Estimate of the three cases.
Behaviour of Rufus;
of Henry the Second.
Comparison with Henry the First.
As for the matter of the three cases, the trial of
William of Saint-Calais was in itself the perfectly fair
trial of a rebel who, in the end, after the custom of the
age, came off very lightly for his rebellion. There really
seems nothing to blame William Rufus for in that matter—William
Rufus, that is, still largely guided by Lanfranc—except
some characteristic pettinesses just towards the
end of the story.[1] Towards Anselm William appears—save
under one or two momentary touches of better
feeling—simply as the power of evil striving, by whatever
means, to crush the power of good. He seems none
the less so, even when on particular points his own case
is technically right. Henry the Second, acting honestly
for the good of his kingdom, both technically and
morally right in his main quarrel, stoops to the base and
foolish course of trying to crush his adversary by a
crowd of charges in which the King seems to have been
both morally and technically wrong, and which certainly
would never have been brought if the Archbishop
had not given offence on other grounds. William Rufus
again, and Henry the Second also, each forsook his own
position by calling in, when it suited their momentary
purposes, the very power which their main position bade
them to control and to keep out of their kingdom. Not
so the great king who came between them. The Lion of
Justice knew, and he alone in those days seems to have
known, how to carry on a controversy of principle,
without ever forsaking his own position, without ever
losing his temper or lowering his dignity, without any
breach of personal respect and friendship towards the
holy man whom his kingly office made it his duty to
withstand.
The three years of Anselm's first sojourn beyond sea
- ↑ See above, p. 115.
