Anselm and his tenants. monks seem to have been commonly on the best of terms. Still we seem here to see the beginnings of those disputes which grew into such terrible storms a hundred years later. The lands of the monks had, as we have seen,[1] not been spared during the vacancy of the archbishopric. And it may be that some wrong had been again done to them when the King was molesting the Archbishop's men during the time of truce. We heard not long ago of great complaints going up during that time; some of them may have taken the formal shape of an appeal to the Cardinal. Anselm's reeves may have been no more scrupulous than the reeves of other men. Indeed we find a curious witness that it was so. The question was raised why Anselm, a monk and a special lover of monks, did not always live at Canterbury, among his monks.[2] Several answers are given. The most remarkable is that his presence in his manors was needed to protect his poorer tenants from the oppression of his reeves.[2] When such care was needed on behalf of the tenants, it is quite possible that the reeves might sometimes meddle wrongfully with the possessions of the monks also.
A time of peace for Anselm followed, though hardly a time of peace for England. Before the year was out the King had put down the revolt in Northumberland; Earl Robert of Mowbray was his prisoner. An expedition against the Welsh was less successful, and Scotland still remained under the king of her own choice. The
- ↑ Ib. "Si Cantuariam assidue incoleret, homines sui ex advectione victualium oppido gravarentur; et insuper a præpositis, ut sæpe contingebat, multis ex causis oppressi, si quem interpellarent, nunquam præsentem haberent, magis ac magis oppressi in destructionem funditus irent." Of the doings of reeves of all kinds we have often heard. See specially N. C. vol. iv. p. 616.
- ↑ This question is argued by Eadmer in the Life, ii. I. 9.
