Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/583

 not been better off during the vacancy than now that the archbishopric was full. And all this while, heavy as William professed to deem the crime of so much as giving Urban the title of Pope, William's own dealings with Urban were neither slight nor unfriendly.

§ 5. The Mission of Cardinal Walter. 1095.

The months of truce between the King and the Archbishop were, as our next chapter will show, busy months in other ways. William Rufus was all this time engaged in another dispute with a subject of a rank but little below that of the Primate, a dispute in which, at least in its early stages, the King appears to much greater advantage than he commonly does. A conspiracy against William's throne and life was plotting; Robert of Mowbray was making ready for revolt, and his refusal to appear, when summoned, at the Easter and Whitsun assemblies of this year was the first overt act of his rebellion. We may conceive that Anselm did not attend either of those gatherings; that of Whitsuntide we know that he did not. It might be more consistent with the notion of the truce that he should keep away from the King's presence and court till the time which had been fixed for the controversy formally to begin again. At Easter and for some time after, Anselm seems to have stayed at Canterbury, and, while he was there, the metropolitan city received an unexpected visitor, who did not allow himself to be treated as a guest.

The year which we have reached was one of the most memorable in the history of the papacy. Urban, though not in full possession of Rome, had kept his Christmas there a year before, and his cause was decidedly in the