned to Rome. But
the excommunication caused great distress at St.
Evroul. The brotherhood broke up : several of the

v.] ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. 99

older men followed Robert, as still their rightful abbot,
to Rome, where the Pope Alexander, once a pupil of
Lanfranc s at Bee, received him hospitably ; and the
monastery suffered much from its lay neighbours, who
took advantage of the quarrel to annoy and plunder
the monks. Osbern remained with terrible torments
of conscience. He at last made a humble submission
to the Pope, and was formally allowed to keep the
place into which he had been intruded. " He was
from his childhood," says Orderic, " very learned in
letters, eloquent of speech, and exceedingly inge
nious in all kinds of handicraft : such as carving,
building, writing, and the like ; he was of middle
stature, well grown, with his head completely loaded
with black hair or white. He was harsh to the silly
and froward, merciful to the sick and poor, fairly liberal
to people outside, fervent in discipline, a most skilful
provider of all that the brethren needed, spiritually
or bodily. He kept the youths in very severe order,
and compelled them by word and stripes to read and
sing and write well. He himself with his own hands
made the writing tablets for the children and the
unlearned, and prepared frames, covered with wax,
and required from them daily the due portion of
work appointed to each. Thus driving away idle
ness, he laid on their youthful minds wholesome
burdens." Robert sought a new home in Apulia
among his Norman fellow-countrymen. He founded
three monasteries in Italy. He came back afterwards
and made his peace with William ; but he did not re
gain his abbey, and found Normandy no place for him.
But Orderic rejoices that by his means, "in three
monasteries of Italy, the chant of St. Evroul is sung,

H 2

ioo ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. [CHAP.

and its monastic order observed to this day, as far as
the opportunity of that country and the love of those
who dwell in it allow."

The vicissitudes of St. Evroul are a contrast to
the tranquillity of Bee ; but they did not prevent
St. Evroul from being a flourishing establishment.
"The Abbey of Ouche or St. Evroul," says Mr.
Freeman, " has its own claim on our respect. It
was the spot which beheld the composition of the
record from which we draw our main knowledge
of the times following those with which we have to
deal : it was the home of the man in whom, perhaps
more than in any other, the characters of Normans
and Englishmen were inseparably mingled. There
the historian wrote, who, though the son of a
French father, the denizen of a Norman monas
tery, still clung to England as his country and
gloried in his English birth the historian who
could at once admire the greatness of the Conqueror
and sympathise with the wrongs of his victims, who,
amid all the conventional reviling which Norman
loyalty prescribed, could still see and acknowledge
with genuine admiration the virtues and the great
ness even of the perjured Harold. To have merely
produced a chronicler may seem faint praise beside
the fame of producing men whose career has had
a lasting influence on the human mind ; yet, even
beside the long bead-roll of the worthies of Bee,
some thoughts may well be extended to the house
where Orderic recorded the minutest details alike
of the saints and of the warriors of his time."

Orderic s picture of himself, as he has incidentally
disclosed it, is not unworthy, in its pathetic and

v.] ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. 101

simple truthfulness, to stand beside the grander
objects of interest in the age to which he belonged.

Orderic was the English-born son of a French
father, Odeler of Orleans, who had accompanied one
of the most powerful and most trusted of William s
barons into England, Roger of Montgomery, the
husband of the fierce Countess Mabel of Belesme,
heiress of that wicked house of Talvas, from which
the sword seemed never to depart. In England,
Roger of Montgomery and Belesme had become
lord of Arundel and the Sussex shore, and then,
in addition, Earl of Shrewsbury ; and he guarded
the northern marches against the Welsh, whom he
"mightily oppressed," after the fashion in which
Elizabeth s warriors kept in check the Irish. Of
this great lord, Odeler was a confidential and fa
voured cleric. He was a priest, and he was, or had
been, married ; and the way in which Orderic, one
of his three sons, became a monk of the Norman
house of St. Evroul, is a curious example of the
habits of the time. Whatever the great earl was to
others, to his clerical family he turned a good side ;
"he was wise and moderate, and a lover of justice,"
says Orderic, repeating probably the received judgment
of his father s house, " and he loved the company
of wise and modest men. He kept for a long time
three wise clerks with him Godbald, Odeler, and
Herbert to whose advice he profitably listened."
Like others of his time, he was a bountiful bene
factor to the religious foundations of France and
Normandy, from the spoils of England : St. Ste
phen s at Caen, Cluni, Troarn, and others received
from him English lands ; and after having done

102 ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. [CHAP.

much mischief to the house of St. Evroul, in the
lifetime of his cruel wife, the Countess Mabel, who
hunted its founders to death, he afterwards atoned
for his ill deeds by large benefactions of rents,
churches, and lands on both sides of the Channel.
Odeler persuaded his patron to make amends for
his offences, and to save something from the perishing
goods of time, by founding a monastery near Shrews
bury "a castle of monks," as Orderic calls it in
the quaint speech which he makes his father address
to the "glorious consul," to be built for God against
Satan, " where cowled champions (pugiles] may
resist Behemoth in continual battle." He himself
offered a site, and half his property ; the other half was
to be held of the monks by one of his three sons ;
he offered himself, he offered another son, a boy of
five years old ; and his eldest child Orderic, a boy
at school, he absolutely gave up for the love of the
Redeemer, to be separated from him for ever,
and sent across the sea, "where, an exile of his own
accord, he might be a soldier of the King of heaven
among strangers, and, free from all mischievous re
gard and tenderness of relations, he might flourish
excellently in monastic observance and the service of
the Lord." " He had provided for him a safe place
of abode among the servants of God at St. Evroul
In Normandy ; and he had given of his substance
30 marks of silver to his masters and companions,
as a thank-offering of blessing." " He had long de
sired thus to devote himself and his family to the
service of the Lord, that in the day of account he
with his children might be counted worthy to stand
among the elect of God."

v.] ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. 103

His proposal was approved by the Earl, and
by the Earl s vassals, whose assent was asked :
the monastery was built and endowed with gifts
from friends ; monks from Seez were brought over
to start it, and the gift of Earl Roger, comprising
a suburb of the town, was offered on the altar to
St. Peter by the symbol of the founder s gloves.
"This," says Orderic, who long afterwards tells the
story, " is a digression, be it of what account it may,
about the building of the monastery on my father s
land, which is now inhabited by the family of Christ,
and where my father himself, as I remember, an
old man of sixty, willingly bore to the end the
yoke of Christ. Forgive me, good reader, and let
it not be an offence to thee, I pray thee, if I commit
to record something about my father, whom I have
never seen, since the time when, as if I had been a
hated step-child, he sent me forth for the love of his
Maker, into exile. It is now forty-two years ago, and
in those years many changes have been, far and
wide, in the world. While I often think of these
things, and some of them commit to my paper,
-carefully resisting idleness, I thus exercise myself
in inditing them. Now I return to my work, and
speak to those younger than myself, a stranger, to
those of the country, about their own affairs, things
that they know not; and in this way by God s help
do them useful service."

In the same strain of perfectly resigned and con
tented confidence in his lot and his hopes, yet of
pensive and affectionate yearning to the now distant
days of his boyhood, and to the scenes and men
about his father s house where it was passed, and

104 ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. [CHAP.

where he had his last sight of his father the chapel
where he was baptized, the altar where he served, the
good prior who taught him letters he concludes the
long work of his life; and finishes in a solemn appeal
and earnest commendation to the God whom he has
served, not unbecoming one whose lifelong study had
been the Book of Psalms :

" Behold, worn out with age and infirmity, I desire
to end my work, and for many reasons prudence
requires it. For I am now [1141] passing the sixty-
seventh year of my age in the worship of my Lord Jesus
Christ, and while I see the foremost men of this world
crushed by heavy disasters of the most opposite sort,
I dance for joy, in the safe estate of obedience and
poverty. There is Stephen, king of the English, sigh
ing in prison ; and Lewis, king of the French, leading
an expedition against the Goths and Gascons, is vexed
with many and frequent cares. There is the church
of Lisieux, whose bishop is dead, and which is without
a pastor ; and when it will have one, and of what sort,
I know not. What shall I say more ? Amid these
things, I turn my speech to thee, O Almighty God,
and with double force beseech thy goodness that thou
wouldest have mercy on me. I give thee thanks, O
King most high, who didst freely make me, and hast
ordered my years according to thy good pleasure.
For thou art my King and my God, and I am thy
servant and the son of thine handmaid, who, from the
first days of my life, according to my power, have
served thee. For on Easter eve I was baptized at
Attingesham [Atcham], which village is in England
on the Severn, that great river of Severn. There, by
the ministry of Ordric the priest, thou didst regene-

v.] ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. 105

rate me by water and the Holy Ghost, and didst put
upon me the name of the same priest, my god-father.
Then, when I was five years old, I was delivered over
to school in the city of Shrewsbury, and there I
offered to thee the first services of clerkship in the
Church of the holy apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul.
There Sigward, the famous priest, taught me for five
years the letters of the Camena Nicostrata, 1 and broke
me in to psalms and hymns and other necessary in
structions ; meanwhile, thou didst exalt the aforesaid
church, built on the river Mole, which belonged to my
father, and by the pious devotion of Count Roger didst
build there a venerable monastery. It did not seem fit
to thee that I should longer be thy soldier there, lest
with my relations, who often to thy servants are a
burden and hindrance, I should suffer some disquiet,
or run into some loss in the fulfilment of thy law
through the carnal affection of my relations. There
fore, O glorious God, who didst command Abraham
to go forth from his country and his father s house and
kindred, thou didst put into the heart of Odeler my
father, to give up all his claim in me, and to put me
absolutely under thy yoke. So he delivered me to
Rainald the monk, a weeping father his weeping child,
and for the love of thee appointed me to banishment :
and he never saw me afterwards. Young boy as I was,
I took not on me to dispute my father s wishes, but in
everything I willingly assented, for he had promised
on his part that, if I would become a monk, I should
after my death possess Paradise with the innocent.

1 That is, the alphabet, the invention of the Muse Nicostrata ; a bit
of Orderic s erudition. Vide Diet. Biog. and Mythol. art. Cam:ncc t and
Hyginus.

io6 ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. [CHAP.

Gladly was this engagement made between me and
thee, my father being its minister ; and I left behind
my native country and my parents and all my kin,
and my acquaintance and friends, and they, weeping
and bidding me farewell, with loving prayers, com
mended me to thee, O most high Lord God. Hear
their supplications, I beseech thee, and graciously
grant what they desired, O merciful King of Sabaoth.
" So being ten years old I crossed the British Sea, and
came an exile to Normandy, where, unknown to all, I
knew no man. Like Joseph in Egypt, I heard a strange
language. Yet by the help of thy favour, among
these strangers I found all gentleness and friend
liness. In the eleventh year of my age, I was received
to the monastic life by the venerable Abbot Mainer,
in the monastery of Ouche, and on Sunday, the 2ist
of September [1085], I was tonsured after the man
ner of clerks, and for my English name, which sounded
harsh to Normans, the name of Vitalis was given me,
borrowed from one of the companions of St. Maurice
the martyr, whose martyrdom was then celebrated
[Sept. 22]. In this house for fifty-six years, by thy
favour, have I had my conversation, and by all the
brethren and dwellers in ; t I have been loved and
honoured much more than I deserved. Heat and
cold and the burden of the day have I endured,
labouring among thine own in the vineyard of So-
rech; 1 and the penny which thou hast promised I
have confidently waited for, for thou art faithful. Six
abbots have I reverenced as my fathers and masters,
because they were in thy place : Mainer and Serlo,
Roger and Guarin, Richard and Ranulf. They were

1 The vineyard planted with "choice vine" (Isa. v. 2).

v.] ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. 107

the lawful heads of the convent of Ouche; for me and
for others they kept watch, as those who must give
account; within and abroad they used good husbandry,
and, with thee for their companion and helper, pro
vided all things necessary for us. On March 15 [1091],
when I was sixteen years old, at the bidding of Serlo,
our abbot-elect, Gilbert, Bishop of Lisieux, ordained
me sub-deacon. Then after two years, on the 26th of
March [1093], Serlo, Bishop of Seez, laid on me the
office of deacon, in which grade I gladly ministered
to thee fifteen years. Lastly, in the thirty-third year of
my age, William, Archbishop of Rouen, on the 2ist
of December [1107] laid on me the burden of the
priesthood. On the same day, he ordained 244 dea
cons and 1 20 priests, with whom, in the Holy Ghost,
I devoutly approached thy holy altar, and have now
for thirty-four years faithfully performed thy service
unto thee with a willing mind.

" Thus, thus, O Lord my God, my Maker and the
Giver of my life, hast thou through different steps
bestowed on me freely thy gifts, and duly ordered my
years for thy service. In all the places whither thou
hast so far led me, thou hast caused me to find love,
not by my deserts but by thy favour. For all thy
benefits, O gracious Father, I give thee thanks, with
my whole heart I laud and bless thee ; and for all
my numberless offences, I with tears beseech thy
mercy. Spare me, O Lord, spare me, and let me not
be confounded. According to thy goodness, which
cannot be wearied, look pitifully on thy handiwork,
and forgive and wash away all my sins. Give me a
will which shall persevere in thy service, and strength
that fails not against the craft and malice of Satan,

io8 ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. [CHAP.

till by thy gift I attain the inheritance of everlasting
salvation. And the things which I ask for myself, both
here and hereafter, O gracious God, those I wish for
my friends and benefactors ; those too I earnestly
desire according to t % hy wise ordering for all thy
faithful ones. The worth of our own deserts sufficeth
riot to obtain those everlasting good things, which,
with burning desire, the longings of the perfect yearn
after. Therefore, O Lord God, Father Almighty,
Maker and Ruler of the angels, true hope and eternal
blessedness of the righteous, therefore let the glorious
intercession help us in thy sight, of the Holy Virgin
and Mother Mary and of all the Saints, by the mercy
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of all, who
liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the
Holy Ghost, God for ever and ever. Amen."

There is something very touching in the way in
which the old man of nearly seventy, broken in
and hardened to the stern life of a Norman abbey,
cannot help, in the midst of other subjects, going
back to the days of boyhood, when he served at the
altar and went to school in England by the banks of
the Severn, and recalls the bitter days of parting, and
his first dreary dwelling in that strange land which had
become so familiar to him. There is thankfulness,
hearty and sincere, for that ordering of his life, which,
hard as had been its conditions, made him a monk ;
a thankfulness like that of the patriarch Jacob to
his father s God, "which had fed him all his life
long;" a thankfulness not perhaps heroic, but simple,
genuine, and tender, for having been preserved and
fenced round from the storms of a wild and naughty
world. But the rigid rule and austere ideas of his

v.] ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. 109

profession had left his feelings quick and warm. They
had been chastened and brought into subjection ; but
they kept their place. There was no suppression of
natural affection in the old monk whose thoughts
dwelt so pathetically on the " weeping father who
had given him up, and " whom he had never seen
again ;" only a subordination of it to higher purposes,
a short parting here for an endless meeting at last.
And this warm human interest and power of sym
pathy mingling, often quaintly enough, with the
harshnesses and abrupt severities of his age and of
his profession, are the characteristic features of Orderic
as a painter of his times. He caught the spirit of
work and the horror of idleness which were at this
time keen and dominant in the Norman cloisters ;
and it is curious, and almost affecting, to see how,
with such wretched tools as he had in the way of
books and language, such an undeveloped stage of
intellectual cultivation, such poor and limited possi
bilities of understanding the world about him and its
laws, and what was excellent in the specimens which
he had of ancient perfection in thought and expres
sion, he threw himself enthusiastically into the task
of setting forth, with life and truthfulness, the state of
things amid which he lived, and of connecting with it
the story of the world. His superiors found out that
he had the power of words and of telling a story, in
the learned style fit for clerks who aimed at being
lettered men ; and they set him to work to record,
first the matters of interest to the house, and then
other things. Never was there such a mass of con
fusion as the book, as it grew under his hands for
some twenty years or more ; it is the torment and

i io ORDER1C THE CHRONICLER. [CHAP.

despair of historians, who yet find in it some of their
best material. Of the style, an English reader may
best form an idea by combining the biblical pedantry
and doggrel of a Fifth-monarchy pamphlet of the
I /th century with the classical pedantry of the most
extravagant burlesques of Dr. Johnson s English.
In Orderic, Greek words play the part which Latin ones
play in English bombast There is no reason to think
that he knew Greek ; but he had picked up Greek
words, partly in the Latin fathers, partly in glossaries
and interpretations : he parades them, as a child
parades its finery or mock jewels, in his more common
place Latin ; and the effect undoubtedly is inexpres
sible, though not exactly in the way which he intended.
Then, being a man of letters, and having read old
Roman authors, he thinks it his duty to express the
facts of Norman life as much as he can in the terms
of the great days of old : Norman ruffians, whose
abominable brutalities he describes, are "heroes;"
counts and barons are " consuls and consular men;"
a feudal array of Englishmen or Normans is offi
cered by "tribunes and centurions." But every age
has its attempts at the grand style ; and Orderic s,
grotesque as it is, is childishly innocent. For all this,
Orderic can see what is before him, and can say what
he sees and what he means. He is clumsy, disorderly,
full of rambling digressions, with one portion of his
account in one place, and the rest of it in another ; he
does not always remember what he has said, and is
by no means to be trusted for accuracy. But he had
been, for his opportunities, a zealous and painstaking
reader. He had an eye and a care and interest for
details and for points of character. And he had a

v.] ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. m

remarkable respect for what seemed to him all the
facts of a transaction or a character, whether or not
they looked very consistent or compatible when they
were put side by side on paper. His sketches of men
have sometimes the faithful awkwardness of a bad
photograph ; the life and expression which reconciled
incongruities are not there, but there are the actual
things to be seen, ugly and fair together. But there
is more than this. Orderic had the Christian may we
say, the English ? spirit of justice. He knew a great
man when he saw him ; but he saw too what was evil
and cruel and mean, even in a great man, and he was
not afraid to say it. Profoundly impressed, as most
of his contemporaries were, with the awful vicissitudes
of human life, and expressing this feeling often in
terms which, in their force and simplicity, contrast
remarkably with the laboured grandiloquence of the
rest of the book, he was more sensible than most
about him not only that right was not always with
the victorious, but that truth and justice were; not
always undivided on one side.

From him we get, without fear or favour, the most

*

lively image of what real life seemed to the dweller
in a Norman monastery, brought in contact with a
great variety of men, with a great and unceasing
movement all round him, with great enterprises in the
world on foot and in progress, like the Eastern wars,
and the gigantic schemes of ecclesiastical policy of
the Popes. Sometimes a traveller, Orderic speaks
of what he himself saw at Worcester, at Croyland,
at Cambray, or at Cluni ; more often, hearing the
stories or watching the ways of travellers who
availed themselves on their journey of the hospitality

ii2 ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. [CHAP.

of St. Evroul, or who sought its shelter for their old
age. It is as lively as real life, and also as confused
and unassorted. Nothing comes amiss to him a
family history, with the fate of all the members of
the house a great revolution like the conquest and
subjection of England the detailed account, often
spirited and vivid, of a deed of arms or a siege ;
details, equally particular, and though not so vivid yet
quite as curious, of the customs and transactions of
the time, relating to property, to sales and gifts and
rents, and to the various ways in which property was
transferred, preserved, or lost ; details of the monastic
profession, in itself a world of its own, with its vicis
situdes, its triumphs, its jealousies, its disasters, its
conflicts, its quarrels, its scandals ; the manners, the
tastes,^the occupations, the singularities, the personal
appearance, the red hair, or rubicund visage, or short
stature, or passionate temper, or shrewd ways, of this
or that famous abbot or bishop ; bits of description
of natural phenomena, such as remarkable thunder
storms, or flights of falling stars ; repetitions of super
natural and Dantesque legends which had been told
in the cloister, or of the stories brought back from
the Crusades, bearing on them the mark of the highly
excited imagination of the pilgrims who told them;
carefully weighed and balanced summaries of the cha
racters of the great people who pass across his scene,
or still better, brief forcible touches, evidently from
direct impression, of some leading feature in the
abbots or bishops, the barons or knights, and by no
means least, the ladies, of that wild time and turbulent
society. His great work is a mixture of important
history, curious gossip of the country-side, judgments

\

v.] ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. 113

on persons and things, which but for their form would
not discredit a professed moralist of sarcastic humour ;
orations composed with dignity, and put into the
mouths of great persons, because the Latin historians
did the same ; and dry annals from the creation or the
flood, down to the current year. He is always in
danger of mistaking the true means of producing the
real effect of things, as it impresses his own feeling ;
of expressing his sense of what is great, or eventful,
or tragic, by inflated words, or of representing what
he intends for picturesqueness and vividness by some
ridiculously chosen epithet or some grotesque bit
of pedantry. But he is not always on his stilts,
and often forgets himself, at least for some sen
tences ; and then he writes with discrimination,
clearness, and force ; his sense of the absurd and
ridiculous gets for a moment, at all risk of indecorum,
out of the stiff shell of his erudition ; and in the
story of some pathetic scene, the last moments,
for instance, and the leave-taking of some religious
man, or the fate of some former favourite of for
tune, he is simple, touching, and impressive. These
pictures though of course there is something con
ventional in them, and where the occasion seems to
demand it, the temptation to be rhetorical is irre
sistible are many of them remarkably distinct, unlike
in their circumstances to any other, each with its
own colour and expression and individual character.
He saw great things and great men : not insensible
to their greatness, he was still more deeply im
pressed with the awful contrasts of this mortal state,
and the tremendous march and lessons of God s
S.L. x. I

ii4 ORDERIC THE CHRONICLER. [CHAP. v.

providence ; and through the disfigurement of much
ignorance, and turgid writing, and bad taste, it is im
possible not to discern and recognize the genuine
spirit of faith, the profound and overwhelming sense
of the living and supreme government and justice of
Almighty God.

CHAPTER VI.

ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION OF WILLIAM.

" The vast frame
Of social nature changes evermore
Her organs and her members with decay
Restless, and restless generation, powers
And functions dying and produced at need,
And by this law the mighty whole subsists :
With an ascent and progress in the main ;
Yet oh ! how disproportioned to the hopes
And expectations of self- flattering minds."

WORDSWORTH, Excursion, b. vii.

ANSELM S life, before he came to England, nearly
coincided with the reign of William the Bastard, as
Duke of Normandy, and then as King of England.
Anselm was born in 1033. In 1035, Robert the Great
Duke, Robert the Devil, died on his Eastern pilgrimage
far from home, at Nicsea; and left his son of seven years
old, with the stain of his birth upon him, to meet the
scorn and to tame the anarchy of Normandy. In the
same year also, 1035, died the other mighty repre
sentative of the Norsemen s victoiy, the great Cnut,
leaving in almost equal confusion the realm which,
thirty-one years after, the Norman boy-prince, whose
reign began with such dark and threatening signs, was
to wrest from its right owner, and unite to Normandy
by a conquest the most eventful for good and for evil
in the history of Christian Europe. Anselm s life, like

I 2

ii6 ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION [CHAP.

the years of the house of Bee, nearly began with the
beginning of the Conqueror s reign ; and very shortly
after the Conqueror s death (1087), the great change in
Anselm s fortune came, which transferred him to a new
scene, and connected him henceforth with England.

Thus his life, up to the time when he became arch
bishop, extended almost exactly over the period which
saw the moral awakening and the first serious at
tempts at religious reform and political organization
in Normandy. Of these attempts it is too much to
say that the impulse came alone from Duke William ;
but in no one was the improving spirit of the time
more powerful, and in no one, according to the
measure of the age, did it find a more intelligent
and resolute minister. In his latter days, hard and
unscrupulous as he was, an honest and large-hearted
purpose in favour of order and right directed his
government, whenever an irresistible ambition did not
overpower every other thought and feeling.

Anselm arrived in Normandy when the poor help
less boy, who had begun to reign just when he himself
was born, had grown up, through disaster, treachery,
and appalling dangers, into the greatest man of
Western Europe, who at nineteen had beaten down
domestic rebellion at Val-es-Dunes(lO47), whose hand
had been heavy on his neighbours, on Anjou and
Maine, who had taught the French invaders and the
French king a stern lesson, once and again, at Morte-
mer (1054) and Varaville (1058). The religious
movement which had begun with the century had
gained strength with the progress of William s power,
and was taking full possession of the Norman Church.
William himself was deeply affected by it. The vague

vi.] OF WILLIAM. 117

position of a royal patron of the Church, fitfully using
his power from caprice or temper, had with him passed
into that of a jealous and intelligent guardian, watch
ing over all that went on in churches and monasteries,
claiming great powers of interference, but interfering
with an object and on a system. The interests of
religion, as he understood them, were scarcely less a
matter of his solicitude than the political affairs of
his duchy. To his ambition they, like every moral
restraint, were subordinate ; sometimes probably they
were so to his personal prepossessions : but, on the
whole, he had it distinctly in view to raise the tone of
feeling, duty, and life, and by his appointments and
general policy, as well as by his personal strictness
and self-restraint, to check licence and disorder, and to
encourage the reality of religious effort. The customs
of Normandy, as of other Western countries, allowed
him great powers in the Church ; and, giving them
fresh significance from the edge which he put upon
them and the manifest intention with which he used
them, he shaped them into a strong weapon for
making his authority felt in the fierce and unruly
society in which men then had to pass their days.

In the government of mankind at that time, in
their religious as well as their political life, three
powers may be discerned law, deliberately settled on
some reasonable ground ; custom ; and personal cha
racter and force. Of these three, law, as we understand
it, was the weakest, personal action the strongest ; but
though law was a very small restraint on personal
will, custom was a considerable one ; and though
law was as yet weak, it was the growing element.
In various shapes, some very questionable and even

u8 ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION [CHAP..

disastrous ones, it was beginning to assert its superior
claims in contrast with mere custom, and the will, in
a good direction or a bad, of individual holders of
power. The monasteries with their rules had kept
up even in the darkest times the idea of equal and
real law, in however confined a range, when the
canons of the Church and the laws of the Empire had
alike lost their force ; the Italian municipalities had
also not entirely forgotten the traditions and the use of
Roman jurisprudence ; and now, both in the political
state and in the Church, the statesmen of the age,,
emperors and pontiffs, were beginning to understand
the importance of a system of law, based on principles
of universal application, armed with due authority,
and enforcing its decisions. The emperors and their
adherents looked for it in the civil law of Rome
adapted to a feudal state of society ; the popes and
their partisans had begun to build up the great struc
ture of the Canon Law. Both attempts partook of
the coarseness, the mingled rigour and looseness,
the inexperience, the necessary ignorance of the time ;
both, though they were not without much honest
purpose to promote and defend right and establish
a fixed order for human lii e, were partial, incomplete,
liable to deviate before the prejudices of the many
or the selfishness of the strong ; both were still fatally
influenced by the dominant belief in the claims
of personal authority ; and one at least was based
on forgery and fraud, the parents of a still unex
hausted train of mischiefs even to this day. Yet
they were the beginnings, perhaps in those times
the only possible beginnings, of law. They brought
the notion of it prominently before mankind. They

vi.] OF WILLIAM. 119

furnished examples of it, and with all their short
comings they excite our interest and deserve our
respect, as the forerunners and first essays of those
nobler achievements of happier times, the fruit, not yet
matured, of the experiments, the mistakes and the
late wisdom of so many ages, by which the face of
society has been changed.

The impulse, more in its religious than its political
character, was approaching Normandy ; but there it
was still fitful and weak. Custom ruled ordinarily ; but
when a strong and able man showed himself, his
was the influence to which all others bowed or adapted
themselves. A reformer and organizer in wild and
ignorant days means a man who, with a clearer
sight than his brethren, and on the whole higher
and wider objects, has a heavy hand and an inflexible
will. Such was William. William, accordingly, ex
ercised without question, and as a matter of course,
an authority in the Norman Church which in general
character differed little from the Tudor supremacy,
and which a few years later, and in different hands,
was resented as an intolerable grievance, and became
the occasion of fierce conflicts. He was the real
active head of the government, in the Church as
in the State ; and no one thought it strange that
he should be. He appointed the bishops, not
always perhaps in the same manner; sometimes ap
parently by his sole choice, sometimes with con
sultation and assent of his chief men. He invested
them with their office by the delivery of the pastoral
staff, and they became " his men" and owed him service
like his military lords : if he had charges against
them, they were tried _by his council and deposed

120 ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION [CHAP.

by his authority. So with the abbots of the chief
monasteries : either he appointed them directly him
self, or he gave leave to the monks to elect ; but in
any case their choice had to be confirmed by him,
and he conferred the dignity by the pastoral staff.
If a monastery was to be founded, his consent had
to be obtained ; probably not by any distinct law,
but because such a foundation would be utterly
insecure without the allowance and guaranteed pro
tection of the Duke, who was the general guardian
of the peace of his land. If a monastery got into
trouble from internal quarrels, the Duke was appealed
to, and he sent down a commission to investigate and
restore peace. Ecclesiastical as well as civil causes
came to his court ; over churchmen as well as laymen
he asserted his authority, and both equally resorted
to his justice. And it was not only as an arbiter
and judge, but as a visitor and overseer, acting from
himself, and carrying out purposes of his own, that he
interposed in Church affairs. He asserted and exer
cised his right to correct, to reform, to legislate for the
Church, and no one thought of contradicting him.

Orderic gives both sides of William s character,
and in giving one sometimes forgets the necessary
qualifications implied in the other. But undoubtedly
there was a real basis of fact in the following judg
ment, written after William s death :

" King William was famous and deserved praise
for his zeal and love for many sorts of worth in many
sorts of men ; but above all things he ever loved in
God s servants true religion, to which sometimes
peace and worldly prosperity minister. This is wit
nessed by wide-spread notoriety, and proved beyond

vi.] OF WILLIAM. 121

question by the evidence of deeds. For when any
chief shepherd finished his course and passed from
this world, and the Church of God in widowhood
mourned for its proper ruler, the prince with due
care sent prudent delegates to the house which was
without its head, and caused all the church posses
sions to be inventoried, lest they should be wasted
by irreligious guardians. Then he called together
bishops and abbots and other wise counsellors, and
by their advice inquired very carefully who was the
best and wisest man, as well in divine things as in
worldly, to rule the house of God. Then the person
who, for the goodness of his life and for his learning
and wisdom, was selected by the judgment of the
wise, the gracious king made the ruler and steward
of the bishopric or abbacy. This observance he kept
for fifty-six years (?), during which he bore rule in
the duchy of Normandy or in the kingdom of Eng
land ; and by this he left a religious custom and example
to those who come after. The heresy of simony he
utterly abhorred, and therefore in choosing abbots
and bishops he considered not so much men s riches
or power, as their holiness and wisdom. He set
persons approved in excellence over the monasteries
of England ; by whose zeal and strictness the estate
of monastic life, which had somewhat languished,
revived, and where it seemed to have failed, rose up
again to its former vigour."

Eadmer, writing after the supremacy of the Con
queror had developed into the tyranny of his sons,
thus describes the nature of his claims, the " usages "
on which he governed.

" Wishing, therefore, to keep in England the usages

122 ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION [CHAP.

and laws which he and his fathers were wont to have in
Normandy, he appointed throughout the land bishops,
abbots, and other chief men from among persons in
whom it would have been judged unseemly, if they did
not obey his laws in all things, laying aside every other
consideration, or if any of them, by the power of
any earthly honour, dared to raise his head against
him ; for every one knew from whence and for what
they were chosen, and who they were. All things
therefore, divine and human, waited on his nod. To
understand what this came to, I will put down some
of the novelties which he caused to be observed
throughout England ; thinking them necessary to be
known, for the understanding of that which I have
undertaken to write about. He would, then, suffer no
one in all his dominions to receive the Bishop of the
city of Rome for the Apostle s Vicar, unless by his
command, or in any wise to receive his letters, unless
they had first been shown to himself. Further, he
would not suffer the Primate of his kingdom, the
Archbishop of Canterbury, if he were presiding over a
general council of the bishops, to establish or forbid
anything, unless what was agreeable to his will, and
had first been ordained by him. To none of his
bishops, nevertheless, did he permit that it should be
allowed to implead publicly or excommunicate any of
his barons or servants charged with incest or adultery,
or any great crime, except by his precept, or to
compel them by any penalty of ecclesiastical severity."
The character of this authority will be best seen in
two or three instances in the part which the Duke
takes in the foundation and internal affairs of an
abbey, that of St. Evroul; and as regards Church

vi.] OF WILLIAM. 123

legislation, in the proceedings of two great Norman
assemblies, in which he attempted to lay down, in the
rude form, familiar to the times, of canons and decrees,
the principles of law as opposed to custom or mere
will, to which he proposed to make both the clergy
and the people generally conform themselves.

In 1050, four Norman nobles, William and Robert,
the sons of Geroy, and Hugh and Robert, sons of
Robert of Grentmaisnil, having resolved to found a
monastery on the spot consecrated by the abode and
memory of a saint, St. Ebrulfus or St. Evroul, and to
give certain lands for its support, " went to William
the Duke of the Normans and opened to him their
will, and besought him to help them in their salutary
work by his authority as prince. Further, the above-
named place they by common consent committed to
his guardianship, so that neither to themselves nor to
any other should it ever be lawful to exact from the
monks or their men any custom or rent, save the
benefits of their prayers. The Duke gladly assented
to their good wish, and confirmed the disposition of
the property which his nobles gave to St. Evroul, and
delivered the deed to Malger, the Archbishop of Rouen,
and to his suffragan bishops, to be confirmed by their
subscriptions. Then Hugh and Robert, having received
from the Duke licence to choose an abbot," go to
Jumieges, and ask for a monk of Jumieges, Theodoric,
for the first head of their monastery. Then they
present him to the Duke, and the Duke, "receiving
him with due reverence, and having given him, as the
custom is, the pastoral staff, set him over the Church of
Ouche ;" and then he is consecrated by the Bishop of
Lisieux. That was the customary process in founding

124 ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION [CHAP.

a monastic house. In the progress of the history of
St. Evroul, the same taking for granted of the Duke s
supreme authority to arrange, to sanction, and to re
dress wrong appears. The Duke grants his privilege
that the monastery may be for ever free and exempt
from all external authority. The Duke grants to the
brethren the right to elect their own abbot, so that
they observe the rule of discipline, and are not in
fluenced by friendship or kindred, or love of money.
The Duke commands the Archbishop of Rouen and
his bishops to confirm his grants, by making excom
munication the penalty of violating them. When
quarrels arose, and the Abbot Theodoric wishes to get
rid of his burdens, he desires " to resign to William
Duke of the Normans his pastoral staff." William,
acting as a visitor, orders the Archbishop of Rouen
to send down a commission, Lanfranc among them,
to inquire and make peace. When, in spite of this,
the poor old abbot is worried by the quarrels and
intrigues of his flock into running away on a pil
grimage to Jerusalem, the newly-elected abbot, his
enemy, Prior Robert de Grentmaisnil, is presented to
the Duke for approval and confirmation, and receive
from the Duke the entire power of the abbacy, by
means of the crosier of Bishop Ivo of Seez, and " the
care of souls," by the benediction of Bishop William
of Evreux. Abbot Robert became mixed up, about
1063, with the factions of the Norman nobles. He
fell under William s displeasure, and was cited to
appear at the Duke s court to answer for certain
crimes of which he was accused falsely, says the
historian of St. Evroul. But Robert, whether guilty
or not, preferred to seek his safety by leaving Nor-

vi.] OF WILLIAM. 125

mandy, and repaired to Rome to lay his case before
the Pope. On this William, without scruple or hesita
tion, at once filled up his vacancy. No mention is
made by Orderic of any trial, of any deposition by
ecclesiastical authority. But " the Norman Duke,"
says Orderic, " by the counsel of the venerable
Ansfred Abbot of Preaux, and Lanfranc Prior of
Bee, and other ecclesiastical persons," summoned
Osbern Prior of Cormeilles, and without giving him
any notice, " committed to him the care of the Abbey
of Ouche by the crosier of Maurilius the Archbishop,
in a synod at Rouen. Thence, Hugh Bishop of
Lisieux, by the Duke s order, conducted him to
Preaux, and there, without the knowledge of the
monks of St. Evroul, consecrated him abbot, and after
wards conducted him to Ouche, and by the Duke s
command set him over the sorrowful monks. They
were in trouble, with danger on both sides. For in the
lifetime of their abbot [Robert de Grentmaisnil], who
had founded their church and received them to their
estate of monks, and had been driven out, without
reasonable grounds of charge, not by the judgment
of a synod, but by the tyranny of the angry Marquis"
(a piece of rhetoric of Orderic s, for the more com
mon title of count or duke), " they hesitated to
receive another abbot ; and, on the other hand, they
dared not openly refuse him on account of the wrath
of the Duke. At length, by the advice of Bishop
Hugh, they chose to suffer violence, and voluntarily to
show obedience to the master given them, lest, if they
continued without the yoke, they should offend the
power of God, and rouse the ill-will of the Duke to
greater violence, to the destruction of the recently

126 ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION [CHAP.

founded house." The Duke was not able to prevent
the grievous tribulation which fell on the unfortunate
monks from the harrying of their house and lands by
Abbot Robert s kinsmen and friends, or from their in
ternal dissensions and* bitter heart-burnings. He was
not able to hinder the scruples and troubles of con
science of the new abbot, who felt himself an intruder,
and found himself in a nest of hornets. But the Duke
kept him there; and his answer when Robert returned,
backed by papal legates, to reclaim his abbey, was
that straightforward declaration which has already
been noticed, that he would gladly confer with the
Pope s messengers about religious matters; but that
any monk who questioned his authority at home, he
would hang without scruple to the highest tree in
the next wood. Abbot Robert did not wait to try
whether he would be as good as his word. From a
safe distance he cited Osbern, who dared not obey,
to appear before the Roman cardinals, and excom
municated him. A number of the principal monks
left the monastery to join their late head. Osbern
would gladly have resigned, if he had dared ; but he
stayed on in fear, and with an unquiet conscience.
The monastery recovered and flourished under him.
Robert in after years was reconciled to William, but
he could not regain his abbey. And Osbern satis
fied his own scruples by addressing a letter of apology
and satisfaction to Pope Alexander, " Supreme Head
of the Church on earth;" while the Pope, by the
advice of Robert himself, made the best of the case,
and, absolving Osbern, left him where he was.

And what William did with unsatisfactory or
troublesome abbots, he was quite as ready to do

vi.] OF WILLIAM. 127

with unsatisfactory or troublesome bishops. His
uncle Malger, whom William s counsellors in his
boyhood had made Archbishop of Rouen, who had
held the great see without troubling himself about
the Pope s benediction and pall, and w r ho had lived
the life of a magnificent noble, given much more to
hunting and cock-fighting than to episcopal duties,
and caring very little about the canons of the Church,
had offended William. In an age of reviving strict
ness his manner of life w r as not edifying. Moreover,
his brother was the leader of one of the revolts against
William, and the archbishop was accused of encou
raging the rebellion ; finally, in spite of his own laxity,
he threw himself strongly into the ecclesiastical oppo
sition to William s marriage, and we even hear of ex
communication either pronounced or threatened by
him. Nevertheless, though in this matter the Pope
was with him, and William had married in spite of the
Pope and the alleged canonical impediment, William
w r as too strong for him. Malger was deposed at a council
at Lisieux, at which a papal legate was present ; and
whatever may have been the forms observed, in the
natural language of the writers of the time, the act of
deposition is ascribed to William. It is one of the
puzzles of the confused politics of the Church and
State struggle just beginning, and of our incomplete
information about them, to find a papal legate pre
siding in one of William s councils, while William
was still defying the Pope s formal prohibition as
regards his marriage, and helping or allowing William
to depose a great ecclesiastic who, whatever his faults,
had, apparently alone, attempted to enforce that pro
hibition. But there does not seem to have been any-

128 ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION [CHAP

thing surprising in it to William s contemporaries and
chroniclers ; they relate without remark, as part of the
ordinary course of things, the exercise of his authority
in deposing from Church offices as in appointing to
them. And, independently of custom, which was, in
fact, now beginning to be broken into, the reason is on
the surface. William s general policy was thoroughly
in harmony with the resolute and austere spirit of
reform which was gaining power in the Norman
Church, and his own feelings to a great extent sym
pathised with it. Self-willed, ambitious, and hard as
he was, he hated lawlessness and disorder, and with
very sincere purpose went along with the efforts of
the earnest men round him, to purify and strengthen
what the time understood as religion. He set at
naught ecclesiastical impediments in the way of his
marriage, possibly not very intelligible ones ; he cared
not the more about them, even when formally declared
by a Pope in council ; but few royal husbands
have loved and honoured their wives as William, in
that fierce and licentious age, loved and honoured
Matilda. He deposed Archbishop Malger, whose life
was scandalous, and who was further personally
obnoxious to himself; but he filled his place, once
and again, by men who redeemed the great see of
Rouen from its long shame, and lived as serious
Christian bishops, and not as wild princes of the
ducal family, without fear and without law. "A
prelate of a very different stamp from Malger," says
Mr. Freeman, "succeeded him on the metropolitan
throne of Rouen. William had now fully learned
that the high places of the Church could not be
rightly turned into mere provisions for the younger

vi.] OF WILLIAM. 129

members of sovereign houses. He determined to
give the Norman Church a thoroughly worthy chief
pastor, and in his choice he overlooked all prejudices
of family, and even of nation. This willingness to
recognize the claims of merit in strangers from every
land has been already spoken of as one of the marked
features of the Norman national character. The new
primate, Maurilius, was a man of foreign birth, who
had seen much of various parts of the world, and who
seems to have made choice of Normandy as his
adopted country. His career in many respects re
minds us of that of Lanfranc, with this difference, that
the earlier years of Lanfranc were spent in a character
wholly lay, while Maurilius had first entered the
ecclesiastical calling as a secular priest." He had
spent his life in seeking, in different lands, new
opportunities of religious service ; and, in his last
appointment, he left a saintly and venerable name,
which did honour to William s choice. A reformer of
clerical life, a church-builder and restorer, the friend
and adviser of Anselm, he was succeeded by men of
the same sort : John, a headstrong and injudicious
champion of discipline, and the gentler William
" Bonne-ame." Lanfranc, who, on the death of
Maurilius, was wished for as his successor by the
Church of Rouen, but not apparently by William,
was possibly denied to Rouen because he was
intended for Canterbury.

William s high prerogative in the Church was no
doubt less strange and less unquestioned, because he
was so keenly interested in what was supposed to affect
its welfare. " Everything," says Mr. Freeman, speak
ing of the way in which William s part in a council at

s. L. x. K

130 ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION [CHAP.

