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.CHAPTER VWILLIAM RUFUS AND ANSELMIN following the history of Malcolm of Scotland we have CHAP.passed by events of greater importance which make the yeara turning-point in the reign of William Rufus.Theappointment of Anselm to the archbishopric of Canterburydivides the reign into two natural divisions.In the firstperiod William secures his hold on power, develops his tyran-nous administrative system and his financial extortions, beginshis policy of conquest in Normandy, forces Scotland to recog-nize his supremacy, and rounds off his kingdom towards thenorth-west.The second period is more simple in character,but its events are of greater importance.Apart from theabortive rebellion of Robert of which has alreadybeen narrated, William s authority is unquestioned.bard s machine appears to run smoothly.Monks recordtheir groans and give voice to their horror, but the peace ofthe state is not disturbed, nor are precautions necessaryagainst any foreign enemy.Two series of events fill up thehistory of the period, both of great and lasting interest.Oneis the long quarrel between the king and the archbishop,which involve the whole question of the relation betweenChurch State in the feudal age; and the other is theking s effort to gain possession of Normandy, the intro-ductory chapter of a long history.Early in Lent, or a little earlier, King William fellsick at a royal manor near to Gloucester, and was carried inhaste into that city.There he lay during the rest of Lent,so ill that his death was expected at any moment, and it waseven reported that he had died.Brought face to face withdeath, the terrors of the world to come seized hold of him.The medieval sinner who outraged the moral sentiment ofhis time, as William did, was sustained by no philosophical RUFUSexistence of God or belief in the evolutionaryVHis life was a reckless defiance or a carelessorigin of ethics.an almighty power, whose determination andif not bought off, he did not question.ability to punish him,torments of a physical hell were vividly portrayed on alloccasions, and accepted by the highest as well as the lowestWilliam wasas an essential part of the divine revelation.no exception to this rule.He became even more shockinglydefiant of God after his recovery than he had been before.God, he declared to the Bishop of Rochester, should neverhave in him a good man because of the evil which He haddone him.And God let him have what he wished, addsthe pious historian, according to the idea of good which hehad formed.And yet, if he had been aliowed time for adeath-bed repentance at the end of his life, he would haveyielded undoubtedly to the same vague terrors, and havemade a hasty bid for safety with gifts and promises.At anyrate now, when the nobles and bishops who came to visit himsuggested that it was time for him to make atonement for hisevil deeds, he eagerly seized upon the chance.He promisedto reform his life, to protect the churches, and not put themup any more for sale, to annul bad laws, and to decree goodones; and bishops were sent to lay these promises on thealtar.Some of his good resolutions could only be carriedout by virtue of a royal writ, and an order was drawn up andsealed, commanding the release of prisoners, the remission ofdebts due the crown, and the forgiving of offences.Greatwas the rejoicing at these signs of reformation, and prayersoffered for so good a king, but when he hadonce recovered, his promises were as quickly forgotten asthe very similar ones which he had made in the crisis of therebellion of 1088.William probably still believed, when hefound himself restored to health, that nobody can keep allhis promises, as he had answered when Lanfranc remon-strated with him on the violation of his coronation pledges.Before his recovery, however, he took one step in theway of reformation from which he did not draw back.Heappointed a new Archbishop of Canterbury.It was the fearof death alone which wrung this concession from the king,and it shows a clear consciousness on his part of the guiltTHE KZNG ZN FEAR OF DEATH93of retaining the archbishopric in his hands.Only a fewweeks earlier, at the meeting of the Christmas court, whenthe members had petitioned that he would be graciouslypleased to allow prayers to be offered that he might be led tosee the wrong which he was doing, he had answered withcontempt,  Pray as much as you like I shall do whatplease.Nobody s praying is going to change my mind.Now, however, he was praying himself, and anxious to getrid of this guilt.The man whom all England with one voicedeclared to be the ideal archbishop was at hand, and the kingbesought him most earnestly to accept the appointment, andso to aid him in his endeavour to save his soul.This man was Anselm, now abbot of the famous monasteryof where Lanfranc had been at one time prior.Bornsixty years before, at Aosta, in the kingdom of Burgundy,in the later Piedmont, he had crossed into France, likeLanfranc, led by the desire of learning and the religious life.Finally he had become a monk at and had devoted him-self to study and to theological writing.Only with greatreluctance, and always imperfectly, did he attend to theadministrative duties which fell to him as he was made firstprior and then abbot of the monastery.His cast of mindwas wholly metaphysical, his spirit entirely of the cloisterand the school.The monastic life, free from the responsi-bilities of office, exactly suited him, and he was made for it.When all England was importuning him to accept the pri-macy, he shrank back from it with a reluctance which waswholly genuine, and an obstinacy which belonged also to hisnature.He felt himself unfitted for the place, and he fore-saw the  result.He likened his future relation with the kingto that of a weak old sheep yoked with an untamed bull.InThat harmony which hadall this he was perfectly right [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]