Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/566

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among Christian princes, knew no superior either in the elder or the younger Rome, was alone entitled to judge how far the claims of the Pontiff of one world should be acknowledged in another. This sole claim to Imperial power on behalf of the Monarch of all Britain might have been disputed in the last age in Bulgaria and in the next age in Castile; at that moment William of England was without a rival. He might even, if he chose to take up Anselm's line of argument, bear himself as more truly Imperial than the German king whose Roman crown had been placed on his head by a schismatic pontiff. And yet at no moment since the day when Scot and Briton and Northman bowed to Eadward the Unconquered had the Emperor of the Isle of Albion been less of an Emperor than when Anselm met the Red King at Rockingham. The younger William had indeed fallen away from the dominion of the father who had received the homage at Abernethy and had made the pilgrimage to Saint David's. The Welsh were in open and triumphant revolt; the Scots had driven out the king that he had given them. The Welsh had broken down his castles; the Scots had declared their land to be barred against all William's subjects, French and English. True he was girding himself up for great efforts against both enemies; but those efforts had not yet been made. William was just then as far away as a man could be from deserving his father's surnames of the Conqueror and the Great. At such a moment, we may really believe that he would feel special annoyance at anything which might be construed as casting doubt even in theory on claims which he found it so hard to assert in practice. In the moment of his first great success in England, there had been less to