The earls

The archbishop's praiseworthy efforts to prevent the outbreak of revolt were unsuccessful. The two earls mustered their forces (that of Earl Ralph consisting largely of defeated. Bretons), and they endeavoured to effect a junction; but they were intercepted, and ultimately defeated. Lanfranc kept the king duly informed of the progress of events. In his first letter he begs him not to trouble himself to cross the sea, for although they would welcome his coming as an angel of God, yet they should regard it as a disgrace to require his assistance in putting down a mere rabble of perjured robbers. Ralph the Earl, or rather the Traitor, and his whole army had been routed, and were being pursued by a vast host of Normans and English. He was informed by the leaders that in a few days they would all have fled beyond sea, or be captured either dead or alive.

In his next despatch Lanfranc writes in a strain of thanksgiving. "Glory to God in the highest, by whose mercy your kingdom has been purged of the filth of the Bretons. The Castle of Norwich has been surrendered, and the Bretons who were in it and had lands in England have sworn, in return for life and limb, to quit your realm within forty days and not to come back without your license. . . . By the mercy of God the din of war is now hushed in England."

Earl Roger was condemned, on the return of William, to imprisonment for life; and Earl Waltheof, although he had

taken no active part in the revolt, was accused of Fate of Earl sympathy with the rebels, and after many months of Waltheof. imprisonment was beheaded at Winchester. This

deed, which was certainly not justified by the conduct of the earl, must be regarded as one of the blots on William's reign, and proves that in his sterner and more suspicious moods he was not amenable even to the influence of Lanfranc; for Lanfranc had declared his conviction of the earl's innocence, and when Waltheof became (like Simon de Montfort in later times) an object of popular veneration, the archbishop expressed approval of it, and said that he should be happy if, after his death, he himself might enjoy the same rest as that into which Waltheof had entered.

Lanfranc had proved himself a strong and capable guardian of the realm during the king's absence. Seven years after

III

BISHOP ODO

1082.

61

wards, in 1082, on another critical occasion, William was indebted to his assistance in a different way. The pride and cruelty of Bishop Odo had long been offensive to Seizure of the king and a source of danger to the stability of Bishop Odo, his rule. The prophecy of a soothsayer that Pope Gregory VII. would be succeeded by one bearing the name of Odo filled the prelate's vain mind with a crazy ambition. He bought himself a palace in Rome and made large presents to the leading citizens, and was setting out at the head of a kind of army for Italy when he was surprised and detained in the Isle of Wight by William, who had hastily crossed over from Normandy. The king summoned an assembly of his great men, and submitted to them his complaints against his brother, his oppressions, his cruelties, his plunder of churches, his seduction of the king's knights to support himself in an enterprise of personal ambition, when they were needed at home to defend the realm against the Danes and the Irish. Such a disturber of the public peace and safety must be restrained. He bade his barons lay hold of Odo and put him in ward; but there was no man who dared to arrest him, being a bishop. William then seized him with his own hands. Odo claimed the privilege of his order: "I am a clerk, and it is unlawful to condemn a bishop without the sanction of the pope." The subtle mind of Lanfranc, trained in the lawyers' craft, suggested the king's answer: "I do not seize the Bishop of Bayeux. I seize the Earl of Kent." As Earl of Kent, accordingly, Odo was carried off to Normandy and imprisoned in the Castle of Rouen. Pope Gregory in his private correspondence fiercely denounced the deed as a wicked outrage and insult, but his letter to William was couched in milder language, no doubt because he did not wish to lower himself by making demands or issuing threats which he very well knew would be ineffective. Odo was kept in prison at Rouen during the five remaining years of William's life. At the earnest entreaty of his brother, the Earl of Mortain, he was included in the general release of prisoners granted by the Conqueror on his deathbed in 1087.

The energy with which Lanfranc discharged the manifold duties that fell to his lot is the more remarkable and praiseworthy since it is clear from his private correspondence

Lanfranc's

that the difficulties and burdens of his position weighed heavily upon his spirits. In a letter written, soon after his appointment, to Pope Alexander II., he bitterly difficulties. regrets having accepted it. The peril both to his own soul and to the Church from the troubles and evils of every kind by which he was surrounded made him weary of his life. He beseeches the pope to release him from his bondage and suffer him to return to the monastic life, which he loves above everything. He is not conscious of having effected any improvement in the religious condition of the country, or if any, so very small that it is quite outweighed by the damage done to his own soul.

So also in a later letter to John, Archbishop of Rouen, he begs him not to attribute his silence to any lack of affection, but to excess of work (often of a secular kind), worry, and anxiety, which leave him very little leisure for writing, and when he has leisure he frequently finds it difficult to get trustworthy carriers.

