The lay lords support Anselm.
The King's difficulties. The King had told them that no one could be his man and the Archbishop's at once, and he had bidden them to withdraw their faith—clearly using the word in the feudal sense—from the Archbishop. They answered that they were not the Archbishop's men, that they could not withdraw from him a fealty which they had never paid to him. This of course was true of the lay nobles as a body, whatever questions there might be about Tunbridge castle or any other particular fief. But they went on to say that, though Anselm was not their lord, yet he was their archbishop, that it was he who had to "govern Christianity" in the land; that, as Christian men, they could not, while in that land, decline his mastership, all the more as there was no spot of offence in him which should make the King treat him in any other way.[1] Such an answer naturally stirred up William's wrath; but the earls and great barons of his kingdom were a body with whom even he could not dare to trifle. He was stronger than any one among them; he might not be stronger than all of them together, backed as they now were, as the events of the day before had shown, by popular feeling. He had once beaten the Norman nobles at the head of the English people; he might not be able to beat the Norman nobles and the English people together. He therefore made an effort, and kept down any open outburst of the wrath that was in him.[2] But*
- ↑ The answer of the lay lords must be taken as a formal setting forth of their position; one would be glad to know whose are the actual sentiments and words. It runs thus (Eadmer, 30); "Nos nunquam fuimus homines ejus, nec fidelitatem quam ei non fecimus abjurare valemus. Archiepiscopus noster est; Christianitatem in hac terra gubernare habet, et ea re nos qui Christiani sumus ejus magisterium, dum hic vivimus, declinare non possumus, præsertim cum nullius offensæ macula illum respiciat, quæ vos secus de illo agere compellat."
- ↑ "Quod ipse repressa sustinuit ira, rationi eorum palam ne nimis offenderentur contraire præcavens." This is perhaps a solitary case of recorded self-restraint on the part of William Rufus, at all events since the death of
