,1 iU »™l»9i« « . 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 DA 209 .T4 F7 1878 
 Froude, James Anthony, 1818- 
 1894. 
 
 Life and times of Thomas 
 
 SAei/. Be eke t 
 
THOMAS BECKET. 
 
WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
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LIFE AND TIMES 
 
 OF 
 
 THOMAS BECKET. 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES ANTHONY^^FROUDE, M. A. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG AND COMPANY. 
 1878. 
 
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
 STEREOTTPED AND PRIX TED BX 
 H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANT. 
 
LIFE AND TIMES 
 
 OF 
 
 THOMAS BECKET.^ 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Among the earliest efforts of the modern sacerdotal party 
 in the Church of England was an attempt to reestablish 
 the memory of the martyr of Canterbury. The sacerdotal 
 party, so far as their objects were acknowledged, aspired 
 only to liberate the Church from bondage to the State. 
 The choice of Becket as an object of adoration was a tacit 
 confession of their real ambition. The theory of Becket 
 was not that the Church had a right to self-administration, 
 but that the Church was the supreme administrator in this 
 world, and perhaps in the next ; that the secular sword as 
 well as the spiritual had been delivered to Peter ; and that 
 the civil power existed only as the delegate of Peter's suc- 
 cessors. If it be true that the clergy are possessed in any 
 real sense of supernatural powers ; if the " keys," as they 
 are called, have been actually granted to them ; if through 
 them, as the ordinary and appointed channel, the will of 
 God is alone made known to mankind — then Becket was 
 right, and the High Churchmen are right, and kings and 
 cabinets ought to be superseded at once by commissions of 
 
 1 Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury. Edited by James Craigie Robertson, Canon of Canterbury. Pub- 
 lished under the direction of the Master of the KoUs. 1876. 
 
2 Life and Times of 
 
 s 
 
 bishops. If, on the other hand, the clergy are but like 
 other orders of priesthoods in other ages and countries — 
 mere human beings set apart for peculiar functions, and 
 tempted by the nature of those functions into fantastic no- 
 tions of their own consequence — then these recurring con- 
 flicts between Church and State resolve themselves into 
 phenomena of social evolution, the common sense of man- 
 kind exerting itself to control a groundless assumption. To 
 the student of human nature the story of such conflicts is 
 always interesting — comedy and tragedy winding one into 
 the other. They have furnished occasion for remarkable 
 exhibitions of human character. And while Churchmen 
 are raising up Becket as a brazen serpent, on which the 
 world is to look to be healed of its incredulities, the incred- 
 ulous world may look with advantage at him from its own 
 point of view, and, if unconvinced that he was a saint, may 
 still find instruction in a study of his actions and his fate. 
 
 We take advantage, then, of the publication of new ma- 
 terials and the republication of old materials in an accessible 
 form to draw a sketch of Becket as he appears to ourselves ; 
 and we must commence with an attempt to reproduce the 
 mental condition of the times in which he lived. Human 
 nature is said to be always the same. It is no less true 
 that human nature is continuously changing. Motives 
 which in one age are languid and even unintelligible have 
 been in another alive and all-powerful. To comprehend 
 these differences, to take them up into his imagination, to 
 keep them present before him as the key to what he reads, 
 is the chief difl[iculty and the chief duty of the student of 
 history. 
 
 Characteristic incidents, particular things which men rep- 
 resentative of their age indisputably did, convey a clearer 
 idea than any general description. Let the reader attend 
 to a few transactions which occurred either in Becket's life- 
 time or immediately subsequent to it, in which the principal 
 actors were persons known to himself. 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 3 
 
