- bard were to be carried out in their fulness. It is the
state of ecclesiastical matters during this memorable vacancy, and the memorable nomination which at last ended it, which call for our main attention at this stage of our story.
§ 2. The Vacancy of the Primacy and the Appointment of Anselm. 1089-1093.
Effects of the vacancy of the see of Canterbury.
Special position of the metropolitan see.
It needs some little effort of the imagination fully to
take in all that is implied in a four years' vacancy of the
see of Canterbury in the eleventh century. For the
King to keep any bishopric vacant in order to fill his
coffers with its revenues was a new and an unrighteous
thing, against which men cried out as at once new and
unrighteous. But to deal in this way with the see of
Canterbury was something which differed in kind from
the like treatment of any other see. That the bishopric
of Lincoln was vacant, that the Bishop of Durham was
in banishment, was mainly a local grievance. The
churches of Lincoln and Durham suffered; they were
condemned to what, in the language of the times, was
called a state of widowhood. The tenants of those
churches suffered all that was implied in being handed
over from a milder lord to a harsher one. The dioceses
were defrauded of whatever advantages might have
flowed from the episcopal superintendence of Robert
Bloet or of William of Saint-Calais. But the general
affairs of the Church and realm might go on much the
same; there was one councillor less in the gemót or the
synod, and that was all. It was another thing when the
patriarchal throne was left vacant, when Church and
realm were deprived of him who in a certain sense
might be called the head of both. An Archbishop of
Canterbury was something more than merely the first
