His treatment of them. bidden to sit down as his friends in seats of honour.[1] Those who said that they had abjured only such obedience as was claimed by the Pope's authority, were sent, like naughty children, into a corner of the room, to wait, as traitors and enemies, for their sentence of condemnation.[2] But they debated among themselves in their corner, and soon found the means of winning back the royal favour. A heavy bribe, paid at once or soon after, wiped out even the crime of drawing distinctions while withdrawing their obedience from a metropolitan whom the King hated.[3]
Anselm wishes to leave England. While his suffragans were undergoing this singular experience of the strength of the secular arm, Anselm sent a message to the King. He now asked that, as all protection within the kingdom was withdrawn from him, the King would give him and his companions a safe-conduct to one of his havens, that he might go out of the realm till
- ↑ Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 31. "Hos quidem qui, nulla conditione interposita, funditus ei quicquid prælato suo debebant se abjurasse professi sunt, juxta se sicut fideles et amicos suos honorifice sedere præcepit."
- ↑ "Illos vero qui in hoc solo quod præciperet ex parte apostolici sese subjectionem et obedientiam illi abnegasse dicere ausi sunt, ut perfidos ac suæ voluntatis inimicos, procul in angulo domus sententiam suæ damnationis ira permotus jussit præstolari. Territi ergo et confusione super confusionem induti, in angulum domus secesserunt,"
- ↑ "Reperto statim salubri et quo niti solebant domestico consilio, hoc est, data copiosa pecunia, in amicitiam regis recepti sunt." All this suggests the question, what was the course taken by Gundulf of Rochester, Anselm's old friend, and the holder of a bishopric which stood in a specially close relation to the archbishop. In the Historia Novorum there is no mention of Gundulf; the bishops are spoken of as an united body, except so far as they were divided on this last question. But it seems implied that all disowned Anselm in one way or another. Yet in the Life (ii. 3. 24) the bishops disown him, "Rofensi solo excepto." How are these accounts to be reconciled? If Gundulf had stood out in any marked way from the rest, Eadmer would surely have mentioned him in the Historia Novorum. One might suppose that the Bishop of Rochester, as holding of the Archbishop, was not in the company of the King's bishops at all. But, if he had stayed outside with Anselm and Eadmer, one would have looked for that to be mentioned also. He can hardly lurk in the first person plural which Eadmer so often uses.
