Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/658

Anselm's acts declared null.

The monks keep Peckham. have done the like in the like case. But Rufus or his agents went much further. Our guide implies that he acted as if Anselm had been an intruder in the archbishopric. All the acts and orders of Anselm during his four years' primacy—that is, we must suppose, all leases, grants, and legal transactions of every kind—were declared null and void.^[1] Much loss and wrong must have been thus caused to many persons. A man who had, in the old phrase, bought land of the archbishopric for a term or for lives^[2] would lose his land, and, we may be sure, would not get back his money. A clerk collated by the Archbishop might be turned out of his living to make room for a nominee of the King. It is no wonder then that the wrongs which were done now were said to be greater than the wrongs which had been done when the archiepiscopal estates had before been seized after the death of Lanfranc.^[3] For at any rate the acts of Lanfranc were not reversed. One feels a certain desire to know what became of the Archbishop's knights whose array had so displeased the King earlier in the year. But we hear nothing of them or of any particular class; all is quite general. In one case indeed it is quite certain that the rule that all Anselm's acts should be treated as invalid was not carried out. The monks of Christ Church clearly kept their temporary possession of the manor of Peckham. For they spent the whole income of it on great architectural works which Anselm himself had begun. The metropolitan church, so lately rebuilt by Lanfranc, had already become small in the eyes of a younger generation, as indeed it was smaller than many

1. Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 41. "Irrita fieri omnia quæ per ipsum mutata vel statuta fuisse probari poterant, ex quo primo venerat in archiepiscopatum."
2. See N. C. vol. v. p. 772.
3. Hist. Nov. 41. "Ut tribulationes quæ factæ sunt in illo post mortem venerandæ memoriæ Lanfranci ante introitum patris Anselmi parvipensæ sunt comparatione tribulationum quæ factæ sunt his diebus."