. William the Conqueror might have made the spiritual
authority subordinate to the temporal, if he had followed his
inclinations. But he dared not quarrel with the Pope,--the great
Hildebrand, by whose favor he was unmolested in the conquest of the
Saxons. He was on very intimate terms of friendship with Lanfranc, whom
he made Archbishop of Canterbury,--a wily and ambitious Italian, who was
devoted to the See of Rome and his spiritual monarch. The influence of
Hildebrand and Lanfranc combined was too great to be resisted. Nor did
he attempt resistance; he acquiesced in the necessity of making a king
of Canterbury. His mind was so deeply absorbed with his conquest and
other state matters that he did not seem to comprehend the difficulties
which might arise under his successors, in yielding so much power to the
primate. Moreover Lanfranc, in the quiet enjoyment of his ecclesiastical
privileges, gave his powerful assistance in imposing the Norman yoke. He
filled the great sees with Norman prelates. He does not seem to have had
much sympathy with the Saxons, or their bishops, who were not so refined
or intellectual as the bishops of France. The Normans were a superior
race to the Saxons in executive ability and military enthusiasm. The
chivalric element of English society, among the higher classes, came
from the Normans, not from the Saxons. In piety, in passive virtues, in
sustained industry, in patient toil, in love of personal freedom, the
Saxons doubtless furnished a finer material for the basis of an
agricultural, industrial, and commercial nation. The sturdy yeomen of
England were Saxons: the noble and great administrators were Normans. In
pride, in ambition, and in executive ability the Normans bore a closer
resemblance to the old heroic Romans than did the Saxons.

The next archbishop after Lanfranc was Anselm, appointed by William
Rufus. Anselm was a great scholar, the profoundest of the early
Schoolmen; a man of meditative habits, who it was presumed would not
interfere with royal encroachments. William Rufus never dreamed that the
austere and learned monk, who had spent most of his days in the abbey of
Bec in devout meditations and scholastic inquiries, would interfere with
his rapacity. But, as we have already seen, Anselm was conscientious,
and became the champion of the high-church party in the West. He
occupied two distinct spheres,--he was absorbed in philosophical
speculations, yet took an interest in all mu