Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/568

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at last be done which the Assembly had been called for the very purpose of doing. The bishops were puzzled, as they well might be; they looked at one another, but no one had anything to say; so they went back to their lord. Our guide however puts thoughts into their hearts which Anselm had certainly not uttered, which his position in no way implied, and which one is tempted to think that both Anselm and Eadmer first heard of in later times when they came to talk with a pope face to face. The bishops, we are told, remembered, what they had not thought of before, that an Archbishop of Canterbury could not be judged on any charge by any judge except the Pope. This may be so far true as that William of Saint-Calais may have remembered the day when he had urged those very claims on behalf, not only of an Archbishop of Canterbury, but of a Bishop of Durham. If the other bishops had any such sudden enlightenment, they did well to keep their new light to themselves. The doctrine that no one but a Pope could judge the Archbishop, combined with the doctrine that there could be no Pope in England without the King's leave, amounted, during the present state of things, to a full licence to the Archbishop to do anything that he might think good.

Meanwhile things were taking a new turn in the outer place of assembly. There a state of mind very unlike that of the King's inner council began to show itself. There were those, as there will always be in every gathering of men, whose instinct led them to insult and trample on one who seemed to be falling. By such men