§ 4. The Council of Rockingham. December, 1094-March, 1095.
Notices of the year 1095.
Councils of the year.
The year to which the last Christmas feast introduces
us brings strongly home to us the singular way in
which our general chroniclers follow one line of events,
while the special biographer of the Archbishop follows
another. There is no contradiction; but the gaps
which have to be filled up in each narrative are remarkable.
It is not perhaps wonderful that the biographer
of Anselm should, even in a work which bears
a general title, pass by events which in no way affected
the history of Anselm. It is more remarkable that one
of the most striking scenes in Anselm's history should not
have been thought worthy of notice by the more general
annalists of our land. But so it is. The year 1095 is
a year of very stirring events, and it is preeminently a
year of councils. But, with a single exception, our two
authorities do not record the same events and the same
councils. Both tell us of the pallium being brought to
Anselm; but, while one tells us nothing of the most
striking of the assemblies in which Anselm bore a part,
the other tells us nothing of the conspiracy, the revolt,
the war, which specially mark this year in the general
story of England.
Alleged Welsh campaign. January 9, 1095? If our story is rightly told, the Christmas meeting of William and Henry, followed before long by a Norman campaign on the part of Henry, was followed yet more immediately by a Welsh campaign on the part of William. The King took the affairs of his own island into his own hands, and, for the present, he left those of the mainland to the Count of Coutances. A winter campaign in Wales does not sound very promising, and we are not surprised to hear that it did not add much to the
