Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/466

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the staff of Bec from the Duke; if he was not ready to receive the staff of Canterbury from the King, it was not because of any scruple as to the mode of appointment, but because he refused to accept the appointment itself, however made. Not a single English bishop has a word to say on the matter. We could not look for such scruples in Wulfstan who had received his staff from the holy Eadward; but neither do they trouble William of Saint-Calais, so lately the zealous champion of the rights of Rome. If anything, the bishops seem to attribute a kind of mystic and almost sacramental efficacy to the investiture by the King's hand. Nor is there a word said as to the rights of any ecclesiastical electors, the monks of Christ Church or any other. It is taken for granted that the whole matter rests with the King. Anselm protests against the validity of the act, but not on any ground which assumed any other elector than the King. The nomination was invalid, because he did not consent to it himself, because the Duke of the Normans, the Archbishop of Rouen, and the monks of Bec, had not consented to it. Anselm is very careful as to the rights of all these three; he has not a word to say about the rights of the monks of Christ Church. Had he been a subject of the crown of England, a bishop or presbyter of the province of Canterbury, and himself willing to accept the archbishopric, there would clearly have been in his eyes nothing irregular in his accepting it in the form in which it was forced upon him, by the sole choice and sole investiture of the King. He afterwards learned to think otherwise; but it was neither at Canterbury nor at Bec nor at Aosta that he learned such scruples. He had to go beyond English, Norman, and Burgundian ground to look for them. At present he does at every stage, as an ordinary matter of