His death,
April 21,

he replied, "If His will be so I shall gladly obey it; but if He were willing that I should still abide with you until I have solved a question that I am turning over in my mind about the origin of the soul, I should be thankful; for I know not if any one is likely to solve it after I am gone." This wish, however, was not to be fulfilled. Towards the evening of the third day, when he could no longer speak so as to be understood, being asked by Ralph, Bishop of Rochester, if he would bestow his blessing on all who were present, together with the rest of the brethren, the king and queen, their children, and the people of the land, he raised his right hand and made the sign of the cross, then sank back with his head drooping on his chest. So they watched him through the night to the dawn of Wednesday in Holy Week. "By 1109. this time," says Eadmer, "the brethren were singing matins in the greater Church, and one of us, taking the text of the Gospels, read the Passion which was appointed to be read at mass that day. But when he came to the words, 'Ye are they who 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 in my kingdom,' Anselm began to draw his breath more slowly. We perceived therefore that he was about to depart, and he was taken from his bed and laid upon sackcloth and ashes; and the whole company of his spiritual sons, having collected round him, he yielded his last breath into the hands of his Creator and slept in peace." Such was the tranquil ending of the earthly life which had been so vexed and harassed by the storms of controversy and strife. It was the sixteenth year of his pontificate and the seventy-sixth of his age. His remains were buried in the Cathedral at Canterbury, next to the grave of Lanfranc, in the body of the Church in front of the great rood, but they were afterwards transferred to the chapel beneath the south-east tower which bears his name; and there they now rest.

The strife of Anselm with William Rufus had been a struggle on behalf of righteousness and just government against coarse wickedness and brutal tyranny. The contest with Henry I. was on behalf of ecclesiastical liberties. The question at issue which underlay the strife throughout was the

VI

VICTORY OF ANSELM

131

The battle was

been, over an If the prelate spiritual func

same for which the popes had been contending with the Emperors Henry IV. and V. from the days of Gregory VII. This question was whether the Church should be completely feudalised ;—whether a bishop was the mere nominee of the sovereign, and became bound, when he did homage, to obedience and service, like a lay vassal. fought, as ecclesiastical contests often have outward custom: the practice of investiture. received the ring and staff, the symbols of his tions, from the sovereign, it seemed at any rate as if the lay authority bestowed the bishopric itself, and as if the homage were done not merely for the temporalities of the see, but as a sign of absolute vassalage. By the surrender of investiture it was made clear once for all that this was not so. The Church was, thus far, detached from feudalism. Two strong kings had tried their best to hold it within the grip of feudal bonds, but they had failed. The victory of Anselm strengthened the Church to offer that resistance to the royal power in which the clergy for more than a century to come took a leading part, and helped to secure for the nation some of its most valuable constitutional rights. Occasion for resistance to papal pretensions and exactions had not yet arisen, but it was

soon to come.

AUTHORITIES. -The same as in Chap. V., together with notices in Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, William of Newburgh (all in Rolls series). Flor. of Worcester, Freeman's Will. Rufus, vol. ii., and Norm. Conq. v. 339-345.

CHAPTER VII

RIVAL POWERS: THE CHURCH, THE KING, THE POPE

Ralph

Abp. of Canterbury.

AFTER the death of Anselm the king broke the promise of his coronation charter by keeping the primacy vacant for five years, during which he confiscated the revenues of the d'Escures, see; but the property of the monks of Christchurch was not molested. When Henry was urged to take compassion on the widowed Church he would reply that great caution was necessary to secure an archbishop who would be a worthy successor of the great men appointed by his father and his brother. At length, in 1114, yielding to the entreaties of the bishops and clergy and the admonitions of the pope, perhaps also of his own conscience, he invited the leading men in the kingdom, clerical and lay, to a conference at Windsor. The election of Faricius, Abbot of Abingdon, was regarded as almost a certainty, being favoured by the king. He was a man of high character, and his appointment would have been entirely acceptable to the prior and monks of Christchurch. Some of the bishops, however, and other magnates thought that the office required more experience in secular affairs than a monk was likely to have, and they recommended the appointment of a royal chaplain, or the translation of a bishop. On the other hand, it was urged that from the days of St. Augustine the chief pontiffs in England had been monks, with the solitary exception of Stigand, who had wrongly intruded himself into the metropolitan see and had been rightly expelled from it. The prior and monks of Canterbury therefore proposed the election of Ralph d'Escures, Bishop of

