53. To Henry, King of the English

To his beloved lord, Henry, the renowned king of the English, Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, offers faithful service, and his prayers.

For that your highness in your letter salutes me in so honourable a manner and with such affectionate good-will, I thank you heartily, as I ought. But when you so earnestly beg me not to be displeased at there being so long a delay in sending your ambassador to Rome; though I ought not, so far as in me lies, lightly to esteem your request, yet is the cause more God's than mine; whence out of a faithful heart and mind well-disposed towards you I tell you what I must not leave unsaid. That a thing should be displeasing to me, unless it displeases on God's account, is no great matter; but to displease God in the least is by no means to be lightly thought of; as it displeases God not a little to spoil an archbishop of his goods, the which you have already, by God's inspiration, amended. But for a bishop to be separated from his flock, and the church from its bishop, without a reason approved by God, He considers a very serious thing. Therefore turn your mind speedily to arranging how you may be satisfied, so that I, being, such as I am, a bishop of the church which God has commended to your royal power and to your realm, to guard, may speedily be restored to your peace, and may no longer be debarred from the opportunity of exercising according to my ability the office for which I was there placed. I am also in great fear lest it displease God, and lest the lord pope justly blame me because, though it is so long since you and I met together at the Eagle's Castle, I have never as yet sent him an ambassador from whom He might learn what was settled between us on such an important matter, and what remains to be completed, and through whom I might receive his advice and commands. Wherefore it is dangerous for me to wait longer for your ambassador, whom I had hoped was going to return from Rome before next Christmas, as I under stand you: particularly as, by whose advice or for what reason I know not, you have not yet made any final arrangement. Since, therefore, that I am unable to be present with the church committed to me ought to be of far more consequence to me than any question about landed property, I implore you to name to me by letter some no distant time when I may expect your ambassador to be returning from Rome, for I dare not put off longer than next Christmas, at the very latest, sending my own ambassador. Farewell.