Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/663

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of Saint-Calais and Thomas were both of them, in the strictest sense, summoned before a court to answer a charge. The charges were indeed of quite different kinds in the two cases. William of Saint-Calais was charged with high treason. Thomas, besides a number of demands about money, was charged only with failing to appear in the King's court in answer to an earlier summons. Anselm, on the other hand, cannot be said to have been really charged with anything, though the King and his party tried to treat him as though he had been. The assembly at Rockingham was gathered at Anselm's own request, to inform him on a point of law. The King and his bishops tried to treat Anselm as a criminal; but they found that the general feeling of the assembly would not allow them to do so. At Winchester again, Anselm was not summoned to answer any charge, for the charge about the troops in the Welsh war had been dropped at Windsor. The charges, such as they are, which are brought against him turn up as it were casually in the course of the proceedings. Yet the order of things seems much the same in the case of Anselm and in the case of Thomas, while in the case of William of Saint-Calais it seems to be different. In the case of William of Saint-Calais everything is done in the King's presence. The Bishop himself has more than once to leave the place of meeting, while particular points are discussed; but there is not that endless going to and fro which there is in the other two cases. In the case of Thomas, as in the case of Anselm, we see plainly the inner room where the King sits with his immediate counsellors, while the Archbishop waits in an outer place with the general body of the assembly. At Northampton we see the architectural arrangement more clearly than either at Rockingham or at Winchester. Thomas enters the great hall, and goes no further, while the