The second journey of Anselm to Rome was a perpetual ovation, but was of course barren of results.  The Pope remained inflexible, and Anselm prepared to return to England; but, from the friendly hints of the prelates who accompanied him, he sojourned again at Lyons with his friend the archbishop.  Both the Pope and the King had compromised; Anselm alone was straightforward and fearless.  As a consequence his revenues were seized, and he remained in exile.  He had been willing to do the Pope’s bidding, had he made an exception to the canons; but so long as the law remained in force he had nothing to do but conform to it.  He remained in Lyons a year and a half, while Henry continued his negotiations with Pascal; but finding that nothing was accomplished, Anselm resolved to excommunicate his sovereign.  The report of this intention alarmed Henry, then preparing for a decisive conflict with his brother Robert.  The excommunication would at least be inconvenient; it might cost him his crown.  So he sought an interview with Anselm at the castle of l’Aigle, and became outwardly reconciled, and restored to him his revenues.

“The end of the dreary contest came at last, in 1107, after vexatious delays and intrigues.”  It was settled by compromise,—­as most quarrels are settled, as most institutions are established.  Outwardly the King yielded.  He agreed, in an assembly of nobles, bishops, and abbots at London, that henceforth no one should be invested with bishopric or abbacy, either by king or layman, by the customary badges of ring and crosier.  Anselm, on his part, agreed that no prelate should be refused consecration who was nominated by the King.  The appointment of bishops remained with the King; but the consecration could be withheld by the primate, since he alone had the right to give the badges of office, without which spiritual functions could not be lawfully performed.  It was a moral victory to the Church, but the victory of an unpopular cause.  It cemented the power of the Pope, while freedom from papal interference has ever been dear to the English nation.

When Anselm had fought this great fight he died, 1109, in the sixteenth year of his reign as primate of the Church in England, and was buried, next to Lanfranc, in his abbey church.  His career outwardly is memorable only for this contest, which was afterwards renewed by Thomas Becket with a greater king than either William Rufus or Henry I. It is interesting, since it was a part of the great struggle between the spiritual and temporal powers for two hundred years,—­from Hildebrand to Innocent III.  This was only one of the phases of the quarrel,—­one of the battles of a long war,—­ not between popes and emperors, as in Germany and Italy, but between a king and the vicegerent of a pope; a king and his subject, the one armed with secular, the other with spiritual, weapons.  It was only brought to an end by an appeal to the fears of men,—­the dread of excommunication and consequent torments in