The first appeal to Rome made by William of Saint-Calais. means to escape punishment for a civil crime. It was from the mouth of William of Saint-Calais that, for the first time as far as we can see, men who were English by birth or settlement heard the doctrine that the King of the English had a superior on earth, that the decrees of the Witan of England could be rightly appealed from to a foreign power. The later career of the Bishop makes him a strange champion of any such teaching. The largest charity will not allow us to give him credit for the pure single-mindedness of Anselm, or even for the conscious self-devotion of Thomas. We feel throughout that he is simply using every verbal technicality in order to avoid any discussion of the real facts. A trial and conviction would hardly have brought with them any harsher punishment than the forfeiture and banishment which he actually underwent. But it made a fairer show in men's eyes to undergo forfeiture and banishment in the character of a persecuted confessor than to undergo the same amount of loss in the character of a convicted traitor.
Behaviour of Lanfranc;
of the King.
The part played by Lanfranc is eminently characteristic.
Practically he maintains the royal supremacy on
every point; but he makes no formal declaration which
could commit him to anti-papal theories. As for William
Rufus, one is really inclined for a long while to admire
his patience through a discussion which must have been
both wearisome and provoking, rather than to feel any
wonder that, towards the end of the day, he begins to
break out into somewhat stronger language. But in the
latter part of the story, like Henry the Second but unlike
Henry the First, he stoops from his own thoroughly good
position. He shows a purpose to take every advantage
however mean, and to crush the Bishop in any way,
fair or foul. So at least it seems in our story; but one
would like to hear the other side, as one is unwilling
