Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/407

 Rufus and Flambard the presumption was that a demand made on behalf of the crown was unlawful.

But there is one form of the exactions of the Red King which, for obvious reasons, stands forth before all others in the pages of the writers of the time. When the King would be the heir of every man, he was fully minded to be the heir of the clerk or the monk as well as of the layman. And Flambard, priest and chaplain as he was, had no mind to sacrifice the interests of his master to the interests of his order. By his suggestion William began early in his reign, as soon as the influence of Lanfranc was withdrawn, to make himself in a special way the heir of deceased bishops and abbots. These great spiritual lords were among the chief land-owners of the kingdom. The kings therefore naturally claimed to have a voice in their appointment. They invested the new prelate with his ring and staff; and this right, so fiercely denied to the successor of Augustus, was exercised without dispute by the successor of Cerdic and Rolf. The

erant pro aliorum hæreditatibus vel pro eis rebus quæ justius aliis contingebant."]debellando sibi subegit, nemo in ea episcopus vel abbas ante Anselmum factus est qui non primo fuerit homo regis, ac de manu illius episcopatus vel abbatiæ investituram per dationem virgæ pastoralis suscepit." He excepts the bishops of Rochester, who received investiture from the Archbishop of Canterbury, their lord as well as their metropolitan.
 * [Footnote: debebantur condono, exceptis rectis firmis meis et exceptis illis quæ pacta

A distinct witness to the antiquity of the royal rights in England is borne by William of Malmesbury (v. 417), where he is speaking of the controversy in Henry the First's time. The King refused to yield to the new claims of the Pope, "non elationis ambitu, sed procerum et maxime comitis de Mellento instinctu, qui, in hoc negotio magis antiqua consuetudine quam recti tenore rationem reverberans allegabat multum regiæ majestati diminui, si omittens morem antecessorum, non investiret electum per baculum et annulum."

Another remarkable witness is given by one of the continuators of Sigebert (Sigeberti Auctarium Ursicampinum, Pertz, vi. 471). He records the]*