Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie, and this is episode 466, The Bachelor.

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Podcast.com for about the price of a latte for a month. And thank you very much to Jessica,

Heba, and De Nira for signing up already. All of those promises Rufus had made to be a better man had finally convinced God.

After about two months of being bedridden, the king recovered from his mystery illness.

And now that the divine had delivered on its side of the bargain, Well, there was really no point to any of those

promises anymore. And so Rufus immediately said about invalidating all of his penitential acts.

He wasn't going to be a better person. He wasn't going to be focused on strictly enforcing

justice. He wasn't going to protect the church. He wasn't going to free his

prisoners and he definitely wasn't going to erase the debts. In fact, maybe he'll do the opposite,

just out of spite. And Edmere, Anselm and their fellow churchmen were absolutely stunned by

this sudden about face, which is funny

because there's nothing about Rufus that suggests that he was ever going to do otherwise.

This was a guy who came from an entire family of liars and who really rose to be the cream

of the crop of lying liars who lie. But for some reason, his supporters

completely ignored all evidence about his character and instead seemed to believe that the real

Rufus was the Rufus that lived in their hearts and that he would never lie to them.

Anyway, so while the church was paying the inevitable price of trusting the untrustworthy,

there was one man who was spared the embarrassment.

Anselm.

Now Anselm had not yet been formally invested as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

...