learned, what Englishmen had already learned, that gold was as powerful in the counsels of the Holy See as ever it was in the closet of the Red King. The Pope's agents and messengers might take bribes; the Pope himself, the holy College around him, would never sink to such shame. The majestic and attractive side of the Roman system was all that would present itself to his eyes. He would flee to the blessed shelter and be at peace. He had had enough of the world of kings and courts, the world where men of God were called on to send men to fight the battles of this life, and were called in question if swords were not sharp enough or if horses were not duly trained and caparisoned. Weary and sick at heart, he would turn away from such a scene and from its thankless duties; he would, for a while at least, leave the potsherds of the earth to strive with the potsherds of the earth; he would go where he might perhaps win leave to throw aside his burthen, or where, failing that, he might receive renewed strength to bear it.
New position taken by Anselm.
Aspect of his conduct.
In all this we can thoroughly enter into Anselm's
feelings, nor are we called upon to pronounce any censure
upon either his feelings or his conduct. But it is
plain that he was now taking up a wholly different position
from that which he had taken at Rockingham, a
position in which he could not expect to meet with, and
in which he did not meet with, the same support which
he had met with at Rockingham. At Gillingham and at
Rockingham Anselm did nothing which could be fairly
construed as a defiance of the law or an appeal to the
Pope against any lawful authority of the King. All that
he did was to ask the King's leave to go for the pallium,
that is to do what all his predecessors had done, to obey
what might be as fairly called a custom of the realm as
any other. In the discussions which now began, his
conduct would, to say the least, have, in the eyes of