CHAP. VII

BISHOP ERNULF

133

Rochester. He had been Abbot of Seez in Normandy and had proved himself an able ruler of the house in troublous times. In 1100 he had been compelled to seek refuge in England from the brutal violence and oppression of Earl Robert of Bellême, and after a residence of eight years, during which he had won general confidence and esteem in the various monastic houses in which he sojourned, he had been selected by Anselm, with the approval of everybody, to succeed Gundulf in the see of Rochester. During the vacancy of the primacy he had administered the diocese, and to some extent even the province, of Canterbury. He thus fulfilled the conditions required by all parties for the archbishopric: he was a monk, a bishop, a man of experience, and withal a scholar with agreeable manners and a ready wit. He was unanimously elected by the king, the bishops, the prior and monks of Christchurch on April 26, 1114, and was enthroned at Canterbury with much splendour and rejoicing on the 18th of the following month. This election. illustrates the truth of Eadmer's remark, that when Henry gave up investiture he also left the custom of his predecessors, and no longer nominated prelates at his own will.

At the suggestion of the new primate the now vacant see of Rochester was filled by the election of Ernulf, Abbot of Peterborough. A more acceptable appointment Ernulf made I could not have been made. Ernulf had been Bp. of Rochester. trained at Bec, he had been the friend of Lanfranc, Anselm, and Gundulf, and was ultimately made Prior of Christchurch, Canterbury. Alike at Canterbury and Peterborough he was beloved for his gentle courteous manners, and respected for his holiness of life, his learning, and his activity in adding to the buildings and decorations of the Church. The valuable collection of documents which he made at Rochester, known as the Textus Roffensis, has earned for him the lasting gratitude of scholars.

Archbishop Ralph proved himself an able and strenuous defender of the metropolitan rights of his see against the pope and the Archbishop of York, and on two occasions against the crown. The contest with the pope originated in connection with a request for the pall. The archbishop, who was suffering from gout, sent

The archbishop's pall.

three envoys with a letter to Pope Paschal II. praying him to send the pall by the bearers. They were received very coldly, and their request would have been refused but for the good offices of Anselm, a nephew of the late primate and abbot of St. Saba. He persuaded the pope and his councillors to let him convey the pall to England as the papal representative. At the same time the pope took the opportunity of expressing his dissatisfaction with the attitude of the English Church towards the apostolic see. Abbot Anselm was charged with

a letter to the king informing him that the pope had yielded to the request that the pall should be sent, although it ought to have been fetched in person, but the concession was only made in the hope that more respect would be paid in future to the apostolic see. He complained that his letters and *messengers were not received without the king's permission, that all kinds of irregularities prevailed unchecked, and that the collections of Peterpence were so negligent or so fraudulent that not half the full amount due ever reached Rome. The Prior and monks of Christchurch were also served with a letter informing them that the translation of the Bishop of Rochester to the metropolitan see without the knowledge and consent of the pope was a very serious piece of presumption, only condoned in consideration of Ralph's high reputation for learning and goodness.

Abbot Anselm was received with much worship at Canterbury on Sunday, June 27, 1115, being met by Archbishop Ralph arrayed in pontifical robes, but barefoot, Reception of accompanied by the priors of the two convents the pall. Christchurch and St. Augustine, and a great concourse of bishops, clergy, and monks. The pall was carried by Anselm in a silver casket, deposited on the Cathedral altar, and thence solemnly taken by the primate, after he had made profession of obedience and fidelity to the pope.

Pope Paschal had not even yet delivered his final castigation of the independent spirit of the English Church. All the bishops and nobles of the kingdom were summoned by the king to a council at Westminster on September 16. There was a general belief that it was called at the instance of the new primate to confer

Papal complaints.