Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/472

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time from March to August, negotiations were going on between William and Malcolm of Scotland. In August Malcolm came personally to Gloucester, but William refused to see him. Malcolm then went home in wrath, and took his revenge in a fifth and last invasion of England, in the course of which he was killed near Alnwick in the month of November. By that time Anselm was already enthroned, but not yet consecrated. The main telling of the two stories must be kept apart; but it is well always to keep the joint chronology of the two in mind. In reading the Lives of Anselm, where secular affairs are mentioned only casually, we might sometimes forget how stirring a time the year of Anselm's appointment was in other ways; while the general writers of the time, as I have already noticed, tell us less about Anselm than we should have looked for. The affairs of Scotland and the affairs of Anselm were going on at the same time; and along with them a third chain of affairs must have begun of which we shall hear much in the next year. Rufus was by this time already planning a second attack on his brother in Normandy. Except during the short season of his penitence, he was doubtless ready for such an enterprise at any moment. And this same year, seemingly in the course of its summer, a special tempter came over from beyond sea. This was William of Eu, of whom we have already heard as the King's enemy and of whom we shall hear again in the same character, but who just now appears as the King's counsellor. As the owner of vast English estates, he had played a leading part in the first rebellion against William, with the object of uniting England and Normandy under a single prince. That object he still sought; but he now sought to gain it by other means. He had learned which of