Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/581

 be got over before the particular case of Anselm came on. If matters had not been brought to an agreement before that time, the case was to begin again exactly at the stage in which it had left off at Rockingham. It is not clear whether, even at this last moment, William and Anselm again met face to face. But the Archbishop, by the King's leave, went to Canterbury, knowing that the truce was but an idle and momentary veiling of hatred and of oppression that was to come.

So it soon proved; yet the scene at Rockingham was a victory, not only for a moment but for ever. No slight step had been taken in the great march of English freedom, when Anselm, whom the King had sought to condemn without trial or indictment, went back, with his own immediate case indeed unsolved, but free, uncondemned, untried, with the voice of the people loud in his favour, while the barons of the realm declared him free from every crime. It was no mean day in English history when a king, a Norman king, the proudest and fiercest of Norman kings, was taught that there were limits to his will. It is like a foreshadowing of brighter days to come when the Primate of all England, backed by the barons and people of England—for on that day the very strangers and conquerors deserved that name—overcame the Red King and his time-serving bishops. The day of Rockingham has the fullest right to be marked with white in the kalendar in which we enter the day of Runnymede and the day of Lewes.

The honour of the chivalrous King was pledged to the peace with Anselm. But the honour of the chivalrous