Rouen for Church discipline is incidentally noticed in
the original account " everything bears witness alike
to the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Norman dukes
and of the personal zeal of William in all eccle
siastical matters." There is a kind of indefinite but
very vigorous authority implied in respect to his con
stitutional position, as if Norman lords and Norman
bishops were all of one great household, with William
at their head, taking a paternal oversight of all its
concerns, and keeping every member of it up to his
duty. Orderic s way of describing William s relation
to two remarkable assemblies shows how natural it
was, to those who had known William, to think of
him as the foremost figure in them, taking the initia
tive before archbishops and bishops, tracing out their
work, and whether he left it to them to do or joined
himself with them, still without rival the chief au
thority over them. In 1072, a council purely eccle
siastical was held at Rouen. Its canons relate simply
to matters of faith and discipline. But it is thus intro
duced by Orderic. William "assembled the chief men
of Normandy and Le Mans, and encouraged them by a
king s word to maintain peace and right. The bishops
and abbots and ecclesiastical persons he admonished
to live well, to consider well and continually the law
of God, to take counsel together for the Church of
God, to correct the ways of those placed under them,
according to the determination of the canons, and all
with due care to govern." tf Therefore" }\e proceeds, a
council was held in the Cathedral of Rouen by the
archbishop and his suffragans, in which, after " dis
cussion on the faith of the Holy Trinity," according
to the received usag e in councils, a number of canons

LIBRARY ST. MARY S COLLEGE

vi.] OP WILLIAM. 131

were passed. This was an ecclesiastical assembly.
But that this assembly was held, was William s doing;
and he assigned its objects. In 1080, another as
sembly of a more mixed kind more resembling
a parliament was held at Lillebonne. Orderic thus
speaks of it: "In the year 1080, King William had
his residence at Lillebonne, at Whitsuntide, and
thither he commanded Archbishop William and all
bishops and abbots and counts, with other chief men
of Normandy, to come together. As the king com
manded, so was it done. Therefore, in the eighth
year of the Pontificate of our Lord the Pope Gre
gory VI L, a full council was held at Lillebonne, and
profitable counsel was taken concerning the state of
the Church of God and of the whole realm, by the
foresight of the king, with the advice of his barons.
But the statutes of the council, as they were faithfully
noted down by those present, I will here insert, that
those who come after may learn what sort of laws
there were in Normandy under William the king."
The first thing that strikes a reader in these statutes
is their general agreement with the objects of the
reforming party in the Norman Church. They enforce
the Truce of God. They enforce clerical continence.
They guard against lay usurpations. The next thing
is, the way in which the king, by himself and his
officers, undertakes to guard and give effect to the
jurisdiction and claims of the Church. The third
thing is, that the king allows neither layman nor
churchman to take the law into his own hands ; and
while he gives the largest and most liberal scope for
the exercise of the ecclesiastical powers, and allows
full right to custom, he makes all depend upon the

K 2

132 ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION [CHAP.

king s sanction ; he brings all within the king s eye ;
and, without narrowing or encroaching on the functions
and authority of the bishops, he makes all disputed
matters depend at last on the authorization of the
king s court ; he assigns classes of crimes and modes
of punishment to be dealt with by the bishops, and
traces the order of particular processes. He acts as
if the general care of the Church, as well as of the
State, was committed to him, and it was his business
to give to the authorities in each their duly fenced
provinces of work, to draw firmly the lines between
their several provinces; and, while granting to each
the fullest powers and the amplest countenance, to
allow neither to trespass on his neighbour s functions
and rights, or to neglect his own.

William s ecclesiastical administration is distinctly
characterized by the choice of his chief and confi
dential adviser. That adviser was Lanfranc, teacher
and reformer, restorer of studies, reviver of zeal both
for learning and strictness, theologian, administrator,
diplomatist, statesman ; a man thoroughly in earnest
in the cause of religion, but knowing just how far he
might go ; ready for sacrifices, but only when they
were necessary, and not the least inclined to waste
them for a trifle : very resolute, and very cautious.
In Lanfranc, William had a man who could tell
him all that anyone of that age could tell him of
what w T as then known of the history, philosophy, and
literature of the Church and the world, and of the
actual state of questions, tendencies, and parties in
the stirring ecclesiastical politics of the day. He
could trust Lanfranc s acquaintance with his proper
department of knowledge ; he could trust his honesty

vi.] OF WILLIAM. 133

and untiring perseverance*; he could trust his good
sense and his wise sobriety of mind ; he could trust
his loyalty the more, because he knew that it had
bounds, though wide ones. For what seems to have
riveted the connection between William and Lanfranc
was Lanfranc s perilous boldness in siding at first with
the ecclesiastical opposition to William s marriage ;
an opposition which probably touched his jealousy as
a ruler, and certainly stung him to rage as a husband.
When he heard that Lanfranc had condemned it, he
ordered not only that the Prior of Bee should be
banished from Normandy at once, but that the house
should be punished also ; that the home farmstead of
the abbey, or, as it was called, its " Park," should be
burned and destroyed. The savage order was obeyed.
Lanfranc set out on a lame horse which went on three
legs, for the monks had no better to give him, says his
biographer, unable, as so often we find it in these
writers, to resist the joke which mixes with their tears
and quotations from Scripture. He met the Duke,
bitter and dangerous in his wrath ; he saluted htm,
" the lame horse, too, bowing his head to the ground at
every step," as the biographer is careful to add. Lan
franc was sure that if he could only get a chance of
explaining himself, his case was not desperate. The
Duke first turned away his face ; then, " the Divine
mercy touching his heart," he allowed Lanfranc to
speak. " Lanfranc began," says the story, " with a
pretty pleasantry," which betrays, as some other stories
do, his astute Lombard humour : " I am leaving the
country by your orders, he said, and I have to go as if
on foot, troubled as I am with this useless beast ; for I
have to look after him so much, that I cannot ?et on

134 ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION [CHAP.

a step. So, that I may be able to obey your command,
please to give me a better horse. The joke took.
The Duke replied in the same strain, that he never
heard of an offender asking for a present from his
displeased judge. So, a beginning being made, Lan-
franc gained a hearing, and was able to make his
position clear. William was too wise a man to throw
away lightly an ally like Lanfranc. A complete
reconciliation and a closer confidence followed. The
dispute about the marriage turned on a matter of
Church law which William had broken, but which,
according to the doctrine of the time, the Pope could
dispense with and condone. Lanfranc would not agree
even to William breaking such rules at his pleasure ;
but he would do his best to repair what could not be
undone, and to make peace between him and the
Church. He went to Rome as William s repre
sentative to plead his cause with Nicholas II. ; he
urged to the Pope that excommunication and inter
dict, which, it would seem, had been already pro
nounced, would only weigh heavy on those who
neither had helped the marriage nor could break it ;.
and that it was out of the question that William
would ever give up his wife. And he prevailed.
William was allowed to keep her ; but the foundation
of two great monastic houses, St. Stephen at Caen, by
William, the Holy Trinity for women, by Matilda, were
the satisfaction for their offence, and the monuments
of the great compromise, between opponents equally
matched in determination and self-reliance, which was
the fruit of Lanfranc s mediation. Skilful it un
doubtedly was ; wise and justifiable in its moderation,
the cause of controversy being what it was, a matter

vi.] OF WILLIAM. 135

of positive and arbitrary restriction, and not as many
of these quarrels were, matters of morality or of impor
tant principle, it may be held to have been with good
reason. But it was the achievement of a statesman,
a judicious and patriotic one ; it may be that a saint,
a hero, or a man of plain and straightforward sim
plicity might have done differently perhaps better ;
not impossibly worse.

But from this time, Lanfranc, the representative of
what was in those days hopeful progress and serious
care for higher aims, was everything to William.
William let no man be his master. From every grant
of his confidence he reserved an ample right to judge
for himself, to question the recommendations or the
acts of his advisers, to throw on them the burden of
making out their case, to put aside their counsel and
act in his own way. This self-assertion and inward
loneliness of purpose and judgment, in a man who
surrounded himself with counsellors and made it all
through life his practice to consult them and refer to
them, is one of William s striking characteristics. But
no one probably had his heart more thoroughly than
Lanfranc. Lanfranc was his chosen means of com
munication with the Roman court. Lanfranc, as
Prior of Bee, appears as his commissioner and adviser
in the troubles of the monastery of St. Evroul. He
goes down there with other churchmen to inquire
into the disputes of the house and to restore peace
and order. It is by his advice that on the refusal of
Abbot Robert to appear before the king s court, and
his flight to Rome, a new abbot is appointed by the
king s authority and maintained in the face of excom
munication and the Pope s legates. To him, on the

136 ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION [CHAP.
eve of the invasion, William committed the great

o

Abbey of St. Stephen which he had founded at Caen,
his noble and most characteristic monument, the
memorial of his marriage, of his love for his wife, of
his inflexible will, and of his readiness, when his
main point was gained, to pay a large price for gaining
it, and to accept judicious accommodations. To Lan-
franc he turned, when his sword had done its work in
England, for help in quieting it and restoring order,
and to be a balance against the lawlessness and
licence of his fierce soldiers. The doubtful position
of the English Archbishop of Canterbury made it all
the easier to do, what William anyhow would have
had no scruple in doing. The Pope, the legates,
the king s council called Lanfranc to the throne of
Canterbury, and the government of the English
Church. To Lanfranc was the task committed of
doing in the spiritual sphere what William did in the
political a task of mingled good and evil purpose,
and good and evil effect ; which involved honest efforts
to restore order, to raise standards, to curb lawlessness,
to promote knowledge ; which involved also much
plain and undisguised injustice, many harsh and
violent measures, the predominance everywhere of
foreigners, almost always unsympathising and rude,
and often shamelessly greedy. Lanfranc s appoint
ment and administration brought the English Church
more fully within the circle of Western Christen
dom, with its rising spirit of intellectual enterprise;
they also brought it more closely within the in
fluence and under the control of the great ecclesi
astical monarchy at Rome. To Lanfranc William
left large liberty. The archbishop held synods, and

vi.] OF WILLIAM. 137

introduced the new discipline which Normandy had
accepted ; replaced English bishops and abbots by
Norman ones ; drew the strings tight of monastic
observance ; put down, by force if necessary, monastic
mutinies ; stiffly and successfully asserted the rights of
his see, whether to canonical superiority against the
Archbishop of York, or to the possession of lands
and manors against one of the strongest of the
Norman spoilers, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of
Kent, William s half-brother. All was in the direc
tion of William s policy, of Avhat was good in it and
what was bad ; it all helped towards repressing licence,
towards giving him an orderly realm, towards keeping
in check his turbulent nobles ; it also helped to excuse
and disguise his hard and unscrupulous rule, to make
England more Norman, to crush that English spirit
which had greater and nobler elements in it than that
of the resolute and crafty race who were lords of the
hour. The writers of the time speak of Lanfranc as
the depositary of William s thoughts and plans of
rule : knowing him well enough to do what at first
hearing might offend him, in full confidence of the
power of his own well-considered grounds to justify
his course to a master who required reasons ; trusted
by William, as William could not trust his most
loyal barons. "When William sojourned in Nor
mandy," says Lanfranc s biographer, " Lanfranc was
the chief man and the guardian of England ; the
other chiefs being subordinate to him, and assisting
him in what concerned the defence and the order and
the peace of the realm, according to the laws of the
land." The expressions may be, perhaps, too broad ;
but Lanfranc s letters during the rebellion of 1075

138 ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION [CHAP.

show how important was his position, both in watch
ing matters in the king s behalf and in discounte-

o o

nancing the rebels, whom he excommunicated and,
even after their submission, refused to absolve without
William s leave ; and *in being a mediator through
whom the rebels could approach their lord and seek for
reconciliation. Lanfranc, though he felt the dislike
and contempt of an Italian turned Norman, for the
language and the ways of the conquered English, was
not unmindful of what was due from a churchman,
and especially from a successor of St. Augustin, to his
so-called " barbarian" flock. He took their part, as
far as seemed reasonable to him, and in his disputes
they were often on his side. But he was too new
a ruler, and came too soon after the Conquest, to
identify himself heartily with those whom his patron
had conquered and ruled so sternly.

Lanfranc was an adviser, a minister, a faithful,
calm-judging helper ; but the supreme direction, the
ultimate sanction, William kept to himself in all things.
Thus, respectful, even cordial as he was in his relations
with the Holy See, with which he saw it to be impor
tant to connect the Norman Church as with the great
centre of civilization, and from which he had sought
and received benediction on the great enterprise of his
life, he had no thought of making his obedience abso
lute and unconditional. One potentate only of the
time knew how to answer Gregory VII. at once with
temper and resolution; and that was William. " Hubert
your legate," he writes to the Pope, " coming to me on
your behalf, admonished me, religious Father, that I
should do fealty to you and your successors ; and that,
touching the money which my predecessors were ac-

vi.] OF WILLIAM. 139

customed to send to the Roman Church, I should take
better order. The one claim I have admitted, and the
other I have not admitted. Fealty I neither have been
willing to do, nor will I do it now, for I never promised it ;
and I find not that my predecessors did it to yours. The
money, for three years while I have been in Gaul, has
been carelessly collected ; now, however, that by the
Divine mercy I am returned to my realm, what has been
gathered is forwarded by the aforesaid legate, and
the remainder, as soon as there is an opportunity, shall
be sent by the envoys of Lanfranc, our faithful Arch
bishop. Pray for us and for the state of our realm ;
because we have loved your predecessors, and you
above all we desire to love sincerely, and listen to
obediently." And Gregory, though angry and contemp
tuous about the money, had to let the matter pass.
Lanfranc himself, who probably was the actual writer
of the king s letter, took the same tone of guarded
respect, but resolute assertion of rights, to the great
and terrible Pope. Gregory wrote to him by the
same legate, charging him with having cooled in his
regard and duty to the Roman Church since his pro
motion. Lanfranc " neither wishes nor sought to find
fault with the Pope s words," but in his conscience he
does not understand how absence or promotion can
make him less hearty in his submission to the Pope s
commands in all things, " according to the command
of the canons ;" and insinuates that it is really the
Pope who has become cool to him. " The words of
your message," he adds, " I, with your legate, to the
best of my power, recommended to my lord the
king. I urged, but could not persuade. How far he
in all points has not assented to your wish, he himself

140 ADMINISTRATION OF WILLIAM. [CHAP. vi.

makes known to you both by word and letter." In
the great contest between the Pope and the Empire,
William, and Lanfranc with him, though far from
withdrawing their recognition of Gregory, and re
fusing to give any countenance to his rival, spoke
of him in terms which implied the king s right to
form his own judgment and take his own line, if
necessary, in the quarrel which had thrown Gregory s
claims into dispute. There is a curious letter of Lan-
franc s to the representative of the Antipope Guibert,
Cardinal Hugo, who had tried to get England on his
master s side. " I have received and read your letter,
and some things in it have displeased me. I do not
approve of your vituperating Pope Gregory, and
calling him Hildebrand, and that you give bad
names to his legates, and that you praise up Clement
so extravagantly. For it is written, that in a man s
lifetime he ought not to be praised, nor his neighbour
disparaged. It is as yet unknown to mankind what
they are now, and what they are to be in the sight of
God. Yet I do not believe that the Emperor, without
great reason, would have ventured to take so grave a
step, nor that without great help from God he could
have achieved so great a victory. I do not recom
mend your coming to England, unless you first receive
the king s leave. For our island has not yet dis
owned the former Pope (Gregory), nor declared its
judgment whether it ought to obey the latter. When
we have heard the reasons on both sides, if it so
happen, we shall be able to see more clearly what
ought to be done."

CHAPTER VII.

CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH.

" So fails, so languishes, grows dim, and dies
All that this world is proud of. From their spheres
The stars of human glory are cast down ;
Perish the roses and the flowers of kings,
Princes and emperors, and the crowns and palms
Of all the mighty, withered and consumed. "

WORDSWORTH, Excursion, b. vii.

WHILE the Conqueror lived there was government in
the State and the Church. There was the strong love
of order, the purpose of improvement, the sense of the
value of law, the hatred of anarchy and misrule, and
the firm mind to put them down. William, with
his tender and true heart for his wife, and recog
nizing with the deference of a great mind and spirit
the combination of knowledge and power with noble
ness of character in men like Lanfranc and Anselm,
had little respect and little patience for the people of
his time. His own ambition, unscrupulous and selfish
as it was, was of a higher order than theirs ; it was
combined with a consciousness, of his fitness for the
first place, and the desire of an adequate field for the
exercise of his power to rule. To those who put their
own ends or their own wishes in the way of his, he
was without pity. His great men he would exalt and

H2 CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. [CHAP.

enrich, and secure to every man his place ; for the
little folk, he would maintain a due measure of peace
and order ; bishops and religious men he wished to
see zealous for their great objects, and true to their
high profession, and there were no limits to his help
and countenance when he thought they were fulfilling
their calling. Narrow conceptions of government, we
may think ; but it was much, in those days of begin
nings, to have them. But woe to those who thought
of thwarting him, or having their own way against his !
He knew that he lived in a turbulent and dangerous

o

time, and that there were few to trust ; and his hand,
to crush or to punish, was swift, heavy, and, in Eng
land, relentless. Governing an alien race is the trial
and, for the most part, the failure of civilized times ;
and it was not likely to be easy or successful in his
day, and after a great wrong such as he had com
mitted against Englishmen. Hard and stern at all
periods of his life, he was cruel and oppressive towards
its end, when he became embittered by finding that
the race which he had ill-treated, and which he could
so little understand, sullenly hated while it feared
him. Yet the tyranny of William the king was a
light matter to England, if set against the furious
insolence of his foreign military lords, which he alone
could keep in some order. It was something for the
country, vexed as it was by the king s demands for
money, and by the greediness of his unscrupulous
administration, that these men at least had some one
to be afraid of. As his life drew to its close his
temper waxed harsher, his yoke heavier, his craving
for money more insatiable. An old man s value for
a hoard was joined with an old man s increased care-

VIL] CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. 143

lessness for suffering, and the disgust of a conqueror
whose ends were but half won and whom success had
not made happy. England had become to him what the
Indies were afterwards to Spain, a convenient source
of wealth to be drawn upon without conscience or
mercy. No one can doubt that in the years, dreary and
miserable from tempest, murrain and fever, from dearth
and famine, just before his death, his inexorable de
mands for money, searching the country in every corner
and racking it to the utmost, made England most mise
rable. Yet the English writer who with incomparable
vigour and pathos describes the wretchedness and
humiliation of his country and the fiscal exactions
and injustice of her foreign king, is the witness also
of the order which he kept; and records, in the form
which had become proverbial, that the traveller could
pass secure and unharmed through the land with his
bosom full of gold, and that no man might raise his
hand against his neighbour or harm a woman, without
suffering speedy vengeance.

On Thursday, September 9, 1087, William, the
" famous Baron," died at Rouen. The impression
produced by his death, by the retrospect which it
invited of his character and wonderful fortunes, by
the contrast between what he had been and what was
the end of his greatness, was something deeper and
more solemn than that produced by the spectacle of
mortality in an ordinary king. In England and in
Normandy, it found expression by the pens of
contemporary writers, who enable us to understand
with more than ordinary distinctness the overpower
ing feeling of awe and amazement, partly at his
dreadful strength, so irresistible, yet so controlled

144 CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. [CHAP.

by purpose and will, partly at the great instance in
him of the upshot of the greatest success, caused by
the disappearance of this mighty power from the
scene of human life, where he had been so long the
foremost object In England a nameless monk, per
haps a bishop, at any rate one who had been in his
court and had seen him close, and whose vigorous
words found their way into the monastic chronicles
which were yet written in the old English tongue,
thus records his feelings at William s death. The
passage has been often quoted, but it is difficult to
speak of William and his end without quoting it.

" If any one would know what manner of man
King William was, or what worship he had, and of
how many lands he was lord ; then will we write of
him as we knew him, who looked on him, and once
lived in his court. The King William that we speak
of was a very wise man, and very great ; and more
worshipful and stronger than any of his foregangers.
He was mild to the good men who loved God, and be
yond all measure stern to those who gainsaid his will.
On that selfsame place where God granted him that
he might win England, he raised up a great minster,
and set monks therein, and enriched it well. In his
days was the great minster at Canterbury built, and
also very many others over all England. Also this
land he filled with monks, and they lived their life
after St. Benedict s rule ; and Christendom " (the state
of Christian religion) "was such in his days that each
man followed, if he would, what belonged to his office.
Also he was right worshipful : thrice he wore his
king s helm (crown) each year, so oft as he was in
England. At Easter he wore it at Winchester, at

ii.] CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. 145

Pentecost at Westminster, at Midwinter at Gloucester.
And there were with him all the great men over all
England, archbishops and bishops, abbots and earls,
thanes and knights. So he was also a right stern
man and a hasty ; so that men durst not do anything
against his will. He had earls in his bonds who
did against his will. Bishops he set off their bishop
rics, and abbots off their abbacies, and thanes in
prison ; and at last he spared not his own brother,
called Odo : he was a very great bishop in Nor
mandy : at Bayeux was his see ; and he was the
chief of men next to the king. And he had an earl
dom in England, and when the king was in Nor
mandy, he was mightiest in this land. And him did
he set in prison. Among other things it is not to be
forgotten the good peace that he made in this land ;
so that any one man, that himself were aught, might
fare over his realm with his bosom full of gold,
unhurt : and no man durst slay another man, had this
one done ever so much evil to the other : and if any
man harmed a woman, he was punished accordingly.
He ruled over England ; and with his craftiness so
looked it through, that there was not one hide within
England, that he learned not who had it, or what it
was worth ; and then he set it in his written book.
The Britons land was in his rule, and he made castles
therein, and the people of Man, with all authority ; so
also Scotland he brought under him by reason of his
great strength. The Norman land was his inherit
ance ; and over the earldom which is called of Mans
he ruled ; and if he might have lived yet two years,
he had won Ireland by his policy and without any
weapons. Surely in his time men had much tra-

S.L. X. T

146 CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. [CHAP..

vail, and very many sorrows ; castles he had built,
and poor men he made to toil hard. The king was
so very stern : and he took of the men under his rule
many a mark of gold, and more hundred pounds of
silver. That he took, both by right, and also with
much unright, of his people, and for little need ; he
was fallen on covetousness : and greediness he loved
altogether. He made great deer-chases, and there
with laid down laws, that whoso slew hart or hind,
he should be blinded : he forbad [to touch] the
harts and so also the boars ; so much he loved the
high deer, just as if he were their father. Also he
appointed concerning the hares, that they might go
free. His great men complained of it, and the poor
men murmured ; but he was so stiff, that he recked
naught of them all, and they must altogether

" Follow the king s will

If they would live, or have land

Land or goods, or even a quiet life.
Wala wa ! that any man should so be proud,
Should so lift himself up, and reckon himself above all men.
The Almighty God show to his soul mercy,
And grant him for his sins forgiveness.

This thing we have written concerning him, both the
good and the evil : that good men may follow after
their goodness, and altogether forsake wickedness ;
and go in the way that us leadeth to the kingdom of
heaven."

In Normandy, Orderic, the man who shared in a
remarkable manner both English and Norman feelings,
preserved the recollections of Normandy about the
end of the greatest of the Normans : what were
supposed to be the thoughts of the last hours of his

VIL] CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. 147

life ; how he must have looked back on its strange
passages and judged of them then ; and how little
his greatness could save him from the anguish and
bitterness of his mortal condition, and even from
its most loathsome humiliations. His account, as
usual, is very rhetorical, and full of the pedantry
which all ages are apt to mistake for fine writing.
He puts a long speech into William s mouth, full of
curious bits of history, but as unlike as it \vell
could be, in form and manner, to any discourse that
William can be supposed to have held when he was
dying. But that he spoke much, and spoke in the
same kind of sense as Orderic reports, there is no
reason for doubting. Orderic not only represents
the tales which went about at the time in the cloisters
of the news-loving monks, but probably had heard
the story from the mouth of some of the church
men who were about William s death-bed, such as
Gilbert Maminot, the scientific and almost wizard
bishop of Lisieux, William s chief physician, and
the diocesan of St. Evroul. It is even not improbable
that Orderic s long oration represents not merely the
general feeling of the dying king, but also, from the
way in which Orderic twice dwells on the vigour
with which he was able to use his faculties and his
speech to the last, that it stands for the full and
frequent discourse which he had with his attendants,
and that it embodies various portions of what he
said to them. It exhibits him going over in memory,
from its hard and stormy beginnings, his long
and eventful career ; his sense of his own offences
against God and against those who had suffered from
his ambition ; his sense of the falseness and ingratitude

L 2

148 CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. [CHAP.

of men, and his stern will, unshaken by the approach
of death, to deal to them their deserts. In its temper,
it is at any rate very like William. It is the language
of a man awed and humbled, in all severe truth and
seriousness, before the supreme goodness and the
supreme justice, and, in measure, before those who
on earth reflected it : but not afraid, even when feel
ing himself going to judgment, to pass judgment
to the uttermost against the wickedness which he
had hated on earth, though his own hands were not
clean from it, and not shrinking from calling to mind
his counterbalancing good deeds ; his care for the
cause of religion ; his freedom from the great crime
of the age, selling the dignities of the Church for
money ; his desire to put fit persons into her high
offices ; his love of good men ; the houses of prayer
and devotion which he had founded or helped. The
friend of Lanfranc, the founder of St. Stephen s, is
not unlikely to have looked back in this spirit on
his chequered course, full of dark passages of wrong
and blood, but full also of serious efforts to follow
after what he believed to be the light.

To the last, William, in spite of the agony of his
disease, was able with clear mind, and with speech that
failed not, to communicate his thoughts, his wishes,
and his advice to those about him. At early dawn
on the Qth of September, from the abbey of St. Ger-
vais outside of Rouen, whither he had been carried
to be out of the noise of the city, he heard the
great bell sound of the cathedral. He asked what it
meant, and he was told that the bell was going for
prime in St. Mary s Church. " Then the king raised
his eyes to heaven and, stretching out his arms, com-

vii.] CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. 149

mended himself to his Lady, Mary the holy mother
of God, that she by her holy intercession would
reconcile him to her dear Son, Christ ; and he at once
expired." The physicians who had watched him all
night, lying quiet without any sound of pain, were
taken by surprise by the suddenness of his passing
away, and " became almost out of their mind." Then
followed scenes, which showed the change that was
coming. His attendants, bishops, and religious men,
and probably some of his family and his barons, at
once mounted their horses, and hurried off to look
to the safety of their lands and houses. The servants,
seeing that their betters had gone, stripped the de
serted house, and the very corpse of the dead, of
all that they could lay hands upon, and made off
"like kites" with their prey. The "Justicer" was
dead, and the felons took their first revenge and
first used their liberty, by despoiling him who had
been their chastiser and dread. The story was told
and believed that William s death was announced
at Rome and in Calabria among those whom he had
banished, on the day of his death at Rouen ; and
Orderic sees in it the joy of the Evil One, conveying
the news to the powers of violence and lawlessness,
that their great enemy was no more. But at Rouen,
for three hours all were thunderstruck, and no one
dared to come near the place where the dead king
lay, forsaken and almost naked. " O magnificence
of the world," cries Orderic, " how worthless thou
art, and how vain and frail : like the rain bubbles
of the shower, swollen one moment, burst into nothing
the next. Here was a most mighty lord, whom
more than a hundred thousand warriors just now

150 CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. [CHAP.

eagerly served, and before whom many nations feared
and trembled ; and now, by his own servants, in a
house not his own, he lies foully stripped, and from
the first to the third hour of morning is left deserted
on the bare floor. The townsmen of Rouen, when
they heard the news, were amazed, and lost their
senses like drunken men ; they could not have been
more troubled if there had been a host of enemies
at their gates. Every one rose up from the place
where he was, and sought counsel what to do from
his wife or his friend, or the acquaintance he met
with on the way. Each man moved, or prepared to
move his goods, and in his panic hid them where
they might not be found."

The strong king was dead ; powerless to guard
or to punish ; and it was now every man for himself.
The clergy of Rouen at last collected their senses,
and came in procession to pay the last offices to
their king. William Bonne-Ame, the Archbishop,
ordered the body to be taken for burial to the minster
at Caen. But it seems that William Bonne-Ame,
the king s chosen Archbishop, spoken of as a model
of goodness, did not feel himself bound to provide
the means of transport. Perhaps Orderic only re
peats the gossip of the cloister of St. Evroul ; but
Orderic says that " the king s brethren and kindred
had departed from him, and they and his servants had
wickedly left him, as if he were but a barbarian.
And there was not one of all his vassals to care for
his burial." Why not the Primate of Normandy,
the Archbishop whom William had honoured and
exalted, in his own city ? But as the Bishop of
Lisieux had deserted his king s corpse and fled to his

vii.] CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. 151

own house, so it seems that it was no business of the
Archbishop of Rouen to transport the body to Caen
for burial. It was left to a certain " country knight "
named Herlwin, who was "touched with natural
goodness, and who, for the love of God and the honour
of his race, like a man " took the duty on him. He,
at his own charges, hired those who prepared the body
for burial and who were to carry it to the grave ; and
putting it on board a ship, he carried it round to Caen.
To the last, the same dark shadow lowers over the
end of the great king. Orderic relates how, as the
funeral entered Caen, a terrible fire broke out, and.
the clergy alone were left to conduct the body to the
Minster of St. Stephen. At least the funeral office
might be expected to correspond to his greatness,
If the lords and captains, and chief estates of Nor
mandy were not there, the leaders of the Norman
Church had assembled round the bier of their pro
tector. Orderic recites their names : William of Rouen,
Gilbert of Evreux, Gilbert of Lisieux, Michael of
Avranches, Geoffrey of Coutances, Gerard of Seez, and,
only just released from his captivity on the King s
death-bed, and released with the deepest reluctance
*and misgiving, Odo, the king s half-brother, Bishop
of Bayeux and Earl of Kent. There, too, came the
abbots of the famous monasteries, almost as great
persons as the bishops; Anselm of Bee, William of
Fecamp, Gerbert of Fontanelle, Guntard of Jumieges,
Mainer of St. Evroul, Fulk of Dives, Durand of
Troarn, Robert of Seez, Osbern of Bernay, Roger of
Mount St. Michael in the Peril of the Sea ; and those
of the great houses of Rouen, St. Ouen, and the
Mount of the Holy Trinity. The " Great Gilbert,"

152 CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. [CHAP.

Bishop of Evreux, made an eloquent oration, in
which he set forth the magnificence of the king ;
how he had extended the bounds of Normandy ;
how he had exalted his nation more than all his
predecessors had done ; how he had kept peace and
justice in all his dominion ; how he had chastised
thieves and robbers with the rod of law ; how, by the
sword of valour, he had stoutly guarded clergy and
monks and the defenceless folk. He ended with
many tears, beseeching the people, in the love of
God, that, since no mortal man can live here without
sin, they would intercede for him to the Almighty
God ; and that, if in aught the dead had offended
them, they would forgive him. The call was answered.
" Then stood up Asceline, son of Arthur, and, with a
loud voice in the audience of them all, put forward
this complaint : The ground on which you stand
was the place of my father s house, which this man,
for whom you make request, when he was yet Count
of Normandy, took away from my father by violence,
and, utterly refusing justice, he by his strong hand
founded this church. This land, therefore, I claim, and
openly demand it back ; and in the behalf of God I
forbid the body of the spoiler to be covered with the
sod that is mine, and to be buried in my inheritance.
On the spot the claim was investigated and acknow
ledged ; and, before the body could be lowered into the
stone coffin, a bargain was struck for the grave, and
the ground round it. But the miseries of the scene
were not yet ended. " The debt was paid, the price
of that narrow plot of earth, the last bed of the
Conqueror. Asceline withdrew his ban ; but as the
swollen corpse sank into the ground, it burst, filling

vri.] CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. 153

the sacred edifice with corruption. The obsequies
were hurried through, and thus was William the
Conqueror gathered to his fathers, with loathing,
disgust, and horror." l

" Behold ! " writes Orderic, " I have with care in
quired and with truth related what, in the Duke s
fall, was pointed out beforehand by God s ordering
hand. It is no fancy tragedy that I am palming
off; I am not courting the laughter of idlers by
the quaint speeches of a comedy; but to thought
ful readers I present the reality of change and
chance. In the midst of prosperity, disasters ap
peared, that the hearts of men on earth might
fear. A king once mighty and warlike, the terror
of many people in many countries, lay naked on
the ground, deserted by those whom he had
nourished up. He needed borrowed money for his
uneral; he needed the help of a common soldier
to provide a bier and bearers of it, he who had, up to
that moment, such a superfluity of riches. Past a town
in flames, he was carried by frightened men to his
minster ; and he who had ruled over so many cities
and towns and villages, wanted a free spot of earth,
that was his own, for his burial. . . . Rich and poor
are alike in their lot : both are a prey to death and
the worm. Put not, then, your trust in princes,
which are nought, O ye sons of men ; but in God, the
Living and the True, who is the Maker of all. Con
sider the train of things in the Old and the New
Testament, and there take for yourselves examples
without number of what to avoid and what to desire.
Trust not in wrong and robbery, and desire not the

1 Sir F. Palgrave.

154 CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. [CHAP.

fruit of violence. If riches increase, set not your
heart upon them. For all flesh is grass, and all the
glory of it as the flower of the grass. The grass
withereth, and the flower thereof fadeth away ; but
the word of the Lord endureth for ever."

Orderic concludes with a sermon. But had he not
indeed a text ; and is his sermon more than the
thought which would rise of itself in all hearts at
such a spectacle ?

The reign of strength was over ; the reign of insolent
lawlessness and brute force began. Robert of Belesme,
the head in Normandy of the fierce house of Talvas,
the rival of that of Rollo, was entering Brionne on his
way to the king s court at Rouen, when the tidings
met him. At once he turned his horse, and riding to
Alen^on, expelled from the castle the garrison which
kept it for the king. He did the same at Belesme,
and seized or destroyed all the holds of his weaker
neighbours. Other lords in the south-east, rivals or
enemies, followed his example. William, Count of
Evreux, turned out the royal garrison from the
" donjon : of the castle. William of Breteuil, and
Ralph of Conches, and all the strong hands round,
seized each all the fortified posts within reach ; that
" each might freely carry on his execrable quarrels
against his neighbour and the dweller next him.
Then the chief men of Normandy drove out all
the King s guards from their strongholds, and vied
with one another in spoiling with their own hands
a country abounding in wealth. And so the riches
which they had torn by violence from the English
and other nations, they lost, as they deserved, by
their own robberies and plunderings among them-

vii.] CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. 155

selves." It was a foretaste of what was coming,
though in different ways in England and Normandy.
That break-up of society to which military feudalism
was always tending that dispersion of power from a
central authority among a crowd of fierce and greedy
soldier chiefs, plotting, robbing, destroying, fighting
each man for himself; the substitution of arbitrary
will not only for law but for custom ; the dissolution
of all ties of duty and faith, of all restraints which
held men back from the wild savageness and appetites
of beasts came upon the lands over which the great
Conqueror had ruled. He had kept the anarchy of his
generation at bay ; he had shamed and cowed its
licence. His serious and severe temper, his iron hand,
his instincts of kingly greatness, the countenance
which he had given so conspicuously to that religion
which, hard, narrow, imperfect as it might be, carried
with it a weight which the age could understand on
the side of self-conquest, of obedience to a rule of
life, of peace and industry, of the belief in an ideal of
human nature superior to material things, of the con
viction of human brotherhood, and faith in divine
charity, had for the time accustomed his realms to a
state of things in which something was paramount,
which, if it was not yet law, was stronger than dis
order. Under him turbulence was dangerous and
unprofitable, and riot was unfashionable. Now the
curb was taken away ; and it was soon made evident
what the Conqueror s government, uneasy and harsh
as it was, had kept down, and from what he had
saved his subjects.

The great power which he had founded fell apart,
at least for a time, at his death. The succession to

i $6 CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. [CHAP.

Normandy had long been pledged to his eldest son
Robert. Vicious and unruly, he had been his father s
enemy and scourge : but he had a strong party in
Normandy ; Orderic makes William say that the
majority of the barons had acknowledged him ; his
father left him Normandy, to be misgoverned and
ruined ; but he would not give him England. Eng
land, he said, according to Orderic s report, God had
given to him ; it had not come to him by hereditary
right in the same way as the Duchy ; and as it had
been given to him, he dared not give it ; he only
wished and hoped that his second son William might
have it : and he sent him away to England bearing
a letter to the Archbishop Lanfranc, asking for his
aid to make William king. He was without difficulty
acknowledged in England, and consecrated by Lan
franc at Westminster before the month was out in
which his father died. Henry, the youngest and
the ablest, was left with a large treasure in money,
to bide his time.

The ungovernable wildness of the old barbarian

o

stock of the Pirate Sea Kings seemed to have
revived in the two eldest sons. In Robert it showed
itself in alternating fits of fierce energy and lazy

toroor and exhaustion, like the succession of wakeful

A

ferocity with slumberous inactivity in a wild animal.
In William all was wakefulness. He had all his father s
force of character, his father s wary boldness, his
father s terrible inflexibility of will, his father s vigour
and decision and rapidity in action ; but without those
perceptions of right, that feeling after something better,
that deep though confused respect for goodness, that
living thousrh often clouded fear of God, which had

vir.] CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. 157

given whatever nobleness it had to his father s royalty.
Imagine the Conqueror without his aversion to the
confusion and anarchy which he made it his task to
quell, imagine him blind to the great intellectual
and religious movement in Normandy which was
embodied and typified in Lanfranc, imagine him
without his passionate faithfulness to his wife ; and
his triumph, supported by ability at the time un
equalled, would have been a reign of wickedness
and horror to which the actual miseries of his rule,
even the laying waste of the North and the murder
of Earl Waltheof, would have seemed light in com
parison. These makeweights to the Conqueror s
unscrupulousness and hardness were taken away in
his son ; and we have the king who reigned in his
stead.

In another point, also, they were a contrast. The
Conqueror was austere and his court a grave one.
According to a reaction often seen, William the Red
turned with revengeful disgust against the solemn
ways and speech of his father s household, in which
doubtless he had seen many hypocrisies, and broke
out into reckless and ostentatious mockery of the
restraints and beliefs of the time. The decorum
which had been in fashion gave place in him to a
new fashion of shameless licentiousness which seemed
to aim at affronting and defying what was most sacred
and revered. Unmarried, he shocked by his profligacy
an age which was accustomed to lawlessness of all
kinds ; and a noisy openness of speech and boisterous
and riotous merriment, which made a very distinct
impression on observers round him, partly relieved,
and partly masked, as is not seldom the case, the

158 CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. [CHAP.

keen shrewdness and craft, and the pitiless selfish
ness, of the real man beneath.

Yet the difference at first sight seems small between
the father s rule and the son s. The father was un
scrupulous and oppressive; the son could command like
his father. He crushed rebellion as effectually ; he
hung without mercy thieves and felons ; no man, says
Orderic, as he might have said in his rhetorical eulogy
of the Conqueror, dared mutter a word against him.
The crown of England was as safe in the Red King s
keeping, and as much feared by its subjects and its
neighbours, as it had been in his father s time. What
then made the difference between the two royalties,
outwardly so like ? It was the incipient order, the
faint half-conscious preludes of civilization, the sense
of something higher than force, the purpose, how
ever dim, of maintaining right, which were present
in the Conqueror s notions of kingship, and which
disappeared for the time under William the Red.
The beginnings of moral elevation under the father
went back under the two elder sons to the more naked
and undisguised selfishness common in all ages to
men who think that power is in their hands to do what
they like with, and natural especially to an untaught
and untrained stage of political life which is painfully
and with many relapses emerging from barbarism. In
Normandy all was anarchy under the indolent and reck
less Robert ; in England all was powerful and vigilant
tyranny under his formidable and ambitious brother :
but both had lost that which had prevented their
father s rule from being confounded with the common
self-will and violence of the kings and princes of his
time, and had given him his best claim to greatness.

vi i.] CHANGES A T WILLIAM S DEA TH. 1 59,

In Normandy, as has been said, the elements of
disorder broke loose at once, and there was no hand
to check them. But in England, where William the
Red had been accepted and consecrated as an English
king at Westminster, and had given the solemn pro
mise of an English king to maintain right and peace,
turbulence, the turbulence of the foreigners, found
its master. There was one keen and decisive trial
of strength between William and the fierce Norman
lords who looked upon England as their prey. Odo
the warrior-bishop of Bayeux was no sooner released
from his prison than he was at the head of a great
confederacy of the strangers to conquer back Eng
land for the Duke of Normandy and his lawless
and greedy soldiers. Odo, once the greatest man
next the king, had met with a rival in Lanfranc.
He had contended with Lanfranc for lands and for
influence : to Lanfranc s counsel his imprisonment was
ascribed. That Lanfranc had crowned William and
was his adviser would be a reason with Odo for
urging Robert to invade England. But William
could guard his own. The English were with him
and fought for him. London was with him, and
Kent. He had the hearty support of Lanfranc and
Wolfstan ; of the foremost of the foreign churchmen,
of the saintliest of the English. And his triumph
was rapid and complete. He was king at home ;
not indeed without outbursts of hostility and dis
affection in the Welsh and Scottish march-lands, or
among the Norman lords in distant Northumberland;
but William s rapid energy and decision easily foiled
them : his State was never in danger after the first
trial of strength ; and henceforth his thoughts were

160 CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. [CHAP.

given to carrying out his vengeance and extending
his power abroad. His reign began with hope. He
had promised to be an English king, just, merciful,
and true : he had fought with Englishmen for his
soldiers against insolent and traitorous " Frenchmen,"
and had triumphed : he had the great Lanfranc,
his father s friend and counsellor, from whose hand
he had received knighthood and then the crown, the
illustrious stranger, who reluctantly, yet with sin
cerity, had taken part with the English people, to
be his adviser and supporter. But the hope soon
passed. In the year after the Red King s coronation
Lanfranc followed his great master to the grave ;
and then, what Lanfranc had been to the father,
that, to the son- -the soul of his counsels, the
minister of his policy, the suggester and instrument
of his deeds was the low-born Norman priest, the
scandal, amusement, and horror of his age, Ranulf
or Ralph, nicknamed Flambard, the Firebrand. The
difference between the two reigns is expressed in
the contrast between Lanfranc and Ralph Flambard.

Flambard was one of a class of churchmen who were
characteristic of a low and imperfect stage of civiliza
tion, and who passed away with it. They are not to
be confounded with the statesmen-ecclesiastics of the
middle and later ages who, whatever we think of
them, must be judged of on very different principles,
Becket, Wolsey, Ximenes, were statesmen, because to
a great churchman all human interests were thought
to belong of right, and he was not going out of his
high and comprehensive sphere when he handled
them. The ideal at least was a great one, however
it at last failed in practice, which made those who

VIL] CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. 161

are charged with man s highest laws and concerns, the
companions and yokefellows of kings, the guides
of earthly government, the arbiters of the policy of
nations, the interpreters of the wants and aims of
society. But these men, though they united the
priest with the statesman, and often did so to the
great hurt of one or other character, and sometimes
of both, never forgot their church manship. But the
other order of men, of whom Ralph Flambard was
a typical instance, simply merged and lost their
ecclesiastical functions in their secular business, and
used their clerkship to make themselves more
serviceable instruments of administration and tools
of power. The feudal house or meisney of the
eleventh century had its military family and its
clerical family one for hand-work, the other for head-
work ; both equally portions of the royal or baronial
court, and one as indispensable as the other. The
clerics, most of them in orders but not all priests,
did all the writing, account-keeping, law business,
all that had to do with estate agency or the do
mestic economy ; they furnished, besides the mass-
priests and chaplains, the secretaries, chancellors,
attorneys, "purveyors," and clerks of the kitchen.
They were by no means useless, all of them. The work
which is now done in the Exchequer, the Treasury,
the offices of Chancery, by the Boards of Revenue
and Customs, by the law officers of the Crown, by
the departments of Public Works and Crown Domains,
the business of public accounts and state correspon
dence, was mostly in the hands of these men ; and
their work was by no means always ill done. They
had among them the contriving brains, the quick pens,

S.L. X.

162 CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. [CHAP.

the calculating heads of their time ; they had the
financial inventiveness, the legal resource, the busi
nesslike coolness, necessary for their work. The
finance and the office routine of the age were rude,
but they were beginnings ; and though much in them
was blundering, and, what was worse, corrupt and op
pressive, we are even now in many things beholden to
these early clerical pioneers of English administration.
But of all conceivable employments and functions, it
is difficult to imagine any that less suit a man invested
with Christian orders.

