Rufus and Flambard the presumption was that a demand made on behalf of the crown was unlawful.
Dealings with church property.
Appointment and investiture of bishops and abbots.
But there is one form of the exactions of the Red King
which, for obvious reasons, stands forth before all others
in the pages of the writers of the time. When the King
would be the heir of every man, he was fully minded
to be the heir of the clerk or the monk as well as of the
layman. And Flambard, priest and chaplain as he was,
had no mind to sacrifice the interests of his master to
the interests of his order. By his suggestion William
began early in his reign, as soon as the influence of Lanfranc
was withdrawn, to make himself in a special way
the heir of deceased bishops and abbots. These great
spiritual lords were among the chief land-owners of the
kingdom. The kings therefore naturally claimed to have
a voice in their appointment. They invested the new
prelate with his ring and staff; and this right, so fiercely
denied to the successor of Augustus, was exercised without
dispute by the successor of Cerdic and Rolf.[1] The
- [Footnote: debebantur condono, exceptis rectis firmis meis et exceptis illis quæ pacta
erant pro aliorum hæreditatibus vel pro eis rebus quæ justius aliis contingebant."]debellando sibi subegit, nemo in ea episcopus vel abbas ante Anselmum factus est qui non primo fuerit homo regis, ac de manu illius episcopatus vel abbatiæ investituram per dationem virgæ pastoralis suscepit." He excepts the bishops of Rochester, who received investiture from the Archbishop of Canterbury, their lord as well as their metropolitan.
A distinct witness to the antiquity of the royal rights in England is borne by William of Malmesbury (v. 417), where he is speaking of the controversy in Henry the First's time. The King refused to yield to the new claims of the Pope, "non elationis ambitu, sed procerum et maxime comitis de Mellento instinctu, qui, in hoc negotio magis antiqua consuetudine quam recti tenore rationem reverberans allegabat multum regiæ majestati diminui, si omittens morem antecessorum, non investiret electum per baculum et annulum."
Another remarkable witness is given by one of the continuators of Sigebert (Sigeberti Auctarium Ursicampinum, Pertz, vi. 471). He records the]*
- ↑ See N. C. vol. iv. pp. 429, 821. Eadmer says emphatically in the Preface to the Historia Novorum; "Ex eo quippe quo Willelmus Normanniæ comes terram illam [Angliam
