pious Wulstan, the hero and saint of the people, must be thrust violently from his see. Above all, abbots full of learning must be secured to govern the monasteries. Therefore, a tyrant like Thurstan must be thrust on the monastery of Glastonbury. In short, the learned and refined scholar of Bec wished to introduce 'sweetness and light' into England by insulting the deepest feelings and needlessly wounding the prejudices of his unwillingly adopted countrymen.

Such a man would hardly have been fitted to rouse and inspirit a people under the weight of the horrors which broke forth in Rufus' reign. Of them there is little need to speak in detail. The wail that goes up from the chroniclers at this time, joined in even by courtiers like William of Malmesbury, and men who, like Orderic, had respected Rufus' father; the seizing of the ecclesiastical appointments into his hands by Rufus, and his encouragement of simony, were, to a people like the English, far deadlier blows in those times than we can now quite realize. Taxation, too, and plunder by

1 Bromton, p. 976.

2 Ang. -Sax. Chron., vol. ii. p. 184; Florent. Wigorn., pp. 16, 17.

officials, inflicted a deeper disgrace when they were carried out by a Ralph of Durham,' to whom, as well as to his master, it seems almost a stretch of charity to apply Portia's words, 'God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.'

So impossible was it now to draw any remaining hope from the Norman King, that, in Orderic's words, the people called on God, 'Who by the two-handed Aoth (sic) had delivered Israel from the hand of Moab by the death of that very fat King Eglon.' But the evil was too deep for the dagger of Ehud, or the arrow of Tyrrell, to cure it. It was a far nobler than either of these; one who worked by gentler, but far more radical methods, whom God now raised up to deliver England from the pit of impurity and misery into which she was falling. What manner of man this was

1 Sir F. Palgrave's merciful estimate of Ralph is evidently founded on the account given by Simeon, of Durham, in his Historia de Dunelmensi Ecclesia (p. 59, ed. and vol. as above); but that very same chronicler, in his Historia de Gestis Regum Anglorum, p. 225 (ed. and vol. as above), takes a far less favourable view of Ralph's character, while other chroniclers add darker shades still. The reason of the difference between Simeon's two accounts seems to be that in the former case he was thinking of Ralph mainly as the champion of the independence of the church of Durham against the Archbishop of York, while in the latter case he takes the ordinary point of view of an English chronicler.

I propose to show to my reader by a story already quoted by Thierry,' but well worth giving at full length from its original source.

'When he was in England about the possessions of the monasteries, but especially to see Archbishop Lanfranc, after much discourse, Lanfranc at length began to speak of the Blessed Elpheg. "Those English," he said, "among whom we live, have set up some saints for themselves, whose merits are uncertain. One of these rests in our church, Elpheg, our predecessor-a good man, no doubt, whom they reverence not only as a saint but as a martyr. On enquiry into his case, I find that after having been stoned by the Pagans, and suffering many injuries, and reproaches, and scourgings, he was killed by the sword, because he would not extort from his servants the money necessary for the ransom of his body. Since, then, it is not the pain, but the cause, which makes the martyr. I should like to have your opinion as to whether

1 History of Norman Conquest, Hazlitt's translation, vol. i. p. 255.

2 The story has already been translated at length in a book from which, directly or indirectly, I must have derived my clearest impressions both of Lanfranc and Anselm-History of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, by Rev. F. D. Maurice, vol. i. pp. 516,

517.

these men are to be restrained or supported." For Lanfranc, being newly settled in England, did not know the whole story; for Elpheg also suffered for the cause of Christ. But Anselm, when he had heard the story, answered, "He appears to me a most eminent martyr, who preferred to die rather than to bring injury on those whom he ought specially to defend. And certainly he who so feared the thing which seems so small would stand most faithfully for the confession of Christ. For he who avoids little evils does

not readily give way to great ones. Thus John, who suffered for the truth, and Elpheg who died for justice, I esteem noble martyrs. For each died for Christ, who, as He is Truth, so also is Justice." Then Lanfranc became silent, and ordered the history of the martyr to be read, and his feast to be celebrated every year.' '1

The

Johannis Sarisburiensis Vita, S. Anselmi, Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. pp. 162, 163. The story is also told, but in a far inferior form, in Lanfranc's Life, chap. xvi. pp. 15, 16. The author of this latter work does indeed as little justice to Lanfranc as to Anselm. graceful patronage of the Angli inter quos vivimus' and the 'bonum quidem' is exchanged for vulgar self-assertion ('quasi conquerendo quod homines illius patriæ colerent quosdam sanctos quos ille non affectaret, et maximè'), and the courteous deference to Anselm brought out by John of Salisbury is quite lost in a noisy

Here, then, at last, was a man who, though partly educated in the country of the oppressor, yet understood the aspirations and longings of the oppressed; who, though unusually learned and cultivated, yet felt most strongly for the cause of the poor, and seems to have been understood by them,' as the rich and learned never fully understood him; who, always distrusting himself, and painfully conscious of his own weakness, yet in the cause of justice and purity, spoke with a freedom to Rufus to which Lanfranc would never have dared to rise.

He founded

His work is not easy to estimate. no school, he took part in no public act of permanent political importance, it is impossible to prove that he even put down any great sin, it is easy to show that the effects of some of his acts were evil; 3 but no one can read, I need not say Eadmer or John of Salisbury, but any chronicle

eulogy on Anselm's 'perspicacitas,' with which Lanfranc concludes the conversation. On the other hand, the whole tenderness and sympathy of Anselm's answer is quite lost in this account.

1 See note 3, P. 23.

2 See Eadmer's account of Anselm's opposition to his own election as archbishop, Hist. Novorum, Book I. p. 17.

See as to his enforcement of celibacy on the clergy, Florent. Wigorn., pp. 57 and 59.