Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/569

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threats, revilings, slanders of every kind, were hurled at the Archbishop, as he sat peacefully waking and sleeping, while William of Saint-Calais marched to and fro at the head of his episcopal troop. But threats and revilings were not the only voices that Anselm heard. The feeling of the great mass of the assembly was with him. Well might it be so. Englishmen still abiding on their own soil, Normans who on English soil were growing into Englishmen, men who had brought with them the spirit which had made the Conqueror himself pause on the day of Lillebonne, were not minded to see the assembly of the nation turned into a mere tool to carry out a despot's will. They were not minded that the man whose cause they had come together to judge according to law should be judged without law by a time-serving cabal of the King's creatures. English thegns, Norman knights, were wrought in another mould from the simoniacal bishops of William's court. A spirit began to stir among them like the spirit of the old times, the spirit of the day which called back Godwine to his earldom and drove Robert of Jumièges from his archbishopric. When Anselm spoke and William of Saint-Calais stood abashed and speechless, the general feeling of the assembly went with the man who was ready to trust his cause to the event of a fair debate, against the man who could do nothing but take for granted over and over again the very question which they had come there to argue. There went through the hall that deep, low murmur which shows that the heart of a great assembly is stirring and that it will before long find some means of clearer utterance. But for a while no man dared to speak openly for fear—it is Eadmer's word—of the tyrant. At last a spokesman was found. A knight**