1012) was a brave and noble man. Charles Dickens gives the following description of his death: "For twenty days the Archbishop of Canterbury defended that city against the Danish besiegers, and, when a traitor in the town threw the gates open and admitted them, he said, in chains: 'I will not buy my life with money that must be extorted from the suffering people. Do with me what you please.' Again and again he steadily refused to purchase his release with gold wrung from the poor. At last the Danes, being tired of this, and being assembled at a drunken merrymaking, had him brought into the feastinghall. Now, bishop,' they said, 'we want gold.' He looked around on the crowd of angry faces, and he knew that his time was come. 'I have no gold,' said he. 'Get it, bishop,' they all thundered. That I have often told you I will not,' said he. They gathered closer around him, threatening, but he stood unmoved. Then one man struck him, then another, then a cursing soldier picked up from a heap in the corner of the hall, where fragments had been rudely thrown at dinner, a great ox bone, and cast it at his face, from which the blood came spurting forth; then others ran to the same

heap, and knocked him down with other bones, and bruised and battered him, till a soldier whom he had baptized took pity on him and struck him dead with his battle-axe."

Archbishop Stigand (e. 1052, d. 1070) was in office when the Conqueror came, and, as quaint Thomas Fuller has it, "submitted to him without parley, preferring a whole pate to a holy pall."

Archbishop Lanfranc (b. 1005, e. 1070, d. 1089) came to England with William the Conqueror, and was placed by him in the see of Canterbury, as a reward for reconciling the Pope to the king's marriage with his cousin. Lanfranc rebuilt the cathedral in imitation of the one he and King William were building in Normandy, in penance for the objectionable marriage.

This cathedral was built upon land seized by William the Conqueror from one of his Norman subjects without payment. Mrs. Hemans has written a poem on his burial there from which the following is an extract.

"Lowly upon his bier,

The royal Conqueror lay;
Baron and chief stood near,

Silent in war array.

Down the long minster's aisle,
Crowds mutely gazing streamed;
Altar and tomb the while

Through mists of incense gleamed;
And by the torch's blaze

The stately priest had said
High words of power and praise,
To the glory of the dead.
They lowered him with the sound
Of requiems to repose,
When from the throngs around,
A solemn voice arose;
'Forbear, forbear!' it cried,

'In the holiest name forbear!
He hath conquered regions wide,
But he shall not slumber there.
By the violated hearth,

Which made way for yon proud shrine;
By the harvests which this earth
Hath borne to me and mine;
By the home e'en here o'erthrown,
On my children's native spot,
Hence! with his dark renown
Cumber our birthplace not.'
One deep voice thus arose

From a heart which wrongs had riven.

Oh! who shall number those

That were but heard in heaven?"

Lanfranc advocated the theological dogma

of the real presence.

He removed all the

Saxon bishops, and filled their places with French and Italians.

Archbishop Anselm (b. 1033, e. 1093, d. 1109) was the first protector whom the English found. He was a noted theologian, and his intellectual powers, noble character, and kindly discipline had great moral influence. He was appointed by King William Rufus in a fit of remorse when he thought he was going to die; but the fit didn't last:

"The devil was sick

the devil a monk would be; The devil got well — the devil a monk was he."

The king treated Anselm with such disrespect that he forsook his see and retired to Rome. On the death of the king he was recalled by Henry I. William of Malmesbury states that at the wedding of Henry I. and Matilda of Scotland, Anselm mounted into the pulpit at Westminster and gave the assembled multitude the proofs that Matilda had never been professed a nun and was free to marry. Then the archbishop asked if any one objected. There was a loud shout of approbation, and the lady was immediately married and crowned.

Anselm was placed in Paradise by Dante.

Archbishop Thomas à Becket (b. 1117, e. 1162, d. 1170), at his consecration, abandoned all the pomp and splendour with which he had previously been surrounded as chancellor of England and prime favourite of King Henry II., and made his appearance as an austere monk. The king had borne down all opposition, and insisted on this appointment, because he believed he should still have Becket's assistance against the encroachments of the clergy on his royal prerogative, although Becket had warned him that if he were forced to choose between the favour of God and man, he must prefer that of God. A long struggle ensued between these former allies, transformed to bitter enemies. Becket fled to France; the Pope was on his side in the quarrel, and at his request excommunicated the Archbishop of York. This fiery bishop complained to the king, who exclaimed, in a passion: "Is there no one of you man enough to deliver me from that traitor?" This was accepted by four knights of his household as a command, or at least a permission, to kill the archbishop. The knights went to Canterbury and assassinated Becket in the cathedral on December 29, 1170.

The repentant king kept a vigil at the tomb,