Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/636

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war in general or specially for Welsh war, either as the picked mercenaries of the King or as the tried followers of the Earl of Chester and the Lord of Glamorgan. William, as a military commander, might naturally be annoyed at the poor figure cut by the Archbishop's knights; but there is every reason to think that, in point of law, his complaint against the Archbishop was unjust. It seems to be shown to be so by the fact that the charge which the King brought against Anselm on this account was one which in the end he found it better to drop. But he now bade Anselm to be ready to do right to him, according to the judgement of his court, whenever he should think fit to summon him for that end.

Anselm seems to have been thoroughly disheartened by this fresh blow. And yet it was no more than what he had been looking for. Over and over again he had said that between him and William there could be no lasting peace, that under such a king as William there could be no real reform. And the new grievance was a personal one; whether the charge was right or wrong, it had nothing to do with the interests of the Church or with good morals; it simply touched his relations to the King as his temporal lord. Since the meeting at Windsor two years before, though William had given Anselm no kind of help in his plans, he does not seem to have openly thwarted them, except, as seems implied throughout, by still refusing his leave for the holding of a synod. At the same time there had been quite enough to make Anselm thoroughly weary of England and her King and of everything to do with her. And the visits of the Cardinal of Albano and the Abbot