en more able than Dunstan,--a great
statesman as well as prelate. He ruled England as grand justiciary in
the absence of the monarch, and was thus viceregent of the kingdom. But
while he despoiled the Saxon prelates, he would suffer no royal
spoliation of the Norman bishops. He even wrested away from Odo,
half-brother of the Conqueror, the manors he held as Count of Kent,
which originally belonged to the See of Canterbury. Thus was William,
with all his greed and ambition, kept in check by the spiritual monarch
he had himself made so powerful.

On the death of this great prelate, all eyes were turned to Anselm as
his successor, who was then Abbot of Bec, absorbed in his studies. But
William Rufus, who had in the mean time succeeded to the throne of the
Conqueror, did not at once appoint any one to the vacant See, since he
had seized and used its revenues to the scandal of the nation and the
indignation of the Church. For five years there was no primate in
England and no Archbishop of Canterbury. At last, what seemed to be a
mortal sickness seized the King, and in the near prospect of death he
summoned Anselm to his chamber and conferred upon him the exalted
dignity,--which Anselm refused to accept, dreading the burdens of the
office, and preferring the quiet life of a scholar in his Norman abbey.
Like Thomas Aquinas, in the next century, who refused the archbishopric
of Naples to pursue his philosophical studies in Paris, Anselm declined
the primacy of the Church in England, with its cares and labors and
responsibilities, that he might be unmolested in his theological
inquiries. He understood the position in which he should be placed, and
foresaw that he should be brought in collision with his sovereign if he
would faithfully guard the liberties and interests of the Church. He was
a man of peace and meditation, and hated conflict, turmoil, and active
life. He knew that one of the requirements of a great prelate is to have
business talents, more necessary perhaps than eloquence or learning. At
last, however, on the pressing solicitation of the Pope, the King, and
the clergy, he consented to mount the throne of Lanfranc, on condition
that the temporalities, privileges, and powers of the See of Canterbury
should not be attacked. The crafty and rapacious, but now penitent
monarch, thinking he was about to die, and wishing to make his peace
with Heaven, made all the concessions required; and the quiet monk and
doctor, whom e