Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/601

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example of the Bishops of Hereford and Salisbury. But it comes out in the letter that some of these undutiful suffragans had taken up the strangest and most self-condemning line of defence. These men, cringing slaves of the King, who had carried every mean and insulting message from the King to the Primate, who had laid down the rule that neither bishops nor other men had anything to do but to follow the King's will in all things, were not ashamed to plead that Anselm was no lawful archbishop, that he could claim no duty from them, simply because he had done what they had themselves done in a far greater degree. These faithful servants of King William were not ashamed to urge that their master and his kingdom had been in a state of schism, cut off from the Catholic Church and its lawful head, and that Anselm had been a partaker in the schism. He had received investiture from a schismatic King; he had done homage to that schismatic King, and had received consecration from schismatic bishops. In other words, they plead that Anselm is no lawful archbishop, because he had been consecrated by themselves.

A more shameless plea than this could hardly be thought of, but Anselm does not seem stirred by its shamelessness. He simply answers the doubt which was cast on his own appointment and consecration as calmly as if it had been started by some impartial outsider. Those who consecrated him were not schismatics; no judgement had cut them off from the communion of the Church. They had not cast off their allegiance to the Roman Pontiff; they all professed obedience to the Roman