Whilst Anselm was on his visit to the Earl of Chester, there was some conversation about him at Court, and some one said that the good Abbot was so humble that he had no desire for any promotion or dignity. “Not for the Archbishopric?” shouted the King, with a laugh of derision; “but”—and he swore an oath—“other Archbishop than me there shall be none.”
Some of the clergy about this time requested William to permit prayers to be offered in the churches, that he might be directed to make a fit choice of a Primate. He laughed, and said the Church might ask what she pleased; she would not hinder him from doing what he pleased.
He knew not what Power he was defying. That power, in the following spring, stretched him on a bed of sickness, despairing of life, and in an agony of remorse at his many fearful sins, especially filled with terror at his sacrilege, and longing to free himself from that patrimony of the Church which seemed to be weighing down his soul.
Anselm was still with Hugh the Wolf, probably at Gloucester, where the King’s illness took place. A message came to summon him without delay to the royal chamber, there to receive the pastoral staff of Canterbury. He would not hear of it; he declared he was unfit, he was an old man, and knew nothing of business, he was weak, unable to govern the Church in such times. “The plough should be drawn by animals of equal strength,” said he to the bishops and other friends who stood round, combatting his scruples, and exulting that the king’s heart was at length touched. “Would you yoke a feeble old sheep with a wild young bull?”
Without heeding his objections, the Norman clergy by main force dragged him into the room where lay the Red King, in truth like to a wild bull in a net, suffering from violent fever, and half mad with impatience and anguish of mind. He would not hear Anselm’s repeated refusals, and besought him to save him. “You will ruin me,” he said. “My salvation is in your hands. I know God will never have mercy on me if Canterbury is not filled.”
Still Anselm wept, imploring him to make another choice; but the bishops carried him up to the bedside, and actually forced open his clenched hand to receive the pastoral staff which William held out to him. Then, half fainting, he was carried away to the Cathedral, where they chanted the Te Deum, and might well have also sung, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water.”
But though William had thus been shown how little his will availed when he openly defied the force of prayer, his stubborn disposition was unchanged, and he recovered only to become more profane than ever. Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, when congratulating him on his restoration, expressed a hope that he would henceforth show more regard to the Most High. “Bishop,” he returned, as usual with an oath, “I will pay no honor to Him who has brought so much evil on me.”
A war at this time broke out between William and his brother Robert, and the King ordered all his bishops to pay him large sums to maintain his forces. Canterbury had been so wasted with his extortions that Anselm could hardly raise 500 marks, which he brought the King, warning him that this was the last exaction with which he meant to comply. “Keep your money and your foul tongue to yourself,” answered William; and Anselm gave the money to the poor.
Shortly after, Anselm expostulated with William on the wretched state of the country, where the Christian religion had almost perished; but the King only said he would do what he would with his own, and that his father had never met with such language from Lanfranc. Anselm was advised to offer him treasure to make his peace, but this he would not do; and William, on hearing of his refusal, broke out thus: “Tell him that as I hated him yesterday, I hate him more to day, and will hate him daily more and more. Let him keep his blessings to himself; I will have none of them.”
The next collision was respecting the Pallium, the scarf of black wool with white crosses; woven from the wool of the lambs blessed by the Pope on St. Agnes’ day, which, since the time of St. Augustine, had always been given by the Pope to the English Primate. Anselm, who had now been Archbishop for two years, asked permission to go and receive it; but as it was in the midst of the dispute between Emperor and Pope, there was an Antipope, as pretenders to that dignity were called—one Guibert, appointed by Henry IV. of Germany, besides Urban II., who had been chosen by the Cardinals, and whose original Christian name was really Odo. William went into a great fury on hearing that Anselm regarded Urban as the true Pope, without having referred to himself, convoked the clergy and laity at Rockingham, and called on them to depose the Archbishop. The bishops, all but Gundulf of Rochester, were in favor of the King, and renounced their obedience to the Primate; but the nobles showed themselves resolved to protect him, whereupon William adjourned the council, and sent privately to ask what might be gained by acknowledging Urban as Pope.
Urban sent a legate to England with the Pallium. The King first tried to make him depose Anselm, and then to give him the Pallium instead of investing the Archbishop with it; but the legate, by way of compromise, laid it on the altar at Canterbury, whence Anselm took it up.
Two years more passed, and Anselm came to beg permission to go to Rome to consult with the Pope on the miserable state of the Church. William said he might go, but if he did, he himself should take all the manors of Canterbury again, and the bishops warned him they should be on the king’s side.
“You have answered well,” said Anselm; “go to your lord; I will hold to my God.”
William banished him for life; but just before he departed, he came to the King, saying, “I know not when I shall see you again, and if you will take it, I would fain give you my blessing—the blessing of a father to his son.”
For one moment the Red King was touched; he bowed his head, and the old man made the sign of the cross on his brow; but no sooner was Anselm gone forth from his presence, than his heart was again hardened, and he so interfered with his departure, that he was forced to leave England in the dress of a pilgrim, with only his staff and wallet.
In Italy, Anselm was able to live in quiet study, write and pray in peace. He longed to resign his archbishopric, but the Pope would not consent; and when Urban was about to excommunicate the King, he prevailed to prevent the sentence from being pronounced.
William was left to his own courses, and to his chosen friend Ralph, a low-born Norman priest, beloved by the King partly for his qualities as a boon companion, partly for his ingenuity as an extortioner. He was universally known by the nickname of Flambard, or the Torch, and was bitterly hated by men of every class. He was once very nearly murdered by some sailors, who kidnapped him, and carried him on board a large ship. Some of them quarrelled about the division of his robes, a storm arose, and he so worked on their fears that they at length set him on shore, where William was so delighted to see him that he gave him the bishopric of Durham, the richest of all, because the bishop was also an earl, and was charged to defend the frontier against the Scots.
He had promised to relax the forest laws, but this was only one of his promises made to be broken; and he became so much more strict in his enforcement of them than even the Conqueror, that he acquired the nickname of Ranger of the Woods and Keeper of the Deer. Dogs in the neighborhood of his forests were deprived of their claws, and there was a scale of punishments for poachers of any rank, extending from the loss of a hand, or eye, to that of life itself. In 1099, another Richard, an illegitimate son of Duke Robert of Normandy, was killed in the New Forest by striking his head against the branch of a tree; and a belief in a family fate began to prevail, so much so that Bishop Gundulf warned the King against hunting there; but William, as usual, laughed him to scorn, and in the summer of 1100 took up his residence in his lodge of Malwood, attended by his brother Henry, and many other nobles.
On the last night of July a strange sound was heard—the King calling aloud on St. Mary; and when his attendants came into his chamber, they found him crossing