Relations between Rufus and Anselm.
Working of the new ideas.
New position of the King.
Ecclesiastical position of the Conqueror.
William and Lanfranc.
Opposite conduct of Rufus.
Vacancy of the see of Canterbury. 1089-1093.
Of these three the first on the list must claim the
precedence. The relations between Rufus and Anselm
involve the whole civil and ecclesiastical policy of the
reign. The dispute between King and Primate was the
outcome of all that had been working in silence while
the Red King was winning castles in Normandy, receiving
the homage of Scotland, and enlarging the
bounds of England. During those years one side of the
results of the Norman Conquest was put into formal
shape. Between the fall of Rochester and the restoration
of Carlisle, new ideas, new claims, had come to their full
growth. Those ideas, those claims, had made the kingship
of William the Red something marked by not a few
points of difference from the kingship either of the Confessor
or of the Conqueror. Nowhere does the difference
between the elder and the younger William stand forth
more clearly than in their dealings with the spiritual
power. No king, as I have often shown, was more truly
Supreme Governor of the Church within his realm than
was the Conqueror of England, her defender against the
claims of Rome. But William the Great sought and
found his fellow-worker in all things in an archbishop
likeminded with himself. We can hardly conceive the
reign of the Conqueror without the primacy of Lanfranc.
But the great object of William the Red was to
avoid the restraints which could not fail to be placed
upon his self-will, if he had one standing at his side
whose place it was to be at once the chief shepherd of
the English Church and the tribune of the English
people. For three years and more from the death of
Lanfranc the see of Canterbury remained vacant. Such
a vacancy was without precedent; but it was designed
itself to become a precedent. It was by no accident, from
no momentary cause, that William delayed the appointment
of any successor to his old guardian and coun-
