Note 7 — Archbishop Anselm and Norman Autocracy 1093–1109

“In England Anselm had stood only for right and liberty; he, the chief witness for religion and righteousness, saw all round him vice rampant, men spoiled of what was their own—justice, decency, honour trampled under foot. Law was unknown, except to ensnare and oppress. The King’s Court was the instrument of one man’s selfish and cruel will, and of the devices of a cunning and greedy minister. The natural remedies of wrong were destroyed and corrupted; the king’s peace, the king’s law, the king’s justice, to which men in those days looked for help, could only be thought of in mocking contrast to the reality. Against this energetic reign of misrule and injustice, a resistance as energetic was wanted; and to resist it was felt to be the call and bounden duty of a man in Anselm’s place. He resisted, as was the way in those days, man to man, person to person, in outright fashion and plain-spoken words. He resisted lawlessness, wickedness, oppression, corruption. When others acquiesced in the evil state, he refused; and further, he taught a lesson which England has since largely learned, though in a very different way. He taught his generation to appeal from force and arbitrary will to law. It was idle to talk of appealing to law in England; its time had not yet come.”—Church, Saint Anselm.