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Anselm but would not show him any favour, because he ‘heard not wherefore he should.’ Anselm inquired what the latter words meant. ‘The mystery,’ replied the bishops, ‘is plain. If you want peace with him, you must give plenty of money. Offer him again the 500l. which he refused, and promise him as much more, to be raised from your tenants.’ Anselm indignantly rejected such a method. It would set a disastrous precedent for buying off the king's wrath. The bishops urged him at least to repeat the offer of the 500l., but Anselm refused to give again what had been once rejected; moreover, he said he had promised it to the poor, and the greater part had already been given away. His words were reported to the king, who sent back his answer. ‘Yesterday I hated him much, to-day I hate him more, and tomorrow and henceforth I shall hate him with even bitterer hatred. I will no longer hold him as father and archbishop, and his blessing and prayers I utterly abhor and despise. Let him go where he will, and not tarry any longer to bless my voyage.’ ‘We therefore speedily left the court,’ says Eadmer, who became from this time his constant companion, ‘and abandoned the king to his will’ (Hist. Nov. i. 379 ). William crossed at length to Normandy about the middle of March. He spent much and gained little in his campaign, and returned to England on 28 Dec. 1094.

Anselm had not yet received his pallium from the pope, which, although not considered essential to the validity of archiepiscopal functions, was looked upon as an indispensable badge of metropolitan authority; and Anselm had now been a full year in office without receiving it. Some time, therefore, in February 1095, he went to Gillingham, near Shaftesbury, where the king was keeping court, and asked leave to go to Rome for his pallium. The papacy was now claimed by two rivals, Urban and Clement. Normandy had acknowledged Urban. England had not as yet acknowledged either. William asked Anselm from which of the two he intended to get his pallium. ‘From Urban,’ was the reply; and he reminded the king of the warning he had given him at Rochester, that he had, when abbot of Bec, promised allegiance to Urban, and could not recede from it. William, however, maintained that Anselm could not obey the pope against the king's will consistently with the allegiance due to himself. He had not yet acknowledged Urban, and it was neither his custom nor his father's to let any one in England acknowledge any pope without his leave. Anselm felt that the king had no right to force any one into renouncing a choice made before he became a subject. The conflict, however, between the claims of the king and of the pope on his obedience was one which he rightly thought could be settled only by the great council of the nation. He asked for such a council, and the request was granted. A great assembly of the chief men in church and state was convened for Sunday, 11 March 1095, at the royal castle of Rockingham, on the borders of Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. A crowd of bishops, abbots, nobles, monks, clerks, and laymen were gathered at an early hour in the castle and the precincts. The king and a party of privy councillors sat in a separate chamber; a messenger passed to and fro between them and the general assembly, which seems to have been either in the chapel of the castle or the great hall which may have opened out of it.

Anselm himself opened the proceedings with an address; the bishops came from the royal presence chamber to hear it. He explained the object of the assembly, which was to decide whether there was any real incompatibility between his allegiance to the king and his obedience to Urban. The bishops, who, throughout these transactions, appear as timid and obsequious courtiers, replied that the archbishop was too wise and good a man to need advice from them; but, at any rate, no advice could they give him unless he first submitted absolutely to the king's will. They reported his speech, however, to the king, who adjourned the proceedings to the morrow.

On Monday, therefore, Anselm, sitting in the midst of the assembly, asked the bishops if they were now ready with their advice. But they had only the same answer to make. Then Anselm spoke in solemn tones, with uplifted eyes and kindling countenance, ‘Since you, the shepherds of the people, who are called the leaders of the nation, will give no counsel to me, your head, save according to the will of one man, I will betake me to the chief Shepherd and Head of all, to the Angel of great counsel, and will follow the counsel which I shall receive from Him in my cause, yea, rather in His cause and that of His church. He who declared that obedience was due to St. Peter and the other apostles, and through them to the bishops, saying, “He that despiseth you despiseth me,” also taught that the things of Cæsar were to be rendered to Cæsar. By those words I will abide. In the things which are God's I will give obedience to the vicar of the blessed Peter;