But there were differences among them, and Ralph
Flambard was one of the worst specimens of the worst
kind of the class. The accounts which remain of him
are so unanimous, so distinct, so consistent, and reflect
such deep indignation and scorn, that we feel that we
have to be on our guard in judging of a man so
detested both in Normandy and in England. Gossip
greedily gathers round an unpopular name ; about his
parents, about his first steps in life, about the early
tokens of an evil bent and readiness for mischief, of
audacity, craft, servile suppleness ; such stories may be
but the growth of later hatred, and must be taken
with allowance for the feelings of which they are the
evidence. There is no reason, however, to doubt the
accuracy of the portrait, drawn probably by those
who had seen him, of his manners and qualities ; of a
man without education, but with much mother-wit
and boundless fluency of tongue ; coarse, impudent,
cunning, boisterous, a formidable bully, a ready
mocker, free in his loud banter and noisy horse
laughs. But what is certain is this : that Ralph
Flambard being a churchman, and rising to the high

VIL] CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. 163

dignities of the Church, deliberately set himself not
only to plunder but to injure and degrade the Church;
that, uniting in his own person the chief management
of the revenue and the administration of justice, he
was the thorough-going and unscrupulous minister
of a policy of fiscal wrong and oppression such as
was never in England ; that he was the prompter and
instrument of a system of barefaced and daring
venality which set everything in Church and State
to sale. In a reign in which legal chicane was
placed at the service of greedy violence, and the land
racked to furnish means to the vast ambition of a
king who yet seemed to have no other end in ruling
but to have all human rights under his feet, Ralph
Flambard was the soul of his counsels, the man on
whose quick wit and fearless hand, and bold and over
bearing tongue, the king relied to outface the opposi
tion and scandal which his outrages provoked, and to
find new means to replenish a treasury which his per
sonal manner of life and his ambitious political schemes,
in which bribes played as important a part as his war
like qualities, were continually emptying. Of this rule,
so ignoble in purpose, and as barren of all wholesome
fruit of government as that of a rapacious Roman
Praetor or a Turkish Pacha who has bought his pro
vince a rule redeemed from ignominy only (if that
be a redemption) by its merciless strength Flambard
was the civil representative. Of what it was in point
of law, of what it was in respect for justice and wish
to elevate and improve, he is the measure. The charge
that Orderic brings against him in his dealing with
secular property, of tampering with the measurements
and valuations of Doomsday, and subverting the old

M 2

1 64 CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. [CHAP.

English understanding of the quantities and rents of
estates for the benefit of the Treasury, might be sus
pected of exaggeration the usual exaggeration of the
tax-payer when the rights of the revenue are sharply
looked after were k not certain that, in a case where
there was no room for mistake, in his treatment of
church property, Flambard did not stop at the most
flagrant and high-handed wrong. That the king
should keep great church offices vacant simply that
he might seize and appropriate their revenues, is a pro
ceeding which does not admit of being overcoloured ;
it is simple and intelligible ; it is exactly of the same
kind as any other sort of robbery. And this was the
great financial invention devised by Flambard. When
a bishop or abbot died, the king s officer Flambard
himself when, as at Canterbury, the dignity was great
enough entered on the property, and kept it for the
king s use as long as he pleased. After Lanfranc s
death the see of Canterbury was vacant for more than
three years, and its rents were taken possession of by
the king. They were again seized when Anselm left
England, and remained in the king s hands for three
years more, till his death. When he fell in the New
Forest he held, besides the lands of Canterbury, those
of Winchester and Sarum, and eleven abbeys besides.
The minister of all this iniquity had to go through
the ups and downs of such a career of adventure.
William the Red made him Bishop of Durham. His
brother s first act on succeeding to the crown was to
imprison Flambard in the Tower. He escaped by
making his guards drunk ; and the manner of his
escape, and how the "fat prelate," sliding down the
rough rope which was not long enough to reach the

vii.] CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. 165

ground, scraped off the skin from his hands, and
finished with a heavy tumble at the end, became one
of the good stories of the time. He came to Nor
mandy, and, in the anarchy under Duke Courtehose,
quartered himself at Lisieux, where Bishop Gilbert
Maninot the astrologer, the Conqueror s old friend
and physician, had just died. Flambard got the
bishopric for his brother Fulcher ; on his death he
held it three years for his own son, a child of twelve
years old, with the promise from the Duke, that if this
boy should die, the bishopric should go to another
son ; then, when the outcry against this arrangement
became too strong, he got the bishopric for one of his
creatures, who was turned out of it for his simoniacal
bargain with the Duke. Finally, when the battle of
Tinchebrai had made it clear which was the winning
side, Flambard, who, as Orderic says, was " residing
as a prince in the town of Lisieux," made his sub
mission to Henry, recovered his bishopric of Durham,
and left the name of a grand prelate and a mag
nificent builder, dying, it is said, peacefully and a
penitent.

It was this brutality and misrule, this detestable
and ungovernable sway of selfishness, passion, and
cruelty, this treatment of kingdoms and states as a
wicked landlord treated his tenants, which roused
zeal and indignation in the awakening conscience and
awakening intelligence of Christian Europe. The
opposition to it came from the clergy ; primarily, and
as to the origin of the impulse, from the monasteries
places where the search after peace and light and
purity, the forgiveness of sin, and the conquest of
evil, were, in however imperfect and mistaken a

1 66 CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. [CHAP.

way, made the objects of human life ; where the
new learning of the time disclosed more and more
what men were made for, and might be ; where prayer
and charity opened a spiritual world for them ; where
self-discipline made them know what those, who
would, could do. From the monasteries the im
pulse was communicated, not to the secular clergy,
as a body, but to their leaders, to the bishops, who
carried with them the ideas of the monasteries into
public life ; at last to the heads of the hierarchy, the
popes. By the mouth of the clergy, spoke the voice
of the helpless, defenceless multitudes, who shared
with them in the misery of living in a time when law
was the feeblest and most untrustworthy stay of right,
and men held everything at the mercy of masters,
who had many desires and few scruples, quickly and
fiercely quarrelsome, impatient of control, superiority,
and quiet, and simply indifferent to the suffering, the
fear, the waste, that make bitter the days when
society is enslaved to the terrible fascination of the
sword. In the conflict which ensued, there was much
of a mixed character, much that was ambiguous.
Those who were on the right side were not always
right, those on the wrong side not always wrong. The
personal interests of the clergy were involved in their
efforts against military insolence and self-will, as well as
the interests of justice and the interests of the poor.
Doubtless they had much to lose by the uncontrolled
reign of the sword ; but they had also much to lose
by opposing it. To resist and counterbalance it, they
brought in another kind of power, which in the course
of things worked great mischief and had to be taken
away. What is worse, they based this power, not

vii.] CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. 167

always consciously, indeed, yet, in fact, upon ideas
and documents which were false. Their great lever
was a belief in a divine universal theocracy, appointed
by God and assigned by Christ to the Pope ; a belief
which, springing out of the natural growth of tradi
tions, utilities and claims, and encouraged by the ne
cessity of the times, was at last boldly founded on
gross forgeries, and has developed into the preten
sions of the later Popes, which to this day astonish
a world which has seen many wonders. But this is
all easy to say after the event, and the experience of
nearly nine centuries. Before the event, in the dark
ness and perplexity of the eleventh century, things
looked very different. Then, in those days of armed
and lawless power, it was no unnatural thing for a
great Pope to match his moral and spiritual power
against the cruel forces which seemed to be amenable
to no other check. Then it was most natural for

Christians, hating the pride that defied God s law and
the licence which trod its sanctities under foot, to rally
round the conspicuous and traditional centre of Chris
tendom, and seek there a support which failed them at
the extremities. They must be judged by what they
knew, and what they could see. It is unjust, as well
as unphilosophical, to import into the disputes of the
Hildebrandine age the ideas and axioms which belong
to later times. Pride, arrogance, falsehood, of course,
are the same in all ages, and wherever we meet them
deserve our condemnation. But it is a fallacy to
carry back, in our thoughts and associations, what a
thing has become, to what it was under earlier and
different conditions. We all acknowledge this rule
of caution in judging of philosophical and religious

1 68 CHANGES AT WILLIAM S DEATH. [CHAP. vn.

development. It is equally true of institutions,
government, and policy. It is a mistake, in comparing
two different and remote stages of the same thing,
to make a later false and corrupt direction the
measure of a former natural and innocent one. A
thing may even turn out in the long run, and under
altered conditions, mistaken and mischievous, while
yet at the first it was the best and wisest perhaps the
only course to accept with unreserved earnestness.

Of such a nature was the contest which has made
Anselm s name famous in English history : a contest
in which, as Archbishop of Canterbury, he carried to
extremity his opposition to two kings of England ; a
contest in which he threw himself on the support of
the popes, and the result of which did much to con
firm their power in England ; a contest in which the
part he took has made the most illustrious name
of his age a byword with English historians, and
an object of dislike to some who, but for that,
would not be insensible to the power of one of the
most perfect examples of middle-age saintliness ; a
contest in which what he did conduced in the end to
results which bore evil fruit in England, but in which,
notwithstanding, according to all that he could judge
by then, he was right.

CHAPTER VIII.

ANSELM, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

" Who is the Happy Warrior? Who is he

That every man in arms should wish to be ?
******

Tis he whose law is reason ; who depends
Upon that law as on the best of friends ;
\Vhence, in a state where men are tempted still
To evil for a guard against worse ill,
And what in quality or act is best
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,-
He labours good on good to fix, and owes
To virtue every triumph that he knows ;
-Who, if he rise to station of command,
Rises by open means ; and there will stand
On honourable terms or else retire ;
Who comprehends his trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim ;
And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait
For wealth or honour, or for worldly state ;
Whom they must follow ; on whose head must fall,
Like showers of manna, if they come at all."

WORDSWORTH S Happy Warrior.

THERE can be no doubt that towards the end of
the Conqueror s reign the fame of the school of Bee
was pre-eminent in his dominions, above all other
places of religion and learning ; and that next to the
illustrious name of its creator Lanfranc, was that of
Anselm, his pupil and successor at Bee. There can
be little doubt, either, that when Lanfranc died, the

1 70 ANSELM, [CHAP.

thoughts of all who looked upon him as the great
ecclesiastical leader of his day turned to Anselm, as
the man to carry on his work. Anselm was known
in England as well as in Normandy ; known as Lan-
franc s friend ; known in the cloister of Canterbury as
the sharer of his counsels ; known at the Conqueror s
court ; known as even more full of sympathy for the
native English than even Lanfranc himself. Every
thing pointed him out as the fittest man that Nor
mandy could furnish to take the great place which
Lanfranc had left vacant. He would probably have
been the Conqueror s choice ; and by all who desired,
for whatever reason, that the see of Canterbury
should be filled in a way suitable to its eminence and
importance, he was marked at once as the person
whom it would most become the Conqueror s son to
choose.

But for such appointments, which had been a matter
of great consequence with his father, William the Red
had little care. Lanfranc was gone, and Ralph Flam-
bard was the king s new counsellor ; and even that age
of violence was shocked when, instead of naming an
Archbishop of Canterbury, the King of England seized
the possessions of the see, and that he might rack its
revenues, refused to fill it up. For nearly four years
this lasted ; and the patience with which the scandal
was endured, keenly felt as it was even by the rough
barons of William s court, is the measure of what a
bold bad king could do, who knew how to use his
power. A contemporary picture of the actual state of
things in a case like this is valuable. Eadmer was a
monk at Canterbury, and describes what passed before
his eyes. " The king," he says, " seized the Church at

viii.] ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 171

Canterbury, the mother of all England, Scotland,
and Ireland, and the neighbouring isles ; all that
belonged to it, within and without, he caused to be
inventoried by his officers ; and after fixing an allow
ance for the support of the monks, who there served
God, he ordered the remainder to be set at a rent and
brought into his domain. So he put up the Church of
Christ to sale ; giving the power of lordship over it to
any one who, with whatever damage to it, would bid the
highest price. Every year, in wretched succession, a
new rent was set ; for the king would allow no bargain to
remain settled, but whoever promised more ousted him
who was paying less ; unless the former tenant, giving
up his original bargain, came up of his own accord to the
offer of the later bidder. You might see, besides, every
day, the most abandoned of men on their business
of collecting money for the king, marching about the
cloisters of the monastery, regardless of the religious
rule of God s servants, and with cruel and threatening
looks, giving their orders on all sides; uttering menaces,
lording it over every one, and showing their power to
the utmost. What scandals and quarrels and irregu
larities arose from this I hate to remember. The
monks of the church were some of them dispersed at
the approach of the mischief, and sent to other houses,
and those who remained suffered many tribulations
and indignities. What shall I say of the church
tenants, who were ground down by such wasting and
misery ; so that I might doubt, but for the evils which
followed, whether with bare life they could have been
more cruelly oppressed ? Nor did all this happen only
at Canterbury. The same savage cruelty raged in all
her daughter churches in England which, when bishop

i/2 ANSELM, [CHAP.

or abbot died, at that time fell into widowhood. And
this king, too, was the first who ordained this woful
oppression against the churches of God ; he had
inherited nothing of this sort from his father : he alone,
when the churches .were vacant, kept them in his
own hands. And thus wherever you looked, there was
wretchedness before your eyes ; and this distress
lasted for nearly five years over the Church of Canter
bury, always increasing, always, as time went on,
growing more cruel and evil."

The feeling of the time was against fiscal oppression
carried on in this wholesale way against the Church.
The rough and unscrupulous barons had a kind of
respect for the monks, who in peace lived as hard
lives as soldiers in a campaign, and seemed so much
better men than themselves ; and though in passion or
quarrel they themselves might often use them ill, they
looked with a disapproving eye on a regular system
for insulting and annoying them, and for enriching the
king out of lands which benefactors had given for
the benefit of their souls, and in hope of sharing in
the blessings of perpetual prayers. And in the case
of Canterbury the pride was touched both of English
men and of Norman barons. For Canterbury was a
see of peculiar and unmatched dignity in the west,
and its archbishop was a much greater person in
court and realm than any archbishop of Rouen or
Lyons. He was a spiritual father to the whole king
dom ; the most venerable among its nobles, the repre
sentative and spokesman of the poor and the humble ;
the great centre of sacred and divine authority, with
out whose assent and anointing the king s title was
not complete, and who was the witness between the

VIIL] ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 173

king and his people of the king s solemn promises
of righteous government, of mercy, mildness, and
peace. The king s council was imperfect while no
Archbishop of Canterbury was there to be his ad
viser. The honour of the English crown and realm
suffered, when the archbishopric lay vacant year after
year, in the hands of Ralph Flambard and his men ;
and people talked among themselves that the place
which Lanfranc had filled so worthily, there was now
Lanfranc s friend to fill.

Whether or not with any thought of this kind,
and it probably was so, in the year 1092 Hugh of
Avranches, Earl of Chester, an old friend of Anselm s,
invited him over to England to organize a house in
which he had substituted monks for seculars, St.
Werburg s at Chester. Hugh the Wolf, one of the
Conqueror s march lords on the Welsh border, is
painted for us with much vividness in one of the rude
but vigorous portraits which Orderic liked to draw,
-a violent, loose-living, but generous barbarian,
honouring self-control and a religious life in others,
though he had little of it himself; living for eating
and drinking, for wild and wasteful hunting, by which
he damaged his own and his neighbours lands ;
for murderous war against the troublesome Welsh ;
for free indulgence, without much reference to right
or wrong; very open-handed; so fat that he could
hardly stand ; very fond of the noise and riotous com
pany of a great following of retainers, old and young,
yet keeping about him also a simple-minded religious
chaplain, \vhom he had brought with him from
Avranches, and who did his best, undiscouraged,
though the odds were much against him, to awaken

174 ANSELM, [CHAP

a sense of right in his wild flock, and to prove by the
example of military saints like St. Maurice and St.
Sebastian, that soldiers might serve God. It is one
of the puzzles of those strange days, what there
could have been in^common between Earl Hugh and
Anselm to have been the foundation of the mutual
regard which from old date seems to have been
acknowledged between them. Anselm, however,
declined the earl s invitation. It was already whis
pered about, that if he went to England he would be
archbishop. Such a change was, in truth, entirely
against his own inclination and habits of life, and he had
made up his mind against accepting it ; but he would
not give room to suspicions by seeming to put him
self in the way of it. Again Earl Hugh sent for him ;
he was sick, and wanted the help of an old friend. If
the fear of the archbishopric kept Anselm away, " I
declare," he said, "on my faith, that in the reports
which are flying about there is nothing ;" and it would
ill become him to be hindered by such misgivings from
succouring a friend in necessity. Again Anselm
refused, and again Earl Hugh repeated his pressing
message. "No peace that Anselm could have in
eternity, would save him from regretting for ever that
he had refused to come to his friend." Anselm s sen
sitive conscience was perplexed ; to refuse to go seemed
like putting the care of his own character for disinter
estedness above the wishes and perhaps the real needs
of one who had been from old time his familiar friend.
So, commending his intention and purpose to God, he
went to Boulogne and crossed to Dover. Eadmer adds,
that others among the chief men of England who had
chosen him as the " comforter and physician" of their

viii.] ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 175

souls, pressed his coming over ; and when once he had
come over, the community of Bee, which possessed
property in England which no doubt needed look
ing after, made it a matter of command to their
abbot that he should remain till he had put their
affairs in order. He came to Canterbury, meaning
to remain there the next day, which was a festival ;
but he was met with cries of welcome, as the future
archbishop, and he hurried away at once. At the
court, which he passed on his w r ay to Chester, he
was received with great honour even by the king.
There he and the Red King had their first experience
of one another. At a private interview Anselm,
instead of entering, as the king expected, on the
affairs of the monastery, laid before him, in the
unceremonious fashion of those times, the complaints
and charges which were in every one s mouth against
his government. " 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." It is
not said how William received the appeal, and they
parted. Anselm went to Chester, and found Earl
Hugh recovered. But the affairs of Bee, and the
ordering of the Chester monastery, had still to be
arranged ; and Anselm was kept on nearly five
months in England. The talk about the arch
bishopric dropped, and he ceased to think about it.
But when he wished to return to Normandy, the king
refused to give him the necessary leave to go out of
the realm.

Why William detained him is one of the unex
plained points in Eadmer s otherwise clear and
distinct narrative. It seems as if William felt that if

i/6 ANSELM, [CHAP.

there was to be an Archbishop of Canterbury, he, like
the rest of the world, would rather have Anselm than
anyone else ; but that he saw no reason for the
present to make up his mind to surrender so con
venient a possession as the archbishop s heritage.
So he kept Anselm in England, on the chance of his
being necessary. The nobles and bishops who had
perhaps hoped that Anselm s being on the spot might
bring matters to a point, and were disappointed at
the king s showing no signs of relenting, had re
course, in their despair of any direct influence, to a
device which, even to Eadmer, seemed a most extra
ordinary one, and treated their fierce king as if he
were an impracticable child who could only be worked
upon by roundabout means. By one of the quaintest
of all the quaint and original mixtures of simplicity
and craft of which the Middle Ages are full, it was pro
posed at the meeting of the court at Gloucester at
Christmas 1092, that the king should be asked by his
barons and bishops, who were troubled and distressed
at the vacancy of Canterbury, to allow prayers to be
said in all the churches of the realm that God would
put it into the king s heart to raise up the widowed see
from its scandalous and unprecedented desolation.
He was "somewhat indignant" at the suggestion
when it was first laid before him, but he assented to
it ; adding, as his view of the matter, " that the
Church might ask what it liked, but he should not
give up doing what he chose." The bishops took
him at his word, and the person to whom they applied
to draw up the form of prayer was Anselm. He
objected to do, as a mere abbot, what properly
belonged to bishops to do. But they persisted :

viil.] ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 177

prayers were accordingly ordered throughout all the
churches of England, and the court broke up. When
the king s temper was sounded, he was as obstinate
as ever. One of his chief men in familiar talk spoke
of the Abbot of Bee as the holiest man he had ever
known ; " he loved God only, and, as was plain in all
his ways, desired nothing transitory." " Not even the
archbishopric ?" rejoined William with his character
istic scoff. The other maintained his opinion, and
said that there were many who thought the same.
" If he thought that he had but the least chance of

o

it," said the king, "would he not dance and clap his
hands as he rushed to embrace it ? But," he added,
" by the Holy Face of Lucca," (his usual oath,)
" neither he nor any one else at this time shall be
" archbishop except myself."

The king was still at Gloucester, when, in the
beginning of 1093, he was seized with a dangerous
illness. The times were so unsettled, that the anxiety
caused by it brought back the bishops and great men
who had just dispersed. William thought himself
dying, and he looked back and looked forward with
the feelings so common in those days, when men
were reckless in health and helpless in the hour of
need. The victims of his rapacity and injustice, the
prisoners in his dungeons, the crown debtors ground
down and ruined by fiscal extortion, the churches
which he had plundered and sold, and kept without
pastors, all rose up before his mind : above all, the
flagrant and monstrous wrong to the nation as
well as to religion, of the greatest see of the realm,
treated with prolonged and obstinate indignity and
left unfilled. His barons as well as his bishops

S.L. X.

i ;8 AN S ELM, [CHAP.

spoke their minds plainly, and pressed for reparation
and amendment. And now, as was natural, the
influence of a spiritual counsellor like Anselm was
at once thought of. In those times, sick men thought
nothing of sending across the sea for a comforter
whose knowledge and goodness they trusted, to aid
and advise them in their ignorance and terror : and
Anselm had the greatest name of all of his time
for that knowledge which heals the soul. He was
staying, ignorant of the king s illness, somewhere
not far from Gloucester, when he was summoned
in all haste to attend upon the dying man. He
came ; "he goes into the king," as Eadmer tells the
story ; " he is asked what advice he thinks most
wholesome for the soul of the dying. He first begs
to be told what had been counselled to the sick
man by his attendants. He hears, approves, and
adds It is written, Begin to the Lord in confession,
and so it seems to me that first he should make a
clean confession of all that he knows that he has
done against God, and should promise that, if he
recovers, he will without pretence amend all ; and
then that without delay he should give orders for all
to be done which you have recommended. The pur
port of this advice is approved, and the charge
assigned him of receiving this confession. The
king is informed of what Anselm had said to be
most expedient for his soul s health. He at once
agrees, and with sorrow of heart engages to do all
that Anselm s judgment requires, and all his life
long to keep more fully justice and mercifulness.
He pledges to this his faith, and he makes his bishops
witnesses between himself and God, sending persons

VIIL] ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 179

to promise this his word to God on the altar in his
stead. An edict is written, and sealed with the
king s seal, that all prisoners whatsoever should be
set free in all his dominion; all debts irrevocably
forgiven ; all offences, heretofore committed, be par
doned and forgotten for ever. Further, there are
promised to all the people good and holy laws, the
inviolable upholding of right, and such a serious in
quiry into wrong-doing as may deter others." " The
king," says Florence, with the Peterborough Chronicle,
"when he thought himself soon to die, promised to
God, as his barons recommended to him, to correct
his life, to sell no more churches, nor put them out
to farm, but to defend them by his kingly power,
to take away unrighteous laws, and to establish
righteous ones."

There was one more matter to be settled : the
king, who believed himself and \vas believed by
others to be dying, was dying with the vacant arch
bishopric in his possession and on his conscience.
There could be no question now with him about
getting free from the perilous load. But who was
to be archbishop ? All waited for the king to
name him. He named Anselm. Anselm, he said,
was most worthy of it.

And now followed a scene, which we read with
different feelings, according as we are able to believe
that a great post like the archbishopric may have
had irresistible terrors, overwhelming all its attractions
or temptations, to a religious mind and conscience
in the eleventh century. If Anselm s reluctance
was not deep and genuine, the w r hole thing was the
grossest of comedies ; if his reluctance was real,

X 2

i8o ANSELM, [CHAR

the scene is one of a thousand examples of the way
in which the most natural and touching feelings may
be expressed in shapes, which by the changes of
times and habits come to seem most grotesque and
unintelligible. But if it was a comedy, or even if he
did not know his own mind, then the whole view
which was taken of Anselm in his own time was mis
taken, and the conception of his character on which
the present account is written, is fundamentally
wrong. His writings, the picture of the man shown
in his letters, and the opinion of those who knew him
by reputation and of those who knew him best and
wrote of him, have conspired to lead us wrong.

When the king s choice was announced to Anselm,
he trembled and turned pale. The bishops came to
bring him to the king, to receive the investiture of
the archbishopric in the customary way, by the
delivery of a pastoral staff. Anselm absolutely re
fused to go. Then the bishops took him aside from
the bystanders, and expostulated with him. " What
did he mean ? How could he strive against God ?
He saw Christianity almost destroyed in England, all
kinds of wickedness rampant, the churches of God
nigh dead by this man s tyranny ; and when he could
help, he scorned to do so. Most wonderful of men,
what was he thinking about ! Where were his wits
gone to ? He was preferring his own ease and quiet
to the call which had come to him to raise up Can
terbury from its oppression and bondage, and to
share in the labours of his brethren." He insisted,
" Bear with me, I pray you, bear with me, and attend
to the matter. I know that the tribulations are
great. But consider, I am old and unfit for work :

VIIL] ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 181

how can I bear the charge of all this Church ? I
am a monk, and I can honestly say, I have shunned
all worldly business. Do not entangle me in what
I have never loved, and am not fit for." But they
put aside his plea. Only let him go forward boldly
and be their guide and leader, and they would take
care of the temporal part of his work. No, he said,
it could not be. There was his foreign allegiance,
his foreign obedience to his archbishop, his ties to
his monastery, which could not be dissolved without
the will of his brethren. These matters, they an
swered naturally enough, could easily be arranged ;
but he still refused. " It is no use," he said ; " what
you purpose shall not be." At last they dragged
him by main force to the sick king s room : William,
in his anguish and fear, was deeply anxious about the
matter, and entreated him with tears, by the memory of
his father and mother, who had been Anselm s friends,
to deliver their son from the deadly peril in which
he stood. The sick man s distress moved some of
the bystanders, and they turned with angry remon
strances on Anselm. " What senseless folly this was !
The king could not bear this agitation. Anselm
was embittering his dying hours ; and on him would
rest the responsibility of all the mischiefs that would
follow, if he would not do his part by accepting the
pastoral charge." Anselm in his trouble appealed
for encouragement to two of his monks, Baldwin and
Eustace, who were with him. " Ah, my brethren, why
do not you help me ? " Might it have been the
will of God," he used to say, speaking of those
moments, " I would, if I had the choice, gladly have
died, rather than been raised to the archbishopric."

1 82 ANSELM, [CHAP.

Baldwin could only speak of submitting to the will
of God ; and burst, says Eadmer, into a passion of
tears, blood gushing from his nostrils. "Alas! your
staff is soon broken," said Anselm. Then the king
bade them all fall at ^nselm s feet to implore his assent ;
he, in his turn, fell down before them, still holding
to his refusal. Finally, they lost patience ; they were
angry with him, and with themselves for their own
irresolution. The cry arose, "A pastoral staff! a
pastoral staff! They dragged him to the king s
bed-side, and held out his right arm to receive the
staff. But when the king presented it, Anselm
kept his hand firmly clenched and would not take
it. They tried by main force to wrench it open ;
and when he cried out with the pain of their violence,
they at last held the staff closely pressed against
his still closed hand. Amid the shouts of the crowd,
" Long live the Bishop" with the Te Deum of the
bishops and clergy, "he was carried, rather than led,
to a neighbouring church, still crying out, It is nought
that ye are doing, it is nought that ye are doing."
He himself describes the scene in a letter to his
monks at Bee. " It would have been difficult to
make out whether madmen were dragging along one
in his senses, or sane men a madman, save that
they were chanting, and I, pale with amazement and
pain, looked more like one dead than alive." From
the church he went back to the king : " I tell thee, my
lord king," he said, "that thou shalt not die of this
sickness ; and hence I wish you to know how easily
you may alter what has been done with me ; for I have
not acknowledged nor do I acknowledge its validity."
Then, when he had left the king s chamber, he

VIIL] ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 183

addressed the bishops and nobles who were escort
ing him. They did not know, he said, what they
had been doing. They had yoked together to the
plough the untameable bull with the old and feeble
sheep ; and no good could come of the union. The
plough was the Church of God ; and the plough in
England was drawn by two strong oxen, the king
and the Archbishop of Canterbury: the one, by his
justice and power in things of this world ; the other,
by his teaching and governance in things divine.
One, Lanfranc, was dead ; and in his room, with his
fierce companion, they had joined the poor sheep,
which in its own place might furnish milk and wool
and lambs for the service of the Lord, but now could
only be the victim of violence which it was helpless
to prevent. When their short satisfaction at the
relief which they had gained had passed, they would
find that things w r ould become worse than ever. He
would have to bear the brunt of the king s savage
temper: they would not have the courage to stand
by him against the king ; and when he was crushed,
they would in their turn find themselves under the
king s feet. Then dismissing them, he returned to
his lodging. He was almost overcome and faint
with distress ; they brought him holy water and made
him drink it. This happened on the First} Sunday
in Lent, March 6, 1093. The king immediately
ordered that he should be invested with all the
temporalities of the see, as Lanfranc had held them.

There was plainly no escape. His acceptance
was the one chance open for better things. If there
was to be an archbishop, it must be Anselm. On
cooler thoughts, he recognized what had happened as

1 84 ANSELM, [CHAP.

the will of God ; though, as he said, whether in mercy
or wrath, he could not tell : and he bowed to it. There
were still many steps between him and the arch
bishopric. The consents of the Duke of Normandy,
of the Archbishop pf Rouen, and of the monks of
Bee were necessary, in order to release Anselm from
his existing obligations. From the Duke and the
Archbishop the requisite consent was easily obtained.
The monks of Bee were more difficult. It is a curious
feature in the monastic discipline, that while the abbot
was supreme over the monastery, the monastery as a
body had the right to command the abbot on his
obedience to bow to their claims on his service. At
Bee, they were disposed to insist on this right. They
did not like to lose their famous abbot. Some were
deeply attached to him. There were some who
whispered complaints of his ambition and self-
seeking. They refused at first to set him free.
At the solemn chapter held to decide on the matter,
there was an obstinate minority which refused to
concur in relieving him from his duties to Bee.
Their discontent was shared by others. Duke
Robert spoke disrespectfully of Anselm s motives.
Gilbert, Bishop of Evreux, the diocese in which Bee
was situated, who had given to Anselm the consecra
tion of abbot, expressed himself unfavourably to
Anselm s honesty in taking the archbishopric. It
is plain that, as was natural enough, there was a
good deal of talk in Normandy and the neighbour
hood about the motives which had drawn away the
Abbot of Bee to England.

Anselm was in the position, always a difficult
one to act in, and for others to judge about, of a man

viii.] ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 185

long marked out for high and difficult office, who has
at first violently shrunk from the appointment which
seemed almost called for, and has then made up his
mind to take it. There is indecision in such a situa
tion ; and he has to bear the consequences. He can
but throw himself on his character, on the imperious
necessities of the call, on the equitable interpretation of
circumstances. There certainly was a cause. " If you
knew/ he writes to the monks at Bee, "what mischief
the continuance of this long vacancy (of Canterbury)
has done both to souls and bodies, and how hateful it
is, and they, too, by whom it is caused, to all the better
and wiser sort, yes, and to the English people, I think
if you had the feelings of men you too would detest
its prolongation." " There are some, I hear," he says in
another letter, " who they are God knows, who
either spitefully fancy, or through misunderstanding
suspect, or are stung by unruly vexation to say, that I
am rather drawn to the archbishopric by corrupt am
bition, than forced to it by a religious necessity. I know
not what I can say to persuade them of what is in my
conscience, if my past life and conversation do not
satisfy them. I have lived for thirty-three years in
the monastic habit : three without office, fifteen as
prior, as many as abbot ; and those who have known
me have loved me, not from care of my own about it,
but by God s mercy; and those the more, who knew
me the most intimately and familiarly; and no one
saw in me anything from which he could gather that I
took delight in promotion. What shall I do then ? How
shall I drive away and quench this false and hateful
suspicion, that it may not hurt the souls of those who
-once loved me for God s sake, by chilling their chanty ;

1 86 AN S ELM, [CHAP

or of those to whom my advice or example, be it worth
what it may, might be of use, by making them think
me worse than I really am ; or of those who do not
know me and hear this, by setting before them an evil

example Thou God seest me ; be thou my

witness, that I know not, as my conscience tells me,
why the love of anything, which thy servant as a
despiser of the world ought to despise, should drag
and bind me to the archbishopric to which I am
suddenly hurried." " Here," he proceeds, " is my
conscience, about my wish for the archbishopric or
my dislike to it. If I deliberately lie to God, I don t
know to whom I can speak the truth." He goes
on, after warning those who were busy in fostering
suspicion, "whether many or one," to notice some of
the forms in which the claim of the monastery to keep
him was put. " Some of you say that I might have
reasonably held out against the election ; they say,
1 When he was compelled to be an abbot, he delivered
himself as a servant to us in the name of the Lord
. . . But what did I give you in l the name of the Lord ?^
Surely this : that I would not of my own will with
draw myself from your service, nor seek to withdraw
myself, except under the obligation of that order
and obedience of which I was before, according to
God s will, the servant. He ought, they said, to
have put forward this previous surrender of himself
to Bee as a bar to any other office. He had been given
to the brethren at Bee, " according to God ; : and
after the analogy of marriage, no one ought to take
away him whom God had given. They reminded him
that he had been used to say, that he desired not to
live except for them ; that he never would have any

VIIL] ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 187

other government except that of Bee. The answer
is that God s will has overruled it all. " I trusted to
my strength and wit to keep myself where I wished
to be ; God has been stronger and craftier than I,
and my confidence has come to nothing." The
reluctance of the monks to part with him, notwith
standing the shapes which it took, and the irritation
which the change created, are remarkable proofs of
what Anselm had been at Bee. " Many of you," he
writes, " nearly all, came to Bee because of me ; but
none of you became a monk because of me : it
was for no hope of recompense from me that you
vowed yourselves to God ; from Him to whom you
gave all you had, from Him look for all you want.
Cast all your burden upon Him and He will nourish
you. For myself I pray that you will not love me
less, because God does His will with me ; that I may
not lose my reward with you, if I have ever wished to
do your will, because now I dare not and ought not
and cannot resist the will of God, nor up to this time
see how I can withdraw myself from the Church of
the English, except by resisting God. Show that you
have loved me, not only for yourselves, but for God s
sake and my own."

All these difficulties caused delay. The king
meanwhile got well, and with health came regrets for
the engagements made on his sick-bed. Eadmer says
that his public promises were without scruple broken.
The amnesty to prisoners was recalled ; the cancelled
debts were again exacted ; the suits and claims of the
crown, which had been abandoned, were revived.
"Then arose such misery and suffering through the
whole realm, that whoever remembers it cannot

VSELM,

remember to have soon anything like it in England.
All the evil which the king had done before he was
sick seemed good in comparison with the evils which
he did when restored to health." He seemed to look
back on his illness % with fierce bitterness. Gundulf,
Bishop of Rochester, an old pupil and friend of
Anselm s at Bee, and the king s chief architect, remon
strated. "Be assured. Bishop," was the answer, per
haps in half-jest to people who understood no jesting on
such matters, " that, by the Holy Face of Lucca, God
shall never have me ^ood for the ill that He has brought

-3 O

on me." But he had shown no wish to revoke Anselm s
appointment. Anselm received the formal consent
to his election from Normandy before it reached
the king. Anselm, however, was not yet bound. At
Rochester, where he met William in the course of the
summer, he set before the king three conditions on
which only he would accept the archbishopric. All
the possessions of the see, as Lanfranc had held
them, must be granted to him without trouble ; and
if the see had claims for lands which had been taken
from it, the king must do him right. Then, in things
pertaining to God and Christian religion, the king
must give special weight to his counsel ; and as he
took the king for his earthly lord and defender, so
the king must have him for his spiritual father and
ghostly adviser. Lastly, he reminded the king that
in the quarrel that was going on between the rival
Popes, Urban and the Anti-Pope Clement, who was
recognized by the Emperor, he, with the rest of the
Xorman Church, had acknowledged Urban, and that
from this allegiance he could not swerve. The caution

o

necessary, because England as yet had been

viii.] ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 189

neutral, and had acknowledged neither. Let the
king, he said, declare his mind on these points, that
I may know what my course is to be. The king
summoned two of his advisers, William de St.
Carileph Bishop of Durham, and Robert Count of
Meulan, or, as it was then written, Mellent, and asked
Anselm to repeat his words. He did so ; and the
king by his council answered, that as to the see
property, Anselm should have all that Lanfranc had,
but that about any further claim he would make no
promise. And as to this and other points he would
trust Anselm as he should find that he ought. A few
days after he also received from Normandy the letters
releasing Anselm. He summoned Anselm to Wind
sor, where the court was staying, and invited him to
acquiesce in the choice made by himself and the
whole realm ; but he went on to beg of Anselm, as
a personal favour to himself, that he would agree that
the grants of Church lands made by the king since
Lanfranc s death to military vassals of the Crown, on
tenure of service to himself, should stand. This meant
that these lands were to be withdrawn for good
from the see. To this Anselm would not agree. He
would not bargain to spoil a church office which was
not even yet his. His view, repeated more than once
in his letters, was clear and simple. It was a time
when reckless giving was followed by unscrupulous
encroachment ; and his successor, he foresaw, would
have just as much as, and no more than, he himself
should have on the day when he died. If other people
robbed Church lands, or connived at the robbery, the
wrong might be repaired. " But now as the king is
the advocate of the Church, and the Archbishop the

Ah S ELM, [CHAP.

trustee, the answer hereafter will be, to any claim of
restitution, that what the king has done, and the
archbishop confirmed by allowing, must hold good."
The king was so irritated by this refusal that the
whole matter was suspended. Anselm, says Eadmer,
began to hope that he should escape the burden. " I
said and did for six months," he says to his friend
the Archbishop of Lyons, " all that I could without
sin that I might be let off." But the complaints of
the ruin of the Church began again, and were, after
what had passed, too much for the king. The monks
of Canterbury assailed Anselm with eager and angry
appeals. At last he consented. At Winchester he
was, " according to the custom of the land, made
the king s man, and ordered to be seised of the
whole archbishopric as Lanfranc had been." On the
5th of September he came to Canterbury, and was
enthroned. On the very day of the solemnity Ralph
Flambard appeared there, with his airs of insolence
and his harshness, to disturb the festivities by a suit
in the king s name against some of the archbishop s
tenants. The people s minds were deeply wounded at
the insult; that "a man like Anselm should not be
allowed to pass the first day of his dignity in peace."
He himself took it as a presage of what awaited him.
On the 4th of December, 1093, he was consecrated
by the Archbishop of York, in the presence of nearly
all the English bishops. According to the old ritual,
the Book of the Gospels, opened at random, was laid
on the shoulders of the newly consecrated prelate,
and the passage at which it opened was taken as a
sort of omen of his episcopate. The passage which
turned up was, " He bade many, and sent his servant

VIIL] ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 191

at supper-time to say to them that were bidden,
Come ; for all things are now ready. And they all
with one consent began to make excuse."

His first intercourse with the king was friendly ;
but it was soon clouded. William was in the midst
of his projects against his brother Robert, and money
was his great want. Among others who offered their
presents, Anselm, urged by his friends, brought 500
marks. The king at first received it graciously.
But the men round him represented to him that he
might reasonably expect a much greater sum from
one to whom he had done such honour. Accordingly,
as his practice was when he was dissatisfied with a
present, Anselm s 500 marks were refused. He went
to the king and expostulated. " It was his first
present, but not his last ; and a free gift was better
than a forced and servile contribution." His words
implied a reproof to the king s system of extortion ;
and William answered angrily, that he wanted neither
his money nor his scolding, and bade him begone.
Anselm thought, says Eadmer, of the words of the
Gospel which had been read on the day when he first
entered his cathedral " No man can serve two
masters." But the refusal was a relief. A sum of
money in the shape of a free gift, after a man was
consecrated, was one of the ways in which church
offices were sold and bought. Implacable opposition to
this system was one of the main points in the policy of
the reforming party with whom Anselm sympathised.
He congratulated himself that he was saved even from
the appearance of a corrupt bargain for the arch
bishopric. He was urged to regain the king s favour
by doubling his present, but he refused ; he gave away

192 AN S ELM, [CHAP.

the money to the poor, and left the court when the
Christmas festival was over.

He soon met William again. With the rest of the
great men of England he was summoned in February
1094, to meet the king at Hastings, where he was
waiting for a fair wind to carry him over to Nor
mandy. The bishops were to give their blessing to
the expedition, and to help the king by their prayers
against the perils of the sea. There was a long delay
from contrary winds, and Anselm now made his
appeal to the king for help in the work which the
king had forced upon him. The points on which he
insisted were two. He wanted some check to the
unbridled licence of manners to which the contem
porary chronicles bear ample and detailed evidence ;
and he wanted important religious posts, like those
of the abbots of the monasteries, to be filled up. The
customary remedy for disorders, w r ell known in Eng
land as in Normandy, was a council of bishops,
meeting with the king s sanction, whose regulations
were to be backed by his authority. Anselm asked
for such a council, " by which Christian religion, which
had well-nigh perished in many men, might be restored,"
and the influence of its teachers revived and strength
ened. William demurred. He would call a council
only at his own time \vhen he pleased, not when
Anselm pleased ; and, with a sneer, he asked what
the council was to be about ? " The whole land," said
Anselm, "unless judgment and discipline are exer
cised in earnest, will soon be a Sodom." William was
not pleased, and answered shortly, " What good would
come of this matter for you?" "If not for me, at
least, I hope, for God and for you." " Enough," said

viii.] ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 193

the king ; "talk to me no more about it." Anselm left
the subject, and spoke of the vacant abbeys, repre
senting the ruin caused to the monks themselves, and
the great danger to the king s soul, of leaving all this
evil unredressed. William could no longer contain his
anger. " What are the abbeys to you ? Are they not
mine ? Go to ; you do what you like with your
farms, and am I not to do what I like with my
abbeys?" " Yours," was the answer, " to protect as
their advocate, not to waste and destroy and use for
the expense of your wars." The king expressed
again his great displeasure. " Your predecessor," he
said, " would not have dared to speak thus to my
father. I will do nothing for you." And they parted.
Anselm thought that in these ungracious answers
the old anger about the money might be working ;
and he resolved to send a message by the bishops
asking for the king s friendship. " If he will not
give it me, let him say why ; if I have offended, I am
ready to make amends." " No," the king answered,
" I have nothing to accuse him of; but I will not
grant him my favour, because I do not hear any reason
why I should." The bishops brought back the reply,
and Anselm asked what he meant by " not hearing
why he should." The bishops saw no difficulty in
understanding him. " The mystery," they said, " is
plain. If you want peace with him, you must give
him money."- -" Give him the five hundred pounds
you offered," was their advice, " and promise as much
more ; and he will give you back his friendship. We
see no other way of getting out of the difficulty ; and
we have no other for ourselves." " Far be it from me,"
said Anselm, "to take this way out of it." To such a

S.L. X.

194 ANSELM, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

precedent for extortion he could never lend himself.
Besides, his tenants had been racked since Lanfranc s
death ; and was he " to strip them in their nakedness,
or rather flay them alive ?" It was unworthy to think
of buying the king^s favour, as he would a horse or an
ass, for money. What he asked was to have as arch
bishop his love, and to give himself and all he had
to his king s service. His business-like brethren re
marked, that "at any rate he could not refuse the
five hundred marks already offered." " No," he said,
" he would not offer what had been rejected ; and
besides, the greater part of it was gone to the poor."
When William was told of this, he sent back the
following answer : " Yesterday I hated him much,
to-day still more ; to-morrow and ever after he may
be sure I shall hate him with more bitter hatred. As
father and archbishop I will never hold him more ;
his blessings and prayers I utterly abhor and refuse.
Let him go where he will, and not wait any longer
for my crossing to give me his blessing." " Anselm
departed with speed," says Eadmer, who appears
from this time as the archbishop s constant com
panion, " and left him to his will." William crossed
to Normandy, for what seemed at the time an
inglorious summer war, in which all that was clear
was that it had cost him vast sums of money, wrung
from the English people, the English churches, and
the English monks. Normandy was not yet his. But
it was soon to be, and his was money not spent for
nothing.

