The life of Anselm very nearly corresponded with that of the Conqueror, who died in 1087, being five years older; and he was Abbot of Bec during the whole reign of William as King of England.  There was nothing particularly memorable in his life as abbot aside from his theological studies.  It was not until he was elevated to the See of Canterbury, on the death of Lanfranc, that his memorable career became historical.  He anticipated Thomas Becket in his contest to secure the liberties of the Church against the encroachments of the Norman kings.  The cause of the one was the cause of the other; only, Anselm was trained in monastic seclusion, and Becket amid the tumults and intrigues of a court.  The one was essentially an ecclesiastic and theologian; the other a courtier and statesman.  The former was religious, and the latter secular in his habits and duties.  Yet both fought the same great battle, the essential principle of which was the object of contention between the popes and the emperors of Germany,—­that pertaining to the right of investiture, which may be regarded, next to the Crusades, as the great outward event of the twelfth century.  That memorable struggle for supremacy was not brought to a close until Innocent III. made the kings of the earth his vassals, and reigned without a rival in Christendom.  Gregory VII. had fought heroically, but he died in exile, leaving to future popes the fruit of his transcendent labors.

Lanfranc died in 1089,—­the ablest churchman of the century next to the great Hildebrand, his master.  It was through his influence that England was more closely allied with Rome, and that those fetters were imposed by the popes which the ablest of the Norman kings were unable to break.  The Pope had sanctioned the atrocious conquest of England by the Normans—­beneficially as it afterwards turned out—­only on the condition that extraordinary powers should be conferred on the Archbishop of Canterbury, his representative in enforcing the papal claims, who thus became virtually independent of the king,—­a spiritual monarch of such dignity that he was almost equal to his sovereign in authority.  There was no such See in Germany and France as that of Canterbury.  Its mighty and lordly metropolitan had the exclusive right of crowning the king.  To him the Archbishop of York, once his equal, had succumbed.  He was not merely primate, but had the supreme control of the Church in England.  He could depose prelates and excommunicate the greatest personages; he enjoyed enormous revenues; he was vicegerent of the Pope.

Loth was William to concede such great powers to the Pope, but he could not be King of England without making a king of Canterbury.  So he made choice of Lanfranc—­then Abbot of St. Stephen, the most princely of the Norman convents—­for the highest ecclesiastical dignity in his realm, and perhaps in Europe after the papacy itself.  Lanfranc was his friend, and also the friend of Hildebrand;