But in considering the rise of democracy we can no more omit the early struggles against the absolutism of the Crown than we can pass over Simon of Montfort's Parliament, or the unsuccessful popular revolts, or the war with Charles I., or the Whig revolution of 1688. They are all incidents of pre-democratic days, but they are all events of significance. Democracy is no new order of society, conceived in the fertile mind of man; it has been slowly evolved and brought to birth after centuries of struggle, to be tried as a form of government only when other forms are outgrown, and cease to be acceptable. All the great men--heroic and faulty--who withstood the tyranny of their day, not only wrested charters from kings, they left a tradition of resistance; and this tradition has been of incalculable service to a nation seeking self-government. It is easy to dismiss the work of Anselm and Becket as mere disputes between monarch and Churchman, to treat lightly the battle for the Great Charter as a strife between king and barons. Just as easy is it to regard the Peasant Revolt of the fourteenth century and Jack Cade's rebellion in the fifteenth century as the tumults of a riotous mob. The great point is to see clearly in all these contests, successful and unsuccessful, the movement for liberty, for greater security and expansion of life in England, and to note that only by a stern endurance and a willingness not to bear an irksome oppression have our liberties been won. In the winning of these liberties we have proved our fitness for democracy, for a government that will allow the fullest measure of self-development. Now, what was it that Anselm contended for, first with William II. and then with Henry I.? ARCHBISHOP ANSELM AND NORMAN AUTOCRACY Anselm was sixty when, in 1093, William II. named him for the Archbishopric of Canterbury. In vain Anselm, who was Abbot of the famous monastery of Bec, in Normandy, protested that he was too old, and that his business was not with high place and power in this world. The King seemed to be dying, and the bishops gathered round the sick bed would not hear of any refusal on Anselm's part. They pushed the pastoral staff into his hands, and carried him off to a neighbouring church, while the people shouted "Long live the bishop!"