CHAPTER IX.

THE MEETING AT ROCKINGHAM.

" O happy in their souls high solitude
AVho commune thus with God and not with earth !
Amid the scoffings of the wealth-enslaved
A ready prey, as though in absent mood
They calmly move, nor hear the unmannered mirth."

Lyra Apostolica, xxiv.

THE signs of the approaching storm had shown
themselves. William had found that the new arch
bishop was not a man to be frightened by rough
words into compliance with arbitrary and unreason
able demands. Anselm had found what he had
anticipated, that the king, once more in health,
with his political objects before him and his need of
money pressing him, would not listen to remon
strances, nor change his ways. Naturally enough,
the king thought he had made a great mistake in
forcing the archbishopric on Anselm. He began to
think how he could force it from him. Occasions for
attempting this were not likely to be wanting.

On his return from Normandy a new cause of
difference w r as opened between him and Anselm.
The rule had been established by the Popes, and
accepted by Western Christendom, that a metro
politan must go to Rome to get from the Pope his
Pallium, the white woollen stole with four crosses which

O 2

i 9 6 THE MEETING AT ROCKINGHAM. [CHAP.

was the badge of his office and dignity, and is still
the special blazon in the armorial bearings of Canter
bury. The usage was an acknowledged one at this
time : Lanfranc himself had gone to Rome for the
purpose. But the chair of St. Peter was now claimed
by two rivals, Urban and Clement. Anselm had
foreseen a difficulty in the matter. France and
Normandy had acknowledged Urban ; England had
acknowledged neither. Anselm, before his final
acceptance, had given fair warning that to him
Urban was the true Pope ; the king had evaded
the subject. Anselm now asked leave to go to Rome
for his Pallium. William was at Gillingham, a royal
residence near Shaftesbury, on the borders of the
Forest of Selwood. " From which Pope ?" asked
the king. Anselm had already given the answer to
the question, and he could but repeat it " From
Pope Urban." " Urban," said the king, " I have not
acknowledged. By my customs, by the customs of
my father, no man may acknowledge a Pope in Eng
land without my leave. To challenge my power in this,
is as much as to deprive me of my crown." Anselm
reminded him of the warning given at Rochester.
The king broke forth in anger, declaring that Anselm
could not keep his faith to the king, and his obedience
to the Apostolic See, without the king s leave. The
question thus raised could not be left unsettled.
Was that indeed the rule for the Churchmen of
England ? Anselm demanded that it should be
answered by the great council of England. The
demand could not be refused, and an assembly was
summoned to consider the whole matter, and to
give the king advice upon it.

ix.] THE MEETING AT ROCKINGHAM, 197

Accordingly a great meeting of the chief men in
Church and State was held at the Castle of Rock-
ingham. " The tangled forest of Rockingham," says
Sir F. Palgrave, "a continuation of the Derbyshire
woodlands, was among the largest and most secluded
in the kingdom. At a much later period, this dreary
weald measured thirty miles in length. The castle,
raised by the Conqueror, had been planned by the
cautious sovereign quite as much for the purpose of
coercing the inhabitants, as for the protection of the
glowing furnaces. Echoes of facts and t opinions, the
mediaeval traditions, represent the forgemen as a
peculiarly barbarous class ; had Anselm been faint
hearted, he might have dreaded placing himself in a
spot where the executioners of any misdeed or cruelty
might be so readily found." But he had no reason
for such fears. Fierce as the age was, and fierce as
William was, such an end to his quarrel with Anselm
was never thought of. Roughness, insult, treachery,
high-handed injustice, were weapons to be used with
out scruple ; but it is not enough to say that the
murder of an opponent like Anselm, judicial or secret,
would have shocked everybody : it never presented
itself to the king s mind. Anselm all along was quite
safe of his life, and felt himself to be so.

The great council we might almost call it a par
liament met on Mid-Lent Sunday, March n, 1095,
probably in the church of the castle. There were the
bishops, abbots, and nobles ; and besides a numerous
throng, watching and listening, of " monks, clerics,
and laymen." The king did not appear ; he had his
private council sitting apart, from which messages
passed to and fro between him and the archbishop

198 THE MEETING AT ROCKINGHAM. [CHAP.

in the larger public assembly. The proceedings are
reported in great detail, day by day, by Eadmer, who
was present, and who probably heard what passed on
the king s side from Gundulf, the one bishop who did
not take part against Anselm. Anselm stated his case,
and the reasons why he invoked their judgment and
arbitration. It was the same question which was to
be put by the king, and answered so emphatically by
bishops and parliament, four centuries later; but it
was put under very different circumstances, and under
very different conditions at this time. "The king,"
said Anselm, " had told him that he had not yet ac
knowledged Urban as Pope, and that he therefore did
not choose that Anselm should go to Urban for the
Pallium." He had added, " If you receive in my realm
Urban or any one else for Pope, without my choice
and authority, or if having received him you hold to
him, you act against the faith which you owe to me,
and offend me not less than if you tried to deprive
me of my crown. Therefore be assured that in my
realm you shall have no part, unless I have the proof
by plain declarations that, according to my wish,
you refuse all submission and obedience to Urban."
Anselm went on to remind them that it was by no
wish or seeking of his own that he was archbishop ;
that he had been driven to it ; that he had known
his own infirmities, and urged them ; further, that on
this point he had from the first given fair notice that
he had acknowledged Urban, and would not swerve
from his obedience for an hour. " They knew," he said,
" how much he had desired the burden, how attractive
he had held it, what pleasure he had found in it." He
declared once more that he would rather, with all

.IX.] THE MEETING AT ROCKINGHAM. 199

reverence to the will of God, have been cast into
the fire than have been exalted to the archbishopric.
" But," he said, " seeing that you were importunate, I
have trusted myself to you, and taken up the load you
put upon me, relying on the hope of your promised
assistance." Now the time had come to claim the
promise. The question had been adjourned to this as
semblage, that they all might by joint counsel inquire
whether, saving his faith to the king, he could keep
his obedience to the Apostolic See. He especially ap
pealed to his brethren the bishops, that " they would
show him how he might neither do anything contrary
to his obedience to the Pope, nor offend against the
faith which he owed to the king. For it is a serious
thing to despise and deny the Vicar of St. Peter ; it
is a serious thing to break the faith which I pro
mised to keep, according to God, to the king : but
that, too, is serious which is said, that it is impossible
for me to keep the one without breaking the other."

It was a fair question to men with the inherited
and unbroken convictions of the religion of that age.
The claim which William maintained had come down
to him from his father, who had insisted on it reso
lutely, with Lanfranc s sanction or acquiescence, even
against Gregory VII. "It was a prerogative," the
bishops declared, "which their lord held chief above
anything in his government, and in which it was clear
that he excelled all other kings." On the other hand,
no one in those days imagined Christianity without
Christendom, and Christendom without a Pope ; and
all these bishops understood exactly as Anselm did
the favourite papal text, "Thou art Peter, and on
-this rock I will build my Church." Nobody in those

200 THE MEETING AT ROCKINGHAM. [CHAP.

days doubted the divine authority of the Pope : the
claim on which the Norman kings laid so much stress
had naturally and reasonably arisen from the contest
of rival popes, and the doubt who was really the true
Pope. No one had held more intimate relations with
Rome, or made more use of the Pope s power, than
William the Conqueror. But with Anselm, the only
question that there could be, who was the Pope, was,
as he had from the first declared, no question at all ;
he, with Normandy, and all Gaul, had recognized
Urban as the true Pope. It was part of William s
policy of mingled bullying and trickery, the trust
placed in evasion and delay by a man who doubted
of all men s straightforwardness and disinterestedness,
and hoped that with time their selfishness would be
his sure ally, that he shut his eyes to what was plain
from the first, that the Pope whom Anselm had
acknowledged, he would stick to.

But the bishops were in heart, as w r ell as by the
forms of the law, the king s men. Some of them
had bought their bishoprics, most of them were afraid
of William, and were always expecting to have to ap
pease his wrath by heavy gifts of money. They saw,
too, that a quarrel of this kind was most dangerous to
the already precarious peace of their churches ; and they
refused to be drawn into it. With compliments on
Anselm s wisdom, which ought, they said, to be their
guide, they declined to give any other advice than
that he should submit himself without conditions to
the king s will. They were willing, however, to
report his words to the king, and the proceedings
were adjourned to the morrow. On the Monday
accordingly, they met again, and Anselm repeated

ix.] THE MEETING AT ROCKING HAM. 201

his question, to which they gave the same answer.
They would advise him only on condition of his sub
mitting himself, without qualification or reserve, to the
king s will. It was the answer of cowards, convicted
by their own conscience, and knowing that all who
heard them knew what was in their conscience.
" Having said these words, they were silent," says
Eadmer, " and hung down their heads, as if to receive
what was coming on them." Then Anselm, his eyes
kindling, made his appeal. " Since you," he said, " the
shepherds of the Christian people, and you who are
called chiefs of the nation, refuse your counsel to me,
your chief, except according to the will of one man, I
will go to the Chief Shepherd and Prince of all ; I will
hasten to the Angel of great counsel, and receive from
Him the counsel which I will follow in this my cause,
yea, His cause and that of His Church. He says to
the most blessed of the apostles, Peter, Thou art
Peter, and on this rock will I build my Church! &c.
. . . And, again, to all the apostles, jointly : *Hc that
hears you hears vie, and he that despises you despises
me ; and he who touches you touches the apple of
mine eye" It was primarily to St. Peter, and in him
to the other apostles; it is primarily to St. Peter s
vicar, and through him to the other bishops who fill
the apostles places, that these words, as we believe,
were said ; not to any emperor whatsoever, not to any
king, to no duke, or count. But wherein we must
be subject and minister to earthly princes, the same
Angel of great counsel teaches us, saying : Render
to Cczsar the things that are Cczsar s, and the things
that are God s to God These are God s words, these
are God s counsels. These I allow and accept, and

202 THE MEETING AT ROCKINGHAM. [CHAP.

from them will I not depart. Know ye, therefore, all
of you, that in the things that are God s I will render
obedience to the Vicar of St. Peter ; and in those
which belong of right to the earthly dignity of my
lord the king, I will render him both faithful counsel
and service, to the best of my understanding and
power." The chief men of the assembly were not
prepared for this bold and direct announcement.
Their irritation broke out in angry and confused
clamour, " so that it might be thought that they
were declaring him guilty of death ; " and they
peremptorily and angrily refused to report Anselm s
words to the king, to whose chamber they retired.
Anselm, finding no one whom he could trust to inform
William of what had passed, went to him and re
peated his words in his presence. William was, of
course, very angry. He intended that Anselm should
be silenced as well as forced to submission ; and he
looked to his bishops especially to silence him. It
was not easy for them "to find something to say
which should at once soothe the king s wrath, and not
openly contradict the alleged words of God." Eadmer
describes their perplexity, as, broken up into knots
of two or three, they discussed the matter ; while
Anselm, who had returned to the church, sat by
himself to wait the result, and at last, wearied by
the delay, "leaning his head against the wall, fell
into a calm sleep."

At length, late in the day, the bishops with some
of the lay nobles came to him from the king. Their
language was a mixture of coaxing and menace.
"The king," they said, "requires peremptorily an
immediate settlement, once for all, of the question

LIBRARY ST. MARY S COLLEGE

IX.] THE MEETING AT ROCKINGHAM. 203

which had been opened at Gillingham and adjourned
at Anselm s request to the present time. The matter
was perfectly plain and needed no argument. The
whole realm cried out against him for impairing the
honour of their lord s imperial crown ; for to take
away the customs of the royal dignity was as
good as taking away the king s crown ; one could
not be duly held without the other." Then they
appealed to his pride and self-interest. " This Urban
could be of no use to him ; why not shake off the
yoke of subjection to him, and be free, as becomes an
Archbishop of Canterbury, to fulfil the commands of
our lord the king. Let him like a wise man ask
pardon, and fall in with the king s wish ; and so they
who hated him, and exulted over his troubles, would
be put to confusion by the restoration of his high
place." Anselm, still declining to withdraw his obedi
ence from Pope Urban, asked, as the day was closing,
to put off his reply to the morrow, " so that thinking
over it I may answer what God shall please to inspire."
They judged that this meant that he was wavering.
The leader and spokesman on the king s side was
the Bishop of Durham, William de St. Carileph.
William by Eadmer s own account, a ready and
clever speaker, for he gives him this credit, while he
denies him that of " true wisdom" had, early in the
king s reign, begun by measuring his strength against
the king ; he had resisted the claim of jurisdiction of
the king s court on a bishop; he had tampered with,
if he had not joined in, the great conspiracy of the
Normans under Bishop Odo of Bayeux and Bishop
Geoffry of Coutances ; he had been forced to make
terms with the king, to leave his bishopric, and spend

204 THE MEETING AT ROCKINGHAM. [CHAP.

some years in banishment ; and now he was reconciled
with the king, and had formed the hope, that if he
could get Anselm out of the archbishopric he might
be his successor. He had done his best to foment
the quarrel between ^he king and Anselm ; and now,
encouraged by Anselm s request for delay, he boldly
engaged to William either to make him renounce the
Pope, or to force him to resign the see by the sur
render of the ring and staff. Either would suit
William s policy: Anselm would be discredited and
unable to speak and act with authority, if he gave up
the Pope ; or the king would be rid of him altogether,
and have established his absolute power by the most
signal proof of strength. " For what he wished was to
take from Anselm all authority for carrying out Chris
tian religion. For he had a misgiving that he was not
in complete possession of the royal dignity, as long
as any one in all the land was said, even in matters of
conscience (secundum Demn\ to hold anything or to
have any power, except through him." The Bishop
of Durham, accordingly, returned to Anselm w r ith
the king s final summons. Anselm had dared to make
the Bishop of Ostia Pope without the king s authority
in this his England. " Clothe him again, if you please,
with the due dignity of his imperial crown, and then
talk of delay. Else, he imprecates the hatred of
Almighty God on himself, and we his liegemen join
in the imprecation, if he grant even for an hour the
delay you ask for till to-morrow. Therefore, answer
at once, or you shall on the spot feel the doom which
is to avenge your presumption. Think it no matter
of jest. To us it is a matter of great pain and anger.
And no wonder. For that which your Lord and ours

IX.] THE MEETING AT ROCKINGHAM. 205

has as the chief prerogative of his rule, and in which
it is certain that he excels all other kings, you, as far
as you can, rob him of, against the faith you have
pledged him, and to the great distress and trouble
of all his friends." But William de St. Carileph had
overshot his mark and mistaken the man with whom
he had to deal. This threat of instant summary
judgment at the king s will and word might frighten ;
but if it did not frighten, it would be thrown away on
anyone who could appeal to the by no means dor
mant ideas of law and justice. Anselm listened
patiently, and replied, "Whoever would prove that,
because I will not renounce the obedience of the
venerable bishop of the holy Roman Church, I am
violating my faith and my oath to my earthly king,
let him present himself, and he shall find me pre
pared to answer him, as I ought, and where I ought."
When the Bishop of Durham and his companions
came to see the meaning of Anselm s words, " as I
ought and where I ought," they recognized in it a
plea to which they had no answer ; for it meant that
no one could pass judgment on an Archbishop of
Canterbury, except the highest judge and authority
in Christendom, the Pope himself ; and the claim
came home too powerfully to the minds of men, both
as Christians and as Englishmen, for the king s
Norman bishops to think of questioning it. The
sympathy of the crowd had been with Anselm ; but
fear of the king had kept down the expression of it to
faint murmurs. But now a soldier stepped out of the
throng, and kneeling before the archbishop, said,
" Lord and Father, thy children, through me, beseech
thee not to let thy heart be troubled by what thou hast

206 THE MEETING AT ROCKINGHAM. [CHAP.

heard ; but remember how holy Job on the dunghill
vanquished the devil, and avenged Adam whom the
devil had vanquished in Paradise." The quaint at
tempt at encouragement cheered Anselm. " He
perceived that the feeling of the people was with
him. So we were glad, and were more at ease in
our minds, being confident, according to the Scrip
ture, that the voice of the people is the voice
of God."

But in the court there was great vexation. " What
shall I do ?" says our reporter Eadmer literally our
reporter, for he was present during the whole ses
sion: "Were I to attempt to describe the threats,
reproaches, insults, false and foul language with which
the archbishop was assailed, I should be judged an
exaggerator." The king was exasperated, " even to
the dividing of his spirit," 1 with the failure of the
bishops : " What is this ? Did you not promise that
you would treat him according to my will, judge him,
condemn him ?" The Bishop of Durham was tho
roughly disconcerted ; his words on every point were
tame and halting ; he seemed to have lost his head.
He could only suggest what he had refused to Anselm,
delay till the morrow. On the morrow, Tuesday
morning, Anselm and his companions were in their
accustomed seats, waiting the king s orders. For a
long time none came. The council was perplexed.
The Bishop of Durham had nothing better to recom
mend than open violence. As a matter of argument
there was nothing to be said ; Anselm had the words
of God, the authority of the Apostle on his side. But
his staff and ring could be taken from him by force,

1 Heb. iv. 12, Vulg.

ix.] THE MEETING AT ROCKINGHAM. 207

and he expelled the kingdom. The Bishop of Durham
suggested the last expedient which the bishops could
agree in. Such a termination to the quarrel would
be at least the king s act, not their own, as it would
be if they passed judgment on him or on his plea.
An impracticable and dangerous leader would be got
rid of by lay violence, and they would not be compro
mised. But if the bishops acquiesced, the laymen of
the council were dissatisfied. They were beginning
to think that things were going too far. The same
feeling which made the commons see in the arch
bishop the first of Englishmen, the successor of the
great Englishman Dunstan, of the great Italian who
had turned Englishman, Lanfranc, made the nobles
see in him the first of their own order, the Father of
the chiefs of the realm, with whom they could have
no rivalry, the mediator and arbiter between them
and the crown, and the bulwark against its tyranny.
Only second to the crown, as part of the honour and
dignity of the land, was the archbishopric of Canter
bury : an injury to its honour was as serious as an
injury to that of the crown. The barons refused
to agree with the advice of the bishop. " His
words did not please them." " What does please you
then," said the king, " if they do not ? While I live,
equal in my realm I will not endure. And if you
knew that he had such strength on his side, why did
you let me engage in this legal conflict against him ?
Go, go, take counsel together ; for by God s counte
nance, if you do not condemn him, I will condemn
you." One of the shrewdest of them, Robert Count
of Mellent, who was hereafter to be one of Anselm s
stoutest enemies, answered, apparently with a sense of

2o8 THE MEETING A T ROCKING HA M. [CHAP.

amusement at the baffled eagerness of the bishops, and
perhaps with something of a sportsman s admiration for
the gallantry of the single-handed defence, " About our
counsels, I don t know quite what to say. For when
we have been arranging them all day long, and have
settled, by talking them over among ourselves, how
they are to hold together, he goes to sleep, and thinks
no harm ; and the moment they are opened before
him, with one breath of his lips he breaks them as if they
were cobwebs." The king turned again to the bishops :
"What could they do?" It was out of the question,
they said, to judge him ; but they agreed in the king s
strange suggestion, that though they could not judge
him, they could withdraw their obedience from him,
and deny him their brotherly friendship. This, then,
was agreed upon ; and, accompanied by some of the
English abbots, they finally announced to the arch
bishop that they withdrew their obedience from him,
as the king also withdrew from him his protection
and confidence, and would never more hold him for
archbishop and ghostly father. Anselm was to be
come a kind of outlaw, abandoned by all his brethren,
deprived of the king s protection and out of the
king s peace, put to shame before the whole realm.
His answer was calm and temperate. There must be
two to make a quarrel, and he on his part would not
quarrel either with them or with the king. He re
newed his own promise of fidelity and service to the
king ; he would still hold himself responsible for the
king s spiritual welfare, as far as the king deigned to
allow him ; and, come what might, he should still
retain the authority and name of the Archbishop of
Canterbury. William heard his answer with displea-

ix.] THE MEETING AT ROCKINGHAM. 209

sure ; he had probably expected submission or re
signation. There was still one more thing to do : the
ecclesiastical members of the council had formally
deserted Anselm, but the laymen had not. The king
turned to them : " No man shall be mine," he said,
"who chooses to be his;" appealing to the feudal
feeling about homage : and he called on his barons to
follow the example of the bishops. But the tide had
now completely turned. They absolutely refused to
lend themselves to a precedent so dangerous to all
their liberties. They in their turn appealed to the
subtleties of feudal customs. "We never were his
men, and we cannot abjure the fealty which we never
swore. He is our archbishop. He has to govern
Christian religion in this land, and in this respect we,
who are Christians, cannot refuse his guidance while
we live here, especially as no spot of offence attaches
to him to make you act differently as regards him."

The answer altered the whole face of matters. It
turned what had seemed the winning side into the
beaten and disappointed one. It upset all the king s
plans, and the three days laborious and shifty attempts
of the Bishop of Durham and his fellows. The lay
men, high and low, refused to go with them ; and the
defeat was confessed. The king, angry as he was,
dared not carry things too far with his unruly barons.
The bishops had made their sacrifice of honour and
conscience for nothing ; nothing was gained by the
public display of their subserviency, which it was not
even thought worth while to follow up. On all sides
they met mocking eyes and scowling looks, and heard
themselves spoken of in bywords of reproach : " This

or that bishop you might hear branded now by one
S.L. x. P

210 THE MEETING AT ROCKINGHAM. [CHAP.

man, then by another, with some nickname, ac
companying bursts of disgust : Judas the traitor,
Pilate, Herod, and the like." Nor was this all. The
king turned upon them, and, as if suspicious of their
straightforwardness, put to them a test one by one :
did they renounce obedience to Anselm uncondition
ally, or only so far as he claimed it by the authority
of the Pope ? The answers, as might be expected,
were various. Those who gave it boldly and without
reserve were treated with marks of favour as the
king s faithful friends and liegemen ; "those who
qualified it, were driven from his presence, as quibblers
and treacherous equivocators, and ordered to await
the sentence of his judgment in a distant part of the
castle. Thus terrified and covered with confusion upon
confusion, they skulked away to a corner of the build
ing. There they soon found the wholesome and familiar
counsel on which they were wont to rely : they gave
a large sum of money, and they \vere received back
into the king s favour."

Anselm, however, could not treat this public inti
mation from the king, that he was out of the king s
protection, merely as a feint. He at once demanded
a safe-conduct for one of the outports, that he might
quit the kingdom. But it was not William s game
that he should leave, still " seised of the arch
bishopric ; there was no way to " disseise " him, and
the demand was an unpleasant surprise. The bishops
had got the king into the difficulty with their advice,
and he had now in his irritation broken up his
party among them, by inflicting on them the humi
liation of the test question about their sincerity in
renouncing Anselm. He consulted with the barons ;

o

IX.] THE MEETING A T ROCKINGHAM. 2 1 1

and by their advice, the archbishop was again told to
retire to his lodging and come on the morrow for his
.answer. Early on Wednesday morning he received
a message : " Our lord the king desires you to come
to him." He went, anxious to know his fate, divided
between the hope of escape from his burdens and the
fear of remaining in England. " We mounted up, we
went and took our seat in our accustomed place, eager
to know the final issue of our matter." The message
came in the shape of a proposed adjournment of the
whole question. Anselm said that it was only an
attempt to gain time ; but it was not for him to refuse
delay; and a "truce" was agreed upon till the fol
lowing Whitsuntide ; the king still intimating that the
question could only be settled on his present terms.

Anselm accordingly left the court. But the policy
of annoyance and ill-usage did not cease. The king s
ill-humour vented itself on his friends. Baldwin of
Tournai, a monk of Bee, who had been much in
Anselm s confidence, was summarily expelled the
kingdom. The archbishop s chamberlain was arrested
in his very chamber before his eyes. The vexatious
system of the king s treasury and law courts was
carried on against the monks at Canterbury. "That
Church," says Eadmer, " suffered such a storm in all
its tenants, that every one agreed that it would be
better to be without a pastor at all as they had been,
than to have such a pastor as this." The archbishop,
according to the ways of the time, spent his time in
his various country manors ; Harrow, Hayes, and
Mortlake.

P 2

CHAPTER X.

THE FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM.

" Whose powers shed round him in the common strife,
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
A constant influence, a peculiar grace ;
But who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment, to which Heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad, for human kind,
Is happy as a Lover ; and attired
With sudden brightness, like a man inspired ;
And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law

In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw.
*******

Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not
Plays, in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won."

WORDSWORTH S Happy Warrior.

WILLIAM had not the least intention to disown the
Pope or to quarrel with Rome ; and his first step was
an attempt to play off Urban s name and authority on
his own side against Anselm. When the question
first arose he had sent two of the clerks of the chapel,
Gerard, afterwards Archbishop of York, and William
of Warelwast, to Rome, to inquire into the state of
things between the rival popes ; and further, to per
suade the Pope, by the means which were usual in
those days, and which were supposed even under the
reformed papacy of Gregory VII. to have great power
at Rome, to send the archiepiscopal pall to the king,

CH. x.] FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM. 213

to be given by him, with the Pope s sanction, to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, the name of the arch
bishop being suppressed. They found Urban in pos
session of Rome, and acknowledged him ; and in
answer to the king s request Walter, Bishop of
Albano, came to England as papal legate, in com
pany with the two chaplains, shortly before the
appointed time at Whitsuntide, bringing with him
the pallium. But the greatest secrecy was observed.
He passed through Canterbury privately, taking no
notice of the archbishop, and proceeded straight to
the king. His first object was to secure the formal
recognition of Urban in England. Anselm s friends
heard with consternation that the Pope s legate had
encouraged the king to hope that all his wishes
would be granted, and that he had said not a word
in Anselm s favour, or done anything on behalf of one
whose loyalty to the Pope had cost him so dear. The
disappointment was great : " What are we to say ?
If Rome prefers gold and silver to justice, what help
and counsel and comfort may those expect in their
troubles who have not wherewithal to pay that they
may have right done them in their cause ?"

What passed between the king and the Bishop of
Albano does not appear. Eadmer says that the legate
reported the Pope ready to agree to all the king s
wishes, and willing to grant them by special privilege
for his lifetime. But the result was that Urban was
formally acknowledged as Pope in England. Having
recognized Urban, the king then asked for the depo
sition of Anselm by the Pope s authority. He offered,
says Eadmer, a large annual payment to the Roman
Church if he could have his wish. But this was too

214 FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM. [CHAP.

much ; and he gave up the project, regretting that he
had gained so little by his recognition of Urban, but,
as the mistake was past remedy, intending to make the
best of it.

At Whitsuntide, Anselm, who had been keeping the
festival at his manor of Mortlake, was summoned to
the neighbourhood of Windsor, where the king was,
and came to Hayes, another of his manors. He was
visited the next day by nearly all the bishops, and
their errand was once more to prevail on him to make
up the quarrel by a payment of money. Anselm w r as
inflexible. He would not do his lord the shame to>
treat his friendship as a matter of bargain ; he asked
for it freely, as his archbishop and his subject. If he
could not have it on these terms, he asked again for a
safe-conduct to quit the realm. " Have you nothing
else to say to us ?" They then told him of the arrival
of the archiepiscopal stole, sent by the Pope to the
king. Here it was, to be had without the trouble of
the journey. Would he not make some acknowledg
ment of the benefit to himself? Would he not, for
his own credit s sake, offer the king at least what he
would have spent on the journey ? But he would not
hear of it, and bade them leave off. The king saw
that his game had been a false one, and threw it up
at last frankly. Trouble was abroad, and it was no
time to be keeping up a quarrel in which he was
baffled, and in which he could not carry the opinion
of his subjects with him. Rebellion was threatening
in the north : Robert Mowbray, Earl of Northumber
land, had refused the king s summons to appear
at Windsor ; the \Velsh marches were always dan
gerous. William was preparing for a bus}- and critical

x.] FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM. 215

summer, and he could not afford to offend his chief
men. Without more ado he followed their advice, and
freely restored Anselm to his favour. Bygones were
to be bygones, and he granted that the archbishop
.should freely exercise his office as the spiritual father
of the realm. They met publicly at Windsor as
friends, in the presence of the nobles and the
assembled multitude ; and while they were con
versing, " behold," says Eadmer, " that Roman Walter
appears, and pleasantly quotes the verse, Behold, how
good and joyful a thing- it is, brethren, to dwell together
in unity! And, sitting down, he discoursed somewhat
from the Lord s words about peace, praising the
revival of it between them, though feeling all the
while to his shame that it was not by his exertions
that peace had been sown."

It was still hoped that Anselm might flatter the
king by receiving the pall from his hands. But he
refused : what everyone looked upon as St. Peter s
gift it did not belong to the royal dignity to convey
to him. His view was the natural one, and he was
not pressed. It was arranged that it was to be laid
on the altar at Canterbury, and that Anselm was to
take it from thence. There accordingly, on the Third
Sunday after Trinity, June 10, 1095, it was brought
with great ceremony by Bishop Walter in a silver
case. Anselm, bare-footed and surrounded by the
bishops, took it from the altar. Again, it is said, as
at his consecration, the Gospel of the day happened
to be the parable of the great supper, with the
words about " calling many," and " all with one con
sent beginning to make excuse/ These things then
impressed men s minds as significant, and the double

216 FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM. [CHAP.

coincidence naturally excited much remark. For the
time Anselm was left in peace. On his way from
Windsor two other bishops who had taken part
against him at Rockingham, Osmund of Salisbury
and Robert of Hereford, the special friend of St.
Wulfstan of Worcester, followed him and asked his
forgiveness. They turned, says Eadmer, into a little
church by the way, and there he absolved them. His
chief antagonist, William de St. Carileph, a foiled and
disappointed man, felt the anger of his hard master.
His ill-success was harshly visited on him. " He
received a summons," says Sir F. Palgrave, " to
appear before the curia Regis, the King s Court, as
a delinquent. Grievously ill, he requested a respite.
Rufus rudely and cruelly refused the strictly lawful
essoign t de malo lecti (the excuse of a sickness which
confined him to his bed) ; one which, according to our
ancient jurisprudence, the meanest defendant might
claim as a matter of right swearing the excuse was a
sham. The bishop was compelled to follow the court,
in which he had recently paraded so proudly ; but he
sank under the combined effects of vexation and
disease, for when he reached Windsor he took again
to his bed, from whence he never rose. Anselm dili
gently and affectionately attended him, received his
confession, administered the last sacraments, prayed
with him and for him. The bishop s corpse was
interred in Durham cloister, before the chapter door.
St. Carileph, though urged, refused to allow his
decaying body to intrude within St. Cuthbert s tower
ing minster, the noble monument which he had
raised." His possessions, like those of other bishops
who died in this reign, were seized by Ralph Flam-

x.] FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM. 217

bard and his brother Fulbert for the king s use.
Three years and a half afterwards Ralph Flambard
gained his great bishopric for himself- "the Palatine
see" of England.

A year of comparative respite followed. The year
1096 was a busy year for the king. It had begun
with the signal vengeance taken by him at Salisbury
against the conspirators of the year before, and it was
the year of the First Crusade. All Europe was stirred by
an impulse which seemed to set not armies but whole
populations in motion, and to reverse the long accus
tomed current of migration, turning it backward to
the East. Robert of Normandy, unable to govern,
but ready for adventure and fresh conquest, was car
ried away by the enthusiasm of the time ; he had no
money, and William saw at last his opportunity arrive.
He bought Normandy of his brother for three years.
The money was, as usual, to be drawn from England,
and the statements of Eadmer and the English
chroniclers may well be believed that it was a hard
time for England. The lands were racked ; the
churches spoiled of their treasures their chalices, and
reliquaries, and volumes of the Gospels bound in gold
and silver. Anselm only suffered as the rest. He had
of course to furnish his contribution, and he judged
it but reasonable and fitting that he should do so.
But the see had been so impoverished that his own
means were insufficient ; he had to take two hundred
marks of silver from the treasury of the Church of
Canterbury ; and that it might not be a bad precedent
to his successors, he mortgaged to the Church his
archiepiscopal manor of Peckham for seven years to
repay the debt. It was a good bargain for the monks,

2i 8 FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM. [CHAP.

and with the Peckham rents they built part of their
church. But Eadmer is particular in giving these
details, because even while he was writing, there were
those who accused Anselm of robbing the Church of
Canterbury. Betw r een the king and the monks his
money difficulties were not easy to arrange.

But other difficulties were soon to return on him.
Wales was as troublesome to William as Ireland was
to Elizabeth. He marched through the country, but
he failed to subdue it ; and he lost many men and
horses in the attempt. In 1097 he tried to strike a more
serious blow ; but little came of it. He came back
in ill-humour. Anselm again felt it. He received a
letter from the king, complaining of the contingent
of soldiers whom the archbishop had sent to the
army : " He had nothing but evil thanks to give
him for them ; they were insufficiently equipped, and
not fit for the work required." The king therefore
required him to be ready to " do the king right " for
their default, according to the judgment of the King s
Court, whenever the king chose to summon him.
" We looked for peace" said Anselm, when he received
the message, " but no good came ; for a time of health,
and behold trouble" He had, says Eadmer, been
biding his time in hope to get the king s ear, and had
been restraining the impatience of those who urged
him about the state of Christian religion ; but now he
saw that his opponents were too strong for him. The
summons before the King s Court meant at the time
a foregone conclusion against the defendant. The king
had him now at his mercy, not on a question of
religion, but of feudal service. " The king," says Sir
F. Palgrave, "was judge in his Court whenever he

x.] FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM. 219

pleased. The security of securities, the doctrine that
the king had irrevocably delegated his judicial
authority to the ermine on the bench, required
centuries ere it could be perfected. Let the reader
carefully treasure this in his mind, and recollect that
when, in Anglo-Norman times, you speak of the King s
Court, it is only a phrase for the king s despotism."
" Knowing," says Eadmer, " that all judgments of the
King s Court depended on the king s word, and that
nothing was considered there but what he willed,
Anselm thought it an unbecoming farce to strive as
litigants do about a verbal charge, and to submit the
truth of his cause to the judgment of a court, of which
neither law, nor equity, nor reason were the warrant.
He held his peace therefore, and gave no answer to
the messenger, looking on this kind of summons as
belonging to that class of annoyances which he well
remembered ; and this only he earnestly prayed, that
God would calm them." But he made up his mind
that he was powerless to stop the mischief and wrong,
for which yet he was looked upon as partly respon
sible. There was but one course for him. He must
seek counsel and support from the head of the
Hierarchy and the Church.

At the Whitsun meeting, while people were asking
what was to come of this charge, whether Anselm
would have to pay a large fine, or to submit to the
king and never lift up his head more, he sent a request
to the king for permission to go to Rome. The request
was a surprise. William refused. " Anselm could have
no sin needing such absolution ; and as for counsel,
that he was more fit to give it to the Apostolicus,
the Apostle s Vicar, than the Apostolicus to give it to

220 FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM. [CHAP.

him." ft Perhaps, if not this time, he will grant me
leave next time," was Anselm s answer ; but nothing
more was heard of the charge in the King s Court.
Again at a great meeting in August Anselm renewed
his request with the like result. In October he came
by appointment to the king at Winchester, and
again repeated his prayer. The king peremptorily
refused, with threats if he persisted in his request,
or if he went without leave. The scenes of Rock-
ingham were repeated. Walkelin the Bishop of
Winchester took the place which had been filled by
William of Durham, and was joined as before by
several other bishops. They urged obedience to
the king, and the uselessness of going to the Pope.
When Anselm urged their duties as bishops of the
Church of God, they plainly said, that such high
views were very well for a man like Anselm ; but
they had their friends and relations to think of;
they had important business to care for ; and they
could not afford to " rise to his heights, or despise
this world with him." " You have said well," was
the answer : " go to your lord, I will hold to my
God." But now the barons were against him. It
was not according to the customs of the realm that
a man of Anselm s dignity should leave it without
the king s licence ; and they urged strongly that
Anselm had sworn to obey these customs. " Accord
ing to right, and according to God," he immediately
rejoined ; but the qualification was scouted. The
discussion became hot and vehement. Anselm had
proceeded straight to the king s presence, when this
message about the obligation of his oath was brought
to him ; and seating himself, according to the custom,

x.] FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM. 221

at the king s right hand, maintained the necessary
limitations of all oaths, and the ties which bound
him, as a duty to God, to allegiance to the Head of
Christendom. "You, O king," he said, "would not
take it easily if one of your rich and powerful vassals
hindered one of his dependants, who was busy on
your service, from doing the duty to which by his
fealty he was bound." " A sermon, a sermon !" cried
out together the king and Robert Count of Mellent ;
and this was a signal for a general outcry. Anselm
listened, and then went on quietly. " You want me
to swear, in order that you may feel safe of me,
that I will never more appeal to St. Peter or his
Vicar. This is a demand which as a Christian you
ought not to make. For to swear this is to forswear
St. Peter ; and to forswear St. Peter is to forswear
Christ, who has made him chief over His Church.
When then I deny Christ, then I will readily pay
the penalty in your court, for asking for this licence."
The Count of Mellent made a scornful reply: "He
might present himself to Peter and the Pope ;
they knew well enough what they were about." "God
knows," Anselm answered, " what awaits you ; and
He will be able to help me, if He wills it, to the
threshold of His apostles." The company broke
up. A message followed Anselm, to the effect that,
if he went himself, he was to carry nothing away
with him belonging to the king. " Does he mean
my horses, and dress, and furniture, which he may
perhaps call his own ?" The message was a burst
of that mere desire to insult and annoy which
William was ashamed of when he had indulged it ;
and he sent word that Anselm was within ten days to

222 FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM. [CHAP.

be at the sea, and there the king s officer would
meet him, to settle what he might take with him.
The parting then had come, perhaps the leavetaking.
Anselm s affectionate nature was moved, and he
could not restrain a burst of kindly feeling. Nor
was William himself unmoved by it. With cheerful
and bright countenance he returned to the king :
" My lord," he said, " I go. If it could have been
with your good-will, it would have better become
you, and been more agreeable to all good people.
But as things have gone contrary, though on your
behalf I am sorry, yet as far as I am concerned, I
will bear it with an even mind, and not for this will
I give up, by God s mercy, my love for your soul s
health. And now, not knowing when I shall see you
again, I commend you to God ; and as a spiritual
father to hrs beloved son, as the Archbishop of Can
terbury to the King of England, I would fain before
I go, if you refuse it not, give God s blessing and
my own." " I refuse not thy blessing," the king
answered. He bowed his head, and Anselm lifted his
right hand, and made the sign of the cross on him.
And so they parted: on Thursday, Oct. 15, 1097,

Anselm returned at once to Canterbury, where,
after taking leave of the monks, he took at the altar
the pilgrim s staff and scrip, and set forth to Dover.
At Dover he was detained a fortnight by the weather,
and he found there the king s officer, one of the
clerks of the royal chapel, William Warelwast, who
lived with him during his detention. When at last
the wind became fair and Anselm was embarking,
William Warelwast, to the surprise and disgust of
the bystanders, came forward, and required all the

x.] FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM. 223

baggage to be searched. It was meant as a part
ing indignity ; and it came the worse from an eccle
siastic who had been living all the time at Anselm s
table. But no treasure was found ; and he and his
company landed safely at Witsand. William imme
diately seized the property of the see, and kept it
till his death.

And thus began that system of appeals to Rome,
and of inviting foreign interference in our home
concerns, which grew to such a mischievous and
scandalous height ; and Anselm was the beginner of
it. Yet he began it not only in good faith but with
good reason. He had the strongest grounds and the
most urgent motives for insisting on it ; and his
single-handed contest with power in order to maintain
it was one of the steps, and though one serving but
for the time, not the least noble and impressive of the
steps, in the long battle of law against tyranny,
of reason against self-will, of faith in right against
worldliness and brute-force. It is true that, unan
swerable as Anselm s pleas were according to the
universal traditions and understandings of the time,
the instinct of the lawless king and his subservient
prelates was right, even when they knew not how to
silence Anselm and their own conscience, and were
leagued together, the one to defy all control, the
other to uphold injustice as the price of serving their
own interests. They were right, though for wrong
reasons, in their jealousy of any rival to the crown in
England : and experience has amply shown, century
after century, that supreme and irresponsible authority
has no protection against the most monstrous abuse
by being for spiritual ends ; and that the power

224 FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM. [CHAP.

of that great tribunal which Hildebrand imagined
and created, to keep the great ones of the earth in
order and to maintain the right of the helpless against
the mighty, quickly became, in the hands of men, as
lawless, as unscrupulous, as infamously selfish, as the
worst of those tyrannies of this world which it pro
fessed to encounter with the law of God and the
authority of Christ. But in Anselm s time all this
was yet future, and men must do their work with the
instruments and under the conditions of the present.
To him the present showed a throne of judgment,
different in its origin and authority from all earthly
thrones ; a common father and guide of Christians
whom all acknowledged, and who was clothed with
prerogatives which all believed to come from above ;
a law of high purpose and scope, embodying the
greatest principles of justice and purity, and aiming,
on the widest scale, at the elevation and improve
ment of society ; an administration of this law,
which regarded not persons and was not afraid of
the face of man, and told the truth to ambitious
emperors and adulterous kings and queens. In Eng
land Anselm had stood only for right and liberty ;
he, the chief witness for religion and righteousness,
saw all round him vice rampant, men spoiled of what
was their own justice, decency, honour, trampled
under foot. Law was unknown, except to ensnare
and oppress. The King s Court was the instrument
of one man s selfish and cruel will, and of the devices
of a cunning and greedy minister. The natural reme
dies of wrong were destroyed and corrupted ; the
king s peace, the king s law, the king s justice, to
which men in those days looked for help, could only

x.] FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM. 225

be thought of in mocking contrast to the reality.
Against this energetic reign of misrule and injustice,
a resistance as energetic was wanted ; and to resist it
was felt to be the call and bounden duty of a man in
Anselm s place. He resisted, as was the way in those
days, man to man, person to person, in outright
fashion and plain-spoken words. He resisted lawless
ness, wickedness, oppression, corruption. When others
acquiesced in the evil state, he refused ; and further,
he taught a lesson which England has since largely
learned, though in a very different way. He taught
his generation to appeal from force and arbitrary will
to law. It was idle to talk of appealing to law in
England ; its time had not yet come. But there was
a very real and living law in Christendom ; a law, as
we know now, of very mixed and questionable growth,
yet in those days unsuspected, and in its character far
more complete, rational, and imposing than any other
code which had grown up in that stage of society
equal, impartial, with living and powerful sanctions.
On it Anselm cast himself. We see, perhaps, in what
he did, an appeal against his king, against the con
stitution of England and the independent rights of the
nation, to a foreign power. If we see with the eyes
of his own age, we shall see the only appeal practi
cable then from arbitrary rule to law.

If anyone wishes to see the modern counterpart of
this quarrel on a still vaster and more eventful scale,
let him read the detailed history of the conflict
between the Emperor Napoleon and Pope Pius VII. 1
There, as in this case, on the ultimate rights and
grounds of the controversy, sympathies were, in

D Haussonville, L Eglise Romaine et le Premier Empire.
S.L. x.

226 FINAL QUARREL WITH WILLIAM.

England at least, much divided. All but those
who accept the claims of the Roman see, will think
that the Pope was fighting for a power based for
centuries on usurpation and false teaching, and in its
results full of mischief to the world. All but those
who think religion the creature and minister of the
state, will hold that if Napoleon resisted wrongful
claims and upheld the just demands of law and civil
government, he did so with cruel contempt for the
faith and consciences of men, with the most arbitrary
and insolent imposition of his own will. The cause of
religious freedom was mixed up with that of the mis-
government of the Roman court ; the cause of civil
independence was mixed up with that of pitiless
despotism. In the conduct of the quarrel, too, though
the balance of wrong was immeasurably on one side,
the side which suffered such monstrous injury was not
free from blame : Pius VII. did many things which,
though they were as nothing compared with the
wickedness of his oppressor, yet must be read of with
regret, But the quarrel was, after all, one between
true sense of duty and belief in spiritual truth on the
one hand, and brutal irresistible force, professedly
contemptuous of truth and duty, on the other. It was
a contest between the determination to do right at all
hazards, held to under the severest trials with a meek
dignity and an unfailing Christian charity ; and the
resolution to break that spirit, now with the most
terrible menaces, now with the most incredible and
astounding indignities, now with the coarsest and vul-
garest temptations of money or selfish convenience.

