Orderic Vitalis says of King Henry I: ‘He inquired into everything and retained all he heard in his tenacious memory. He wished to know all the business of officials and dignitaries; and since he was an assiduous ruler, he kept an eye on all the happenings in England and Normandy.’ Clearly Orderic, and C. Warren Hollister, who quotes this passage, firmly believed that Henry had his hands on the reins of government as had no other English king before him. Hollister credits Henry with extraordinary administrative abilities, applying ‘reason, system and order’ to a new, precocious English political system. Yet Hollister’s book implies that this administration did not extend to the Church, as it does not consider directly the role of its archbishops in the governance of England. Martin Brett’s masterly study of The English Church under Henry I, Z.N.Brooke’s classic study of The English Church and the Papacy, and Christopher Harper-Bill’s more recent assessment of the Anglo-Norman Church would seem to have covered every aspect of Henry I and the English Church. Yet none of these studies has specifically addressed Henry’s relationship with and view of his archbishops.

Three archbishops served under King Henry: Anselm of Bec (1093–1109), Ralph d’Escures (1114–1122), and William of Corbeil (1123–1136). In discussions of Henry and the Church, Anselm has received by far the most attention: first, because of his enormous fame and saintliness; second, because of the drama of the English Investiture Contest; and finally, because of the massive amount of source material available, including Anselm’s large correspondence and two biographies, labeled ‘eyewitness accounts’. Eadmer’s Vita Anselmi and Historia novorum, the final versions of which emerged in the 1120s, have shaped our interpretations of both Anselm as archbishop and Henry I as king in many ways, including the judgment of many that Historia novorum is a biography of Anselm’s archiepiscopal career, ignoring the last two books, 4 and 5, which recount the career of Archbishop Ralph d’Escures. The sources for Anselm’s two immediate successors are much sparser, and the stories of their careers are far less grand. Ralph’s and William’s roles, consequently, have paled in comparison to Anselm’s. Judith Green remarked that ‘Neither [Ralph nor William] was of a stature or independence of spirit comparable with Anselm’s, probably to the king’s satisfaction’. Martin Brett believed that ‘under Henry I, the archbishops of Canterbury suffered a diminution of influence’.