and no collision took place between them, for neither could do without the other.  William was willing to waive some of his prerogatives as a sovereign for such a kingdom as England, which made him the most powerful monarch in Western Europe, since he ruled the fairest part of France and the whole British realm, the united possession of both Saxons and Danes, with more absolute authority than any feudal sovereign at that time possessed.  His victorious knights were virtually a standing army, bound to him with more than feudal loyalty, since he divided among them the lands of the conquered Saxons, and gave to their relatives the richest benefices of the Church.  With the aid of an Italian prelate, bound in allegiance to the Pope, he hoped to cement his conquest.  Lanfranc did as he wished,—­removed the Saxon bishops, and gave their sees to Normans.  Since Dunstan, no great Saxon bishop had arisen.  The Saxon bishops were feeble and indolent, and were not capable of making an effective resistance.  But Lanfranc was even 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 a great prelate is to have business