CHAPTER XL

ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT.

" It is not long since .these two eyes beheld
A mighty prince of most renowned race,
Whom England high in count of honour held,
And greatest ones did sue to gain his grace ;
Of greatest ones, he greatest in his place.
* * * * *

I saw him die, I saw him die, as one
Of the mean people, and brought forth on bier ;
I saw him die, and no man left to moan
His doleful fate, that late him loved dear ;
Scarce any left to close his eyelids near ;
Scarce any left upon his lips to lay
The sacred sod, or requiem to say. "

SPENSER S Ruins of Time.

ANSELM, in the month of November 1097, began his
winter journey to Italy, accompanied by two friends,
Baldwin of Tournai, his most trusted agent, and
Eadmer, who has preserved in his simple and clear
manner a curious record of the details of a journey
in those days. Their resting-places were generally
the monasteries which were to be found at the end of
each day s ride. Anselm, of course, was received with
honour ; but there was, besides, a charm about his
personal presence and manner, which Eadmer delights
to dwell upon. At St. Omer, he relates, children were
brought to Anselm in great numbers for confirmation,
and then, as no bishop had confirmed there for a long

Q2

228 ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. [CHAP.

time, came grown persons. " Men and women, great
and small, you might see rushing from their houses,
and crowding to our lodging." He spent several days
there, and on the last morning, just as they were
mounting their horses, a young girl came begging
with tears to be confirmed. He would not have
refused, but his companions objected to being de
layed : there was a long day before them ; it was
dangerous to be overtaken by the night in unknown
roads ; there were others, too, waiting about the door
who would make the same request. He was over
ruled, and they started. But as they rode along, the
poor girl s wish came back to his thoughts and made
him very unhappy. He could not forget it; and while
he lived, he said, he should never forgive himself for
having sent the child away with a refusal.

He spent Christmas at Cluni, where he had a friend
in the abbot, Hugh, the old superior of Prior Hilde-
brand, the counsellor of Pope Gregory ; and he
spent the rest of the winter with another Hugh, also
one of Gregory s friends, like him a monk of Cluni,
the energetic and ambitious Archbishop of Lyons,
who had almost added another to the anti-popes of
the time, because he was not chosen Pope in Gregory s
place. In the spring, Anselm, with his two com
panions, travelling as simple monks, passed into
Italy by the Mont Cenis, which so many years before
he had crossed, going northwards to find his calling.
Eadmer likes to tell of the perils of robbers which
they escaped, and which were increased in their case,
partly by the reports of the wealth of an Archbishop
of Canterbury, partly by the hostility of the partisans
of the emperor and the anti-pope, who held the

XL] ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. 229

passes, to all travellers who were on the side of
Pope Urban. He tells, too, with a kind of simple
amusement, how well they preserved their incog
nito how the monks at different monasteries told
them about Anselm s movements, or asked news
about him ; and how skilfully Baldwin put them off
from any suspicion about their unknown guest. He
stopped for Passiontide and Easter at the monas
tery of St. Michael, near Chiusa, the convent on the
great hill that seems to shut the valley between
Susa and Turin ; the spot where the Lombard Desi-
derius vainly tried to make his stand against Charles,
King of the Franks the Sagro di San Michele, one of
the burial-places of the kings of the House of Savoy,
which still arrests travellers, who can be tempted to
turn aside from the hurry of the railway, by a singular
mixture of natural beauty with ancient remains of
great interest. In due time they arrived at Rome.

At Rome they, like so many others, were to find
disenchantment, and to come on those hard resisting
realities of difficulty and necessity which cause such
abatements and retrenchments in all practical theories.
The Pope in Anselm s theory was the divinely con
stituted and divinely supported father of Christendom,
the oracle of truth, the defender of the oppressed, the
avenger of wrong, armed with power from Heaven,
before which the proud must quail ; in the reality, he
was a conscientious but wise and cautious old man
with long and varied experience of the world, encom
passed with trouble and danger, and hardly maintain
ing a very precarious footing ; with the empire and
half Italy against him, with an anti-pope keeping St.
Angelo in Rome itself, and fully alive to the necessity

30 ANSELM ON THE COXTIXEXT. [CHAP.

of prudence and a wary policy. Nothing could
exceed the honour and sympathy shown to Anselm.
He was lodged in the Lateran with Urban ; he was
shown to the court as the great champion of its
claims in distant and strange England ; Eadmer, in
his delisfht and admiration, does not know which to

o

be most pleased with, Anselm s modesty and humility,
and the irresistible charm of his unselfishness and
sweetness, or the extraordinary respect paid to him.
"In assemblies of the nobles, in stations, in pro
cessions, he was second only to the Pope himself.""
The Pope spoke of him as his equal, "the Patriarch,
the Apostolicns or Pope of a second world." But
Urban had many disputes on his hands, and he would
not, if he could help it, add another with so reckless
and so dangerous a person as William of England.
Letters, of course, were written, to remonstrate and
require amendment. Letters came back, accusing
Anselm of leaving England without the king s leave ;
and with the letters, what ordinarily accompanied
them, gifts of money, not of course for Urban, who
was quite above all suspicion, but for the people
round him, of whom it is equally taken for granted, by
Eadmer as by other writers of the time, that money
was of much power with them. \Yilliam s envoys
were roughly and sharply chided ; his conduct was.
declared to be without excuse. Anselm s cause was
laid before councils ; threats were held out if amend
ment was not shown by a fixed time. But when a
year and a half had passed, Anselm and his company
became convinced that the Pope could do nothing for
them ; he had too much on his hands to take up in
earnest another serious quarrel ; and it was plain that

XL] AXSELM OX THE CONTIXEXT. 231

he was not going beyond words and threats. He
tried to make up by the honours which he lavished on
Anselm for the little substantial help he was able to
give him.

Rome was an unhealthy residence for strangers ;
and after his first reception, Anselm accepted the invi
tation of an old Italian scholar of Bee, now abbot of a
monastery at Telese, on the Galore, near Benevento
to take up his abode with him. The Pope approved
of the arrangement : Abbot John was " the Joseph
sent before by God s providence to prepare for ".
father Jacob." The summer heats were " burning up
everything round," and made even Telese a dangerous
sojourn for the northern strangers ; and the abbot
transferred them to a mountain village belonging to
the monastery , called Schlavia (Schiavf . Here, amid
his wanderings and troubles, Anselm had a summer
of respite and refreshment The little village was
perched on a hill-top ; there was no one living in it
but the labourers and a monk who superintended
them : the summer sky was bright, the mountain air
was sweet and fresh and healthy, while the plains
were fainting with the heat After his vexed and
weary life, the old man s heart leaped up at the
charms of nature and repc Hie reqmcs mea, he

broke forth, in the words of the Psalm " Here shall
be my rest for ever : here will I dwell, for I have a
delight therein." He went back at once to his old

O

habits of life, as when he was a simple monk, and before
he had any office ; he resumed his old train of work.
In the midst of the strife and troubles of his last year
in England, he had thought out, and had begun to
compose a work which was, like other works of his, to

232 ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. [CHAP.

open new views in theology, and permanently to affect
the thoughts of men. It was the famous dialogue,
Cur Dcus Homo, in which, seeking the rational ground
of the Incarnation, he lays down a profound and
original theory of tjie Atonement, which, whether
accepted or impugned, has moulded the character of
all Christian doctrine about it since. What he began
amid the fears and distresses of uncongenial England,
he finished in the light and peaceful summer days of
his mountain retreat at Schiavi. As was to be ex
pected, the presence of such a man raised the expec
tation of miracles. The name of the Archbishop of
Canterbury clung for centuries to a w r ell of fresh and
health-giving water, the spring of which was said to
have gushed out of the rock in answer to his prayers.
But he could not long enjoy retirement. He had
to meet the Pope in the camp of the Norman Duke
of Apulia, before Capua ; and there Eadmer notices
again that ever-present charm of face and manner
which attracted to him the reverence and interest of
the heathen " Saracens r of Duke Roger s army, over
whom Anselm s presence exercised such a spell that
they always saluted him as he passed by, " raising
their hands to heaven, kissing their hands to him,
and kneeling down before him ; " and many of them
would have given themselves to him to be taught and
converted by him if they had not been afraid of the
Duke s cruel discipline. He earnestly entreated the
Pope to relieve him of the archbishopric : his expe
rience of William showed that they never could work
together ; and travellers from the West brought over
new stories of his brutal scorn for all religious belief
and feelings. But such a step did not suit the papal

XL] ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. 233

policy any more than a declared breach with the
king. All kinds of good reasons were addressed to
Anselm why he should keep his archbishopric. He
was invited to be present at the Council of Bari
(October 1098), of which Eadmer gives, after his
fashion, a curious account. Anselm was made much
of ; the famous theologian was called upon to defend
the language of the Western creed against the
Greeks ; and Eadmer tells of the flattering language
in which the Pope invited him to address the assem
bly, of the mingled interest and curiosity of the
audience, not quite familiar with his name, but crowd
ing and getting the best seats to hear one whom the
Pope so distinguished, and of the admiration which
his learning and arguments excited. The Pope pro
ceeded to lay before the council Anselm s dispute
with the king, and the sympathy of the council was
so roused, that when the Pope asked their opinion,
they were of one mind in advising the king s excom
munication ; and it was hindered only, says Eadmer,
by Anselm s intercession. It may, perhaps, be doubt
ful whether the Pope meant more than a demonstra
tion. From the council at Bari they returned for the
winter to Rome. There, also, appeared William Warel-
wast, with whom Anselm had parted on the beach
at Dover, to state the king s case against Anselm.
In the public audience the Pope was severe and per
emptory. But Warelwast prevailed on the Pope to
grant a private interview; he distributed his gifts among
those about the Pope ; and the result was that nine
months grace was granted to the king to arrange
the matter instead of three, from Christmas 1098.
"Seeing which things," says Eadmer, "we under-

234 ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. [CHAP.

stood that we vainly looked for counsel or help there,
and we resolved to ask leave to return to Lyons.
But the Pope could not let Anselm go. A council
was to be held about Easter time at the Lateran, and
he must wait for it. Meanwhile every honour was
paid to him. When the council met, the masters of
ceremonies were puzzled where to place him ; for
no Archbishop of Canterbury had ever attended a
council in Rome. The Pope ordered a seat to be
set for him in the most honourable place. The
council (April, 1099) renewed various decrees of
discipline on the subjects which occupied the Church
reformers of the time ; simony, clerical marriage,
and lay investiture. The English ecclesiastics heard
the decree of excommunication passed with acclama
tion against all who gave and all who received the
investiture of churches from lay hands, and who,
for church honours, became "the men," of temporal
lords ; that is, against what had been the established
and unquestioned usage in England and Normandy
to which Anselm himself had conformed. But a re
markable incident startled and impressed the assem
bly. When the canons were to be read in St. Peter s,
the crowd being very great, and there being much
noise made by the stream of people going and coming
at St. Peter s tomb, the Bishop of Lucca, Reinger by
name, a man of tall stature, and loud and ringing
voice, was appointed to read them. He began ; but
when he had got a little way his countenance kindled,
and under the influence of strong emotion he stopped.
" What are we doing here ? " he said, looking round
the assembly. " We are loading men with laws, and
we dare not resist the cruelties of tyrants. Hither

XL] ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. 235

are brought the complaints of the oppressed and the
spoiled ; from hence, as from the head of all, counsel
and help are asked for. And with what result all the
world knows and sees. One is sitting among us from
the ends of the earth, in modest silence, still and
meek. But his silence is a loud cry. The deeper
and gentler his humility and patience, the higher it
rises before God, the more should it kindle us. This
one man, this one man, I say, has come here in
his cruel afflictions and wrongs, to ask for the judg
ment and equity of the apostolic see. And this is the
second year ; and what help has he found ? If you
do not all know whom I mean, it is Anselm, Arch
bishop of England :" and \vith this he thrice struck his
staff violently on the floor, and a burst of breath from
his closed teeth and lips showed his indignation.
" Brother Reinger," exclaimed the Pope, " enough,
enough. Good order shall be taken about this."
Reinger, drawing his breath, rejoined, " There is
good need. For otherwise the thing will not pass
with him who judges justly." And proceeding to
read the canons, he finished with a further warning
before he sat down. But this burst of feeling led
to nothing, and meant nothing. " On the following
day," says Eadmer, " we got leave, and we left Rome,
having obtained nought of judgment or advice through
the Roman Bishop, except what I have said."

Anselm found his way again to Lyons, and lived
there, helping his friend the archbishop. In the
following July (1099) Urban died. "May God s
hatred light on him who cares for it," is said to
have been William s remark when he heard it : " and
what sort of person is his successor ? : " A man in

236 ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. [CHAP.

some respects like Anselm," was the answer. " By
God s countenance, then, he is no good. But he may
keep to himself, for his Popeship shall not this time
get over me. I will use my freedom now/ Every
thing seemed to prosper with him, says Eadmer ;
even the wind, if he wanted to cross to Normandy,
served his wishes. " It seemed as if God would try
how far he might be touched by having all things to
his mind." There was no longer any one to trouble
him, duke, king, or pope. Ralph Flambard became
Bishop of Durham. William built no churches, but
he completed a great memorial of himself, destined
to witness more memorable scenes of English jus
tice and English injustice than any other place in
the land, the great Hall at Westminster. There in
1 100, for the second time, he wore his crown at Pente
cost, and gathered his great council. On the second
of the following August he perished by an uncertain
hand in the New Forest.

Anselm had been all this time in Gaul, spending
his time partly at Lyons, partly at places around,
Vienne, Cluni, Macon, confirming, preaching, writing.
When he confirmed for the Archbishop of Lyons, the
people flocked to him to receive the " holy anoint
ing;" whole days were spent in the administration,
and his attendants were very weary ; but he never
lost his bright and cheerful mood, and never would
send the people away. " So that," says Eadmer,
" there grew up an extraordinary and incredible affec
tion for him among all the people, and his goodness
was spoken of far and wide." From such a man the
ideas of the day expected miracles ; the sick came to
him for relief; his attendants were ready to believe

XL] ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. 237

that they had good reason for coming ; and Eadmer
has his confident stories of cures, which he relates as
an eye-witness. As Eadmer tells them, they do not
read like inventions ; they are the genuine impressions,
told in good faith, of one whose whole manner of
thought made them to him the most likely things in the
world. As regards Anselm himself, as far as appears
from Eadmer, he believed, like everybody else, that
miraculous help might be expected and bestowed ; he
believed in the probability of such answers to prayer ;
but he shrunk altogether from the thought of miracu
lous gifts being entrusted to him or ascribed to him.
Two stones illustrate at once the way in which people
believed, and the natural behaviour of a good man,
humble and true, and trying to think as he ought
about himself, who did not disbelieve the possibility
or even the frequency of such exercises of God s
power and mercy.

"At Vienne," says Eadmer, " when he was taking his
repast after having celebrated mass and preached, two
knights came before him, in form and voice showing
the marks of serious illness, and asking him to deign to
give them some crumbs from the bread which he was
eating. No/ he said, I see that you want neither
a whole loaf nor crumbs. But if you are pleased to
partake, there is plenty of room ; sit down, and, with
the blessing of God, eat what is set before you. They
had not come for this, they answered. I cannot do
anything else for you, he said, for he perceived what
they had meant. One of those who were sitting on his
right saw that they had come for health, and that
Anselm would do nothing which might be set down
to a miracle ; so, as if tired of their importunity,

238 ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. [CHAP.

this person took a fragment from the table and
gave it them, and told them to retire, lest they should
annoy the archbishop. They accordingly went out
with his blessing, and tasted the bread. After dinner
they took me aside, and earnestly begged of me to
help them to receive* the communion of the Lord s
body and blood from his hands at mass. I willingly
agreed, and told them when and where it might be
done. They answered thankfully, and said, We will
certainly come, if by this medicine which we have
received from his table we are not relieved from the
deadly quartan fevers and intolerable pains of body
from which we suffer. And this shall be a sign
between us and you : if we get well, we will not
come ; we will come if we do not. And so we sepa
rated." They did not come back ; and hence Eadmer
supposes that they were healed.

On another occasion "he was met, when on his road
to Cluni, by an ecclesiastic, whose sister was out of
her mind, and who with tears besought him to give
her his blessing and lay his right hand on her. By
the wayside where you will pass she is held by a
number of people, who hope that if you, my lord, will
lay your hand on her, she by God s mercy will be
straightway restored to her mind. But Anselm
passed on without speaking, and as if not hearing.
When the priest insisted with- many prayers, Anselm
sent him away, saying most earnestly, that on no
account would he venture on so strange an act.
Meanwhile we went on, and beheld her in the midst of
the crowd, showing all the signs of raving madness.
The people surrounded Anselm, held the reins of his
horse, and redoubled their entreaties that he would

XL] ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. 239

lay his hand on the miserable woman. He resists,
saying that what they ask is against good sense and
wisdom. They, after the manner of the common
people, urge whatever comes into their heads, hoping
to prevail at least by rude pressure. Then, seeing
that he could not otherwise escape, he yielded to
them in this alone, that he did for her what he never
refused to any one ; he lifted up his right hand and
signed her with the sign of the holy cross. And then,
urging his horse, he hastened away, and pulling the
head of his cowl over his face, he kept apart from his
companions, and gave vent to his tears at the distress
of the unhappy woman. So in sorrow we arrived at
Cluni, and she, pushed on by the crowd,went home. Her
foot had scarcely touched the threshold when she was
restored to health, and the tongues of all broke out in
praise of Anselm. When we heard it at Cluni, we were
glad, and gave glory and thanks to God for His mercy."
As no history at this time, even if only concerned,
so far as this was possible, with secular affairs, was
without miracles, it cannot be expected that such a
life as Anselm s could be witnessed without expecting
them, or told without implying them. They were part
of the unquestioned belief and tacit assumptions of
everybody who lived round him. Undoubtedly he
believed that such things happened. What might be
looked for in a good man, with such a belief, is that he
would not refuse his prayer or his blessing, but that he
would give no encouragement to the ready disposition
to ascribe to him special power and favour. And it
seems plain that while Eadmer was only too glad to
believe miracles of his great master, Anselm was
as far as possible from wishing him to do so.

240 ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. [CHAP.

All our authorities speak of presages of different
kinds preceding William s death. Such stories are
probably the reflection, after the event, of strong
feelings before it, surviving in men s memory ; but it
is remarkable that there should have been such a
variety and such a number of stories of the kind. The
different writers record their own omens ; Eadmer
among the rest. One of these stories has a curious little
touch of the domestic ways of the time. It was at
Lyons : " The feast of St. Peter, which is celebrated
on the ist of August, was at hand ; and having said
matins, we, who were constantly about Anselm, wished
to allow ourselves some sleep. One clerk was lying
near the door of the chamber, and, not yet asleep, had
his eyes shut to go to sleep. And lo ! a young man,
in dress and countenance of no mean appearance,
stood and called him by his name Adam, are you
asleep? No/ answered the clerk. The young
man said, Would you hear news? Gladly. Know
then, for certain, said the other, that all the quarrel
between Archbishop Anselm and King William is
ended and appeased. At these words the clerk
eagerly lifted up his head, and opening his eyes,
looked round. But he saw no one."

The news reached Anselm at the Abbey of "God s
House" (Casa Dei, Chaise Dicu\ near Brioude, in the
Auvergne country, a little place on the top of a hill,
where, though the monastery has disappeared, a re
markable church, but much later than Anselm s time,
still remains, with the tombs in it of two Popes,
Clement VI. and Gregory XL, two of the French
Avignon line, whose family came from the neigh
bourhood. Within a week after William s death, two

XL] ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. 241

monks, one of Canterbury, the other of Bee, were at
Chaise Dieu with the tidings. Anselm had not ceased
to pray for the king. Eadmer says that he was
greatly affected ; he was at first thunderstruck and
silent ; then he burst into " the bitterest weeping."
The party returned to Lyons ; and messenger after
messenger soon arrived from England, from Canter
bury, from the king, from the great men of the realm,
urging his instant return. The land was in suspense
till the archbishop went back to sanction what was
done, and business was at a standstill in the uncer
tainty created by his absence. The new king, Henry,
was especially pressing, promising redress of abuses,
and willing attention to his counsel. On the 23rd of
September Anselm s party landed at Dover ; and
shortly after he was with the king at Salisbury.

So sudden and unthought-of an end as William s
might have thrown England into confusion ; but
there had been a man on the spot equal to the
crisis, and probably long prepared for it. Henry,
the youngest of the Conqueror s sons, was hunting
in the New Forest when his brother Avas shot. As
soon as he heard of what had happened, he imme
diately did as William had done before him : he
seized the treasure at Winchester, and he laid his
claim to the crown before the Witan, the prelates
and barons assembled about the king; in this case
only a certain number of the great council which
gathered to the court three times a year. The
king s title had not yet become a matter of pure
inheritance : one man s title was better than another s,
and birth was an important, for the most part a
preponderating, element in it ; but birth alone was

S.L. X.

242 ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. [CHAR

not a complete and conclusive claim. It had to be
formally and distinctly accepted by the representa
tives of the land ; it had to be sealed and hallowed
by an almost priestly consecration at the hands of
the chief bishop of the Church ; and it had to be
accompanied by the* most solemn promises to the
people of justice, mercy, and good laws. " On the
Thursday [Aug. 2] William was slain," writes the
Peterborough chronicler, " and on the morrow
buried ; and after he was buried, the Witan, who
were then near at hand, chose his brother Henry
for king ; and he forthwith gave the bishopric of
Winchester to William GifTard and then went to
London ; and on the Sunday following [Aug. 5], before
the altar at Westminster, he promised to God and
all the people to put down the injustice which was
in his brother s time, and to keep the best laws
that stood in any king s days before him ; and
after this, Maurice the Bishop of London hallowed
him to be king; and they all in this land submitted
to him, and swore oaths and became his men."
Informal as the transaction appears, described with
the simplicity of a narrative from the Books of Kings,
it was the right and legitimate procedure it was
the way in which by the custom and law of England
the right of the crown was then given and acquired.

But Henry knew that he would have to fight for
it. Robert of Normandy was on his way home ; he
had never given up his claim, though his father had
refused to sanction it ; and Robert was sure of a strong
party among the Normans in England. At any
rate, Henry might expect as a matter of course to
have his strength tried. His first steps were to win

XL] ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. 243

the feelings of the country on his side by reversing
the misrule of the late reign. He imprisoned Ralph
Flambard, now Bishop of Durham, in the Tower. He
at once recalled Anselm. Far from scrupulous him
self, he yet disliked the coarse profligacy and riot
which had reigned in William s court, and at once put
them down. Before the end of the year he tried to
bind himself by another tie to Englishmen, by marry
ing [Nov. 1 1] the English maiden, Edith, the daughter
of Malcolm King of Scotland, and the noble and saintly
Margaret, one of the last remaining children of the
old English line of kings, " through whom the blood
and the right of the Imperial House of Wessex
have passed to the Angevin, the Scottish, and the
German sovereigns of England." *

Some of Anselm s first dealings with Henry were
with reference to this marriage. He did for Henry,
what Lanfranc had done for Henry s father ; he pro
tected a marriage fair and honourable in all ways,
and far more deserving of respect than most of the
great marriages of those days, from the prejudices
and narrow rigour of his own order and his own party.
And he did this more bravely and with less of
compromise than Lanfranc ; he boldly and outright
threw aside objections, which to many of the strict
people of the time must have seemed formidable.
Edith, in the troubled times which had ended in her
father s death by Norman treachery, and her mother s
death in the same week from a broken heart [Nov. 13,
19, 1093], had been sent to England, to be under
the care of her aunt Christina, Abbess of Romsey.
" She was very beautiful. She inherited her mother s

a Freeman, ii. 370.
R 2

244 ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. [CHAP.

talent, her mother s warm affections, sweetness, pa
tience, piety, and had profited by all the cultivation,
both intellectual and moral, that Margaret had be
stowed/ 1 Such a lady was likely to have suitors. But
she was said by her aunt Christina to have made her
profession as a nun ; and while William the Red
lived she continued at Romsey, wearing the nun s
dress. When Henry became king, his thoughts
turned to Edith ; it is said that he had before been
a suitor for her hand ; and such a marriage would
obviously be a politic one. One difficulty was soon
disposed of in those days ; the Welsh lady with whom
he had been living, after the fashion of the house of
Rollo, though she was not his wife, and who had
borne him several children, was dismissed and married
to one of his military chieftains, Gerald of Windsor,
whose lands were in Pembrokeshire. The other
difficulty was more serious. It was commonly be
lieved that Edith had taken the vows as a nun.
She denied it, and accounted intelligibly enough for
wearing the nun s dress and countenancing the belief
that she had taken the veil, in days like those of
William the Red. Her aunt had forced her to wear
it to save her from Norman brutality, and had also
wished to make her a nun in good earnest But the
niece had resisted, in spite of blows and hard words ;
when she dared, she would tear off her nun s head
gear, throwing it on the ground and stamping upon it.
If her ecclesiastical judge had been a formalist
or a pedant, she might have found it hard to make
him believe her story. But Anselm, when she ap
pealed to him as the highest Church authority, put

1 Palgrave, iv. 366.

XL] ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT. 245

aside the ecclesiastical prejudices which might have
told with many against her, and ordered a full and
impartial investigation. She offered to submit her
account of the matter to the judgment of the whole
Church of the English. An assembly of great persons,
religious and secular, was held at Lambeth, then a manor
belonging to Rochester. Commissioners were sent to
the monastery where Edith had been brought up.
Anselm opened the matter, but abstained from taking
any side, and left it to the justice of this great jury to
decide on the facts. For the principle of the case,
there was a precedent fortified by Lanfranc s great
authority. He had on grounds of equity released
from actual vows women who had taken them from
fear of the violence which followed on the Conquest.
The assembly gave their verdict for her. With
this judgment, and with her solemn and circum
stantial account of her repugnance to take vows,
which Anselm himself must have thought as high and
noble as they were inviolable, he was satisfied. He
pronounced her free ; he frankly accepted her story ;
and he refused the confirmation \vhich she offered
of any of the further proofs or ordeals which were
in use at the time. Before a great gathering of the
nobility, and the " lesser people " crowding the doors
of the church and surging all round it, to witness the
marriage and benediction of the new queen, Anselm
stood up and declared the manner and result of the
inquiry ; and then, according to the custom still in
use, called on anyone who doubted, or who thought
that by the Christian law the marriage was unlawful,
to stand forth and speak his mind. Such a challenge
in these days, as we have seen in the case of the

246 ANSELM ON THE CONTINENT.

Conqueror s funeral, was not simply formal ; but a
shout of assent was the answer.

This judgment, larger and more generous than
would have been given by many good men of his
day, gave to Henry a. queen who was worthy of her
place, whose influence was throughout for gentleness
and right, and who, under her changed Norman
name, adopted perhaps from Henry s mother, became
dear to Englishmen as " Good Queen Maude." But
there were many people, Eadmer says, relating the
matter as having been present and as having seen
and heard everything, who blamed Anselm for his
departure from the hard and severe rules by which
such cases were commonly disposed of; rules which
were often made merely to create an occasion for a
dispensation or a privilege, granted not to simple
equity but to a heavy compensation.

CHAPTER XII.

AXSELM AND HENRY I.

" We would every deed
Perform at once as grandly as it shows
After long ages, when from land to land
The poet s swelling song hath rolled it on.
It sounds so lovely what our fathers did,
"When in the silent evening shade reclined,
We drink it in with music s melting tones.
And what we do, is, as it was to them,
Toilsome and incomplete."

GOETHE S Iphigenia (ii. i), translated by
Miss SWANWICK.

ANSELM came back to England with good hope to
do something for the great purpose for which he now
lived the purification and elevation of life, first in
the clergy; then in the monasteries, which were the
pattern schools and models of religion and devotion;
and then in the lay society, with which, monk as he
was, he had such strong sympathy, and which he
looked upon as specially his charge and flock as being
the first spiritual officer of the English Church. The
new king had solemnly promised to put an end to
the odious wrong and the insolent tyranny of the last
reign. "The holy Church of God I make free, so
that I will neither sell it nor let it to farm ; nor on the

248 ANSELM AND HENRY I. [CHAP.

death of archbishop, or bishop, or abbot, will I take
anything from the domain of the Church, or from its
men, till the successor comes into possession ;" -this
had been the first article of the kingly promise given
at Westminster, when the Bishop of London, in
Anselm s absence, had consecrated and crowned him
king.

Henry s position, too, was still insecure. Robert was
back in Normandy with a newly-married wife, fresh
from the glory of the Crusade, and fully intending to
dispute the claims of the younger brother, whom both
he and William had been accustomed to despise and
to make use of, and whom he had joined with William
in excluding from the succession. The English feeling
was strong for Henry : he was not without friends
among the Norman barons ; but as a body the Nor
mans were not to be trusted till they had learned to
know the strength of their master. They had accepted
Henry in Robert s absence, many of them with a secret
preference for Robert, a king who would let them have
their own way, and a secret dislike for Henry, a king
who perhaps might not ; and with a reserve which
fear only, or the sense of their own interest, could at
last bring to an issue. Henry had made to them,
as well as to the Church, large promises. They
were not content with general engagements against
bad customs and unjust exactions ; a number of
the alleged usurpations by the crown on the rights
of landowners, of arbitrary exactions and acts of
power, of abuses in the administration of justice,
were specified and definitely condemned ; and a
great charter, of which copies were sent to the
shires of the kingdom and laid up in the treasuries

xi r.] ANSELM AND HENRY I. 249

of cathedrals and abbeys, attested the liberties
which had been granted to his barons and all his
faithful people by King Henry, "by God s appoint
ment elected by the clergy and people, by God s
mercy and the common counsel and assent of the
barons of the realm of England, crowned king
thereof." Henry had much on his side in the hopes
which he inspired, in the acceptance of the nation,
in his own consciousness of ability and strength.
But he could not afford yet to overlook anything
which could make him more secure ; and a good
understanding with a man of Anselm s high place,
reputation, and popularity, was very important to
him.

But there were difficulties in the position of each of
them which were not long in showing themselves.
Henry, whom the world hardly knew yet, who had
since his father s death been buffeted by fortune, and
had gone through the experiences of a princely exile
while patiently biding his time till his father s dying
words of prophecy should be fulfilled ; who had alter
nately made himself useful to both his brothers, and
had received scant recompense from them combined
with an outward self-command and easiness of manner,
strongly contrasting with his father s hardness and his
brothers boisterous and overbearing roughness, an
iron strength of will, not less tenacious and formidable
than theirs, though disguised for a time under softer
manners and an apparently more pliant temper.
There were two points in which it at once disclosed
itself. Amid all his concessions he peremptorily
refused any relaxation of the hateful and merciless
forest laws ; to the mighty hunters of William s

250 A NSELAf A ND HENR Y I. [CHAP.

family the crown was not worth having, without the
cruel privileges of the chase. There was yet another
matter on which he was resolved to yield nothing.
The ecclesiastical "customs" which had been in force
in his father s time he would maintain. Bishops and
abbots should not only be appointed by him, but they
should, like his barons, become "his men;" they
should receive the investiture of their offices from him ;
the pastoral staff which was the token of their spiritual
authority they should take from his hand. " I will
have all the crosiers in England in my hand," was a
saying ascribed to the Conqueror ; and, in spite of the
canons then beginning to be passed from time to time
at Rome, Lanfranc had not contested the point, and
Anselm himself had, as a matter of course, com
plied with the custom when he received the arch
bishopric from William Rufus. There were obvious
reasons why Henry should maintain his claim. To
resign it would have been to seem to show himself
weaker at the critical beginning of his reign than
his father and brother. There was no strong feeling
against the custom among the English or Norman
clergy. It gave him a special and personal hold on
the service and obedience of the Church, entirely
analogous to that which he had over the allegiance
of his barons and tenants. It was a good deal
more than the right of nomination and patronage.
That was much ; but it was much more that bishops,
when appointed, should not only acknowledge his
authority as faithful subjects, but should be bound to
him by the special ties, first, of having become "his
men," and next of holding, not their temporal posses
sions only but their office itself, by a significant form

XIL] ANSELM AND HENR Y I. 251

which made it seem simply a derivation from his
authority. These customs had been accepted as a
matter of course, without complaint, without protest,
without remark, by the religious men of the Con
queror s age. That they had not only given rise to
intolerable abuse and mischief in his brother s time,
but that they had deeply corrupted the spirit of
churchmen, and made them look upon their office as
a thing that might be bought and sold, and then used
with courtly subservience or cynical selfishness, was
hardly a consideration which could be expected to
weigh with Henry, or to keep him from stiffly
asserting his claims. For a man of Henry s temper,
bent as strongly as his father or his brother on beating
down or eluding every check on his will and his
power, the spectacle of the way in which, in the
late reign, the Church had been humbled, degraded,
and reduced to helplessness, would be distasteful only
from the frantic extravagance which had defeated its
own ends.

It was natural for the king to insist on these
cherished customs of homage and investiture. He
thought that they signified a great deal, and so they
did ; but to Anselm also they signified a great deal.
He had made no difficulty, as we have seen, in con
forming to them at his own election ; but much had
happened since then. He had been the witness and
the victim of the system which placed the duty and
conscience of Christian bishops under the heel of
feudal royalty, and gave to insolent oppression the
right of appealing mockingly to their own oaths of
fealty and acts of submission as the bonds of their
unconditional and uncomplaining submission. A reigri

252 ANSELM AND HENRY I. [CHAP.

like that of the Red King was a lesson not to be soon
forgotten: the "customs" which had seemed so natural
and endurable under the father, had received a new
meaning and a new sting under the policy of the son.
Further, Anselm was in a new position compared
with that of Lanfranc, and with his own at his elec
tion. William s violence had driven him abroad ;
and there he had been compelled to become cognizant,
in a far more distinct way than before, of the legis
lation by which Church rulers and Church councils on
the Continent were attempting to meet the rival
claims of the feudal lords. No one then doubted the
authority of that great office which they believed to
be held in succession from the Prince of the Apostles.
They might doubt between the claims of this or that
pope or anti-pope ; they might question the wisdom
of the pope s decisions, or disobey his orders, or defy
his excommunications, or bribe his advisers, or
imprison his person ; but the general belief in his
authority was no more impaired by such things than
resistance and disobedience affected the general per
suasion of the authority of kings. The see of St.
Peter was the acknowledged constitutional centre of
spiritual law in the West to all that " diversity of
nations who were united in the confession of the
name of Christ;" it was looked upon as the guide
and regulator of teaching, the tribunal and court from
which issued the oracles of right and discipline, the
judgment-seat to which an appeal was open to all,
and which gave sentence on wrong and vice without
fear or favour, without respect of persons, even the
highest and the mightiest. The ideal was imperfectly
realized; it was marred by the extravagance of asser-

xii.] ANSELM AND HENRY I. 253

tion, the imperiousness of temper, the violence of
means with which these claims were urged ; it was
spoiled by the inextricable mixture of by-ends with
grand and noble purposes, of unscrupulous cunning
and crafty policy with intense and self-sacrificing con
viction ; it was more fatally degraded and discre
dited by the selfish and faithless temporizing, and the
shameless greediness, which grew into proverbs wher
ever the name of Rome was mentioned. And every
succeeding century these things grew worse ; the ideal
became more and more a shadow, the reality became
more and more a corrupt and intolerable mockery.
But if ever there was a time when the popes honestly
endeavoured to carry out the idea of their office, it
was just at this period of the Middle Ages. They
attempted to erect an independent throne of truth
and justice above the passions and the force which
reigned in the world around. It is the grandest and
most magnificent failure in human history. But it
had not then been proved to be a failure ; and those
whose souls believed in truth and thirsted for purity,
righteousness, and peace, amid the wrong and con
fusion of their time, turned to it with hope and
loyalty. Anselm probably had troubled himself little
with distant Rome and its doings while busy in the
cloister of Bee with teaching and meditation. The
hopelessness of all justice at home drove him on what
offered itself, and was looked on by all, as the refuge
for the injured and helpless. And while there he had
of necessity become acquainted for himself with the
stringency and earnestness with which the highest
Church authority had condemned the customs of
homage and lay investiture. It was doubtful whether

254 ANSELM AND HENRY 7. [CHAP.

he had not himself come under the penalties pro
nounced against them. He had been present at
solemn councils where the prohibitions against them
were reiterated in the plainest and most peremptory
manner. After what he had seen and heard at
Rome, it would be* impossible for him henceforward
to appear to sanction usages in which he himself had
once seen no harm.

Henry appears to have brought on the question in
an extreme and unusual form, at his first meeting
with Anselm at Salisbury. He demanded from An-
selm a renewal of homage, and required that he should
receive the archbishopric afresh by a new act of in
vestiture. " Lofty as the pretensions of the crown had
been," says Sir F. Palgrave, " this demand was entirely
unprecedented, at least so far as we can collect
from any existing historical evidence. It imported
that, on the death of the Sovereign, the archbishop s
commission expired that his office was subordinate
and derivative, and the dignity therefore reverted to
the crown." The principle of a fresh grant of lands
and privileges at the demise of the lord was not
unknown in civil matters ; but " we have no trace
that this principle was ever extended to the Church."
Henry appears to have meant by this demand, which
went beyond what had been claimed by his prede
cessors, to put the meaning of these forms beyond
question, and to settle a point raised and left uncertain
by the disputes ; perhaps he intended it as an answer
beforehand, and a forward step in meeting, what he
must probably have known, would now be the demands
of the Church for the abolition of " the customs."
" Cherishing the consuetudincs patentee" the hereditary

xii.] ANSELM AND HENRY I. 255;

" usages," says Sir F. Palgrave, "and pledging himself
in his own heart and mind not to abate a jot of his
supremacy over the clergy, he would exercise his
authority in Church affairs somewhat more decently
than his father, and a great deal more than his
brother ; but that was all."

Anselm, when the demand was made, at once
stated his position. He had no choice. He had
heard with his own ears the canons of the Church
and the solemn decisions and sanctions of a great
council. " If his lord the king/ he said, "was willing
to accept these laws, they could work together. If not,
there was no use in his remaining in England ; for he
could not hold communion with those who broke
these laws. He had not come back to England to live
there on condition of disobedience to his spiritual
head. And he begged a plain decision, that he might
take his course." Both parties behaved with dignity
and temper, fitting the gravity of the question.
" The king was much disturbed ; for it was a grave
matter to lose the investitures of churches and the
homages of prelates ; it was a grave matter, too, to let
Anselm take his departure, while he himself was not
yet fully confirmed in the kingdom. For on one side
it seemed to him to be losing, as it were, half of his
kingdom ; on the other, he feared lest Anselm should
make his brother Robert, who would most easily be
brought into subjection to the apostolic see, King of
England." It was agreed that the matter should be
referred to the Pope, things remaining unchanged till
an answer could come back from Rome. Anselm
knew enough of the temper of Rome to be sure that
the appeal which Henry made for a direct exemption

256 ANSELM AND HENRY I. [CHAP.

from the general law was hopeless ; but all along in
this matter of investiture his line was simple obedience
to authorities and rules which, even in the ideas and
belief of his antagonists, had a rightful and para
mount claim to it. There is no appearance that
personally he felt very strongly about the matter of
the dispute ; it was with him purely a question of
obeying, what to him and to his age represented the
law of God against the will and power of man. But
Henry s proposal, if merely for the purpose of gaining
time, was not an unreasonable one, and the Archbishop
wished to avoid anything that might seem to endanger
the new order, or to give ground to the suspicions or
the hopes of those who looked on the dispute as it
might affect the interests of Robert. In the meanwhile,
the king and the archbishop remained good friends ;
Anselm s good sense and justice gave the king his
English bride ; and at Martinmas (Oct. n, noo), he
gave his benediction to Edith-Matilda as wife and
queen.

It was not the only service which Henry owed
him. The critical first year of his reign was
yet to be passed. Ralph Flambard, Bishop of
Durham, had escaped from the Tower, and was in
Normandy stirring up Robert against the new King
of England, as Odo Bishop of Bayeux had passed
from his prison to stir up Robert against William
the Red. Flambard s familiar acquaintance with
England was dangerous; he knew who was doubt
ful, and who could be corrupted, and how to
corrupt them. He gained over the sailors who were
to defend the Channel. Under his guidance, Robert
landed at Portsmouth. At the first news of the

xii.] ANSELM AND HENRY I. 257

approaching invasion, Henry, suspecting his nobles
and suspected by them, had endeavoured to bind
them to him by a new and distinct compact. " The
whole nobility of the realm, with a multitude of the
people, when they met to receive the engagement of
the king s faith, made Anselm their arbiter between
themselves and the king, that to him, in their stead,
the king, holding his hand in Anselm s hand, should
promise to govern the whole kingdom in all things, as
long as he lived, by just and holy laws." But when
it was known that Robert was actually in England,
the Norman chiefs at once, forgetful of their plighted
troth, prepared to desert the king. The English and
the common soldiers were true ; but the king s camp
was full of the fears, mistrust, disloyal balancings of
the Norman lords. Anselm knowing most about their
suspicions and disaffection, was afraid to speak of all
he knew, for fear of driving them at once to Robert s
side. But he was the only man the king could trust.
He threw his influence on Henry s side. He brought
the Norman chiefs, one by one, to the king, that
seeing one another face to face they might be
reassured by mutual explanations and intercourse.
Henry made him fresh promises. Anselm made a
public appeal to the chiefs, in the presence of the
army, not to shame themselves by breaking their faith
and betraying their king. The danger was weathered.
A battle was avoided at a critical time ; Henry
submitted for the present to hard conditions, and
Robert, finding the Norman lords less forward than
he expected, and fearing Anselm s excommunication
against him, as an unjust invader, made peace.

Henry was to have his revenge in a different
S.L. x.

258 A NSELM A ND HENR Y I. [CHAP.

fashion at Tinchebrai ; but at that time, says Eadmer,
if Anselm s fidelity and exertions had not turned
the scale, King Henry would have lost his possession
of the realm of England.

