The King refuses him leave to go back. February, 1093. to be looked to. Between these two sets of affairs, Anselm was kept in England for five months. He then wished to go back to Normandy; but the King's leave, it seems, was needed, and the King's leave was refused.[1]
William's feeling towards Anselm.
Christmas Assembly, 1092-1093.
The vacancy discussed by the Witan.
This refusal is worth notice. It does not seem to have
been done in enmity; at least it was not followed by any
kind of further wrong-doing on the King's part towards
Anselm. It really looks as if William had, not indeed
any fixed purpose of appointing Anselm to the archbishopric,
but a kind of feeling that he might be driven to
appoint him, a feeling that things might come to a stage
in which he could not help naming some archbishop, and
that, if it came to that stage, he could not help naming
Anselm. It is plain from what follows that the thought
of Anselm as a possible archbishop was in the King's
mind as well as in the minds of others. But certainly
no offer or hint was at this stage made by William, nor
was anything said to Anselm about the matter by any
one else.[2] Men no doubt knew Anselm's feelings, and
avoided the subject. But at one point during these
five months the vacancy of the archbishopric was
brought very strongly before Anselm's mind, though
not in a way which suggested his own appointment
rather than that of anybody else. When the Midwinter
Gemót of this year was held, the long vacancy, and
the evils which flowed from it, became a matter of
discussion among the assembled Witan. But they did
not venture to attempt any election, or even to make any
suggestion of their own; they did not even make any
- ↑ Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 15. "Post hæc in Normanniam regredi volens, negata a rege licentia, copiam id agendi habere non potuit." It is not easy, as Dean Church remarks (Anselm, 175), to see why the King's leave was needed for the subject of another prince to go back to his own country.
- ↑ Ib. "Sic hujus temporis spatium transiit, ut de pontificatu Cantuariensi nihil ad eum vel de eo dictum actumve sit; ipseque sui periculi et antiqui timoris securus effectus fuerit."
