Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/577

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the bishops were covered with confusion; they felt that all eyes were turned on them, and that their apostasy was loathed of all. This and that bishop was greeted, seemingly by this or that earl or baron, with the names usual in such cases, Judas, Pilate, and Herod. Then the King put the trembling bishops through another examination. Had they abjured all obedience to Anselm, or only such obedience as he claimed by the authority of the Roman Pontiff? The question was hard to answer. Anselm does not seem to have claimed any obedience by virtue of the authority of the Pope; he had simply refused to withdraw his own obedience from the Pope. Some therefore answered one way, some another. But it was soon plain which way the King wished them to answer. The real question in William's mind had nothing to do with the Pope; any subtlety about acknowledging this or that Pope was a mere excuse. It was Anselm himself, as the servant of God, the man who spake of righteousness and temperance and judgement to come, that Rufus loathed and sought to crush. Those bishops therefore who said that they had abjured Anselm's obedience utterly and without condition were at once

not to the bishops.]
 * [Footnote: Lanfranc. It is significant that it should be in answer to the lay lords and