Wrath of the lay members.
Speech of Bishop Geoffrey on behalf of William.
Answer of Lanfranc. members of the Assembly was waxing hot; they assailed the Bishop, some, we are told, with arguments, some with revilings.[1] At this stage Bishop William found a friend where we should hardly have looked for one. The brigand Bishop of Coutances, already changed from a rebel into a loyal subject, was there among the great men of the realm. England knew him, not as a prelate of the Church, but as one of the greatest of her landowners; but now, like Odo, he speaks as a bishop. He appeals to the Archbishops at least to give a hearing to Bishop William's objection. They, the bishops and abbots, ought no longer to sit there; they ought to withdraw, taking with them some lay assessors, to discuss the point raised by the Bishop of Durham, whether he ought not to be restored to his bishopric before he is called on to plead[2]. Again the great ecclesiastical statesman is inclined to scorn, almost to mock, the scruples of lesser men. Canonical subtleties might disturb the conscience of a bishop who had a few months before headed a band of robbers; but the lawyer of Pavia, the teacher of Avranches, the monk of Bec, the Abbot of Saint Stephen's, the Patriarch of all the nations beyond the sea, had learned, in his long experience, that, as changes of vestments did not greatly matter, so changes of place and procedure did not greatly matter either. As Lanfranc had told Bishop William that they could judge perfectly well in the clothes which they then had on, so now he tells Bishop Geoffrey that they can judge
- ↑ Mon. Angl. u.s. "Tum multum tumultuantes laici, quidam rationibus, quidam vero contumeliis, adversus episcopum deiterarent."
- ↑ Ib. "Domini archiepiscopi, nos non oporteret diutius hæc ita considerare, sed deceret nos surgere et episcopos et abbates convocare, quosdam etiam baronum et comitum istorum nobiscum habere, et cum eis juste decernere si episcopus debeat prius investiri vel ante investituram de querelis regis intrare in placitum." The text has "S. Constantiensis episcopus," but Bishop Geoffrey must be meant.