The answer from Rome had been long in coming,
but it came at last." Henry had asked, so the Pope
put it, that, as a special favour in return for the
reversal of his brother s policy and his good-will to
the Church, he might be privileged by the Roman
Church to make bishops and abbots by the delivery
of the pastoral staff. It was not the exact account :
Henry never wavered about his claim ; and the indul
gence he professed to ask for was, not that he might
keep the usages, but that Anselm might comply with
them. To this Pope Paschal had answered as might
have been expected. He was willing to grant many
favours and indulgences, but not this. His long letter
contained the current arguments and usual texts and
quotations, common since the time of Gregory VII. ;
but through its false analogies and forced parallels, and
the extravagant and conventional exaggerations of its
rhetoric, a true and reasonable feeling is apparent of
the shame and mischief of allowing great Church
offices to be disposed of by the kings and princes of
the time, without an efTjrt to assert their meaning
and sacredness, and to force the world to acknowledge
their paramount spiritual and religious character. A
breach now seemed inevitable. Anselm was called to
the court, and required, as in the first instance, to
give way. His answer was the same: he threw him
self on the decrees of the Roman Council at which
he had been present. " What is that to me ?" said the
king: "I will not lose the customs of my predeces-

XIL] ANSELM AND HENR Y I. 259

sors, nor suffer in my realm a man who is not mine."
The bishops and nobles this time fully took part with
the king ; as before, says Eadmer, there was going
to and fro between the king and the archbishop, al
striving to comply with the king s will and earnestly
insisting that he should not be subject to the obe
dience of the Roman Pontiff. The dispute was
inflamed, Eadmer says, by the influence of Duke
Robert and his friends, who remembered what Anselm
had done against them; but Henry wanted no urging,
and fully knew his own mind. But it was not yet
convenient to come to an open quarrel. England
was not yet fairly in hand. On the troublesome
Welsh border, the worst and most hateful of the bad
house of Talvas and Mabel of Belesme, the restless
and pitiless Robert, who seemed bent on fulfilling his
grandfather s curse on William the Bastard by urging
on his children to destroy one another, had succeeded
his brother Hugh, the only one of Mabel s children
of whom any good is told, in the great earldom of
Shrewsbury and the guardianship of the W T elsh march-
land. He was lord, too, at the other end of England,
of Arundel on the Sussex shore. He had done
homage to Henry ; he had deserted to Robert ; and
the year following the treaty (1102) he was in full
revolt, letting the Welsh loose upon the English
shires, and holding the castles which he had fortified
and prepared, in Sussex, in Yorkshire, and on the
Severn, as centres of rebellion. Henry met him vigo
rously, and crushed him ; and Robert of Belesme was
driven from England, once again to try his strength
against his mightier foe, to fail, and at last to end his
days in one of Henry s prisons. But while he had

S 2

260 ANSELM AND HENRY /. [CHAP.

Robert of Belesme on his hands, Henry probably
thought it best to temporize with Anselm. At
any rate, he again made conciliatory advances to the
archbishop, and proposed a second embassy to Rome
of more distinguished persons : Gerard, now Arch
bishop of York, one of William the Red s chaplains
and envoys to Rome, and two bishops, together with
two of Anselm s most trusted friends, Baldwin, his
late companion, and another. Men of such weight
and knowledge of affairs could explain, it was said, to
the Pope the difficulties of the case and the critical
state of matters better than could be done by letter or
by agents of less dignity and consequence. Accord
ingly they went; in their public audiences they found
the Pope inflexible, and indignant that he should be
pressed to tear up the deliberate ordinances of the holy
Fathers and of his predecessors for the threat of
one man. He would not do so, he said, to save his
head. Letters were written in the same firm tone as
before to the king and to Anselm, and with these the
envoys returned home.

A curious transaction followed. On the return of
the envoys, an assembly of the great men was sum
moned in London, and Anselm was again required by
messengers from the king to submit to the "usages."
But the Pope s letter to the king was not made public.
Anselm showed to every one who chose to see it the
letter which he had himself received, and asked that
the letter to the king should be made known. But
Henry refused ; he put aside the Pope s reply as
irrelevant, and, throwing himself on his own rights,
required unconditional submission. Meanwhile, the
Pope s letter to the king got abroad. Then occurred a

xii.] ANSELM AND HENRY I. 261

scene, which is like nothing so much as some of the
passages in Napoleon s negotiations through the
bishops of his party with Pius VII. The Archbishop
of York and his brethren, the bishops of Chester and
Thetford, announced what they declared on the faith
of bishops to be the real result of their embassy. The
Pope, they said, in a private interview, had charged
them with a verbal message to the king, that so long
as he acted as a good king and appointed religious
prelates, the Pope would not enforce the decrees
against investiture. And the reason, they said, why
he could not give this privilege in writing was lest, if
it became public, other princes might use it to the
prejudice of the Roman see. They also, equally on
their faith and honour as bishops, conveyed, in the
Pope s name, his commands to Anselm to give them
full credit, and follow their counsel. If he refused,
the king might act as he pleased on the Pope s
authority, in spite of Anselm, and might, if Anselm
still insisted on the Pope s letter, banish him from the
kingdom. This strange story took everyone by sur
prise, and called forth immediate remonstrance from
Anselm s representatives. They had heard nothing
of the message, which was utterly inconsistent with
everything which had passed in public between them
and the Pope. When the bishops insisted that the
Pope s language was one thing in public, and another to
themselves in a private interview, Baldwin indignantly
charged them with breaking their canonical oaths and
making the apostolic see infamous. But they held
to their story, and there was a strong division of
opinion and hot altercation in the excited assembly.
When one side insisted on the authority of the actual

262 AN S ELM AND HENRY I. [CHAP.

document, sealed with the Pope s signet, the rejoinder
was fierce and insolent The word of these bishops
ought to weigh more than parchments, " sheepskins,
with a lump of lead at the bottom," backed by the testi
mony of "paltry mpnks, who, when they renounced the
world, lost all weight as evidence in secular business."
"But this is no secular business," said Baldwin. "We
know you," was the reply, " to be a man of sense and
vigour ; but difference of rank itself requires us to
set more by the testimony of an archbishop and two
bishops than by yours." " But what of the testimony
of the letters?" he asked. He was answered with a
sneer : " When we refuse to receive the testimony of
monks against bishops, how could we receive that
of sheepskins ?" "Woe! woe!" burst forth from the
shocked and excited monks, " are not the Gospels
written on sheepskins ?"

Of course in such a dead lock, there was nothing
for it but to send another deputation to Rome ; and in
the meanwhile a compromise was agreed to. The king
was to act as if the bishops had truly reported the
Pope s intentions ; he was to be at liberty to invest fresh
prelates, and Anselm, till the real fact was known,
was not to refuse communion with them. Anselm, on
the other hand, until things were cleared up, was not
to be required to consecrate them. He felt keenly, as
was natural, the embarrassment of his position. He
wrote to the Pope, stating what had happened, and
begging to know for certain what the Pope meant
him to do. If the Pope thought proper to take off
generally in England the excommunication pro
nounced against lay investiture, or to make special
exceptions, let him only say so distinctly. Anselm

xn.] ANSELM AND HENRY /. 263

felt all through that the matter was one of positive
law, and that he was but an officer bound to carry
out, at all personal inconvenience, the acknowledged
law of the Church, and the commands of his lawful
superior. He only entreated for clear instructions. " I
am not afraid," he wrote, "of banishment, or poverty,
or torments, or death ; for all these, God strengthening
me, my heart is ready in obedience to the apostolic
see, and for the liberty of my mother the Church ;
all I ask is certainty, that I may know without doubt
what course I ought to hold by your authority."

The king gained time. He did not wish to quarrel
if he could help it ; and probably thought that he
had more chance at Rome than with Anselm. He
proceeded at once to invest two of his clerks with
bishoprics. He gave Salisbury to his chancellor
Roger, originally a poor priest of Caen, who had
followed him in his adverse fortunes, and had first
pleased Henry by the speed with which he got
through his mass ; and who rose to be one of the
greatest and richest of the king s servants. He gave
Hereford to another Roger, the superintendent or
clerk of his larder. It is hardly wonderful, with such
appointments, made as a matter of course, from men
broken in to the ways of feudal courts, and accustomed
to make themselves useful in them, ecclesiastics in
nothing but their qualifications as scribes, accountants,
and clever men of business, that bishoprics were indif
ferently filled ; and that those who wished to see them
filled as they ought to be, thought nothing too much
to do and to suffer, in order to break down the pre
scriptive system, which made these appointments
seem natural and fit.

264 ANSELM AND HENRY I. [CHAP.

Anselm also gained what he had from the first been
asking for. A council in those days was the ordinary
and approved remedy for disorders in the Church and
society; as later a parliament was for disorders in the
State and Church also. A great council was held, with
the king s consent, about Michaelmas 1102, at West
minster, of the bishops and abbots of the whole realm.
" In this council/ it is said, in the record of it drawn
up by Anselm, " were present, by the request made
by Anselm the archbishop to the king, the chief men
of the realm, so that whatever was decreed by the
authority of the said council might be kept safe by the
harmonious care and solicitude of each order. For so
it was necessary, seeing that for many years, the ob
servance of synods having been intermitted, the thorns
of vice had grown up, and the earnestness of Christian
religion had grown too cold in England." The subjects
of its decrees and orders were many ; but in general
it may be said to have had in view two things : to
draw tighter the strings of discipline among the clergy,
and to arrest the tendency always at work among
them to forget their calling in the liberty and the
business of ordinary life ; and, next, to strike hard at
some special forms of gross and monstrous depravity
with which society was at this time infested, and
which seem to have broken out and become fashion
able in the younger generation since the Conqueror s
death. Abbots who bought their offices, and clergy
who would not put away their wives, were visited
equally with the severity of the council. Among the
canons is one against the " wicked trade used hitherto
in England, by which men are sold like brute animals."
But to enact was one thing, to enforce another.

xii.j ANSELM AND HENRY I. 265

The Council of London, Eadmer says, soon made
many transgressors of its rules among all sorts of
men. Anselm had proposed to publish weekly its
excommunication against the more heinous sins. But
he found it expedient to alter this. All that imme
diately came of the council was the proof that the
Church felt that it ought not to look on sin with indif
ference. But most of the bishops were too deeply
tainted with the worldliness which their canons
denounced to give any hearty support to Anselm in
his efforts to correct it. Yet these efforts were not
in vain. His earnest spirit, his high ideal, and his
single-minded zeal against what was wrong were
beginning to raise the tone of the religious society
round him, though but gradually and partially. A
proof of this was shortly after given in a quarter
where it was least to be expected. One of Henry s
first acts had been to nominate William Giffard
to the bishopric of Winchester. His name suggests
that he belonged to the family of the Giffards, Earls of
Buckingham and Counts of Longueville in Normandy,
a house descended from a sister of the famous Duchess
Gunnor, the wife of the first Duke Richard. He
had long belonged to the king s chapel : he had served
the Conqueror ; he is called chancellor under the Red
King ; he was an ecclesiastic deep in the secular busi
ness of the court, and much trusted by it. A change of
ideas must have been setting in when William Giffard,
Henry s first choice for a bishopric, positively declined
to receive investiture by the pastoral staff from the
king s hands. The appointment appears to have been
a popular one ; it is said that the clergy and people
of Winchester pressed to have him ; that he was

266 ANSELM AND HENRY I. [CHAP.

" elected " by them ; and finally, by the king s consent
or connivance, he had publicly received the pastoral
staff and the charge of the bishopric from Anselm s
hands. The king now called on Anselm to consecrate
him, and with him, the two new bishops of Salisbury
and Hereford. The " king s larderer " had died shortly
after his nomination, having vainly made the strange
request that Anselm would give a commission to the
bishops of London and Rochester to consecrate him
bishop on his death-bed ; and in his place had been
named Reinhelm, another clerk of the royal chapel,
who was chancellor to the queen. This demand was
a departure from the terms, on which both parties had
agreed to wait for the issue of a reference to Rome.
Anselm looked on it as an attempt to steal a march
on him, and, says Eadmer, was somewhat moved by it
" from his tranquillity of mind." He was willing to
consecrate William Giffard, but refused in the most
solemn way, "with the sanction of an oath," to con
secrate the other two. On this refusal the king
ordered Gerard, the Archbishop of York, to consecrate.
Gerard was ready enough ; he was a courtier, an old
antagonist of Anselm s, and only too glad to mor
tify the pride of the rival see of Canterbury. But
the tide was turning. The strong feeling for the
honour of Canterbury may have had something to do
with it. To every one s surprise, the new bishop-elect
of Hereford brought back to the king the ring and
staff with which he had received investiture, regretting
that he had ever taken them, and feeling sure that to
receive consecration from Gerard s hands would be to
receive a curse instead of a blessing. The king was
very wroth, and drove him from the court. The con-

XIL] AN S ELM AND HENRY /. 267

secration of the other two was appointed to take
place in London. All was ready, the church was full,
the bishops were assembled to ask the solemn preli
minary questions, when William Giffard s conscience
smote him, and interrupting the service, he declared
that he would rather be spoiled of all his goods than
receive consecration in such a fashion. Gerard, trying
to mortify Anselm, had brought unexpected humi
liation on himself. The service was broken off, and
the bishops in confusion and anger retired to report
the matter to the king. <( Then the shout of the whole
multitude who had come together to see the issue
rung out ; with one voice their cry was, that William
was a friend of the right, that the bishops were no
bishops, but perverters of justice." William Giffard
was summoned to the presence of the king, to hear
the complaints of the bishops and the threats of the
court. " There he stood," says Eadmer, " but he could
not be drawn aside from the right ; so he was despoiled
of all that he had and banished from the realm."
Anselm s expostulations were of course useless.

In due time the Pope s answer to the reference
arrived. As was to be expected,- he indignantly dis
avowed the verbal message attributed to him by
Gerard of York and his companions : he reiterated the
prohibitions against lay investiture, and excommuni
cated the bishops as liars, and false to their trust.
That they should have lied outright, with the cer
tainty of being found out, seems more incredible than
that they should have blundered. Pope Paschal was
" no Gregory," as one of Anselm s correspondents said ;
he was very desirous to keep well with Henry in his
own critical position ; and in his first letter to Anselm

268 ANSELM AND HENRY L [CHAP.

after his own election he lays great stress on getting
the revenue which the Roman Church derived from
England, and which, he said, it sorely needed. It is
possible that he may have held out some vague hopes
or hinted some ambiguous civilities, which Gerard mis
understood or made too much of. But, on the other
hand, the bishops story was a very circumstantial one;
and nothing in Paschal s character warrants us in think
ing that he was willing to give \vay privately on a
point on which he was so stiff publicly. And the
writers who mention the story, Eadmer and William
of Malmsbury, take for granted, in accordance with
Paschal s account of the matter, that the whole thing
was a trick, not of the Pope to make things pleasant,
but of unscrupulous court bishops to gain time.

But no one yet knew what the Pope s letter, which
was directed to Anselm, contained. The king would
not hear of having it read to him, or its contents
reported to him ; he probably knew what it contained.
Anselm would not break the seal, lest, if the king
should ask to see it and found it unsealed, he should
talk of forgery and interpolations. Anselm feared
also lest its contents might at once force him to ex
treme measures with some of the bishops ; and it was
not opened till Anselm was out of England. But in
the middle of Lent (1103) Henry, on some pretence,
suddenly appeared at Canterbury. The reason soon
appeared. His patience, he let Anselm understand,
was exhausted, and he must have his own, as his
predecessors had had, without evasion and without
delay. " What had he to do with the Pope about
what was his own ? Let all who loved him know for
certain that whoever denied him his father s usages

LIBRARY ST. MARY S COLLEGE

xii.] ANSELM AND HENRY L 269

was his enemy." " I neither am taking, nor wish to
take from him anything that is his," was the answer ;
" but to save my life, unless the same see w r hich laid on
the prohibition takes it off, I may not consent to him
about the matters which I heard with my own ears
decreed in the Roman Synod." The king was known
to be exasperated and disposed for extreme measures ;
people began to talk of personal violence. Things
looked dangerous. " I have seen," says Eadmer, " the
very chief men, on whose advice the king relied, in
tears at the prospect of the mischief to come."
Prayers were made that evil might be averted. But,
in the midst of the excitement, Henry s tone at once
changed. " Would the archbishop go himself to
Rome, and try what he could do with the Pope, lest
the king by losing the rights of his predecessors
should be disgraced." Anselm answered that if the
chief men of the realm thought it right for him to go,
weak as he was, he was ready according as God
should give him strength ; but that if he should reach
the successor of the apostles, he could do nothing
to the prejudice of the liberty of the Church or his
own honour; he could but bear witness to facts.
The reply was that nothing more was wanted ; the
king s envoy would be there also, to state the case
for his master.

This was arranged at the Easter court at Win
chester (1103). Anselm returned to Canterbury, and
four days after set out on his journey to Rome. In
contrast with his first departure, Eadmer says that he
departed " in the king s peace, invested with all that
belonged to him." Correspondence was kept up in
measured but not unfriendly terms. Anselm landed

270 ANSELM AND HENRY I. [CHAP.

at Witsand, and proceeded by Boulogne to Bee and
Chartres. He had friends everywhere : the Countess
Ida, the mother of two kings of Jerusalem, at Bou
logne ; the Countess Adela, the Conqueror s daughter,
at Chartres ; and at Chartres he was also welcomed by
the famous Bishop Ivo, one of the most learned and
moderate canonists of the time, Anselm s fellow-pupil
under Lanfranc at Bee, who was not at first, though
he became so afterwards, of Anselm s mind on the
great question of the day. The season was an unusually
hot one ; every one said it was madness to attempt a
summer journey to Italy ; and Anselm was persuaded
to delay. He spent the time at his old home at Bee.
Such delay probably suited the king. Partly because
he had rather that Anselm, now that he was out of
England, should not tell his own story at Rome,
partly perhaps from a real feeling of kindness which
seems to have been between the two men in spite of
their differences, he became anxious for " his arch
bishop s " health, and wrote, urging him to spare him
self the fatigue of the journey, and do his business by
envoys. But Anselm had already set out at the end
of August, and his answer is dated from the valley
of Maurienne, at the foot of Mont Cenis. At Rome
he found his old acquaintance, the searcher of his
baggage at Dover, his opponent at Rome in the days
of Pope Urban, William Warelwast, who had pro
bably made more journeys to Rome in the king s
service than any other of the clerks of the chapel. In
due time the subject was brought before the Pope
and the Roman court. William Warelwast was an
able and bold advocate of the king s rights. He
asked that the Pope would sanction and legalize for

xii.] ANSELM A ND HENR Y I. 271

King Henry the old customs of William the Con
queror. He urged the humiliation of depriving him
of well-established usages ; and he dilated on the
munificence of the English kings, and on what the
Romans would lose by offending them. His words,
and it may be something more, brought over a good
many of his Roman hearers. " The wishes," it was
said, " of so great a man as the King of England were
on no account to be overlooked." Anselm was silent.
" He would not," says Eadmer, " give his advice that
mortal man should be made the door of the Church ; "
but all along his part was not to press his own view,
but to take the law from the supreme judge. Paschal
also had only listened. Warelwast thought he had
made an impression, and might venture to clench it.
" Know all men present," he added with vehemence,
" that not to save his kingdom will King Henry lose
the investitures of the churches." " Nor, before God,
to save his head, will Pope Paschal let him have
them," was the immediate retort. William was taken
aback, and the feeling of the assembly veered round.
The advice was given by the Pope s counsellors that
Henry should be indulged in some matters of custom,
which might put him in good humour, and not give
cause to other princes to take offence : that he
himself should be personally exempted from excom
munication ; but that the prohibition of investiture
must be maintained, and all those who had infringed

^5

it regarded as excommunicate. A letter, such as
commonly came from the milder popes at this time,
of compliment, remonstrance, and devotional appeal,
firm, but leaving the door open for further negotia
tion, was sent to the king. With arguments from

272 ANSELM AND HENRY I. [CHAP.

Scripture texts, like " I am the door," assurances that
the customs claimed were really of no value, and with
large promises of consideration for the king s wishes,
were mingled congratulations on the birth of his son,
" whom," adds the Pope, " we hear that you have
named by the name* of your famous father, William."
To Anselm the Pope gave his blessing, and the con
firmation of the Primacy of Canterbury. There was
nothing more to do at Rome, and Anselm prepared
to return to England.

He was escorted through the Apennines by the
great Countess Matilda. On the road they were
joined by William Warelwast, who had remained
behind at Rome in the hope of doing something
more in Anselm s absence ; but he found the attempt
useless. He travelled in Anselm s company over the
Alps ; but he was in a hurry to get home, and turned
off before they reached Lyons, where Anselm was to
spend Christmas. Before he went he delivered to
Anselm a message from the king: it was his last
word ; but it was accompanied with assurances of the
king s love and good-will to the archbishop. " I had
hoped," he said, " that our business at Rome would
have had another issue, and I therefore deferred till
now to communicate what my lord bid me say to you.
But now I must tell you. He says that if you return,
to be to him what your predecessors have been to
his, he desires and will gladly welcome your com
ing." "Have you nothing more to say? ; Anselm
asked. " I speak to a man of understanding," was
the only answer. " I understand," said Anselm.
There was no difficulty in understanding, though he
wrote to Henry to ask if Warelwast had rightly

xii.] ANSELM AND HENRY I. 273

delivered his message. Warelwast went forward on
his journey, and Anselm a second time took up his
abode at Lyons with his friend Archbishop Hugh.

The matter was left exactly as Henry wished it.
The Pope had no intention of quarrelling with the
king. He saved matters with Henry by exempting
him personally from the Church laws, and with his
own conscience by enforcing it against everybody else.
Paschal had serious difficulties on his hands at home ;
and this seemed to be the most hopeful way of
arranging the English question. He compromised
and surrendered nothing; but he kept up negotiations
and interchange of friendly messages with Henry.
Henry also had not given way; and he personally was
saved harmless. Anselm s hands were for the present
tied, and he could not speak or influence others by his
presence in England. But not even with him was
Henry inclined to deal as the Red King had done.
On Warehvast s return, the revenues of the archbishop
ric were seized for the king s use. But he appointed,
as receivers, two of the archbishop s own " men," with
the " kindly forethought/ says Eadmer, " that as they
were bound by fealty and oaths to Anselm, they would
exercise their office less vexatiously to the tenants"
an intention which Eadmer intimates was imperfectly
fulfilled. The correspondence between the king and the
archbishop did not cease, and it was kept up in words
of good-will and grave courtesy. " You tell me," writes
the king, " that you cannot come to me nor be with me,
as Lanfranc your predecessor was with my father. I am
very sorry that you will not do so. If you would, I would
gladly receive you ; and all the instances of honour,
dignity, and friendship which my father showed to him

S.L. x. T

274 AN S ELM AND HENRY I. [CHAP.

I would show to you. But our lord the Pope has
sent to me his requests and admonitions on certain
points. Wherefore I wish to send ambassadors to
Rome, and by the counsel of God and my barons
answer our lord the Pope about them, and ask for
that which I ought to ask for. When I have received
his answer, I will write to you as God may put it
into my mind. Meanwhile I am willing that you
should have what is convenient from the profits of the
Church of Canterbury; though I do this unwillingly; for
there is no man living whom I would rather have in my
kingdom with me than you, if there was nothing with
you against it." The queen, who was ever full of love
and reverence for Anselm, and with whom he kept up
a constant correspondence, assured him that her hus
band s mind towards him was much more softened than
many people thought, and that her influence should
not be wanting to produce agreement and harmony
between them. But there was no sign of relenting, or
of any intention to alter or give up the usages. Hard
things were said of Anselm. The king declared that he
alone thwarted him, implying that the Pope would
have been more favourable, but for Anselm. Anselm s
answer, that he could not do, under altered circum
stances, what Lanfranc had done, gave a natural and
obvious handle for invidious reflections ; his steady
friend Queen Matilda writes regretfully that his intem
perate words had disturbed the evenmindedness of
the king and the nobles. " I have said nothing," he
writes in reply, " against the king s father and
Archbishop Lanfranc, men of great and religious
name, when I said that neither in my baptism
nor in my ordination had I pledged myself to

XIL] ANSELM AND HENRY I. 275

their laws and customs, and when I declared
that I would not deny the law of God. As to what
is now demanded of me, on the ground that they did
it, I, on account of what with my own ears I heard at
Rome, cannot do it without the heaviest offence. But
that ill-natured meaning which has been put on my
words, according to which I have spoken foolishly, I do
not suppose to be so taken either by the king or by you ;
for the king, as I understand, received my letter in the
first instance kindly ; but afterwards some one or other,
I know not who, spitefully gave it an ill meaning and
stirred him up against me."

The precedent of Lanfranc was a point on which
Anselm felt himself specially open to misinterpre
tation. " Some mischievous busybody or other,"- -he
writes to his " old and ever new friend, Gundulf, bishop
of Rochester," the only one of the bishops who had
stuck by him throughout, " has interpreted my
letter to the king out of the evil of his own heart ,
as if I boasted that I always have kept God s law and
slandered the king s father and Archbishop Lanfranc, as
if they had lived out of God s law. But they who
say this have too small or too evil a mind. In their
time, the king s father and Archbishop Lanfranc,
great and religious men as they were, did some
things which I at this time cannot do according to
God s will, or without the condemnation of my own
soul."

AnselnYs position was a hard one. About the
" usages " themselves, he never had the strong feelings
of Gregory VII., which were kept up at Rome. In
tellectually and morally, his was not a mind to lay
great stress on matters of this kind ; in temper he was

T 2

276 ANSELM AND HENRY I. [CHAP.

too considerate and ready to allow for others, in his
ways of thinking he was too intent on wider and
loftier views, to see such a question as this with the
keen and accurate instinct of a statesman. His own

conduct shows that there was nothing in homage or

t> &

investiture, taken by themselves, to shock him ; at
first he looked on them as a matter of course. Since
then, he had learned that a meaning could be put on
them ; he had felt what an engine they could be made
for hindering a bishop in his duty, and for making him
think unworthily of his office. But this of itself was
not the reason why he so unflinchingly set himself
against the " customs which Henry truly said were
those of Lanfranc and the Conqueror. There is very
little of the current argument against them in his own
writings. His attitude throughout was that of simple
obedience to the law and to its lawful expounder, and
his own spiritual superior, though he himself had come
to see only too good reason for the law. He had heard
the law promulgated. He had heard its authorized
interpreter enforce the universal application of it.
When there could be no longer any doubt about this,
there was nothing left for him but to obey. And to
obey was all that he pretended to do. It was the
Pope s business to speak in the matter ; that was not
disputed even in England : what the king wanted, was
for the Pope to do, as Popes were too much accustomed
to do, to grant some personal privilege or exemption
from the general law. And Henry wanted Anselm to
believe that, sooner or later, he should persuade the
Pope into giving it, and to go on in the meanwhile as if
it had been given. This was what Anselm would not
do, and for which he was in exile. But let the Pope

XIL] ANSELM AND HENRY I. 277

speak, let him decide in what way he would, let him
modify the law entrusted to his administration, let
him make what terms seemed to him expedient, and
Anselm would be only too glad to go back to the
more congenial work of trying to raise up religion
and morality in England. What his opinion really
was as to what was expedient or right for the Pope to
arrange, hardly appears ; he would, no doubt, have
been glad, when the question about investiture was
once opened, to get rid of a mischievous and unbe
coming practice ; he thought that it was not a
matter for trifling ; and he thought that on both
sides there was too much of an intention to gain time,
and to leave things in suspense ; but to the decision,
when it came, and whatever it was, he was ready to
bow. But the decision was just the thing which it
seemed hopeless to look for. Embassies came and
went; each embassy just avoided bringing things to
extremities, and invited another. " The decision of
the whole matter," as Anselm wrote to the Pope ;
" lies with you." Let Paschal dispense with the law ;
let him take off the excommunication, and Anselm was
ready to communicate with those whom the Pope
dispensed with, to do homage, to allow investiture,
if the Pope thought he could make exceptions to the
canons. " You tell me," he says in one of his
letters to England, with unwonted sharpness, "that
they say that it is I who forbid the king to grant
investitures. Tell them that they lie. It is not I who
forbid the king ; but having heard the Vicar of the
Apostles in a great council excommunicate all who
gave or received investiture, I have no mind to hold
communion with excommunicates, or to become

2/8 ANSELM AND HENRY L [CHAP.

excommunicate myself." And his language on this
point never varied.

But, as was not unnatural, the blame of everything
was thrown on him. Not unnaturally- -for he
was the one man who saw his duty and his line
perfectly clear, and whom nothing could move from
them. He was ready to do whatever the Pope bade
him to resist, to comply, to compromise ; only his
chief must give his orders. And people felt that it
was his unflinching constancy and single-minded
purpose which prevented the authorities at Rome,
for very shame, from conniving, in the case of
distant and rich England, at a breach of their own
recent and solemn laws. William Warelwast would
have had much more chance of arranging matters at
Rome, if he had not had to encounter there, not
Anselm s words, but his silence and his readiness
to accept the " usages," if only the Pope would take
the responsibility of commanding him to accept
them. And so everybody, friends and foes, turned
on him. The queen wrote, beseeching him somehow
or other to find a way out of the difficulty. The
monks of Canterbury charged on him the vexations
which they suffered in his absence ; whatever hap
pened amiss in the church was laid at his door.
He was depriving the king of his rights. He was
letting the king s wicked clerks invade the Church.
He was obstinate and impracticable. He was taking
his ease and evading the duty and danger of his
post. He was led away by "his iron will;" he was
a coward, and " had fled from his flock and left them
to be torn to pieces, at the word of one William."
" He was busying himself about other men s matters,

XIL] ANSELM AND HENR Y I. 279

and neelectinsr his own work." His letters at this

o o

time, differing in their nervous and direct conciseness
from the sermon-like fashion of letter-writing which
is his ordinary style, as it was the style of his age
show that he felt keenly, and had to command himself,
in noticing and answering the peevish and ill-natured
complaints, the gossip, the suspicions, the misinter
pretations, the impatient and unreasonable entreaties,
which came to him from England.

Anselm waited a year and a half at Lyons, while
the king was negotiating at Rome. In March 1105
he received a letter from Paschal, saying that he
had excommunicated the counsellors who instigated
the king to insist on investiture, and especially
Robert Count of Mellent, the shrewdest and most
ambitious of them ; but that he was waiting for
another embassy from England before he settled
anything about the king. " Then Anselm understood
that it was useless for him to wait at Lyons for
help from Rome; for all that he had got in answer
to letters and messages was some sort of consolatory
promises, bidding him expect something, from one
fixed time to another." He had also written more
than once to Henry asking for restitution of the
property of the see, which without any form of judg
ment had been seized for the king s use ; and had
received no answers but polite excuses for delay. He
at length resolved to do something himself to bring
matters to an issue.

He left Lyons and came northwards. On his road
he heard that the Countess Adela of Blois and
Chartres, Henry s sister, who had of old treated him
with great kindness and had taken him for her spiri-

280 ANSELM AND HENRY I. [CHAP.

tual guide, was dangerously ill at Blois. A visit
under such circumstances was looked upon in those
days as an indispensable duty of friendship and
religion ; Anselm turned out of his road and went
to Blois. She recovered; and then Anselrn "did not
conceal from her, that for the injury which for two
years Henry had done to God and to himself, he
was come to excommunicate him."

The countess was alarmed and distressed ; and
set herself in earnest to avert the blow. Excom
munications were the usual, and according to the
ideas of the time the lawful, weapons, in contests
of this kind about the wrongful seizure of property;
and they were not uncommon, even against kings and
princes. But an excommunication from a man of
Anselm s character, who had suffered so much and
so long, was felt to be a more serious thing than
ordinary. It was particularly inconvenient to Henry
just at this time, when he was preparing for his
decisive struggle with his brother Robert for the
possession of Normandy. The report spread, and
Henry was alarmed. " In many places in England,
France, and Normandy, it was noised abroad that
the king himself was on the point of being excom
municated by Anselm ; and thereupon many mischiefs
began to be hatched against a Power not over
much loved, which it was thought might be more
effectually carried out against one excommunicated
by a man like Anselm." But Henry was too prudent
to allow things to come to extremities. The Countess
Adela carried Anselm with her to Chartres, and
through her mediation an interview was arranged
between the king and the archbishop. He and

XIL] ANSELM AND HENRY I. 281

the Countess met Henry (July 22, 1105) at the Castle
of L Aigle on the Rille. " They found the king
overjoyed at Anselm s coming, and not a little softened
from his old harshness." The reconciliation seemed
hearty and frank. Anselm was put in possession
of the revenues of his see, and restored to the king s
friendship. Henry was as gracious as he could be;
whenever anything had to be discussed, he would
always go himself to visit Anselm, instead of sending
for him. Efforts were made that Anselm should at
once return to England. But Henry insisted on the
old conditions recognition of the right of investiture.
And on this point a reference to Rome was necessary.
Things were only half settled ; and Henry made
the most of the opportunity in a characteristic way.
He was at this time in pressing need of money for
his war in Normandy ; and the Church of course
did not escape " in the manifold contributions, which
never ceased," says the English chronicler, " before
the king went over to Normandy, and while he
was there, and after he came back again." Henry
had some skill in inventing, on such emergencies,
new forisfacta matters for fines and forfeiture
questions for the Curia Regis to settle between
him and his lieges. On this occasion he was
seized with a zeal for Church discipline. Many
of the parochial clergy were living in disobedience
to the canons of the late synod of Westminster,
which had forbidden clerical marriage ; " this sin the
king could not endure to see unpunished." So to
bring the offenders to their duty, he, of his own mere
motion, proceeded to mulct them heavily. The tax,
however, proved, unfortunately, not so productive

282 ANSELM AND HENRY I. [CHAP.

as he had anticipated ; and therefore, changing his
mind, he imposed the assessment on the whole body
of the parochial clergy, innocent as well as guilty,
throughout the kingdom. Anselm expostulated ;
the offending clergy ought to be punished, he said,
not by the officers of the Exchequer, but by their
bishops. Henry, in his reply, is much surprised at
the archbishop s objections; he thought that he was
only doing his work for him, labouring in his cause ;
but he would see to it : " however," he said, " whatever
else had happened, the archbishop s people had been
left in peace." But as to the mass of the clergy,
seizures, imprisonment, and every kind of annoy
ance, had enforced the tax-gatherer s demands.
Two hundred priests went barefoot in procession,
in alb and stole, to the king s palace, " with one
voice imploring him to have mercy upon them ;
but they were driven from his presence ; " the king,
perhaps, was busy." They then, " clothed with con
fusion upon confusion," besought the intercession
and good offices of the queen : she was moved to
tears at their story ; but she was afraid to interfere
in their behalf. What is a still greater proof of
Henry s tyranny is that the court party among
the clergy, among them the excommunicated bishops,
began to turn their eyes towards Anselm. Gerard
of York found himself in trouble, and wrote with
apologies and prayers for help to the man whom
he had done his best to ruin. A letter was further
sent, signed by several of the bishops, entreating
Anselm to return, as the only means of remedying
the misery of the English Church. " We have
waited for peace, but it has departed far from us.

XIL] ANSELM AND HENRY I. 283

Laymen had broken in, even unto the altar. Thy
children," they continue, " will fight with thee the
battle of the Lord; and if them shalt be gathered
to thy fathers before us, we will receive of thy hand
the heritage of thy labours. Delay then, no longer ;
thou hast now no excuse before God. We are ready,
not only to follow thee, but to go before thee, if
thou command us ; for now we are seeking in this
cause, not what is ours, but what is the Lord s."
Amongr the names attached to this letter are those

o

of Anselm s old opponents, Gerard of York, Herbert
of Norwich, and Robert of Chester.

At length, after more delays, more embassies, more
intrigues, and bargainings at Rome, the end of this
dreary contest came for Anselm ; and except that
haggling is part of a bargain, it is not easy to see
why it might not have come before. In April 1106,
fresh instructions came from the Pope. It released, or
gave Anselm authority to release, all who had come
under excommunication for breaking the canons
about homage and investiture ; thus enabling Anselm
to return to England and take part with the offending
bishops ; but it laid down no rule for the future.
Henry was now very anxious to get Anselm to
England ; but he was detained at Jumieges and Bee
by repeated attacks of alarming illness. The king s
letters and messages expressed the warmest interest
in him. " All that the king had in Normandy was at
his disposal." Henry at length crossed over to Nor
mandy ; he had a great enterprise on hand ; and he
found time to visit Anselm at Bee. Various matters
were arranged to put a stop to the arbitrary exactions
which had grown up under the Red King; and at

284 ANSELM AND HENRY I. [CHAP.

length Anselm returned once more to England, where
he was received with joyful welcome. "My lord the
king," Anselm writes in one of his letters, " has com
mended to me his kingdom and all that belongs to
him, that my will might be done in all that is his :
in which he has shown the kindness of his good-will
towards me, and his affection for me." The queen
met him, and prepared his lodgings at the places
where he halted ; and, as always, was foremost in her
affection and honour for him. Shortly, he received
from the king the account of his final victory over
his brother Robert, in the decisive battle fought,
"on a day named and fixed," at Tinchebrai (Sept.
28, 1106). Henry s enemies were now crushed and
in his power ; not only his brother, but the more
formidable Norman lords, William of Mortagne and
the implacable Robert of Belesme. Ralph Flambard
recognized the winning side and made his peace with
Henry. Henry had regained the realm over which his
father had ruled ; and the Norman and English lords
soon felt that they had found their master.

But the final arrangement of the dispute with the
Church had yet to come. It was not long delayed.
It might have been expected that the conqueror of
Normandy would have been tempted, if not to extreme
terms, at least to his old game of delay and intrigue.
But Anselm seems to have won his respect; and Henry
was ready for concessions and a fair treaty. " On the
1st of August (1107), savs Eadmer it would have
been at Whitsuntide but for Anselm s illness " an
assembly of bishops, abbots, and chief men of the realm
was held in London, in the king s palace; and for
three days continuously the matter of the investitures

xii.] ANSELM AND HENRY I. 28;

of churches was fully discussed between the king and
the bishops, Anselm being absent ; some of them
urging that the king should perform them after the
custom of his father and brother, and not according to
the command of the Pope. For the Pope, standing
firm in the decision which had been promulgated
thereupon, had allowed the homage which Pope
Urban had forbidden equally with investitures ; and
by this had made the king inclinable to him on the
point of investitures. Then, in the presence of Anselm,
the multitude standing by, the king granted and
decreed that from that time forth for ever no one
should be invested in England with bishopric or abbey
by staff and ring, either by the king or by any lay
hand ; Anselm also allowing that no one elected to a
prelacy should be refused consecration on account of
homage done to the king. This, then, having been
settled, fathers were appointed by the king, by the
counsel of Anselm and the chief men of the realm,
without any investiture of the pastoral staff and
ring, in nearly all the churches in England which
had long been widowed of their pastors." On the
I ith of the same month, at Canterbury, they were
consecrated. Among them were William Giffard and
Reinhelm, whose unexpected scruples and resolute
foregoing of high place first opened Henry s eyes to
the reaction which was beginning, even among the
clerks of the chapel ; among them, too, was William
Warelwast, appointed to Exeter, who, after all his
hard work at Rome, had ended by becoming Anselm s
friend. Among the consecrating bishops was not
only Gerard of York, but the Bishop of Durham,
Ralph Flambard.

CHAPTER XIII.

ANSELM S LAST DAYS.

" Still glides the Stream, and shall not cease to glide";
The Form remains, the Function never dies ;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish ; be it so !
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour ;
And if, as towards the silent tomb we go,
Through love, through hope, and faith s transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know."- -WORDSWORTH.

ANSELM had won a great victory. What was gained
by it ?

Of the victory itself there can be no doubt. The
power which contested it was too mighty and ener
getic ; the opposition too formidable and resolute ; the
object fought for too much prized by those who had
to yield it, and too obstinately defended ; the prescrip
tion assailed was of too long date, too continuous, and
too natural, for it to be a light matter that the issue
of the dispute broke through the cherished usages
of the Norman kings. That the arrangement was
a peaceful compromise, and that the king kept half
what he contended for, in his view perhaps the most
important half, did not make it less a victory, that
any part of what was so valued should be torn

CH. XIIL] ANSELM S LAST DA YS. 287

from such a grasp by the single-minded constancy
of an old man at a distance, whose main weapon
was his conviction of the justice of his cause,
and his unflinching and undeviating steadiness.
To have made so marked a change publicly and
deliberately in the relations of bishops to great
kings, whose rule was not so much by law as by the
loose claims and measures of feudal usages, and to
have induced one of the sons of the Conqueror,
and, among them, to have induced Henry, the
shrewdest, ablest, hardest of them all, to forego part
of the customs which he valued at the worth of
half his kingdom, was an achievement of which,
whatever came of it, no one could mistake the mag
nitude. It was accomplished, too, with a remarkable
absence of those violent measures which were the
common weapons on all sides in those days, and which
were so freely used in other scenes of this same
contest on the continent of Europe. That which
determined it as much as anything was Anselm s
personal character ; the boundless reverence and, still
more, the intense love and sympathy called out on
all sides, by the union in it of the deepest human
tenderness with grave and calm self-command, with
unpretending courage, and with that unconscious and
child-like meekness, so remarkable in him, with which
he bore those great and singular gifts of intellect, in
which by this time he was known to be without a
living equal in Christendom. Henry, with all his deep
and heavy faults, had eyes for this. He knew that in
Anselm he had at Canterbury the greatest Christian
bishop, the greatest religious example of his age. He
felt towards the archbishop, as the great persons about

288 ANS ELM S LAST DA VS. [CHAP.

him and his subjects felt with more admiration, per
haps, of the head, with not so much sympathy probably
of the heart, as there was, at least, among the people ;
much disliking, much resenting, much fearing many of
Anselm s ways and purposes, but unable to resist the
spell and charm of His nobleness, his force of soul, his
unselfish truthfulness. Only Henry, probably, saw it
more clearly than the clerks of his chapel, or cunning
men of the world like Count Robert of Mellent. He
saw that it was, even politically, a mistake to persist
even for the sake of "the usages" in forcing a man
like Anselm, whom he might gain for a friend, to range
himself against him. Slowly and reluctantly, but not
insincerely at last, he made up his mind to come to
terms ; and when he had done so, then with the frank
ness of a really powerful mind, he let his admiration for
his antagonist have its way. No honour, no confidence
was too much for Anselm. Further, when the question
was to be settled, Henry settled it openly and fairly ;
in the way which was the lawful way of witnessing
and establishing important constitutional matters ; in
a great council of the realm, where it was debated,
decided, and then proclaimed before the people,
gathered to hear the proceedings of their chiefs, and
to sanction these proceedings by their presence.

This was the victory ; but what was gained by it ?
It was of course, directly and outwardly, the victory
of a cause which has never been popular in England ;
it renewed and strengthened the ties which connected
England with that great centre of Christendom, where
justice and corruption, high aims and the vilest
rapacity and fraud, undeniable majesty and undeni
able hollowness, were then, as they have ever been,

xiii.] ANSELM S LAST DA VS. 289

so strangely and inextricably combined. Anselm s
victory, with its circumstances, was one of the steps,
and a very important one, which made Rome more
powerful in England : even with the profound and
undoubting beliefs of the eleventh and twelfth cen
turies, that did not recommend it to the sympathy of
Englishmen ; it is not likely to do so now. But those
who judge of events not merely by the light of what
has happened since, and of what, perhaps, have been
their direct consequences, but by the conditions of the
times when they happened, ought to ask themselves
before they regret such a victory as an evil, what would
have come to pass if, in days like those of William
the Red and his brother, with the king s clerical
family as a nursery for bishops, and with clerks like
Ralph Flambard or Gerard of York, or even William
Warelwast, for rulers of the Church, the king and his
party had triumphed, and the claims founded on the
" usages" to the submission of the Church and the
unreserved obedience of the bishops had prevailed
without check or counterpoise ? Would a feudalized
clergy, isolated and subservient, have done better for
religion, for justice, for liberty, for resistance to
arbitary will, for law, for progress, than a clergy con
nected with the rest of Christendom ; sharing for
good, and also, no doubt, for evil, in its general move
ment and fortunes, and bound by strong and real ties
not only to England, but to what was then, after all,
the school and focus of religious activity and effort,
as well as the seat of an encroaching and usurping
centralization the Roman Church. Men must do
what they can in their own day against what are the
evils and dangers of their own day ; they must use

S.L. x.

