Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/544

 *



which, in Anselm's eyes at least, was the best means for its reformation. But William had so utterly refused his consent to the holding of a synod, he had so utterly refused to give Anselm any help in his schemes of moral reform, that Anselm perhaps thought it useless to press those subjects again upon him. The point which he still thought it his duty to press was one which to us seems of infinitely less importance than either, but with regard to which we must look at matters with the eyes of Anselm's day and not with the eyes of our own. Anselm was full archbishop in all points spiritual and temporal, as far as the spiritual and temporal powers of England could make him so. But he still lacked one badge of metropolitan authority, without which his position would certainly be deemed imperfect anywhere out of England. He had not received the archiepiscopal pallium from Rome. He naturally wished for this final stage of his promotion, this sign of recognition, as he would deem it, on the part of the Universal Church and her chief pastor. Now this supposed need of the pallium was not, like some of the claims of the Roman see, anything new. English archbishops had gone to receive the pallium at Rome, or they had had the pallium sent to them from Rome, in the days of the elder William, in the days of Eadward, in the days of kings long before then. Lanfranc had gone to Rome for his pallium with the full good will of the Conqueror, and one of the chief ecclesiastical difficulties of the time immediately before the Conqueror's coming was the belief that Stigand had received his pallium in an irregular way. The amount of dependence on the Roman see which was implied in the receipt of this badge of honour may perhaps be questioned. It would be differently understood at Rome and at Can-*