Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/590

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behalf of Anselm, not a word that could make peace between him and the King, not a word that could give Anselm any comfort among all the troubles that he was enduring on behalf of the Christian religion and of the authority of the Holy See. Many who had looked for great good from the Legate's coming began to murmur, and to say, as Englishmen had learned to say already and as they had often to say again, that at Rome gold went for more than righteousness. To King William everything seemed to be going as he wished it to go. Fully satisfied, he put out a proclamation that throughout his Empire—through the whole patriarchate of Anselm—Urban should be acknowledged as Pope and that obedience should be yielded to him as the successor of Saint Peter. Walter had now gained his point; William fancied that he had gained his. He at once asked that Anselm might be deprived of his archbishopric by the authority of the Pope whom he had just acknowledged. He offered a vast yearly payment to the Roman See, if the Cardinal would only serve his turn in this matter. But Walter stood firm; he had done the work for which he had come; England was under the obedience of Urban. And, much as gold might count for at Rome, neither the Pope nor his Legate had sunk to the infamy of taking money to oppress an innocent man and a faithful