§ 23. WILLIAM RUFUS AND ANSELM. 89
himself to an old and feeble sheep, and the king to a young, wild bull. Thus yoked, he was to draw the plough of the Church of England, with the prospect of being torn to pieces by the ferocity of the bull.1 He was received with intense enthusiasm at Canterbury by the clergy, the monks, and the people, and was consecrated on the second Sunday of Advent, 1093. He began at once to restore discipline according to the principles of Hildebrand, though with more moderation and gentleness.
A short time elapsed before the relations between the king and the prelate became strained. Anselm supported Urban II. ; William leaned to the anti-pope Clement III. The ques tion of investiture with the pallium at once became a matter of dispute. The king at first insisted upon Anselm's receiving it from Clement and then claimed the right to confer it him self. Anselm refused to yield and received it, 1095, from Urban's legate, who brought the sacred vestment to England in a silver casket. The archbishop gave further offence to the king by the mean way, as was said, in which he performed his feudal obligations.2 William decided to try him in his court. To this indignity Anselm would, of course, not submit. It was the old question whether an English ecclesiastic owed pri mary allegiance to the pope or to the crown.3 The arch bishop secured the king's reluctant permission, 1097, to go to Rome. But William's petty spirit pursued the departing prel-
1 Eadmer (Hist. Nov., in Migne's edition of Anselm, II. 368) : " Indomitum taurum et vetulam ac debilem ovem in aratro conjungere sub uno jugo," etc. Ranke, Weltgesch.,VIII. 115, makes here a curious mistake by putting into Anselm's mouth the saying that England's plough must be drawn by " two noble and powerful bulls" (von zwei edlen und krdftigen Stieren, dem Konig und dem Primas).
2 Soon after he was made archbishop, Auselm sent the king £500, a sum far below what the king expected. On another occasion when the king was start ing on a campaign against Wales, Anselm sent what the king regarded as a beggarly contingent of ill-trained knights.
8 The matters in dispute were discussed at Rockingham at a meeting of barons and bishops with Anselm at their head. See Freeman, W. Rufus, I. 476 sqq.
90 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1085-1122.
ate by ordering Anselm's baggage searched at Dover. He seized the revenues of Canterbury, and Anselm's absence was equivalent to exile. Eadmer reports a remarkable scene before Anselm's departure.1 At his last interview with William he refused to leave the king's presence until he had given him his blessing. "As a spiritual father to his son, as Archbishop of Canterbury to the king of England," he said, " I would fain before I go give you God's blessing." To these words the king made reply that he did not decline the priestly bles sing. It was the last time they met.
Anselm was 'most honorably received by the pope, who threatened the king with excommunication, and pronounced afti anathema on all laymen who exercised the right of inves titure and on all clergymen who submitted to lay -investiture.2
The Red King was shot dead by an arrow, — nobody knows whether by a hunter or by an assassin, Aug. 2, 1100, while hunting in the New Forest. " Cut off without shrift, without repentance, he found a tomb in the Old Minster of Winches ter; but the voice of clergy and people, like the voice of one man, pronounced, by a common impulse, the sentence which Rome had feared to pronounce. He received the more unique brand of popular excommunication. No bell was tolled, no prayer was said, no alms were given for the soul of the one baptized and anointed ruler, whose eternal damnation was taken for granted by all men as a thing about which there could be no doubt." 3