No doubt as time went on Lanfranc became less querulous and despondent. The scholar and the monk grew into the ecclesiastical statesman, and a sense of the great importance of his position, and of his utility both to the Church and to the State, must have counteracted his earlier longing to sink back into the seclusion of the cloister. The ignorance of the native clergy and the low state of discipline in the monasteries fretted his soul until, by the appointment of new prelates and a vigorous perseverance in measures of reform, he had brought the Church in England up to the level of the Church in Normandy. An interesting account of a meeting between him and his successor Anselm illustrates a certain hardness and narrowness

and Anselm.

of mind in Lanfranc which helps us to understand Lanfranc his difficulty in settling down to his work amongst a people whom he despised as rude and ignorant. On the death of Herluin, the first Abbot of Bec, in 1078, his office was conferred on the prior, the holy Anselm of Aosta. Soon after his appointment the new abbot paid a visit to England, where the house of Bec had many possessions. was received as an honoured guest in the monastery of Christchurch, Canterbury. Eadmer, the friend and biographer of Anselm, records how the primate and the abbot, as the foremost

He

III

LANFRANC AND ANSELM

333

63

churchmen of the day, the one in official authority and extent of learning, the other in holiness and divine wisdom, discoursed together on many matters of common interest.

Amongst others, Lanfranc imparted his doubts as to the claim of some of the English saints to that title. For instance, one of his predecessors, Ælfheah by name, was venerated not merely as a saint but a martyr. He was no doubt a good man, but how could he fairly be called a martyr, seeing that he had not died to confess the name of Christ, but had been put to death by the Danes merely because he would not pay a ransom for his life?1 The larger mind and larger heart of Anselm made short work of the doubts and scruples of Lanfranc. He who did not hesitate to die rather than commit a slight sin, would certainly not hesitate to die rather than commit a grave one. To deny Christ was certainly a graver sin than to obtain a ransom for one's life at the cost of suffering to those from whom it was raised. Archbishop Ælfheah died rather than commit this lighter sin. Therefore he would certainly have died rather than commit the greater sin of denying Christ. He died rather than commit an unrighteous act; John Baptist had died because he would speak the truth, and he was rightly reckoned a martyr; but if Christ was truth, He was also righteousness, and therefore to die for righteousness was to die for Christ. Ælfheah therefore had a good claim to the title of martyr. Lanfranc declared himself entirely convinced by the simple yet subtle reasoning of Anselm. Henceforth, by his orders, St. Ælfheah was venerated with special honours in the church at Canterbury, and, as we all know, he has kept his place to this day as St. Alphege in the kalendar of the English Church,—April 19.

1 See vol. i. p. 385.

AUTHORITIES.-For events in Glastonbury and Westminster, Will. of Malmesb. de Antiq. Glast. ed. Hearne; Chron. Petrib. For St. Albans, Annal. Monast. vol. ii. (Rolls series). For Battle Abbey, Chron. de Bello. For Peterborough and Ely, Chron. Petrib.; Hist. Eliensis in Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. For account of the monk Guitmand, Orderic Vital. pp. 524-526. For separation of courts, Bp. Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 85. For removal of sees, Will. of Malmesb., Gest. Pont., and Wilkins's Concilia. For acts of Lanfranc and relation of the pope to him and to the king, Lanfranci Epp., Opera, ed. Giles, and Jaffe's Monumenta Gregoriana. For Anselm's visit to Lanfranc, Eadmer, Vita Anselmi, i. 5. 40-44 (Rolls series); Freeman, Norm. Cong. vol. iv. pp. 441-444.

CHAPTER IV

Dying

Conqueror.

WILLIAM RUFUS AND RALPH FLAMBARD

WILLIAM declared on his deathbed that he could not dare to name any one as his successor to the English throne, because he had won it by force and bloodshed rather than wishes of by hereditary right. He therefore commended the William the disposition of the kingdom to God, whose servant he was, and in whose hand were all things. Yet, if it were God's will, he trusted that his son William, who had been faithful to him from his earliest years, might wield the English sceptre, and wield it long and happily. He dictated a letter to Lanfranc expressing his hopes, and begging him to crown his son if he considered the act justifiable. Thus the actual choice of king was referred to the judgment of the primate.

William
Rufus

William Rufus immediately set out for England. He crossed from Touques, when he heard of his father's death, and, after a brief stay at Winchester, where he seized the royal treasure, he sought out Lanfranc at in England. Canterbury and urged him to act in accordance with the dying wishes of the late king. Eadmer says, or at least implies, that Lanfranc hesitated, but his scruples seem to have been overcome by the promises which William made on oath that he would do justice and keep mercy, defend the peace, liberty, and security of the Church against all comers, and defer in all matters to the advice and judgment of the primate.

SO

As there had been no direct nomination of the new king, was there no formal election. The Witan were not