departing soul of man, which on going forth from the body was beset by the evil spirits who had pursued it all through life. So he suffered not the dogs or hunters to touch the hare (Eadmer, Lib. de Similitudinibus S. Ans. 189, 190).
William the Conqueror received his death-wound in 1087. In the presence of Anselm we are told that he who to most men seemed harsh and terrible became so mild that bystanders looked on with amazement (Eadmer, Vit. Ans. i. 47). And when he lay dying in the abbey of St. Gervase at Rouen he sent for Anselm to hear the confession of his burdened conscience. Anselm came from Bec. William, however, put off seeing him for a few days, deeming that he should get better. Meanwhile Anselm himself fell ill, and before he had recovered the king died (Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 1, 17 C). Anselm, however, was present at the strange and terrible scenes amidst which the body of the Conqueror was laid in the minster of St. Stephen at Caen.
Lanfranc crowned William the Red king of England, and in the following year, 1089, he died. William the Red was, unlike his father, profligate and profane, without reverence for goodness, or respect for law and justice. He found a minister worthy of himself in Ralph Flambard, a lowborn Norman clerk, a coarse and unscrupulous man. One simple expedient for replenishing the royal treasury was to keep the great offices of the church vacant and confiscate their revenues.
After the death of Lanfranc the see of Canterbury was kept vacant for more than three years, and its lands were farmed to the highest bidders. The whole nation was shocked by this shameless spoliation of the metropolitan see, and longed to see the man appointed to it who, on his visits to England, had won the hearts of all men, and who was admitted to have no superior in Christendom in piety and learning. But the king cared not. Meanwhile, in 1092 Hugh of Avranches, earl of Chester, invited Anselm to England, to assist him in the work of substituting monks for canons in the minster of St. Werburgh at Chester. Anselm, however, having heard the rumour which marked him out for the primacy, and fearing that the motives of his visit might be misconstrued, declined to come; but at last he was compelled to yield to the urgent entreaties of the earl, who said that he was mortally ill, and that if Anselm did not come his soul's peace in the future world might be for ever disturbed. The chapter of Bec also wished him to go, in order to get the royal exactions on their English property lightened. So he set sail from Boulogne, where he had been staying with the Countess Ida, and reached Canterbury on 8 Sept., the eve of the Nativity of the Virgin; but being hailed by monks and people as their future archbishop, he hurried away early the next morning. On his road to Chester he visited the court, where he was received with great honour, even by the king himself. Anselm asked for a private interview, in which he rebuked the king for the evil things which men said were done by him. William seems to have turned the subject off with a laugh, saying he could not prevent idle rumours, and that the holy man ought not to believe them. So they parted, and Anselm went on to Chester. Here he found Earl Hugh restored to health, and after spending some months in settling the new constitution of St. Werburgh he desired to return to Normandy; but the king would not give him leave to go. In the baseness of his soul he may have thought that Anselm secretly desired the primacy, and that even he might be induced to pay some price for it. Meanwhile the midwinter gemot, held at Gloucester, had passed a resolution that the king should be asked to allow prayers to be offered in all churches that God would put it into his heart to appoint some worthy man to the long vacant see. The king assented, but contemptuously remarked, ‘Pray what ye will; no man's prayer shall shake my purpose.’ Anselm was compelled to frame the prayer. After the gemot the king went to a royal seat at Alvestone, near Gloucester. Here one of his nobles spoke one day of the virtues of Anselm, how he was a man who loved God only, and desired nothing belonging to this fleeting world. ‘Not even the archbishopric?’ said William, with a sneer. ‘No, not even that,’ replied the other, ‘and many think with me.’ The king, however, maintained that had Anselm the least chance of it he would rush to embrace it, but ‘by the holy face of Lucca,’ he added, ‘neither he nor any one else shall be archbishop at present except myself.’ Soon after this the king was taken very ill. He was moved to Gloucester; the lay nobles, bishops, and other great men visited the sick and, as it was thought, dying man, and urged him to redress the wrongs which he had inflicted on the nation, and especially on the church. But the king's advisers felt the need of some one at this critical moment who had peculiar skill in awakening the conscience and ministering to the diseases of the soul. There was no one comparable to Anselm, and he, unconscious of the king's illness, was sojourning not far from Gloucester. He was fetched
