Anselm's continued demands of reform.
He determines not to answer the new summons.
Working of the King's court. season of reform had been shared by Anselm himself. He had more than once urged the King on the subject; but William had always answered that he was too busy dealing with his many enemies to think about such matters.[1] Such an answer was a mere put-off; yet a more discouraging one might have been given. Anselm had therefore fully made up his mind to make the most of this special opportunity, and to make yet one more urgent appeal to the King to help him in his work.[2] And now, at the meeting where he trusted to make this attempt, he was summoned to appear as defendant on a purely temporal charge. To that charge he determined to make no answer. But surely the reason which is given is rather the reason of Eadmer afterwards than of Anselm at the time. Anselm is made to say that in the King's court everything depended on the King's nod, and that his cause would be examined in that court, without law, without equity, without reason.[3] He had not found it so at Rockingham,
- ↑ Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 37. "Rogatus de subventione Christianitatis, nonnumquam solebat respondere se propter hostes quos infestos circumquaque habebat eo intendere non valere."
- ↑ Ib. "Jam tunc illum pace potitum cogitaverat super hac re convenire, et saltem ad consensum alicujus boni fructus exsequendi quibus modis posset attrahendo delinire."
- ↑ Ib. "Quod ille dinoscens, et insuper cuncta regalis curiæ judicia pendere ad nutum regis, nilque in ipsis nisi solum velle illius considerari certissime sciens, indecens æstimavit pro verbi calumnia placitantium more contendere, et veritatis suæ causam curiali judicio, quod nulla lex, nulla æquitas, nulla ratio, muniebat, examinandam introducere." As I understand this, he does not decline the authority of the court; he simply determines to make no defence, and to leave things to take their course. How far did the court deserve the character which Eadmer gives of it? At this stage of the constitution, we are met at every step by the difficulty of distinguishing between the greater curia regis, which was in truth the Witenagemót, and the smaller curia regis of the King's immediate officials and counsellors, the successor of the Theningmannagemót (see N. C. vol. v. pp. 423, 878). Eadmer's picture would, under Rufus, be true enough of the smaller body. The event at Rockingham had shown that it was not always true of the larger.
