Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/419

 *bard were to be carried out in their fulness. It is the state of ecclesiastical matters during this memorable vacancy, and the memorable nomination which at last ended it, which call for our main attention at this stage of our story.

§ 2. ''The Vacancy of the Primacy and the Appointment of Anselm. 1089-1093.''

It needs some little effort of the imagination fully to take in all that is implied in a four years' vacancy of the see of Canterbury in the eleventh century. For the King to keep any bishopric vacant in order to fill his coffers with its revenues was a new and an unrighteous thing, against which men cried out as at once new and unrighteous. But to deal in this way with the see of Canterbury was something which differed in kind from the like treatment of any other see. That the bishopric of Lincoln was vacant, that the Bishop of Durham was in banishment, was mainly a local grievance. The churches of Lincoln and Durham suffered; they were condemned to what, in the language of the times, was called a state of widowhood. The tenants of those churches suffered all that was implied in being handed over from a milder lord to a harsher one. The dioceses were defrauded of whatever advantages might have flowed from the episcopal superintendence of Robert Bloet or of William of Saint-Calais. But the general affairs of the Church and realm might go on much the same; there was one councillor less in the gemót or the synod, and that was all. It was another thing when the patriarchal throne was left vacant, when Church and realm were deprived of him who in a certain sense might be called the head of both. An Archbishop of Canterbury was something more than merely the first