The charge against Anselm withdrawn. "Power is in his hands; he says what pleases him. What he refuses now he may perhaps grant another day. I will multiply my prayers."[1] Anselm had there-*fore to stay in England. But the formal charge against him was withdrawn. Perhaps the King had merely made it in a fit of ill humour, and had long given up any serious thought of pressing it. And, if he really wished to annoy Anselm, he had now a way in which he might annoy him far more thoroughly and with much greater advantage than by any mere temporal suit.
Affairs of Wales. June-August, 1097.
Another assembly.
Anselm's request again refused.
This year was a year of gatherings, alike for counsel
and for warfare. The seeming submission of Wales was
soon found to be utterly hollow. From Midsummer till
August William was engaged in another British expedition,
one which brought nothing but immediate toil and
trouble, but of whose more distant results we shall have
again to speak. On his return he summoned, perhaps
not a general Gemót, but at any rate a council of prelates
and lords, to discuss grave matters touching the
state of the kingdom.[2] We would fain hear something of
their debates on other affairs than those of Anselm; but
that privilege is denied us. We only know that, when
the council was about to break up, when all its members
were eager to get to their homes, Anselm earnestly craved
that his request to go to Rome might be granted, and that
the King again refused.[3]
William Rufus seems never to have been happy save when he was himself moving and keeping everybody else in motion. It must have been in his days as in the days
- ↑ Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 38. "Potestas in manu sua est; dicit quod sibi placet. At si modo non vult concedere, concedet forsitan alia vice. Ego preces multiplicabo."
- ↑ Ib. "Insequenti mense Augusto cum de statu regni acturus rex episcopos, abbates, et quosque regni proceres, in unum præcepti sui sanctione egisset."
- ↑ Anselm made his petition, "dispositis his quæ adunationis illorum causæ fuerant, dum quisque in sua repedare sategisset."
