resigned it by sending back to them the pastoral staff.[1] He was not yet Archbishop of Canterbury; he was not yet, in his own view, even Archbishop-elect; all that had been done at Gloucester he counted for null and void. But he was now free to accept the archbishopric, and, though he still did not wish for the post, he had got over the scruples which had before led him to refuse it. In such a case he deemed it his duty to be perfectly frank with the King, and to tell him on what terms only he would accept the primacy, if the King still persisted in offering it to him.
His conditions with the King.
Restoration of the estates of the see.
The conditions which Anselm now laid before William
Rufus were three. The first of them had to do with the
temporal estates of the archbishopric. I have elsewhere
spoken of the light in which we ought to look at demands
of this kind.[2] We may be sure that Anselm
would gladly have purchased the peace of the land,
the friendship of the King, or anything that would profit
the souls or bodies of other men, at the cost of any temporal
possessions which were strictly his own to give up.
But, if he became Archbishop of Canterbury, he would
become a steward of the church of Canterbury, a trustee
for his successors, the guardian of gifts which had been
given to God, His saints, and His Church. In any of
these characters, it would be a sin against his own soul
and the souls of others, if he willingly allowed anything
which had ever been given to his church to be taken
from her or detained from her. If the King chose to
keep the see vacant and to turn its revenues to his own
use, that would be his sin and not Anselm's; but Anselm
would be a sharer in the sin, if he accepted the see with-*