290 ANSELM S LAST DA VS. [CHAP.

against them the helps and remedies which their own
day gives. There was in those times no question of
what we now put all our trust in, the power of law ;
the growth of our long histories and hard experiences,
and of the prolonged thought of the greatest intel
lects of many generations. The power which pre
sented itself to men in those days as the help of right
against might, the refuge and protector of the weak
against the strong, the place where reason might
make its appeal against will and custom, where liberty
was welcomed and honoured, where it was a familiar
and stirring household word, was not the law and its
judgment-seats, but the Church, with its authority,
concentrated and represented in the Pope. That
belief was just as much a genuine and natural growth
of the age, as the belief which had also grown up
about kings as embodying the power of the nation ;
that it was abused by tyranny or weakness was
no more felt to be an argument against one than
against the other. The question which men like
Anselm asked themselves was, how best they could
restrain wrong, and counteract what were the plainly
evil and dangerous tendencies round them. He did
so by throwing himself on the spiritual power behind
him, which all in his times acknowledged greater than
any power of this world. What else could any man in
his struggle against tyranny and vice have done ? What
better, what more natural course could any man have
taken, earnest in his belief of the paramount supe
riority of spiritual things over, material, and of reason
over force ; earnest in his longing for reformation and
improvement ? The central power of the Pope, which
Anselm strengthened, grew rapidly with the growth

XHI.] ANSELM S LAST DA VS. 291

and advance of the times : it grew to be abused ; it
usurped on the powers to which it was the counter
poise ; it threatened, as they had threatened, to absorb
all rights of sovereignty, all national and personal
claims to independence and freedom ; it had, in its
turn, to be resisted, restrained, at last in England
expelled. It went through the usual course of
successful power in human hands. But this is no
reason why at the time it should not have been the
best, perhaps, even the only defence of the greatest
interests of mankind against the immediate pressure
of the tyrannies and selfishness of the time. If any
thing else could then have taken its place in those
days, the history of Europe has not disclosed it.

It may be thought, on the other hand, that the
actual point which Ansel m gained was not worth the
gaining ; that while he gained too mu.ch in one way,
as regards the influence of the Pope, he was cheated
out of the substance of what he had been fighting for
in regard to checks on the king in the appointment
of bishops. But this was not the view at the time.
Then the feeling was that two things had been done.
By the surrender of the significant ceremony of
delivering the bishopric by the emblematic staff and
ring, it was emphatically put on record that the
spiritual powers of the bishop were not the king s
to give ; the prescription of feudalism was broken ;
a correction was visibly given to the confused but
dangerous notions in which that generation had been
brought up. In the second place, the king was
strongly and solemnly reminded that he owed an
account for the persons whom he appointed bishops ;
they were not merely his creatures ; they were not

U 2

292 ANSELM S LAST DA YS. [CHAP.

merely elevated and promoted on the terms on which
he made a knight or a baron ; the office was not his,
in the sense that he could sell it. There was a body
of opinion to which he owed deference in such ap
pointments ; there was an authority with which he
must reckon, and which had a right to be satisfied.
Whatever the final arrangements were, or if there were
any, about the right of appointing and electing pre
lates (and there is a good deal of variation in the
language in which these transactions are described),
there can be no doifbt that in the case of important
dignitiqs, like those of bishops and the great abbots,
the king would in the long-run find a way to get
them, or the greater part of them, into his patronage.
But it was a distinct step that the attention of the
public, both ecclesiastical and civil, should be directed
to these appointments ; that the king should be
reminded, even if he went against the warning, as
Henry doubtless in many cases did, that there were
rules and fitnesses and other claims than his own to
be thought of in giving bishoprics. Anselm s struggle
raised the general feeling about the calling and the
duties of a bishop. It was a fit work for the first
bishop and pastor of England, of one who sat in the
first Christian see of the West ; it was worth strug
gling for ; and it was a victory worth having, to have
in any degree succeeded in it.

And if nothing else had been gained, or if, when he
was gone, the tide of new things new disputes, new
failures, new abuses and corruptions flowed over his
work, breaking it up and making it useless or harm
ful, this at least was gained, which was more lasting
the example of a man in the highest places of the

xni.] ANSELM S LAST DA YS. 293

world who, when a great principle seemed entrusted to
him, was true to it, and accepted all tasks, all disap
pointments, all humiliations in its service. The liberty
of God s Church, obedience to its law and its divinely
appointed chief, this was the cause for which Anselm
believed himself called to do his best. And he was
not afraid. He was not afraid of the face of the
great, of the disapprobation of his fellows. It was
then an age of much more plain speaking than
ours, when intercourse between kings and other men
was more free, when expression was more homely,
and went with less ceremony to the point. But when
Anselm dared to tell what he believed to be the
truth in the king s court, it was more than the bluff-
ness of a rude code of manners ; he accepted a call
which seemed divine, with its consequences ; the call
of undoubted truth and plain duty. That for which
he contended was to him the cause of purity, honesty,
justice; it involved the hopes of the weak and
despised, in the everyday sufferings, as unceasing
then as in the days of which the Psalms tell, of the
poor and needy at the hands of the proud and the
mighty. " There might be much to say against his
course; the usages were but forms and trifles, or
they were an important right of the crown, and to
assail them was usurpation and disloyalty, or it was
a mere dream to hope to abolish them, or they were
not worth the disturbance which they caused, or there
were worse things to be remedied ; difficulties there were
no doubt ; still, for all this, he felt that this was the
fight of the day, and he held on unmoved. Through
what was romantic and what was unromantic in his
fortunes whether the contest showed in its high or

o

294 A NS ELM S LAST DA YS. [CHAP.

low form as a struggle in heavenly places against
evil before saints and angels, with the unfading
crown in view, or as a game against cowardly selfish
ness and the intrigue of courts ; cheered by the
sympathies of Christendom, by the love and reverence
of the crowds which sought his blessing ; or brought
down from his height of feeling by commonplace
disagreeables, the inconveniences of life dust, heat,
and wet, bad roads and imperialist robbers, debts and
fevers, low insults and troublesome friends, through
it all his faith failed not ; it was ever the same
precious and ennobling cause, bringing consolation in
trouble, giving dignity to what was vexatious and
humiliating. It was her own fault if the Church
gained little by the compromise, and by so rare a
lesson. In one sense, indeed, what is gained by any
great religious movement ? What are all reforms,
restorations, victories of truth, but protests of a
minority ; efforts, clogged and incomplete, of the good
and brave, just enough in their own day to stop
instant ruin the appointed means to save what is
to be saved, but in themselves failures ? Good men
work and suffer, and bad men enjoy their labours
and spoil them ; a step is made in advance evil
rolled back and kept in check for a while only to
return, perhaps, the stronger. But thus, and thus
only, is truth passed on, and the world preserved
from utter corruption. Doubtless bad men still con
tinued powerful in the English Church. Henry
tyrannized, evil was done, and the bishops kept
silence ; low aims and corruption may have still
polluted the very seats of justice ; gold may have been
as powerful with cardinals as with King Henry and

XIIL] ANSELM S LAST DA YS. 295

his chancellors. Anselm may have over-rated his
success. Yet success and victory it was a vantage-
ground for all true men who would follow him ; and if
his work was undone by others, he at least had done
his task manfully. And he had left his Church another
saintly name, and the memory of his good confession,
enshrining as it were her cause, to await the day when
some other champion should again take up the quarrel
-thus from age to age to be maintained, till He shall
come, to whom alone it is reserved to still for ever
the enemy and the avenger, and to root out all
wicked doers from the city of the Lord.

There is little more to be said of Anselm. Henry
was loyal to his agreement. He entirely gave up the
investiture of churches, so Anselm wrote to the Pope,
even against the resistance of many ; and in filling
up vacancies he followed not his own fancy, but took
the advice of religious men. His adviser in this was
Robert Count of Mellent, who had opposed Anselm
so keenly ; he was the man to whom the king most
listened, and he had come round to Anselm s side.
The policy of the late reign was entirely changed ;
" but," says Eadmer, " the count did not love the
English, and would not let any Englishmen be pro
moted to Church dignities." Henry, now that he
was safe on his throne, attended to the representa
tions made to him by Anselm and the chief men of
the realm, as to the evils which especially pressed
upon the poor. Two are mentioned by Eadmer.
The Norman kings were ever moving about through
their kingdom ; and the waste and plunder which ac
companied the passage of their numerous attendants
through the country had come to be, in the lawless

296 A NS ELM S LAST DA YS. [CHAP.

days of the Red King, like the desolation of hostile
armies. " No discipline," says Eadmer, " restrained
them ; they spoiled, they wasted, they destroyed.
What they found in the houses which they invaded
and could not consume, they took to market to sell for
themselves, or theyl)urnt it; or if it was drink, after
washing their horses feet in it, they poured it abroad.
Their cruelties to the fathers of families, their insults
to their wives aad daughters, it shames me to remem
ber. And so, whenever the king s coming was known
beforehand, they fled from their houses, and to save
themselves and what was theirs, as far as they could,
hid themselves in the woods or wherever they thought
they would be safest." This marauding of the ser
vants and followers of the court, Henry attempted
to check by stern penalties. He was equally severe
and inexorable in punishing another crime from
which the poor suffered the coining of false money ;
and his efforts w r ere not without effect, says Eadmer,
in relieving the miseries of the land during all his

reign.

Anselm s life was drawing to its close. The re-
enactment, and confirmation by the authority of the
great Whitsuntide Assembly, of the canons of the
Synod of London against clerical marriage, and a dis
pute with two of the Northern bishops, his old friend
Ralph Flambard, and the archbishop-elect of York,
who, apparently reckoning on Anselm s age and bad
health, was scheming to evade the odious obligation
of acknowledging the paramount claims of the see of
Canterbury, were all that marked the last year of his
life. A little more than a year before his own death,
he had to bury his old and faithful friend, a friend

xiii.] ANSELM S LAST DA YS. 297

first in the cloister of Bee, and then in the troubled
days of his English primacy, the great builder, Gun-
dulf, Bishop of Rochester. Anselm s last days shall
be told in the words of one who had the best right to
record the end of him whom he had loved so simply
and so loyally his attendant Eadmer.

" During these events (of the last two years of his
life) he wrote a treatise * Concerning the Agreement
of Foreknowledge, Predestination, and the Grace of
God, with Free Will/ in which, contrary to his wont,
he found difficulty in composition ; for after his illness
at Bury St. Edmund s, as long as he was spared to this
life, he was weaker than before; so that, when he was
moving from place to place, he was from that time
carried in a litter, instead of riding on horseback. He
was tried, also, by frequent and sharp sicknesses, so
that we scarce dared promise him life. He, however,
never left off his old way of living, but was always
engaged in godly meditations, or holy exhortations,
or other ^ood work.

*.\->

" In the third year after King Henry had recalled
him from his second banishment, every kind of food
by which nature is sustained became loathsome to
him. He used to eat, however, putting force on him
self, knowing that he could not live without food ; and
in this way he somehow or another dragged on life
through half a year, gradually failing day by day Jn
body, though in vigour of mind he was still the same
as he used to be. So being strong in spirit, though
but very feeble in the flesh, he could not go to his
oratory on foot ; but from his strong desire to attend
the consecration of the Lord s body, which he vene
rated with a special feeling of devotion, he caused

298 ANSELM S LAST DA YS. [CHAP.

himself to be carried thither every day in a chair.
We who attended on him tried to prevail on him
to desist, because it fatigued him so much ; but we
succeeded, and that with difficulty, only four days
before he died.

" From that time* he took to his bed, and, with
gasping breath, continued to exhort all who had the
privilege of drawing near him to live to God, each in
his own order. Palm Sunday had dawned, and we,
as usual, were sitting round him ; one of us said to
him, Lord Father, we are given to understand that
you are going to leave the world for your Lord s
Easter court. He answered, If His will be so, I
shall gladly obey His will. But if He willed rather
that I should yet remain amongst you, at least till I
have solved a question which I am turning in my
mind, about the origin of the soul, I should receive it
thankfully, for I know not whether anyone will finish
it after I am gone. Indeed, I hope, that if I could
take food, I might yet get well. For I feel no pain
anywhere; only, from weakness of my stomach, which
cannot take food, I am failing altogether.

" On the following Tuesday, towards evening, he
was no longer able to speak intelligibly. Ralph
Bishop of Rochester asked him to bestow his abso
lution and blessing on us who were present, and on
his other children, and also on the king and queen
with their children, and the people of the land who
had kept themselves under God in his obedience.
He raised his right hand, as if he was suffering
nothing, and made the sign of the Holy Cross ; and
then dropped his head and sank down. The con
gregation of the brethren were already chanting

xni.] ANSELM S LAST DA YS. 299

matins in the great church, when one of those who
watched about our Father took the book of the
Gospels and read before him the history of the
Passion, which was to be read that day at the mass.
But when he came to our Lord s words, Ye are they
which have continued with me in my temptations,
and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father
hath appointed unto me, that ye may eat and drink
at my table/ he began to draw his breath more
slowly. We saw that he was just going, so he was
removed from his bed, and laid upon sackcloth and
ashes. And thus, the whole family of his children
being collected round him, he gave up his last breath
into the hands of his Creator, and slept in peace.

" He passed away, as morning was breaking, on the
Wednesday before the day of our Lord s Supper, the
2 1st of April, in the year of our Lord s Incarnation
1 109 the sixteenth of his pontificate and the seventy-
sixth of his life."

The story of his departure, told so simply and
naturally, has its fringe of wonder and legend. The
balsam with which his body was embalmed seemed
inexhaustible ; the stone coffin, which seemed too
small, wonderfully enlarged itself. The eye of ad
miration and affection was ever on the look-out for
strange accompaniments of memorable events, and
readily saw them ; it was more true and more to be
depended on in seeing into heart and character than
into the outward facts of nature round it.

Those who remember Walton s account of the
death-bed of Richard Hooker will notice more than
one point of likeness between the narrative of the
twelfth century and that of the seventeenth. The soul,

300 ANS ELM S LAST DA YS. [CHAP.

vigorous to the very end, amid the decay of the body
and the "gradual averseness to all food ;" the cling
ing, without affectation, to the love of life to finish a
cherished work ; " he did not beg," writes Walton, " a
long life of God for any other reason but to live to
finish his three remaining books of Polity ; and then,
Lord, let thy servant depart in peace;" -the calm,
quiet, unexcited continuance in the usual rites and
practices of a religious life, long familiar and become
part of everyday life ; the comfort of Eucharist and
Gospel history; the employment to the last moment
of the subtle and inquisitive intellect on its conge
nial trains of abstruse thought, relating to the deep
mysteries of both worlds, seen and unseen, and
rendered more real in the face of death Anselm
revolving the origin of the soul, Hooker "meditating
the number and nature of angels, and their blessed
obedience and order, without which peace could not
be in heaven, and oh that it might be so on earth !"
all these details bring together, at the distance of so
many ages, the two great religious thinkers, who out
wardly were so different. They make us feel that at
bottom, in spite of all changes and differences of
circumstance and custom, in spite of miracles told in
one age, and the prosaic matter-of-fact of another, the
substance of human affections and of religious trust is
the same in both; and that to die as Anselm died, or
to die as Hooker died, is to die in much the same
manner ; with the same view of life now and to come,
the same sense of duty, the same faith : the same
loyalty to the great Taskmaster and Ruler, the same
hope for the cleansing of what was ill in them, and
the making perfect what was incomplete ; the same

XIIL] ANSELM S LAST DA VS. 301

submission to the will of God, the same loving hope
in Christ.

Anselm was first buried next to his friend Lanfranc
in the body of the minster of Canterbury, before the
great rood which rose up in the midst of it before
the choir. His remains were afterwards translated to
the chapel beneath the south-east tower which now
bears his name. There they now rest.

When he was gone, his contemporaries felt that the
tender-hearted, high-minded, resolute old man who
had comforted some of them and affronted others, was

a man whom they might be proud to have lived with.
His words, his wishes, his decisions, were received,
even by those who had opposed him, as oracles which
could not be gainsaid. His name, as was to be ex
pected, passed into the roll of saints ; but apparently
the steps of the process are not clear. His canoniza
tion was demanded, but without effect, by Thomas
Becket : the final ratification of it is ascribed to a
papal bull some centuries later. It was addressed
to Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury
under Henry VII. in I494- 1 I have mentioned that
the last abbot of Bee was M. de Talleyrand. The
Pope who formally canonized St. Anselm is said to
have been Alexander VI., Roderic Borgia. " In the
visible Church the evil are ever mingled with the
good."

But a very different judge had already interpreted
the opinion of Christendom about Anselm. Before
he had suffered the indignity of a canonization at the
hands of Borgia, Dante had consecrated his memory,
and assigned him a place with those whom the Church

1 Crozet-Mouchet, p. 482.

302 A NS ELM S LAST DA YS. [CHAP.

honoured as her saints. The great singer of Christian
Europe, in his vision of Paradise, sees him among the
spirits of light and power in the sphere of the sun-
the special " ministers of God s gifts of reason "
among those whom the Middle Age reverenced as
having shown to it.what the human intellect, quick
ened by the love of God, could do, in the humblest
tasks and sacrifices, and in the highest flights : with
prophets, historians, and philosophers ; with theo
logians and jurists ; with the glories of the great
orders, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventura,
and with their lowly first-fruits. He sees him as one
in those circling garlands of glorified spirits which
he describes answering to another as the double rain
bow, in their movements of love and joy :

" As when her handmaid Juno summons, rise
Two arches of like hue, and parallel,
Drawn out on fleecy cloud athwart the skies,

The outer springing from the inner one.

Like to the voice of that fair nymph that strayed,
Consumed by love, as vapours by the sun :
* *****

Even so the twofold Garland turned to us, -
Of roses formed, that bloom eternally ;
And one with other corresponded thus.

Soon as the sound of dance, and song, according

To such glad movement, and the revelry
Of light to light fresh brilliancy affording,

With one consent were in a moment still,

Like eyes whose movements simultaneous are,
Opening and shutting at the mover s will ;

From one of these new splendours came a sound." 1

And when the poet makes the spirit of St. Bonaventura
enumerate the twelve stars of the garland in which
he moves, Dante, probably by accident, at any rate

1 Paradise, c. xii. , Wright s translation.

xiii.] ANSELM S LAST DA VS. 303

by an accident which suits the double aspect of
Anselm s character, has joined his name at once with
those who had stood for truth in the face of kings
and multitudes, and with one who \vas the type of
the teachers of children in the first steps of know
ledge : the masters of thought and language in its
highest uses and its humblest forms ; with the seer
whose parable rebuked King David ; with the
preacher who thundered against Antioch and Con
stantinople ; with the once famous grammarian, St.
Jerome s master, from whom the Middle Age schools
learnt the elementary laws which govern human
speech, and out of whose book of rudiments Anselm
had doubtless taught his pupils at Bee :

" Nathan the seer, the metropolitan
John Chrysostom, Anselm, and he whose hands
Donatus deigned the primer s help to plan." l

It is his right place : in the noble company of the
strong and meek, who have not been afraid of the
mightiest, and have not disdained to work for and
with the lowliest : capable of the highest things ;
content, as living before Him with whom there is
neither high nor low, to minister in the humblest.

1 Dayman s translation.

THE END.

LONDON : R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, BREAD STREET HILL.

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MACMILLAN &- Co:s GENERAL CATALOGUE
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Lettres. With some short Account or
Critical Notice concerning each Book.

SECTION I.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, and TRAVELS.
Baker (Sir Samuel W.). THE NILE TRIBUTARIES OF

ABYSSINIA, and the Sword Hunters of the Hamran Arabs.
By SIR SAMUEL W. BAKER, M.A., F.R.G.S. With Portraits,
Maps, and Illustrations. Third Edition, 8vo. 21 s.

Sir Samuel Baker here describes twelve months exploration, during
which he examined the rivers that are tributary to the Nile from Abyssinia,
including the Atbara, Settite, Roy an, Salaam, Angrab, Rahad, Dinder,
and the Blue Nile. The interest attached to these portions of Africa differs
entirely from that of the White Nile regions, as the whole of Upper Egypt
and Abyssinia is capable of development, and is inhabited by races having
some degree of civilization; while Central Africa is peopled by a race of
savages, whose future is more problematical.

THE ALBERT N YANZA Great Basin ot the Nile, and Explo
ration of the Nile Sources. New and Cheaper Edition, with
Portraits, Maps, and Illustrations. Two vols. crown Svo. i6s.

* Bruce won the source of the Blue Nile ; Speke and Grant won z/u>
Victoria source of the great White Nile ; and / have been permitted to

A. T. A

10.000.5.70

GENERAL CATALOGUE.

Baker (Sir Samuel W.) (continued}-

succeed in completing the Nile Sources by the discovery of the great
reservoir of the equatorial waters, the Albert N^yanza, from which the
river issues as the entire White Nile."- PREFACE.

NEW AND CHEAP EDITION OF THE ALBERT N YANZA.
i vol. crown 8vo. With Maps and Illustrations, js. 6d.

Barker (Lady). STATION LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND.
By LADY BARKER. Crown 8vo. js. 6d.

" These letters are the exact accotint of a lady s experience of the brighter
and less practical side of colonization. They record the expeditions, ad
ventures, and emergencies diversifying the daily life of the wife of a New
Zealand sheep-farmer ; and, as each was written while the novelty and
excitement of the scenes it describes were fresh ttpon her, they may succeed
in giving here in England an adequate impression of the delight and free
dom of an existence so far removed from our own highly-wrought civiliza
tion" PREFACE.

" We have never read a more truthful or a pleasanter little book"

ATHENAEUM.

Baxter (R. Dudley, M.A.). THE TAXATION OF THE

UNITED KINGDOM. By R. DUDLEY BAXTEF, M.A. Svo.
cloth, 4>r. 6d.

The First Part of this work, originally read before the Statistical
Society of London, deals ^vith the Amount of Taxation ; the Second Part,
which now constitutes the main portion of the work, is almost entirely new,
and embraces the important questions of Rating, of the relative Taxation
of Land, Personalty, and Industry, and of the direct effect of Taxes upon
Prices. The author trusts that the body of facts here collected may be of
permanent value as a record of the past progress and present condition of
the population of the United Kingdom, independently of the transitory
circumstances of its present Taxation.

NATIONAL INCOME. With Coloured Diagrams. Svo. y. 6d.

PART I. Classification of the Population, Upper, Middle, and Labour
Classes. II. Income of the United Kingdom.

" A painstaking and certainly most interesting inquiry. " PALL MALI-
GAZETTE.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &> TRAVELS. 3

Bernard. FOUR LECTURES ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED
WITH DIPLOMACY. By MOUNTAGUE BERNARD, M.A.,
Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy, Oxford.
8vo. 9-r.

Four Lectures, dealing with ( I ) The Congress of Westphalia ; (2) Systems
of Policy ; (3) Diplomacy, Past and Present; (4) The Obligations oj
Treaties,

Blake. THE LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE, THE ARTIST.
By ALEXANDER GILCHRIST. With numerous Illustrations from
Blake s designs, and Fac-similes of his studies of the "Book of
Job." Two vols. medium 8vo. 32,5-.

These volumes contain a Life of Blake ; Selections from his Writings,
including Poems ; Letters ; Annotated Catalogue of Pictures and Drawings,
List, with occasional notes, of Blake s Engravings and Writings. There
are appended Engraved Designs by Blake ; (i) The Book of Job, twenty -
one photo-lithographs from the originals ; (2) Songs of Innocence and
Experience, sixteen of the original Plates.

Blanford (W. T.). GEOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY OF
ABYSSINIA. By W. T. BLANFORD. 8vo. 21 j.

This work contains an account of the Geological and Zoological
Observations made by the Author in Abyssinia, when accompanying the
British Army on its march to Magdala and back in 1868, and during a
short journey in Northern Abyssinia, after the departure of the troops.
Parti. Personal Narrative; Part II. Geology; Part III. Zoology.
With Coloured Illustrations and Geological Map.

Bright (John, M. P.). SPEECHES ON QUESTIONS OF
PUBLIC POLICY. By the Right Hon. JOHN BRIGHT, M. P.
Edited by Professor THOROLD ROGERS. T\vo vols. 8vo. 25^.
Second Edition, with Portrait.

" / have divided the Speeches contained in these volumes into groups.
The materials for selection are so abundant, that I have been constrained
to omit many a speech which is worthy of careful perusal. I have
naturally given prominence to those subjects with which Mr. Bright has
been especially identified, as, for example, India, America, Ireland, and
Parliamentary Reform. But nearly every topic of great public interest on
which Mr. Bright has spoken is represented in these volumes."

EDITOR S PREFACE.
A 2

GENERAL CATALOGUE.

Bright, (John, M.P.) (rontinued}-

AUTHOR S POPULAR EDITION. Extra fcap. 8vo. cloth. Second
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Bryce. THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. By JAMES BRYCE,
B.C.L., Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. [Reprinting.

CAMBRIDGE CHARACTERISTICS. See MULLINGER.

CHATTERTON : A Biographical Study. BY DANIEL WILSON,
LL.D. , Professor of History and English Literature in University
College, Toronto. Crown Svo. 6.y. 6d.

The Author here regards Chatterton as a Poet, not as a mere " resetter
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found much in the old materials capable of being turned to new account ;
and to these materials research in various directions has enabled him to
make some additions.

Clay. THE PRISON CHAPLAIN. A Memoir of the Rev. JOHN
CLAY, B.D., late Chaplain of the Preston Gaol. With Selections
from his Reports and Correspondence, and a Sketch of Prison
Discipline in England. By his Son, the Rev. W. L, CLAY, M.A.
Svo. 15-r.

" Few books have appeared of late years better entitled to an attentive
perusal. . . . It presents a complete narrative of all that has been done and
attempted by various philanthropists for the amelioration of the condition and
the improvement of the morals of the criminal classes in the British
dominions. " LONDON REVI EW.

Cobden. SPEECHES ON QUESTIONS OF PUBLIC
POLICY. By RICHARD COBDEN. Edited by the Right Hon.
JOHN BRIGHT, M.P , and Professor ROGERS. Two vols. Bvo. With
Portrait. (Uniform with BRIGHT S SPEECHES.)

Cooper. --ATHENE CANTABRIGIENSES. By CHARLES
HENRY COOPER, F.S.A., and THOMPSON COOPER, F.S.A.
Vol. I. 8vo., 150085, i&r. Vol. II., 15861609, i&r.

This elaborate work, vvhich is dedicated by permission to Lord Macaulay,
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fashion of Anthony d Wood, in his famous "Athena Oxonienses."

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, & TRAVELS. 5

Cox (G. V., M. A.). RECOLLECTIONS OF OXFORD.
By G. V. Cox, M.A., New College, Late Esquire Bedel and
Coroner in the University of Oxford. Second Edition. Crown 8vo.

" An amusing farrago of anecdote, and will pleasantly recall in many
a country parsonage the memory ofyozithful days"- -TIMES.

Dicey (Edward). THE MORNING LAND. By EDWARD

DICEY. Two vols. crown 8vo. i6s.

" An invitation to be present at the opening of the Suez Canal was the
immediate cause of my journey. But I made it my object also to see as
much of the Morning Land, of whose marvels the canal across the
Isthmus is only the least and latest, as time and opportunity would permit.
The result of my observations was communicated to the journal I then
represented, in a series of letters, which I now give to the public in a
collected form. " -Extract from AUTHOR S PREFACE.

Dilke. GREATER BRITAIN. A Record of Travel in English-
speaking Countries during 1866-7. (America, Australia, India.)
By Sir CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, M.P. Fifth and Cheap
Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.

" Mr. Dilke has written a book which is probably as well worth reading
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highly intelligent observer, that it stimulates the imagination as well as the
judgment of the reader, and that it is on perhaps the most interesting
subject that can attract an Englishman who cares about his country."

SATURDAY REVIEW.

Diirer (Albrecht). HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF AL-

BRECHT DURER, of Nurnberg. With a Translation of his
Letters and Journal, and some account of his works. By Mrs
CHARLES HEATON. Royal Svo. bevelled boards, extra gilt. 3U. 6d.

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pany, Limited; the rest are Photographs and Woodcuts.

EARLY EGYPTIAN HISTORY FOR THE YOUNG. See
"JUVENILE SECTION.

GENERAL CATALOGUE.

Elliott. LIFE OF HENRY VENN ELLIOTT, ot Brighton.
By JOSIAH BATEMAN, M.A., Author of "Life of Daniel Wilson,
Bishop of Calcutta," &c. With Portrait, engraved by JEENS ;
and an Appendix containing a short sketch of the life of the Rev.
Julius Elliott (who met with accidental death while ascending the
Schreckhorn in July, 1869. ) Crown Svo. &s. 6d. Second Edition,
with Appendix.

A very charming piece of religions biography ; no one can read if
without both pleasure and profit." -BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.

Fairfax. A LIFE OF THE GREAT LORD FAIRFAX,

Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Parliament of England.
By CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM, F.S.A. With Portraits, Maps,
Plans, and Illustrations. Demy Svo. i6.r.

No full Life of the great Parliamentary Commander has appeared :
and it is here sought to produce one based upon careful research in con
temporary records and upon family and other documents.

Forbes. --LIFE OF PROFESSOR EDWARD FORBES,
F. R.S. By GEORGE WILSON, M.D., F.R.S.E., and ARCHIBALD
GEIKIE, F.R. S. Svo. with Portrait,

" From the first page to the last the book claims careful reading, as being
a full but not overcrowded rehearsal of a most instructive life, and the true
picture of a mind that was rare in strength and beauty." EXAMINER.

Freeman. --HISTORY OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT,

from the Foundation of the Achaian League to the Disruption of
the United States. By EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A. Vol. I.
General Introduction. History of the Greek Federations. Svo.

2IJ-.

" The task Mr. Freeman has undertaken is one of great magnitude and
importance. It is also a task of an almost entirely novel character. Nc
other work professing to give the history of a political principle occurs to
us, except the slight contributions to the history of representative govern
ment that is contained in a course of J\L Guizot s lectures .... The
history of the development of a principle is at least as important as the
history of a dynasty, or of a race" SATURDAY REVIEW.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, <S- TRAVELS.

Freeman

OLD ENGLISH HISTORY FOR CHILDREN. By EDWARD A.
FREEMAN, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. With
Ftvt Coloured Maps. Extra fcap. 8vo., half-bound. 6s,

Its object is to skmv that clear, accurate, and scientific views of history,
or indeed of any subject, may be easily given to children from the very
first. . . I have, I hope, shown that it is perfectly easy to teach children, from
the very first, to distinguish true history alike ft om legend and from wilful
invention, and also to understand the nature of historical authorities, and
to weigh one statement against another. .... 7 have throughout striven to
connect the history of England with the general history of civilized Europe,
and I have especially tried to make the book serve as an incentive to a more
accurate study of historical geography"- PREFACE.

French (George Russell). - -SHAKSPEAREANA

GENEALOGICA. 8vo. cloth extra, 15*. Uniform with the
"Cambridge Shakespeare."

Part I. Identification of the dramatis persons in the historical plays,
from King John to King Henry VIII. ; Notes on Characters in Macbeth
and Hamlet ; Persons and Places belonging to Warwickshire alluded to.
Part II. The Shakspeare and Arden families and their connexions, with
Tables of descent. The present is the first attempt to give a detailed de
scription, in consecutive order, of each of the dramatis personse in Shak-
speare s immortal chronicle-histories, and some of the characters have been,
it is believed, herein identified for the first time A clue is furnished which,
followed up with ordinary diligence, may enable any one, with a taste for
the pursuit, to trace a distinguished Shakspearean worthy to his lineal
representative in the present day.

Galileo. THE PRIVATE LIFE OF GALILEO. Compiled
principally from his Correspondence and that of his eldest
daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, Nun in the Franciscan Convent of
S. Matthew in Arcetri. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. 7-r. 6d.
It has been the endeavour of the compiler to place before the reader a
filain, nngarbled statement of facts ; and as a means to this end, to allow
Galileo, his friends, and his judges to speak for themselves as Jar as possible.

Gladstone (Right. Hon. W. E., M.P.). JUVENTUS

MUNDI. The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age. Crown 8vo.
cloth extra. With Map. lo.f. 6d. Second Edition.

8. GENERAL CATALOGUE.

Gladstone (Right. Hon. W. E., M.P.)

This neiv work of Mr. Gladstone deals especially with the historic
element in Homer, expounding that element and furnishing by its aid a
full account of the Homeric men and the Homeric religion. It starts, after
the introductory chapter, with a discussion of the several races then existing
in Hellas, including the influence of the Phoenicians and Egyptians. It
contains chapters on the Olympian system, with its several deities ; on the
Ethics and the Polity of the Heroic age ; on the geography of Homer ; on
the characters of the Poems ; presenting, in fine, a view of primitive life
and primitive society as found in the poems of Homer. To this New
Edition various additions have been made.

"GLOBE" ATLAS OF EUROPE. Uniform in size with Mac-
millan s Globe Series, containing 45 Coloured Maps, on a uniform
scale and projection ; with Plans of London and Paris, and a
copious Index. Strongly bound in half- morocco, with flexible
back, 9-f.

This Atlas includes all the countries of Europe in a series of 48 Maps,
drawn on the same scale, with an Alphabetical Index to the situation of
more than ten thousand places, and the relation of the various maps and
countries to each other is defined in a general Key-map. All the maps
being on a uniform scale facilitates the comparison of extent and distance,
and conveys a just impression of the relative magnitude of different countries.
The size suffices to show the provincial divisions, the railways and main
roads, the principal rivers and mountain ranges. "This atlas," writes the
British Quarterly, " will be an invaluable boon for the school, the desk, or
the traveller s portmanteau. "

Godkin (James). THE LAND WAR IN IRELAND. A

History for the Times. By JAMES GODKIN, Author of "Ireland
and her Churches," late Irish Correspondent of the Times. 8vo. I2J.
A History of the Irish Land Question.

Guizot. (Author of "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN.") M. DE
BARANTE, A Memoir, Biographical and Autobiographical. By
M. GUIZOT. Translated by the Author of "JOHN HALIFAX,
GENTLEMAN." Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d.

" The highest purposes of both history and biography are ansi.vcred by a
memoir so lifelike, so faithful, and so philosophical. 1

BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, & TRAVELS.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS. Readings from the best Authorities
on English and European History. Selected and arranged by
E. M. SEWELL and C. M. YONGE. Crown 8vo. 6s,

When young children have acquired the outlines of history from abridge
ments and catechisms, and it becomes desirable to give a more enlarged
view of the subject, in order to render it really ziseful and interesting, a
difficulty often arises as to the choice of books. Two courses are open, either
to take a general and consequently dry history of facts, such as JRttsse/l s
Modern Europe, or to choose some work treating of a particular period or
subject, such as the works of Macaulay and Fronde. The former course
usually renders history uninteresting ; the latter is unsatisfactory, because
it is not sufficiently comprehensive. To remedy this difficulty, selections,
continuous and chronological, have in the present volume been taken from
the larger works of Freeman, Mil/nan, Palgrate, and others, which may
serve as distinct landmarks of historical reading. " We know of scarcely
anything, " says the Guardian, of this volume, "which is so likely to raise
to a higher lei el the average standard of English education."

Hole. A GENEALOGICAL STEMMA OF THE KINGS OF
ENGLAND AND FRANCE. By the Rev. C. HOLE, M.A.,
Trinity College, Cambridge. On Sheet, is.

The different families are printed in distinguishing colours, thus facili
tating reference.

A BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY. Compiled and
Arranged by the Rev. CHARLES HOLE, M.A. Second Edition.
iSmo. neatly and strongly bound in cloth, 4^.

One of the most comprehensive and accurate Biographical Dictionaries
in the world, containing more than \>,<Xfo persons of all countries, with
dates of birth and death, and what they were distinguished for. Extreme
care has been bestowed on the verification of the dates ; and thus numerous
errors, current in Previous works, have been corrected. Its size adapts i(
for the desk, portmanteau, or pocket.

"An invaluable addition to our manuals oj reference, and, from its
moderate price, cannot fail to become as popular as it is useful. 1 TIMES.

io GENERAL CATALOGUE.

Hozier. THE SEVEN WEEKS WAR ; Its Antecedents and
its Incidents. By H. M. HOZIER. With Maps and Plans. Two
vols. Svo.

This -work is based upon letters reprinted by pel-mission from " The
Times. " For the most part it is a product of a personal eye-witness of some
of the most interesting incidents of a war which, for rapidity and decisive
results, may claim an almost unrivalled position in history.

THE BRITISH EXPEDITION TO ABYSSINIA. Compiled from
Authentic Documents. By CAPTAIN HENRY M. HOZIER, late
Assistant Military Secretary to Lord Napier of Magdala. Svo. 9^.

Several accounts of the British Expedition have been published. ....
7 Jiey have, however, been written by those who have not had access to those
authentic documents, which cannot be collected directly after the termination

of a campaign The endeavour of the author of this sketch has been t:>

present to readers a succinct and impartial account oj an enterprise which
lias raielv been equalled in the annals of war" PREFACE.

Irving. THE ANNALS OF OUR TIME. A Diurnal of Events,
Social and Political, which have happened in or had relation to
the Kingdom of Great Britain, from the Accession ot Queen
Victoria to the Opening of the present Parliament. By JOSEPH
IRVING. Svo. half-bound, i&r.

" We have before us a trusty and ready guide to the events of the past
thirty years, available equally for the statesman, the politician, the public
writer, and the general reader. If Mr. Irving s object has been to bring
before the reader all the most noteworthy occurrences which have happened
since the beginning of Her Maj^tys reign, he may justly claim the credit
of having done so most briefly, succinctly, and simply, and in such a
manner, too, as to furnish him with the details necessary in each case to
comprehend the event of which he is in search in an intelligent manner.
Reflection will serve to show the great value of such a work as this to t/u
journalist and statesman, and indeed to every one who feels an interest in
tJie progress of the age ; and we may add that its value is considerably in
creased by the addition of that most important of all appendices, an
accurate and instructive index." TIMES.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, & TRAVELS. 11

Kingsley (Canon). ON THE ANCIEN REGIME as it
Existed on the Continent betore the FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Three Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution. By the Rev.
C. KINGSLEY, M.A., formerly Professor of Modern History
in the University of Cambridge. Crown Svo. 6s.

These three lectures discuss severally (i) Caste, (2) Centralization, (3)
The Explosive Forces by which the Revolution was superinduced. The
Preface deals at some length with cei tain political questions of the present

day.

THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTON. A Series of Lectures
delivered before the University of Cambridge. By Rev. C.
KINGSLEY, M.A. Svo. i2s.

CONTENTS: Inaugural Lecture ; The Forest Children; The Dying
Empire; The Human Deluge ; The Gothic Civilizer ; Dietricti s End; The
Nemesis of the Goths ; Paulus Diaconus ; The Clergy and the Heathen :
The Monk a Civilizer ; The Lombard Laws ; The Popes and the Lombards ;
The Strategy of Providence.

Kingsley (Henry, F.R.G.S.). TALES OF OLD
TRAVEL. Re-narrated by HENRY KINGSLEY, F.R.G.S. With
Eight Illustrations by HUARD. Crown Svo. 6s.

CONTENTS -.Marco Polo: The Shipwreck of Pelsart; The Wonderful
Adventures of Andrew Battel ; The Wanderings of a Capuchin; Peter
Carder; The Preservation of the " Terra Nova ;" Spitzbergen; D* Erme-
nonviiti s Acclimatization Adventure ; The Old Slave Trade ; Miles Philips ;
The Sufferings of Robert Everard ; John Fox ; Alvaro Nunez; The Foun
dation of an Empire.

Latham. BLACK AND WHITE : A Journal of a Three Months
Tour in the United States. By HENRY LATHAM, M. A., Barrister-
at-La\v. Svo. IDS. 6d.

" The spirit in which Mr. Latham has written about our brethren in
America is commendable in high degree. 1 1 ATHEN^UM.

12 GENERAL CATALOGUE.

Law. THE ALPS OF HANNIBAL. By WILLIAM JOHN LAW,
M.A., formerly Student of Christ Church, Oxford. Two vols.
8vo. 2is.

" No one can read the ivork and not acquire a conviction that, in
addition to a thorough grasp of a particular topic, its writer has at
command a large store of reading and thought upon many cognate points
of ancient history and geography, - QUARTERLY REVIEW.

Liverpool. THE LIFE AND ADMINISTRATION OF
ROBERT BANKS, SECOND EARL OF LIVERPOOL, K.G.

Compiled from Original Family Documents by CHARLES DUKE
YONGE, Regius Professor of History and English Literature in
Queen s College, Belfast ; and Author of " The History of the
British Navy," " The History of France under the Bourbons," etc.
Three vols. 8vo. 42^.

Since the time of Lord Burleigh no one, except the second Pitt, ever
enjoyed so long a tenure of power ; with the same exception, no one ever
held office at so critical a time .... Lord Liverpool is the very last
minister who has been able fidly to carry out his own political views ; who
has been so strong that in matters of general policy the Opposition could
extort no concessions from him which were not sanctioned by his own
deliberate judgment. 77ie present work is founded almost entirely on the
correspondence left behind him by Lord Liverpool, and now in the possession
of Colonel and Lady Catherine Harcourt.

"Full of information and instruction" FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW.

Maclear. See Section "ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY."
Macmillan (Rev. Hugh).- -HOLIDAYS ON HIGH

LANDS ; or, Rambles and Incidents in search of Alpine Plants.
By the Rev. HUGH MACMILLAN, Author of "Bible Teachings in
Nature," etc. Crown 8vo. cloth. 6s.

" Botanical knowledge is blended with a love of nature, a pious en
thusiasm, and a rich felicity of diction not to be met with in any works
of kindred character, if we except those of Hugh Miller." -DAILY
TELEGRAPH.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, <S- TRAVELS. 13

Macmillan (Rev. Hugh), (continued)-

FOOT-NOTES FROM THE PAGE OF NATURE. With
numerous Illustrations. Fcap. Svo. 5^.

" Those who have derived pleasure and profit from the study of flowers
and ferns subjects, it is pleasing to find, now everywhere popular by
descending loiver into the arcana of the vegetable kingdom, will find a still
more interesting and delightful field of research in the objects brought under

ieiv in the following pages" PREFACE.

BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE. Fourth Edition. Fcap Svo.
bs. See also "SCIENTIFIC SECTION."

Martin (Frederick) THE STATESMAN S YEAR-BOOK :

A Statistical and Historical Account of the States of the Civilized
World. Manual for Politicians and Merchants for the year 1870.
BY FREDERICK MARTIN. Seventh Annual Publication. Crown
Svo. loj-. 6d.

The new issue has been entirely re-written, revised, and corrected, on the
basis of official reports received direct from tJie heads of the leading Govern
ments of the World, in reply to letters sent to tJiem by the Editor,

" Everybody who know s this work is aware that it is a book that is indis
pensable to writers, financiers, politicians, statesmen, and all who are
directly or indirectly interested in the political, social, industrial, com
mercial, and financial condition of their fellow-creatures at home and
abroad. Mr. Martin deserves warm commendation for the care he takes
in making * The Statesman^ Year Book 1 complete and correct"

STANDARD.

HANDBOOK OF CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY. By
FREDERICK MARTIN, Author of "The Statesman s Year-Book."
Extra fcap. Svo. 6s.

This volume is an attempt to produce a book of reference, furnishing in
a condensed form some biographical particulars of notable living men.
The leading idea has been to give only facts, and those in the briefest form,
and to exclude opinions.

H GENERAL CATALOGUE.

Martineau. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, 18521868.
By HARRIET MARTINEAU. Third Edition, with New Preface.
Crown 8vo. Ss. 6d.

A Collection of Memoirs under these several sections: (i) Royal, (2)
Politicians, (3) Professional, (4) Scientific, (5) Social, (6) Literary. These
Memoirs appeared originally in the columns of the " Daily News."

Masson (Professor). ESSAYS, BIOGRAPHICAL AND

CRITICAL. See Section headed " POETRY AND BELLES LETTRES.

LIFE OF JOHN MILTON. Narrated in connexion with the
Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time. By
DAVID MASSON, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric at Edin
burgh. Vol. I. with Portraits. 8vo. iSs. Vol. II. in the Press.

// is intended to exhibit Milton s life in Us connexions with all the more
notable phenomena of the period of British Jiistory in which it was cast
its state politics, its ecclesiastical variations, its literature and speculative
thought. Commencing in 1608, the Life of Milton proceeds through the
last sixteen years of the reign of James I. , includes the whole of the reign
of Charles I. and the subsequent years of the Commonwealth and the
Protectorate, and then, passing the Restoration, extends itself to 1674, or
through fourteen years of the new state of things under Charles II. The
first volume deals with the life of Milton as extending from 1608 to 1640,
which was the period of his education and of his minor poems.

