Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/667



As for the matter of the three cases, the trial of William of Saint-Calais was in itself the perfectly fair trial of a rebel who, in the end, after the custom of the age, came off very lightly for his rebellion. There really seems nothing to blame William Rufus for in that matter—William Rufus, that is, still largely guided by Lanfranc—except some characteristic pettinesses just towards the end of the story. Towards Anselm William appears—save under one or two momentary touches of better feeling—simply as the power of evil striving, by whatever means, to crush the power of good. He seems none the less so, even when on particular points his own case is technically right. Henry the Second, acting honestly for the good of his kingdom, both technically and morally right in his main quarrel, stoops to the base and foolish course of trying to crush his adversary by a crowd of charges in which the King seems to have been both morally and technically wrong, and which certainly would never have been brought if the Archbishop had not given offence on other grounds. William Rufus again, and Henry the Second also, each forsook his own position by calling in, when it suited their momentary purposes, the very power which their main position bade them to control and to keep out of their kingdom. Not so the great king who came between them. The Lion of Justice knew, and he alone in those days seems to have known, how to carry on a controversy of principle, without ever forsaking his own position, without ever losing his temper or lowering his dignity, without any breach of personal respect and friendship towards the holy man whom his kingly office made it his duty to withstand.

The three years of Anselm's first sojourn beyond sea