Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/497

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the affairs of Scotland and the affairs of Anselm have hardly any bearing on one another. But the affairs of Normandy and the affairs of Anselm have a close connexion. They were discussed in the same assemblies; and one ground of quarrel between King and Primate arose directly out of the discussion of Norman affairs. Some of the details of the two stories are so mixed up with one another that it would be hard to keep them apart. Again, the Scottish warfare of this year is part of a continuous series of Scottish events spread over several years. But the Norman warfare is a kind of episode. It is connected by the laws of cause and effect with things which went before and with things which came after; but, as a story, it stands by itself or is mixed up with the story of Anselm. It cannot be dealt with, like the King's first Norman war, as a distinct chapter of our history. It will therefore be better, during the year which follows the consecration of Anselm, to keep Scottish affairs apart from the history of the ecclesiastical dispute, but to treat the Norman campaign as something filling up part of the time between two great stages in Anselm's history.

The chief business of the assembly which now met at Gloucester was the reception of a hostile message from the Duke of the Normans. This fact makes us wish to know more in detail what Count William of Eu had suggested, and what King William of England had done. It is certain that King William needed no pressing to make him inclined for another attempt on his brother's dominions; but it is clear that the coming of Count William had led to some special action which had given Duke Robert special ground of complaint. The Norman embassy came, and challenged one brother in the name of the other, almost as an earlier Norman embassy had challenged Harold in the name of the father of both of