Morison. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAINT BERNARD,
Abbot of Clairvaux. By JAMES COTTER MORISON, M.A. New
Edition, revised. Crown 8vo. 7$. 6d.

" One of the best contributions in our literature towards a vivid, intel
ligent, and worthy knowledge of European interests and thoughts and
feelings during the twelfth century. A delightful and instructive volume,
and one of the best products of the modern historic spirit.""

PALL MALL GAZETTE.

Morley (John). EDMUND BURKE, a Historical Study. By
JOHN MORLEY, B.A. Oxon. Crown 8vo. js. 6d.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &> TRAVELS. 15

" The style is terse and incisive, and brilliant with epigram and point.
It contains pithy aphoristic sentences -which Burke himself would not have
disowjied. But these are not its best features : its sustained pcnver of
reasoning, its -wide sweep of observation and reflection, its elevated ethical
tnd social tone, stamp it as a work of high excellence, and as such we
cordially recommend it to our readers."- SATURDAY REVIEW.

Mullinger. CAMBRIDGE CHARACTERISTICS IN THE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. By J. B. MULLINGER, B.A.
Crown Svo. 4^.

It is a very entertaining and readable book."- SATURDAY REVIEW.

" The chapters on the Cartesian Philosophy and the Cambridge Plato nists
are admirable. ATHEN,UM.

Palgrave. HISTORY OF NORMANDY AND OF ENG
LAND. By Sir FRANCIS PALGRAVE, Deputy Keeper of Her
Majesty s Public Records. Completing the History to the Death
of "William Rufus. Four vols. Svo. ^4 4^.

Volume I. General Relations of Mtdueval Europe -The Carlovingian
Empire The Danish Expeditions in the Gauls And the Establishment
of Rollo. Volume II. The Three First Dukes of Nor/nandy ; Rollo,
Guillaume Longue-EpJe, and Richard Sans-Peur The Carlovingian
line supplanted by the Capets. Volume III. Richard Sans-Peur
Richard Le-Bon Richard III. Robert Le Diable William the Con
queror. Volume IV. William Rufus Accession of Henry Beauclerc.

Palgrave (W. G.). A NARRATIVE OF A YEAR S
JOURNEY THROUGH CENTRAL AND EASTERN
ARABIA, 1862-3. By WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE, late of
the Eighth Regiment Bombay N. I. Fifth and cheaper Edition.
With Maps, Plans, and Portrait of Author, engraved on steel by
Jeens. Crown Svo. 6s.

" Considering the extent of our previous ignorance, the amount of his
achievements, and the importance of his contributions to our knowledge, ive
cannot say less of him than ivas once said of a far greater discoverer. j\Ir.
ve has indeed given a new world to Europe."- PALL MALL GAZETTE.

16 GENERAL CATALOGUE.

Parkes (Henry). AUSTRALIAN VIEWS OF ENGLAND.
By HENRY PARKES. Crown Svo. cloth. 3.$-. 6d.

" The following letters were written during a residence in England, in

the years 1861 and 1862, and were published in the "Sydney Morning

Herald" on the arrival of the monthly mails .... On re-perusal, these

letters appear to contain views of English life and impressions of English

notabilities which, as the views and impressions of an Englishman on his

return to his native country after an absence of twenty years, may not be

without interest to the English reader. The writer had opportunities of

mixing vvith different classes of the British people, and of hearing opinions

oti passing events from opposite standpoints of observation" AUTHOR S

PREFACE.

Prichard. THE ADMINISTRATION OF INDIA. From
1859 to 1868. The First Ten Years of Administration under the
Crown. By ILTUDUS THOMAS PRICHARD, Barrister-at-La\v.
Two vols. Demy Svo. With Map. 2is.

In these volumes the author has aimed to supply a full, impartial, ana
independent account of British India hehveen 1859 a#</"l868 which is
in many respects the most important epoch in the history of that country
which the present century has seen.

Ralegh. THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH, based
upon Contemporary Documents. By EDWARD EDWARDS. To
gether with Ralegh s Letters, now first collected. With Portrait.
Two vols. Svo. 32.5-.

" Mr. Edwards has certainly written the Life of Ralegh from fuller
information than any previous biographer. He is intelligent, industrious,
sympathetic : and the world has in his two volumes larger means afforded
it of knowing Ralegh than it ever possessed before. The new letters and
the. neidv -edited old letters are in themselves a boon. " PALL MALL
GAZETTE.

Robinson (Crabb).- -DIARY, REMINISCENCES, AND

CORRESPONDENCE OF HENRY CRABB ROBINSON.
Selected and Edited by Dr. SADLER. With Portrait. Second
Edition. Three vols. Svo. cloth. 36^.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, & TRAVELS. 17

Mr. Crabb Robinson s Diary extends over the greater part of three-
quarters of a century. It contains personal reminiscences of some of the
most distinguished characters of that period, including Goethe, \Vieland De
Quince) 1 , Wordsworth (with whom Mr. Crabb Robinson was on terms of
great intimacy), Madame de Stael, Lafayette, Coleridge, Lamb, Milman,
&c. &-Y. : and includes a vast variety of subjects, political, literary, ecclesi
astical, and miscellaneous.

Rogers (James E. Thorold). HISTORICAL GLEAN
INGS : A Series of Sketches. Montague, Walpole, Adam Smith,
Cobbett. By Rev. J. E. T. ROGERS. Crown 8vo. 4^. 6d.

Professor Rogers 1 s object in the following sketches is to present a set of
historical facts, grouped round a principal figure. The essays are in the
form of lectures.

HISTORICAL GLEANINGS. A Series of Sketches. By Rev.
J. E. T. ROGERS. Second Series. Crown Svo. 6s.

A companion volume to the First Series recently published. It contains
papers on Wiklif, Laud, Wilkes, Home Tooke. In these lectures the
author has aimed to state the social facts of the time in which the individual
whose history is handled took part in public business.

Smith (Professor Goldwin). -- THREE ENGLISH

STATESMEN : PYM, CROMWELL, PITT. A Course of
Lectures on the Political History of England. By GOLDWIN
SMITH, M. A. Extra fcap. Svo. New and Cheaper Edition. $s.

" A work which neither historian nor politician can safely afford to
neglect" SATURDAY REVIEW.

SYSTEMS OF LAND TENURE IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES.

A Series of Essays published under the sanction of the COBDEN

CLUB. Demy Svo. Second Edition. 12s.

The subjects treated are: I. Tenure of Land in Ireland; 2. Land
Laws of England ; 3. Tenure of Land in India; 4. Land System of
Belgium and Holland ; 5. Agrarian Legislation of Prussia during the
Present Century; 6. Land System of France ; 7. Russian Agrarian
Legislation of 1861 ; 8. Farm Land and Land Laws of the United

a

States.

B

i8 GENERAL CATALOGUE.

Tacitus.- -THE HISTORY OF TACITUS, translated into
English. By A. J. CHURCH, M.A. and W. J. BRODRIBB, M.A.
With a Map and Notes. 8vo. IQJ-. 6d.

The translators have endeavoured to adhere as closely to the original as
was thought consistent with a proper observance of English idiom. At
the same time it has been their aim to reproduce the precise expressions oj
the author. This work is diaracterised by the Spectator as " a scholarly
and faithful translation. 1

THE AGRICOLA AND GERMANIA. Translated into English by
A. J. CHURCH, M.A. and W. J. BRODRIBB, M.A. With Maps
and Notes. Extra fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.

The translators have sought to produce such a version as may satisfy
scholars who demand a faithful rendering of the original, and English
readers vvho are offended by the baldness and frigidity which commonly
disfigure translations. The treatises are accompanied by introductions,
notes, maps, and a chronological summary. The Athenoeum says of
this work that it is " a version at once readable and exact, which may be
perused with pleasure by all, and consulted with advantage by the classical
student. 1

Taylor (Rev. Isaac). WORDS AND PLACES ; or

Etymological Illustrations of History, Etymology, and Geography.
By the Rev. ISAAC TAYLOR. Second Edition. Crown 8vo.
I2s. 6d.

" Mr. Taylor has produced a really useful book, and one vvhich stands
alone in our language. " SATURDAY REVIE\V.

Trench (Archbishop). GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS : Social
Aspects of the Thirty Years War. By R. CHENEVIX TRENCH.
D.D., Archbishop of Dublin. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.

1 Clear and lucid in style, these lectiii es will be a treasure to many to
whom the subject is unfamiliar" 1 DUBLIN EVENING MAIL.

Trench (Mrs. R.). Edited by ARCHBISHOP TRENCH. Remains
of the late MRS. RICHARD TRENCH. Being Selections from
her Journals, Letters, and other Papers. New and Cheaper Issue,
with Portrait, Svo. 6s.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, fr TRAVELS. 19

Contains notices and anecdotes illustrating the social life of the period
extending over a quarter of a century (1799 1827). It includes also
poems and other miscellaneous pieces by Mrs. Trench.

Trench (Capt. F., F.R.G.S.). THE RUSSO-INDIAN

QUESTION, Historically, Strategically, and Politically con
sidered. By Capt. TRENCH, F.R.G.S. With a Sketch of Central
Asiatic Politics and Map of Central Asia. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d.

11 The Russo-Indian, or Central Asian question has for several obvious
reasons been attracting much public attention in England, in Russia, and
also on the Continent, within the last year or two. . . . I have thought
that the present volume, giving a short sketch of the history of this question
from its earliest origin, and condensing much of the most recent and inte
resting information on the subject, and on its collateral phases, might
perhaps be acceptable to those who take an interest in /V." AUTHOR S
PREFACE.

Trevelyan (G.O., M.P.). CAWNPORE. Illustrated with
Plan. By G. O. TREVELYAN, M.P., Author of "The Com
petition Wallah." Second Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.

" In this book we are not spared one fact of the sad story ; but our
feelings are not harrowed by the recital of imaginary outrages. It is
good for us at home that we have one who tells his tale so well as does
Mr. Trevelyan. - -PALL MALL GAZETTE.

THE COMPETITION WALLAH. New Edition. Crown Svo. 6j.

" The earlier letters are especially interesting for their racy descriptions

of Eiiropean li/e in India Those that follow are of more serious

import, seeking to tell the truth about t/ie Hindoo character and English
influences, good and bad, upon it, as well as to suggest some better course of
treatment than thai hitherto adopted. 1 EXAMINER.

Vaughan (late Rev. Dr. Robert, of the British
Quarterly). MEMOIR OF ROBERT A. VAUGHAN.
Author of "Hours with the Mystics." By ROBERT VAUGHAN,
D.D. Second Edition, revised and enlarged. Extra fcap. Svo. 5,$-.

It deserves a place on the same shelf with Stanley s Life of Arnold, 1
and Carlyle^s Stirling. 1 Dr. Vaughan has performed his painful but
not all unplcasing task with exquisite good taste and feeling" NONCON
FORMIST.

r, 2

20 GENERAL CATALOGUE.

Wagner. MEMOIR OF THE REV. GEORGE WAGNER,
M.A., late Incumbent of St. Stephen s Church, Brighton. By the
Rev. J. N. SIMPKINSON, M.A. Third and Cheaper Edition, cor
rected and abridged. $s.

" A more edifying biography ive have rarely met with."- LITERARY
CHURCHMAN.

Wallace. THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO: the Land of the
Orang Utan and the Bird of Paradise. A Narrative of Travel
with Studies of Man and Nature. By ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE.
With Maps and Illustrations. Second Edition. Two vols. crown
8vo. 24-r.

" A careful lv and deliberately composed narrative. . . . IVe advise
our readers to do as we have done, read his book through} -TIMES.

Ward (Professor). THE HOUSE OE AUSTRIA IN THE

THIRTY YEARS WAR. Two Lectures, vith Notes and Illus
trations. By ADOLPHUS W. WARD, M.A., Professor of History
in Owens College, Manchester. Extra fcap. Svo. 2s. 6J.

" Very compact and instructive. -FORTNIGHTLY REYIFAY.

Warren. AN ESSAY ON GREEK FEDERAL COINAGE.

By the Hon. T- LEICESTER WARREN, M.A. Svo. 2s. 6d.
" The present essay is an attempt to illustrate Mr. Freeman s Federal
Government by evidence deduced from the coinage of the times and countries
therein treated <?/;" PREFACE.

Wilson. A MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON, M. D.,
F.R.S.E., Regius Professor of Technology in the University of
Edinburgh. By his SISTER. New Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.
"An exquisite and touching portrait of a rare and beautiful spirit."
GUARDIAN.

Wilson (Daniel, LL.D.). PREHISTORIC ANNALS
OF SCOTLAND. By DANIEL WILSON, LL.D., Professor of
History and English Literature in University College, Toronto.
New Edition, with numerous Illustrations. r l wo vols. demy
Svo. 36-5-.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, 6- TRAVELS. 21

This elaborate and learned work is divided into four Parts. Part I.
deals with The Primeval or Stone Period : Aboriginal Traces, Sepulchral
Memorials, Dwellings, and Catacombs, Temples, Weapons, &c. &c. ;
Part II., The Bronze Period : The Metatturgic Transition, Primitive
Bronze, Personal Ornaments, Religion, Arts, and Domestic I fab its, with
other topics ; Part III., The Iron Period : The Introduction of Iron, The
Roman Invasion, Strongholds, &c. &c.; Part IV., The Christian Period :
Historical Data, the Xo Trie s Law Relics, Primitive and Mediaeval
Ecclesiology, Ecclesiastical and Miscellaneous Antiquities. The work is
furnished with an elaborate Index.

PREHISTORIC MAN. New Edition, revised and partly re- written,
with numerous Illustrations. One vol. 8vo. 2is.

This work, which carries out the principle of the preceding one, but with
a wider scope, aims to " z-icw Man, as far as possible, unaffected by those
modifying influences which accompany the development of nations and the
maturity of a tnte historic period, in order thereby to ascertain the sources
from whence such development and maturity proceed." It contains, for
example, chapters on the Primeval Transition; Speech; Metals; the
Mound-Builders; Primitive Architecture ; ihe American- Type; the Red
Blood of the West, <2rv. &c.

CHATTERTON : A Biographical Study. By DANIEL WILSON,
LL.D., Professor of History and English Literature in University
College, Toronto. Crown 8vo. 6^. 6d.

77ie Author here regards Chattcrton as a Pod, not as a "mere resetter
and defacer of stolen literary treasures. " Reviewed in this light, he has
found much in the old materials capable of being turned to new account ;
and to these materials research in various directions has enabled him to
make some additions.

SECTION II.

POETRY AND BELLES LETTRES.

Allingham. LAURENCE BLOOMFIELD IN IRELAND;
or, the New Landlord. By WILLIAM ALLINGHAM. New and
Cheaper Issue, with a Preface. Fcap. 8vo. cloth, 45-. 6d.

In the new Preface, the state of Ireland, with special reference to the
Church measure, is discussed.

// is vital with the national character. . . . It has something of Pope s
point and Goldsmith s simplicity, touched to a more modern issue"
ATHENAEUM.

Arnold (Matthew). POEMS. By MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Two vols. Extra fcap. Svo. cloth. 12s. Also sold separately at 6s.
each.

Volume I. contains Narrative and Elegiac Poems; Volume II. Dra
matic and Lyric Poems. The two volumes comprehend the First and
Second Series of the Poems, and the Neiv Poems.

NEW POEMS. Extra fcap. Svo. 6s. 6d.

In this volume will be found i<: Empedocles on Etna ; " " Thyrsis " (written
in commemoration of the late Professor C lough) ; " Epilogue to Lessings
Laocoon ;" Heine s Grave;" " Obermann once more." sill these
poems are also included in the Edition (two vols. ) above-mentioned.

ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. New Edition, with Additions. Extra

fcap. Svo. 6s.

CONTENTS : Preface ; The Function of Criticism at the present time ;
The Literary Influence of Academies; Maurice de Gucrin ; Eugenie
de Guerin ; Hcinrich Heine ; Pagan and Mcdiccval Religicus Sentiment :
Joubert ; Spinoza and the Bible; J\Iarcns Aurelius. j

POETRY & BELLES LETTRES. 23

Arnold (Matthew) (continued)

ASPROMONTE, AND OTHER POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. cloth
extra. 45-. 6d.

CONTENTS : Poems for Italy ; Dramatic Lyrics ; Miscellaneous.

Uncommon lyrical tower and deep poetic feeling. " LITERARY
CHURCHMAN.

Barnes (Rev. W.).~ POEMS OF RURAL LIFE IN COM
MON ENGLISH. By the Ri-:v. W. BAKM-S, Author of
" Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect." Fcap. Svo. 6s.
" In a high degree pleasant and novel. The book is by no means one
which the lovers of descriptive poetry can afford to lose." ATHEN.-EUM.

Bell. ROMANCES AND MINOR POEMS. By HENRY
GLASSFORD BELL. Fcap. Svo. 6s.

" Full of life and genius"- COURT CIRCULAR.

Besant. STUDIES IN EARLY FRENCH POETRY. By

WALTER BESANT, M.A. Crown. Svo. 8s. 6d.

A sort of impression rests on most minds that French literature begins
with the " siede de Louis Qnatorze;" any previous literature being for
ike most part unknown or ignored. Few know anything of the enormous
iterary activity that began in the thirteenth century, was carried on by
Rulebeuf, Marie de France, Gaston de Foix, Thibault de Champagne,
j.nd Lorris ; was fostered by Charles of Orleans, by Margaret of Valois,
by Francis the First ; that gave a crowd of versifiers to France, enriched,
strengthened, developed, and fixed the French language, and prepared the
way for Cornell I c and for Racine. 77ie present work aims to afford
information- and direction touching the early efforts of France in poetical
literature.

" In one moderately sized volume he has contrived to introduce us to the
very best, if not to all of the early French poets." ATHENAEUM.

Bradshaw. AN ATTEMPT TO ASCERTAIN THE STATE

OF CHAUCER S WORKS, AS THEY WERE LEFT AT
HIS DEATH. With some Notes of their Subsequent History.
By HENRY BRADSHAW, of King s College, and the University
Library, Cambridge. In the Press.

24 GENERAL CATALOGUE.

Brimley. ESSAYS BY THE LATE GEORGE BRIMLEY.

M.A. Edited by the Rev. \V. G. CLARK, M.A. With Portrait.
Cheaper Edition. Fcap. Svo. 3^. 6d.

Essays on literary topics, suck as Tennyson s "Poems," Carlyle s
" Life of Stirling,"" "Bleak House," &c,, reprinted from Eraser,//^
Spectator, and like periodicals.

Broome. THE STRANGER OF SERIPIIOS. A Dramatic
Poem. By FREDERICK NAPIER BROOME. Fcap. Svo. $s.

Founded on the Greek legend of Danae and Perseus.

" Grace and beauty of expression are Mr. Broome s characteristics ;
and these qualities are displayed in many passages." ATHENAEUM.

Church (A. J.). IIOR.E TENNYSONIAN.E, Sive Eclogec
e Tennyson o Latine redditse. Cura A. ]. CHURCH, A.M.
Extra fcap. Svo. 6s.

Latin versions of Selections from Tennyson. Among the authors arc
the Editor, the late Professor Conington, Professor Seeley, Dr. Hcssey,
Mr. Kebbel, and other gentlemen.

Clough (Arthur Hugh). THE POEMS AND PROSE
REMAINS OF ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. With a
Selection from his Letters and a Memoir. Edited by his Wife.
With Portrait. Two vols. crown Svo. 21 s. Or Poems sepa
rately, as below.

The late Professor Clough is well knmi n as a graceful, tender poet,
and as the scholarly translator of Plutarch. 7 he letters possess high
interest, not biographical only, biit literary discussing, as they do, the
most important question ! of the time, always in a genial spirit. The
"Remains" include papers on " Retrenchment at Oxford;" on Professor
F. W. Neiv?naits book " The Soul ;" on Wordsworth; on the Formation
of Classical English ; on some Modern Poems (Matthe^v Arnold and the
late Alexander Smitk\ &=c.

THE POEMS OF ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH, sometime Fellow
of Oriel College, Oxford. With a Memoir by F. T. PALGRAVE.
Second Edition. Fcap. Svo. 6s.

POETRY 6- BELLES LETT RES. 25

" From the higher mind of cultivated \ all-questioning, but still conser
vative England, in this cnr puzzled generation, we do not know of any
utterance in literature so characteristic as the poems of Arthur Hugh
dough" FRASER S MAGAZINE.

Dante. DANTE S COMEDY, THE HELL. Translated by
W. M. ROSSETTI. Fcap. 8vo. cloth. 5.5-.

The aim of this translation of Dante may be summed up in one word
Literal ity. . . . To follcnv Dante sentence for sentence, line for line,
word for word neither more nor less has been my strenuous endeavour. "
AUTHOR S PREFACE.

De Vere. THE INFANT BRIDAL, and other Poems. By

AUBREY DE VERE. Fcap. Svo. >js. 6d.

" Mr. De Vere has taken his place among the poets of the day. Pure
and tender feeling, and that polished restraint of style ~<.vliich is called
classical, are the charms of the volume."- SPECTATOR.

Doyle (Sir F. H.). Works by Sir FRANCIS HASTINGS DOYLE,
Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford :

THE RETURN OF THE GUARDS, AND OTHER POEMS.

Fcap. Svo. "js.

" Good wine needs no bush, nor good verse a preface ; and Sir Francis
Doyle s verses run bright and clear, and smack of a classic vintage. . . .
His chief characteristic, as it is his greatest charm, is the simple manliness
which gives force to all he writes. It is a characteristic in these days rare
enough. " EXAMINER.

LECTURES ON POETRY, delivered before the University of
Oxford in 1868. Crown Svo. 3-r. 6d.

THREE LECTURES : (i) Inaugural ; (2) Provincial Poetry ; (3) Dr
Newman s "Dream of Gerontius."

"Full of thoughtful discrimination and fine insight: the lecture on
Provincial Poetry seems to us singularly true, eloquent, and instructive."
SPECTATOR.

Evans. --BROTHER FABIAN S MANUSCRIPT, AND
OTHER POEMS. By SEBASTIAN EVANS. Fcap. Svo. cloth.
6s.

26 GENERAL CATALOGUE.

" In this volume we have full assurance that he has ( the vision and the
faculty divine. 1 . . . Clever and full of kindly humour" GLOBE.

Furnivall. LE MORTE D ARTHUR. Edited from the Harleian
M.S. 2252, in the British Museum. By F. J. FURNIVALL, M.A.
With Essay by the late HERBERT COLERIDGE. Fcap. Svo. js. 6d.

Looking to the interest shown by so many thousands in Mr. Tennyson s
Arthurian poems, the editor and publishers have thought that the old
version would possess considerable interest. It is a reprint of the celebrated
Harleian copy ; and is accompanied by index and glossary.

Garnett. IDYLLS AND EPIGRAMS. Chiefly from the Greek
Anthology. By RICHARD GARNETT. Fcap. Svo. 2s. 6d.

"A charming little book. For English readers, Mr. Gar net? s transla-
lations will open a new world of thought" WESTMINSTER REVIEW.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. By Two BROTHERS. With Vignette,
Title, and Frontispiece. Ne\v Edition, with Memoir. Fcap. Svo. 6s.

" The following year was memorable for the commencement of the
Guesses at Truth. He and his Oxford brother, living as they did in
constant and free interchange of thought on questions of philosophy and
literature and art ; delighting, each of tliem, in the epigrammatic terseness
which is the charm of the Pensccs of Pascal, and the Caracieres* of La
Bruyere agreed to utter themselves in this form, and the book appeared,
anonymously, in two volumes, in 1827."- MEMOIR.

Hamerton. A PAINTER S CAMP. By PHILIP GILBERT
HAMERTON. Second Edition, revised. Extra fcap. Svo. 6s.

BOOK I. In England; BOOK II. In Scotland; BOOK III. In France.
This is the story of an Artist s encampments and adventures. The
headings of a few chapters may serve to convey a notion of the character
of the book : A Walk on the Lancashire Moors ; the Author his own
Housekeeper and Cook ; Tents and Boats for the HigJdands ; The Author
ncamps on an uninhabited Island ; A Lake Voyage ; A Gipsy Journey
to Glen Coe ; Concerning Moonlight and Old Castles ; A little French
City ; A Farm in the Autunois, &-Y. -Y.

POETRY & BELLES LETTRES. 27

a

His pages sparkle with happy turns of expression, not a few well-told

anecdotes, and many observations which are the fruit of attentive study and
wise reflection on the complicated phenomena of huma)i life, as well as oj
unconscious nature"- -WESTMINSTER REVIEW.

ETCHING AND ETCHERS. A Treatise Critical and Practical.
By P. G. HAMERTON. With Original Plates by REMBRANDT,
CALLOT, DUJARDIN, PAUL POTTER, &c. Royal 8vo. Half
morocco, ^is. 6d.

" It is a work of which author, printer, and publisher may alike feel
proud. It is a work, too, of which none but a genuine artist could by pos
sibility have been the author" SATURDAY REVIEW.

HerSChel. THE ILIAD OF HOMER. Translated into English
Hexameters. By Sir JOHN HERSCHEL, Bart. 8vo. i8s.

A version of the Iliad in English Hexameters. The question of Homeric
translation- is fully discussed in the Preface.

"It is admirable, not only for many intrinsic merits, but as a grea
man s tribute to GV///^."- -ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS.

HIATUS : the Void in Modern Education. Its Cause and Antidote.
By OUTIS. 8vo. Ss. 6d.

The main object of this Essay is to point out /icnv the emotional element
which underlies the Fine Arts is disregarded and undeveloped at this time
so far as (despite a pretence at filling it up] to constitute an Educational
Hiatus.

HYMNI ECCLESLE. See "THEOLOGICAL SECTION."

Kennedy. LEGENDARY FICTIONS OF THE IRISH
CELTS. Collected and Narrated by PATRICK KENNEDY. Crown
Svo. With Two Illustrations, "js. 6d.

" A very admirable popular selection of the Irish fairy stories and legends,
in which those who are familiar with Mr. Crokers, and other selections
of the same kind, will find much that is fresh, and full of the peculiar
vivacity and humour, and sometimes even of the ideal bcautv, of the true
Celtic Legend" SPECTATOR.

28 GENERAL CATALOGUE.

Kingsley (Canon). See also HISTORIC SECTION," "WORKS
OF FICTION," and "PHILOSOPHY;" also "JUVENILE BOOKS,"
and 11 THEOLOGY."

THE SAINTS TRAGEDY : or, The True Story of Elizabeth of
Hungary. By the Rev. CHARLES KINGSLEY. With a Preface by
the Rev. F. D. MAITRICE. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 5.$-.

ANDROMEDA, AND OTHER POEMS. Third Edition. Fcap.
8vo. 5-r.

PHAETHON ; or, Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers. Third
Edition. Crown 8vo. 2s.

Kingsley (Henry). See "WORKS OF FICTION."

Lowell (Professor). AMONG MY BOOKS. Six Essays.
By JAMES RUSSELL LOWKLL, M.A., Professor of Belles Lcttres
in Harvard College. Crown Svo. "js. 6d.

Six Essays: Dryden ; Witchcraft; Shakespeare Once More ; Neiv
England Two Centuries ago; Lessing ; Rousseau and the Senti
mentalists.

UNDER THE WILLOWS, AND OTHER POEMS. By JAMES

RUSSELL LOWELL. Fcap. 8vo. 6s.

" Under the Willows /s one of the most admirable bits of idyllic work,
short as it is, or perhaps because it is short, that have been done in our gene
ration" SATURDAY REVIEW.

Masson (Professor). ESSAYS, BIOGRAPHICAL AND

CRITICAL. Chiefly on the British Poets. By DAVID MASSON,
LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Edinburgh.

SVO. I2S. 6d.

"Distinguished by a remarkable power of analysis, a clear statement
of the actual facts on which speculation is based, and an appropriate
beauty of Language. These essays should be popular with serious men."
ATHENAEUM.

BRITISH NOVELISTS AND THEIR STYLES. Being a Critical
Sketch of the History of British Prose Fiction. Crown Svo. Js. 6d.

" Valuable for its lucid analysis of fundamental principles, its breadth
of vieiv, and sustained animation of style." -SPECTATOR.

POETRY &> BELLES LETTRES. 29

MaSSOn (Professor) (continued)

MRS. JERNINGHAM S JOURNAL. Second Edition. Extra fcap.
Svo. 3-r. 6d. A Poem of the boudoir or domestic class, purporting
to be the journal of a newly-married lady.

" One quality in the piece, sufficient of itself to claim a moment s alien -
. ion, is that it is uniqtie original, indeed, is not too strong a word ///
ihe manner of its conception and execution. " PALL MALL GAZETTE.

Mistral (F.). MIRELLE: a Pastoral Epic of Provence. Trans
lated by H. CRICKTOX. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s.

" This is a capital translation of the elegant and richly -coloured pastoral
epic poem of M. Mistral which, in 1859, he dedicated in enthusiastic

terms to Lamartine. It would be hard to overpraise the

sweetness and pleasing freshness of this charming epic." ATHENAEUM.

Myers (Ernest). THE PURITANS. By ERNEST MYERS.
Extra fcap. Svo. cloth. 2s. 6d.

" It is not too much to call it a really grand poem, stately and dignified,
.;nd showing not only a high poetic mind, but also great p<rwer over poetic
expression." LITERARY CHURCHMAN. d

Myers (F. W. H.)- Poems. By F. W. II. MYERS. Extra
fcap. Svo. 4J. 6d. Containing "ST. PAUL," "St. JOHN," and
other Poems.

Nettleship.- -ESSAYS ON ROBERT BROWNING S
POETRY. By JOHN T. NETTLESHIP. Extra fcap. Svo. 6s. 6ct.

Noel. BEATRICE, AND OTHER POEMS. By the Hon.
RODEN NOEL. Fcap. Svo. 6s.

"Beatrice is in many respects a noble poem; it displays a splendour
/ landscape painting, a strong definite precision of highly-coloured descrip
tion, which has not often been surpassed" PALL MALL GAZETTE.

30 GENERAL CATALOGUE.

Norton. THE LADY OF LA GAR AYE. By the HON. MRS.

NORTON. With Vignette and Frontispiece. Sixth Edition.
Fcap. Svo. 4-f. 6d.

" There is no lack of vigour, no faltering of power, plenty of passion,
much bright description, much musical verse. . . . Full of thoughts well-
expressed, and may be classed among her best works." -TIMES.

Orwell. THE BISHOP S WALK AND THE BISHOP S
TIMES. Poems on the days of Archbishop Leighton and the
Scottish Covenant. By ORWELL. Fcap. Svo. 5^.

" Pure taste and faultless precision of language, the fruits of deep thought,
insight into human nature, and lively sympathy. 1 NONCONFORMIST.

Palgrave (Francis T.). ESSAYS ON ART. By FRANCIS
TURNER PALGRAVE, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College,
Oxford. Extra fcap. Svo. 6s.

Mulready Dyce Holm an Hunt Herbert Poetry, Prose, and Sen
sationalism in Art Sculpture in England The Albert Cross, &c.

SHAKESPEARE S SONNETS AND SONGS. Edited by F. T.
PALGRAVE. Gem Edition. With Vignette Title by JEENS. y.bd.

For minute elegance no volume could possibly excel the l Gem
Edition? " SCOTSMAN.

Patmore. Works by COVENTRY PATMORE :-

THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE.

BOOK I. The Betrothal ; BOOK II. The Espousals ; BOOK III.
Faithful for Ever. With Tametton Church Tower. Two vols. Fcap.

QVO. 1 2S.

%* A New andjCheap Edition in one vol. l%mo., beautifully printed
on toned paper, price 2s. 6d.

THE VICTORIES OF LOVE. Fcap. Svo. 4^. 6d.

The intrinsic merit of his poem will secure it a permanent place in
literature. . . . Mr. Patmore has fully earned a place in the catalogue
of poets by the finished idealization of domestic life. 1 -SATURDAY-
REVIEW.

POETRY &> BELLES LETTRES. 31

Pember (E. H.). THE TRAGEDY OF LESBOS. A

Dramatic Poem. By E. H PEMBER. Fcap. Svo. 4-r. 6c/.
Foitnded upon the story of Sappho.

Rossetti. Works by CHRISTINA ROSSETTI :

GOBLIN MARKET, AND OTHER POEMS. With two Designs
by D. G. ROSSETTI. Second Edition. Fcap. Svo. 5^.

"She handles her little marvel with that rare poetic discrimination which
neither exhausts it of its simple wonders by pushing symbolism- too far, nor
keeps those wonders in the merely fabulous and capricious stage. In fact
she has produced a true children s poem ^ which is far more delightful to
the mature than to children, though it would be delightful to all."-
SPECTATOR.

THE PRINCE S PROGRESS, AND OTHER POEMS. With
two Designs by D. G. ROSSETTI. Fcap. Svo. 6s.

" Miss Rossetti 1 s poems are of the kind which recalls Shelley s definition
of Poetry as the record of the best and happiest moments of the best and
happiest minds. . . . They are like the piping of a bird on the spray in
the sunshine, or the quaint singing with which a child amuses itself when
it forgets that anybody is listening."- SATURDAY REVIEW.

Rossetti (W. M.). DANTE S HELL, see " DANTE."

FINE ART, chiefly Contemporary. By WILLIAM M. ROSSETTI.
Crown Svo. IQS. 6cl.

This volume consists of Criticism on Contemporary Art, reprinted from
Fraser, The Saturday Review, The Pall Mall Gazette, and other pub
lications.

Roby. STORY OF A HOUSEHOLD, AND OTHER POEMS.
By MARY K. ROBY. Fcap. Svo. 5^.

Shairp (Principal). KILMAHOE, a Highland Pastoral, with
other Poems. By JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP. Fcap. Svo. 5^.

Kilmahoe is a Highland Pastoral, redolent of the warm soft air of
the Western Lochs and Moors, sketched cut with remarkable grace and pic-
lurtsqueness. " SATURDAY REVIEW.

32 GENERAL CATALOGUE.

Smith. Works by ALEXANDER SMITH :

A LIFE DRAMA, AND OTHER POEMS. Fcap. Svo. 2s. 6d.

CITY POEMS. Fcap. Svo. 5.1-.

EDWIN OF DEIRA. Second Edition. Fcap. Svo. 5^

"A poem which is marked by the strength, sustained siveetness, and
compact texture of real lift." NORTH BRITISH REVIEW.

Smith. POEMS. By CATHERINE BARNARD SMITH. Fcap.
Svo. 5-r.

" WealtJiy in feeling, meaning, Jinish, and grace ; not without passion,
which is suppressed, but the keener for that." ATHENAEUM.

Smith (Rev. Walter). HYMNS OF CHRIST AND THE

CHRISTIAN LIFE. By the Rev. WALTER C. SMITH, M.A.
Fcap. Svo. 6s.

" These are among the sw>eetest sacred poems we have read for a long
tiint. With no profuse imagery, expressing a range of feeling and
expression by no means uncommon, they are trite and elevated, and their
pathos is profound and simple NONCONFORMIST.

Stratford de Redcliffe (Viscount). SHADOWS OF
THE PAST, in Verse. By VISCOUNT STRATFORD DE RED
CLIFFE. Crown Svo. IQJ-. 6d.

" The vigorous words of one who has acted vigorously. They combine
theferz our of politician and poet. "- -GUARDIAN.

Trench. Works by R. CIIENEYIX TRENCH, D.D., Archbishop
ot Dublin. See also Sections "PHILOSOPHY," THEOLOGY," &c.

POEMS. Collected and arranged anew. Fcap. Svo. *js. 6d.
ELEGIAC POEMS. Third Edition. Fcap. Svo. 2s. 6d.

CALDERON S LIFE S A DREAM : The Great Theatre of the
World. With an Essay on his Life and Genius. Fcap. Svo.
AS. 6d.

POETRY & BELLES LETT RES. 33

Trench (Archbishop) (continued}

HOUSEHOLD BOOK OF ENGLISH POETRY. Selected and
arranged, with Notes, by R. C. TRENCH, D.D., Archbishop of
Dublin. Extra fcap. 8vo. 5-r. 6d.

This volume is called a " Household Book, 1 by this name implying that
it is a book for all that there is nothing in it to prevent it from being
confidently plactd in the hands of every member of the household. Speci
mens of all classes of poetry are given , including selections from livin^
authors. The Editor has aimed to produce a book "which the emigrant,
finding room for little not absolutely necessary, might yet find 1 vom for
in his trunk, and the traveller in his knapsack, and that on some narroui
shelves where there are few books this might be one."

" The Archbishop has conferred in this delightful volume an important
gift on the whole English-speaking population of the world." PALL
MALL GAZETTE.

SACRED LATIN POETRY, Chiefly Lyrical. Selected and arranged
for Use. Second Edition, Corrected and Improved. Fcap. 8vo.
is.

The aim of the present volume is to offer to members of our English
Church a collection of the best sacred Latin poetry, such as they shall be
able entirely and heartily to accept and approve a collection, that is, in which
they shall not be evermore liable to be offended, and to have the. current oj
their sympathies checked, by coming upon that which, however beautiful as
poetry, out of higher respects they must reject and condemn in which, too,
they shall not fear that snares are being laid for them, to entangle them
unawares in admiration for ought which is inconsistent with their faith
and fealty to their (nun spiritual mother." PREFACE.

Turner. SONNETS. By the Rev. CHARLES TENNYSON
TURNER. Dedicated to his brother, the Poet Laureate. Fcap.
8vo. 45-. 6d.

" The Sonnets are dedicated to Mr. Tennyson by his brother, and have,
independently of their merits, an interest of association. They both love to
write in simple expressive Saxon; both love to touch their imagery in
epithets rather than in formal similes ; both have a delicate perception
of rhythmical movement, and thus Mr. Turner has occasional lines which,
for phrase and music, might be ascribed to his. brother, . . He knows the

C

34 GENERAL CATALOGUE.

haunts of the wild rose, the shady nooks where light quivers through the
leaves, the ruralities, in short, of the land of imagination"- ATHENAEUM.

SMALL TABLEAUX. Fcap. 8vo. 4*. 6d.

" These brief poems have not only a peculiar kind of interest for the
student of English poetry, but are intrinsically delightful, and "will reward
a careful and frequent perusal. Full of naivete, piety, love, and knowledge
of natural objects, and eath expressing a single and generally a simple
subject by means of minute and original pictorial touches, these sonnets
have a place of their own" PALL MALL GAZETTE.

Vittoria Colonna. LIFE AND POEMS. By Mrs. HENRY
ROSCOE. Crown 8vo. s.

The life of Vittoria Colonna, the celebrated Marchesa di Pescara, has
received but cursory notice from any English writer, though in every
history of Italy her name is mentioned with great honour among the poets
of the sixteenth century. "In three hundred and fifty years," says her
biographer, Visconti, "there has been no other Italian lady who can be
compared to her. "

"It is written with good taste, with quick and intelligent sympathy,
occasionally with a real freshness and charm of style! PALL MALL
GAZETTE.

Webster. Works by AUGUSTA WEBSTER :-

"If Mrs. Webster only remains true to herself, she will assuredly
take a higher rank as a poet than any woman has yet done."
WESTMINSTER REVIEW.

DRAMATIC STUDIES. Extra fcap. Svo. 5-r.

"A volume as strongly marked by perfect taste as by poetic power."
NONCONFORMIST.

PROMETHEUS BOUND OF ^SCHYLUS. Literally translated
into English Verse. Extra fcap. Svo. ^s. 6d.

" Closeness and simplicity combined with literary skill." ATHENAEUM.

"Mrs. Webster s Dramatic Studies 1 and Translation of Prome
theus have won for her an honourable place among our female poets.
She writes with remarkable vigour and dramatic realization, and bids fair
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MEDEA OF EURIPIDES. Literally translated into English Verse.
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POETRY & BELLES LETTRES. 35

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38 GENERAL CATALOGUE.

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THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF THE BEST SONGS AND
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PALGRAVE.

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THE CHILDREN S GARLAND FROM THE BEST POETS.
Selected and arranged by COVENTRY PATMORE.

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40 GENERAL CATALOGLE.

THE BOOK OF PRAISE. From the Best English Hymn Writers.
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REVIEW.

-

THE FAIRY BOOK ; the Best Popular Fairy Stories. Selected and
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THE BALLAD BOOK. A Selection of the Choicest British Ballads.
Edited by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.

" His taste as a judge of old poetry will be found, by all acquainted with
the various readings of old English ballads, true enough to justify his
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THE JEST BOOK. The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings. Selected
and arranged by MARK LEMON.

" The fullest and best jest book that has yet appeared." SATURDAY
REVIEW.

BACON S ESSAYS AND COLOURS OF GOOD AND EVIL.
With Notes and Glossarial Index. By W. ALOIS WRIGHT, M.A.

" The beautiful little edition of Bacon s Essays, now before us, does
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times." SPECTATOR.

" By far the most complete as well as the most elegant edition we
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GOLDEN TREASURY SERIES. 41

THE PILGRIM S PROGRESS from this World to that which is to

come. By JOHN BUNYAN.
"A beautiful and scholarly reprint" SPECTATOR.

THE SUNDAY BOOK OF POETRY FOR THE YOUNG.

Selected and arranged by C. F. ALEXANDER.
; A well-selected volume of Sacred Poetry."- SPECTATOR.

t(

A BOOK OF GOLDEN DEEDS of all Times and all Countries.
Gathered and narrated anew. By the Author of " THE HEIR OF
REDCLYFFE."

". . . To the young, for whom it is especially intended, as a most interesting
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book of reference, and a pleasant one to take up when their wish is to while
away a weary half -hour. We have seen no Prettier gift-book for a long
time." ATHENAEUM.

THE POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BURNS. Edited, with
Biographical Memoir, Notes, and Glossary, by ALEXANDER
SMITH. Two Vols.

"Beyond all question this is the most beautiful edition of Burns
yet out " EDINBURGH DAILY REVIEW.

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE. Edited from
the Original Edition by J. W. CLARK, M.A., Fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge.

" Mutilated and modified editions of this English classic are so much
the rule, that a cheap and pretty copy of it, rigidly exact to the original,
will be a prize to many book-buyers." EXAMINER.

THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. TRANSLATED into ENGLISH, with

Notes by J. LI. DAVIES; M.A. and D. J. VAUGHAN, M.A.
"A dainty and cheap little edition" EXAMINER.

THE SONG BOOK. Words and Tunes from the best Poets and
Musicians. Selected and arranged by JOHN HULLAH, Professor
of Vocal Music in King s College, London.

"A choice collection of the sterling songs of England, Scotland, and
Ireland, with the music of each prefixed to the words. How much Inie
wholesome pleasure, such a book can diffuse, and will diffuse, we trust,
through many thousand families" EXAMINER.

D

42 GENERAL CATALOGUE.

LA LYRE FRANCAISE. Selected and arranged, with Notes, by
GUSTAVE MASSON, French Master in Harrow School.

A selection of the best French songs and lyrical pieces.

TOM BROWN S SCHOOL DAYS. By an OLD BOY.

" A perfect gem of a book. The best and most healthy book about boys
for boys that ever was wr/#^."--lLLUSTRATED TIMES.

A BOOK OF WORTHIES. Gathered from the Old Histories and
written anew by the Author of "THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE."
With Vignette.
" An admirable edition to an admirable series" WESTMINSTER

REVIEW.

LONDON :

K CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOK, PRINTERS.
BREAD STREET HILL.

BQ

6375

C4.E5

1870

CHURCH, RICHARD

BQ

6375

C4-E5

1870

CHURCH, RICHARD

SAINT ANSELM

5EP *

121837

121837

1 9 3 8 <*