Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/475

 resigned it by sending back to them the pastoral staff. He was not yet Archbishop of Canterbury; he was not yet, in his own view, even Archbishop-elect; all that had been done at Gloucester he counted for null and void. But he was now free to accept the archbishopric, and, though he still did not wish for the post, he had got over the scruples which had before led him to refuse it. In such a case he deemed it his duty to be perfectly frank with the King, and to tell him on what terms only he would accept the primacy, if the King still persisted in offering it to him.

The conditions which Anselm now laid before William Rufus were three. The first of them had to do with the temporal estates of the archbishopric. I have elsewhere spoken of the light in which we ought to look at demands of this kind. We may be sure that Anselm would gladly have purchased the peace of the land, the friendship of the King, or anything that would profit the souls or bodies of other men, at the cost of any temporal possessions which were strictly his own to give up. But, if he became Archbishop of Canterbury, he would become a steward of the church of Canterbury, a trustee for his successors, the guardian of gifts which had been given to God, His saints, and His Church. In any of these characters, it would be a sin against his own soul and the souls of others, if he willingly allowed anything which had ever been given to his church to be taken from her or detained from her. If the King chose to keep the see vacant and to turn its revenues to his own use, that would be his sin and not Anselm's; but Anselm would be a sharer in the sin, if he accepted the see with-*