a charge to speak in the name of the Church and the nation in a way which could hardly be pleasing in his ears. The metropolitan see therefore remained unfilled till the day when William Rufus became for a short season another man.
No fear of a bad appointment.
Primates between Anselm and Thomas.
It is worth remarking that what might have seemed a
very obvious way out of the difficulty clearly did not
come into the head of the King or of any one else. The
long vacancy of the archbishopric made men uneasy;
they were grieved and amazed as to what might happen
in so unusual a case; but they felt sure that the present
distress must end some time, and they seem to have
taken for granted that, when it did end, it would end by
the appointment of some one worthy of the place. Men
were troubled at the King's failure to appoint any archbishop;
they do not seem to have been at all troubled
by fear that he might appoint a bad archbishop.[1] Rufus
himself seems never to have thought of granting or
selling the metropolitan see to any of his own creatures,
to Flambard for instance or to Robert Bloet. He might
so deal with Lincoln or Durham; something within
or without him kept him from so dealing with Canterbury.
It is throughout taken for granted that the choice
lay between a good archbishop or none at all. A good
archbishop was the yoke-fellow of a good king, the
reprover of an evil king. William Rufus wanted neither
of those. But even William Rufus had not gone so far,
his subjects did not suspect him of going so far, as to
think of appointing an evil archbishop in order to be
the tool of an evil king. The precedent of making the
patriarchal throne of Britain the reward of merely temporal
services[2] did not come till it had been filled by*
