Sick monks in the
infirmary could relish no drink save the juice which his hand squeezed
for them from the grape-bunch. In the later days of his archbishoprick a
hare chased by the hounds took refuge under his horse, and his gentle
voice grew loud as he forbade a huntsman to stir in the chase while the
creature darted off again to the woods. Even the greed of lands for the
Church to which so many religious men yielded found its characteristic
rebuke as the battling lawyers in such a suit saw Anselm quietly close
his eyes in court and go peacefully to sleep.

[Sidenote: William and Anselm]

A sudden impulse of the Red King drew the abbot from these quiet studies
into the storms of the world. The see of Canterbury had long been left
without a Primate when a dangerous illness frightened the king into the
promotion of Anselm. The Abbot, who happened at the time to be in England
on the business of his house, was dragged to the royal couch and the
cross forced into his hands. But William had no sooner recovered from his
sickness than he found himself face to face with an opponent whose meek
and loving temper rose into firmness and grandeur when it fronted the
tyranny of the king. Much of the struggle between William and the
Archbishop turned on questions such as the right of investiture, which
have little bearing on our history, but the particular question at issue
was of less importance than the fact of a contest at all. The boldness of
Anselm's attitude not only broke the tradition of ecclesiastical
servitude but infused through the nation at large a new spirit of
independence. The real character of the strife appears in the Primate's
answer when his remonstrances against the lawless exactions from the
Church were met by a demand for a present on his own promotion, and his
first offer of five hundred pounds was contemptuously refused. "Treat me
as a free man," Anselm replied, "and I devote myself and all that I have
to your service, but if you treat me as a slave you shall have neither me
nor mine." A burst of the Red King's fury drove the Archbishop from
court, and he finally decided to quit the country, but his example had
not been lost, and the close of William's reign found a new spirit of
freedom in England with which the greatest of the Conqueror's sons was
glad to make terms. His exile however left William without a check.
Supreme at home, he was full of ambition abroad. As a soldier the Red
King was little inferior