Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/33

Anselm Rockingham, Osmund of Salisbury, the compiler of the celebrated Use of Sarum, and Robert of Hereford. Most of the other bishops now followed their example; yet there were some who still remained hostile, and when the papal legate remonstrated, they had the incredible baseness to say that Anselm was not a lawful archbishop because he had received investiture from a king who at the time was in schism with Rome, the very king to whom they themselves had paid the most obsequious homage (Epist. iii. 36).

On 18 Nov. 1095 the first crusade was preached by Urban at Clermont in Auvergne. Robert, duke of Normandy, was seized with the impulse which stirred the heart of Christendom, but his treasury was empty and his hold on his duchy was weak. He therefore mortgaged it for three years to his brother William for the sum of 10,000 marks, which the Red King undertook to raise. The sum was levied with great difficulty. The clergy were already so impoverished that to furnish contributions they were forced to part with many of their most sacred treasures. Anselm was willing to contribute, but he had not enough ready money. By the advice of Walkelin, bishop of Winchester, and Gundulf of Rochester, he borrowed 100 pounds from the monks of Christ Church on the security of his manor of Peckham, which he mortgaged to them for seven years. It turned out a very good bargain for the monks, who enlarged the east end of the cathedral out of the Peckham rents. Altogether Anselm scraped together 200 pounds, and the king seems to have been satisfied. The bargain between the king and his brother was settled in September 1096. Robert started for Palestine. William took possession of Normandy, and remained in the duchy till the following Easter, when the disturbed state of Wales brought him back to England. After holding a gemot at Windsor in April he made a great expedition into Wales, which seemed to be successful. The submission of the country turned out to be only nominal, but at the moment the Red King, by the acquisition of Normandy and reduction of Wales, appeared to have reached the height of his prosperity. A favourable opportunity seemed to have come for again pressing reforms on the king. It may have been, as Anselm believed, only another device to put off the discharge of this duty, that the king, on his return from Wales, wrote an angry letter complaining of the contingent of knights whom Anselm had furnished for the Welsh campaign. They were so ill equipped, he said, and ill trained as to have been quite useless, and Anselm must expect a summons in the King's court to ‘do him right.’ The archbishop did not think it necessary to take any notice of this petulant message. He attended the Whitsuntide gemot, and was graciously received. He again exhorted the king to set about the work of reform, but his appeals were utterly vain, and he now resolved to take the step to which his mind had been gravitating for some time. He sent a formal message to the king by some of the nobles, saying that he was driven by urgent need to ask his leave to go to Rome. The king refused the license. But Anselm had quite made up his mind that the only hope of redress for his own wrongs or the wrongs of the church lay in an appeal to the pope. He renewed his request at another gemot held in August, and again at Winchester in October. The king was now thoroughly enraged. He not only refused the license, but declared that Anselm must pay a fine for asking it. Anselm offered to give good reasons for his request, which the king declined to hear, and told him that if he did go he should seize the archbishopric and never receive him as archbishop again. An adjournment was granted for one day, and on the morrow Anselm said he still asked for the license. For the sake of his own soul, for the sake of religion, and for the king's own honour and profit, it was needful he should go, and if the king would not grant leave he must go without it, obeying God rather than man. The bishops again urged submission. ‘You have spoken well,’ said Anselm; ‘do you go to your lord, and I will cleave to my God.’ The lay barons also were now against him. He had sworn to observe the customs of the realm, and it was contrary to those customs for any man in his position to go to Rome without the king's license. Anselm replied that he had indeed promised to observe the customs, but only so far as they were in accordance with right and agreeable to the will of God. He went into the royal presence chamber, and, seating himself at the king's right hand, maintained this doctrine at some length, until the king and Count Robert of Meulan exclaimed that he was preaching a sermon, and a general uproar followed. Anselm quietly waited till it had subsided, and then summed up his argument. He then rose and departed, accompanied by the faithful Eadmer. They were followed by a messenger from William, who told Anselm that he might leave the kingdom, but must not take anything belonging to the king. ‘I have horses, clothes, and furniture,’ replied Anselm; ‘perhaps some one will say they belong to the king; if so, I will go naked and