Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/576

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The King had told them that no one could be his man and the Archbishop's at once, and he had bidden them to withdraw their faith—clearly using the word in the feudal sense—from the Archbishop. They answered that they were not the Archbishop's men, that they could not withdraw from him a fealty which they had never paid to him. This of course was true of the lay nobles as a body, whatever questions there might be about Tunbridge castle or any other particular fief. But they went on to say that, though Anselm was not their lord, yet he was their archbishop, that it was he who had to "govern Christianity" in the land; that, as Christian men, they could not, while in that land, decline his mastership, all the more as there was no spot of offence in him which should make the King treat him in any other way. Such an answer naturally stirred up William's wrath; but the earls and great barons of his kingdom were a body with whom even he could not dare to trifle. He was stronger than any one among them; he might not be stronger than all of them together, backed as they now were, as the events of the day before had shown, by popular feeling. He had once beaten the Norman nobles at the head of the English people; he might not be able to beat the Norman nobles and the English people together. He therefore made an effort, and kept down any open outburst of the wrath that was in him. But*