Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/585

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foreign lands. Yet, next to the ups and downs of the Emperor himself, one would have thought that no change could have so deeply affected the Roman see as the change from William the Great to William the Red. It is part of the same general difficulty which attaches to the Red King's career, the strange fact that the worst of all crowned sinners, the foulest in life, the most open in blasphemy, the most utter scorner of the ecclesiastical power, never felt the weight of any of those ecclesiastical censures which so often lighted on offenders of a less deep dye. But if Urban was not thinking about William, William was certainly thinking about Urban. It was at this stage that we light on the curious picture which we have before seen, showing us England in a state of uncertainty, and seemingly of indifference, between the rival Pontiffs. But just now it suited William to acknowledge some Pope, because he thought that his only chance of carrying out his purposes against Anselm was by the help of a Pope. He had found that no class of men in his kingdom, except perhaps some of the bishops, would support him in any attempt to deprive the Primate of his own arbitrary will. Mere violence of course was open to him; but his Witan would not agree to any step against Anselm which made any pretence to legal form, and, with public feeling so strongly on Anselm's side, with a dangerous rebellion brewing in the realm, the King might well shrink from mere violence towards the first of his subjects. His new device was to acknowledge a Pope, and then to try, by his usual arts, arts which Rome commonly appreciated, to get the Pope whom he acknowledged to act against the Archbishop. To see Anselm deprived, or in any way humbled, by an exercise of ecclesiastical power, would be to wound Anselm in a much tenderer point, and would therefore be