to the King and his plighted obedience to the Pope? It was a grave matter to sin against either duty. Could not both duties be observed without any breach of either?
The real point avoided on the King's side.
Assumption of the King's party against Anselm.
He is treated as an accused person.
Conduct of the bishops.
This was indeed the question which the Assembly was
brought together to consider and to decide. The
meeting had been called, at Anselm's own request, to
inform him on the point of law, whether he could
acknowledge Urban without disloyalty to William. But
during a long debate of two days, that real issue is
never touched, till Anselm himself calls back men's
minds to the real object of their coming together. It
is assumed throughout by the King and the King's
party that the point of law is already settled in the
sense unfavourable to Anselm, that Anselm has done
something contrary to his allegiance to the King, that
he is there as an accused man for trial, almost as a
convicted man for sentence. That he is a member of
the Assembly, the highest subject in the Assembly,
that the whole object of the meeting is to decide a
question in which the King and his highest subject
understand the law in different ways, seems not to
come into the head of any of the King's immediate
counsellors. Least of all does it come into the heads
of the bishops, the class of men who play the most
prominent and the least creditable part in the story.
Answer of the bishops. To Anselm's question then the bishops were the first to make answer. They are spoken of throughout as acting in a body; but they must have had some spokesman. That spokesman could not have been the Bishop of Durham, who must surely have been sitting with the King in his inner council. William of Saint-Calais comes on the scene afterwards, but no bishop is mentioned by name at this stage. The answer of the episcopal body was not cheering. The Archbishop had no need of their
