Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/637

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of Saint Benignus had done Anselm no good. From this time we mark the beginning of a certain change in him which, without in any way morally blaming him, we must call a change for the worse. Left to himself, he seems not to have had the faintest scruple as to the customs which were established alike in England and in Normandy. He was unwilling to accept the metropolitan office at all; but he made no objection to the particular way of receiving it which was the use of England and of Normandy. He had, without scruple or protest, received the staff of Canterbury from the son as he had received the staff of Bec from the father. His wish to go to Rome to receive the pallium was fully according to precedent, and it was only the petty captiousness of the King that turned it into a matter of offence. But the mere talking about Rome and the Pope which the discussion had led to was not wholesome; and everything that had since happened had tended to put Rome and the Pope more and more into Anselm's head. The coming of the Legate, the rebukes of the Legate, even the base insinuations of his undutiful suffragans against the validity of his appointment, would all help to bring about a certain morbid frame of mind, a craving after Rome and its Bishop as the one centre of shelter and comfort among his troubles. The very failure of Walter's mission, the unworthy greediness and subserviency into which the Legate had fallen, the utter break-down of the later mission of Abbot Jeronto, would all tend the same way. Anselm would hold, not that the Pope was corrupt, but that none but the Pope in his own person could be trusted. He would have nothing more to do with his unfaithful agents; he would go himself to the fountain-head which could not fail him. And he to whom he would go was not simply the Pope, any Pope; it was Urban the Second, the reformer, the preacher of