The lesser actors.
Conduct of the laity,
not favourable to the Bishop. to fancy either Bishop Walkelin or Bishop Osmund directly lending himself to sheer palpable wrong. But, after all, not the least attractive part of the story is the glimpse which it gives us of the lesser actors, some of them men of whom we know from other sources the mere names and nothing more. We feel brought nearer to the real life of the eleventh century every time that we are admitted to see a Domesday name becoming something more than a name, to see Ralph Paganel, Hugh of Port, and Heppo the Balistarius playing their parts in an actual story. The short sharp speeches put into the mouths of some of the smaller actors, as well as those which are put into the mouth of the King, both add to the liveliness of the story and increase our faith in its trustworthiness. As in some other pictures of the kind, the laity, both the great men and the general body, stand out on the whole in favourable colours. It is perfectly plain, from Bishop William's own words,[1] that he had not, like Anselm and Thomas, the mass of the people on his side. It is equally plain that the majority of the assembly, though they certainly gave him a fair hearing, were neither inclined to his cause nor convinced by his arguments. And the conduct of the Counts Alan and Odo and their companion Roger of Poitou is throughout that of strictly honourable men, anxious to carry out to the letter every point to which they have pledged their faith. The Red King, having merely pledged his faith as a king, and not in that more fantastic character in which he always held his plighted word as sacred, is less scrupulous on this head.
The affair of Bishop William brings us almost to the last days of the year of the rebellion. But, much
- ↑ See above, p. 91, where he is afraid of the "indocta multitudo."
