[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Robert called in once more hissuzerain, Philip of France, to his aid, and captured two im-portant castles, that of Argentan towards the south, and thatof in the north-west.William then took a stepwhich illustrates again the extent of his power and hisHe ordered a levy of ten thousand menarbitrary use of it.from England to be sent him in Normandy, and when they hadassembled at Hastings, Ranulf by the king s orderswe are told, took from them the ten shillings which each manhad been furnished for his expenses, and sent them home.Robert and Philip were now marching against William at Eu,and it was probably by the liberal use of this money that the king of France was turned back by craft and all the ex-pedition dispersed. About the same time William sent forhis brother Henry to join him.Henry had reappeared inwestern Normandy not long before, and had begun the recon-struction of his power there.Invited by the inhabitants ofDomfront to protect them against Robert of he hadmade that place a starting-point from which he had recovereda considerable part of his earlier possessions.Now Williamsent ships to bring him by sea to Eu, probably wishing to usehis military  skill against their common enemy.For somereason, however, the ships departed from their course, and onthe last day of October he landed at Southampton, where hestayed some weeks.On December William also returnedto England, and in the spring, Henry was sent back to Nor-mandy with supplies of money to keep up the war againstRobert.The year had been a hard one for both England andNormandy.The duchy had suffered more from the privatewars which prevailed everywhere, and which the duke madeno effort to check, than from the invasion of William.100 RUFUS ANDCHAP.land in general had had peace, under the strong hand of theVking, but so heavy had been the burden of the taxation whichthe war in Normandy had entailed that agriculture declined,we are told, and famine and pestilence followed.In thewest the Welsh had risen against the Norman lords, and hadinvaded and laid waste parts of the English border counties.In Scotland William s ally, Duncan, had been murdered, andhis uncle, Donald, who represented the Scottish nationalparty, had been made king in his place.William founddifficulties enough in England to occupy him for some time,particularly when, as was told above, the refusal of Robertof to appear at court in March revealed the plansof barons for another insurrection.Before he could attempt to deal with any of these difficul-ties, however, another question, more troublesome still, wasforced upon the king.A few weeks after his landingcame to him and asked leave to go to Rome to get hisfrom the pope.From which pope? asked theking.Anselm had already given warning of the answerwhich he must make, and at once replied, From Urban.Here was joined an inevitable issue between the king and thearchbishop; inevitable, not because of the character of thequestion but because of the character of the two men.Noconflict need have arisen upon this question.When Anselmhad remonstrated with the king on the eve of his Normanexpedition, about the vacant abbeys that were in his hands,William in anger had replied that Lanfranc would neverhave dared to use such language to his father.We maysure for one thing, that Lanfranc would have dared tooppose the first William with all his might, if he had thoughtthe reason sufficient, but also that his more practical mindwould never have allowed him to regard this question as im-portant enough to warrant the evils that would follow in thetrain of an open quarrel between king and primate.Duringthe last years of Lanfranc s life, at least from 1084, no popehad been formally recognized in England.Tomind, however, the question was one of vital importance,where delay would be the sacrifice of principle to expediency.On the other hand, it seems clear to us, looking back onthese events, that William, from the strength of his positionin England, could have safely overlooked Anselm s personal CHAP.recognition of Urban, and could have tacitly allowed himeven to get his from the pope without surrenderinganything of his own practical control of the Church.William,however, refused to take this course.Perhaps he had cometo see that a conflict with Anselm could not be avoided, andchose not to allow any, even merely formal, advantages.The student of this crisis is tempted to believe, from the factsof this case, from the king s taking away the staff from theBishop of the words used refer to anything morethan a confiscation of his fief, and especially from his steadyrefusal to allow the meeting of a national council, that Williamhad conceived the idea an independent Church under hissupreme control in all that pertained to its government, andthat he was determined to be rid of an Archbishop of Canter-bury, who would never consent to such a plan.Of the dispute which followed we have a single interestingand detailed account, written by Eadmer who was in personalattendance on Anselm through it all, but it is the accountof a devoted partisan of the archbishop which, it is clear, wecannot trust for legal distinctions, and which is not entirelyconsistent with itself.According to this narrative, Williamasserted that Anselm s request, as amounting to an officialrecognition of one of the two popes, was an attack upon hissovereignty as king.This Anselm denied, he could notwell appreciate the he affirmed that he could atthe same time be true to the pope whom he had recognizedand to the king whose man he was.This was perfectly truefrom point of view, but the other was equally truefrom The fundamental assumptions of the two menwere irreconcilable [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]