 We select as the first a scene at Martel near Limoges in 
 the year 1183. Henry Plantagenet, eldest son of Henry 
 the Second, Prince of Wales as we should now call him, 
 called then " the young king," for he was crowned in his 
 father's lifetime, at that spot and in that year brought his 
 disordered existence to an end. His career had been wild 
 and criminal. He had rebelled ag^ainst his father again 
 and again ; again and again he had been forgiven. In a fit 
 of remorse he had taken the cross, and intended to go to 
 Jerusalem. He forgot Jerusalem in the next temptation. 
 He joined himself to Lewis of France, broke once more 
 into his last and worst revolt, and carried fire and sword 
 into Normandy. He had hoped to bring the nobles to his 
 side; he succeeded only in burning towns and churches, 
 stripping shrines, and bringing general hatred on himself. 
 Finding, we are told, that he could not injure his father as 
 much as he had hoped to do, he chafed himself into a fever, 
 and the fever killed him. Feeling death to be near, he sent 
 a message to his father begging to see him. The old Henry, 
 after past experience, dared not venture. The prince (I 
 translate literally from a contemporary chronicler) — 
 
 then called his bishops and religious men to his side. He con- 
 fessed his sins first in private, then openly to all who were pres- 
 ent. He was absolved. He gave his cross to a friend to carry 
 to the Holy Sepulchre. Then, throwing off his soft clothing, he 
 put on a shirt of hair, tied a rope about his neck, and said to 
 the bishops — 
 
 " By this rope I deliver over myself, a guilty and unworthy 
 sinner, to you the ministers of God. Through your interces- 
 sion and of his own ineffable mercy, I beseech our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, who forgave the thief upon the cross, to have pity on 
 my unhappy soul." 
 
 A bed of ashes had been prepared on the floor. 
 
 " Drag me," he went on, "by this rope out of this bed, and 
 lay me on the ashes." 
 
 The bishop did so. They placed at his head and at his feet 
 two large square stones, and so he died. 
 
4 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 There is one aspect of the twelfth century — the darkest 
 crimes and the most real superstition side by side coexisting 
 in the same character. 
 
 Turn from Martel to Oxford, and go back seventeen 
 years. Men who had so little pity on themselves were as 
 pitiless to others. We quote from Stowe. The story is 
 authenticated by contemporary chroniclers. 
 
 1166. There came into England thirty Germans, as well men 
 as women, who called themselves Publicans. Their head and 
 ruler, named Gerardus, was somewhat learned; the residue very 
 rude. They denied matrimony and the sacraments of baptism 
 and the Lord's Supper, with other articles. They being appre- 
 hended, the king caused a council to be called at Oxford, where 
 the said Gerard answered for all his fellows, who being pressed 
 with Scripture answered concerning their faith as they had been 
 . taught, and would not dispute thereof. After they could by no 
 means be brought from their errors, the bishop gave sentence 
 :against them, and the king commanded that they should be 
 -marked with a hot iron in the forehead and whipped, and that 
 no man should succor them with house-room or otherwise. 
 They took their punishment gladly, their captain going before 
 them singing, " Blessed are ye when men hate you." They 
 were marked both in the forehead and the chin. Thus being 
 whipped and thrust out in winter, they died with cold, no man 
 relieving them. 
 
 To the bishops of Normandy Henry Plantagenet handed 
 the rope to drag him to his death-bed of ashes. Under 
 sentence from the bishops of England these German here- 
 tics were left to a fate more piteous than the stake. The 
 privilege and authority of bishops and clergy was Becket's 
 plea for convulsing Europe. What were the bishops and 
 clergy like themselves? We will look at the bishops 
 assembled at the Council of Westminster in the year 1176. 
 Cardinal Hugezun had come as legate from Rome. The 
 council was attended by the two archbishops, each accom- 
 panied by his suffragans, the abbots, priors, and clergy of his 
 province. Before business began, there arose dira lis et 
 
Thomas Becket. 
 
 5 
 
 contentio, a dreadful strife and contention between these 
 high personages as to which archbishop should sit on the 
 cardinal's right hand. Hichard of Canterbury said the right 
 was with him. Roger of York said the right was with him. 
 Words turned to blows. The monks of Canterbury, zealous 
 for their master, rushed upon the Archbishop of York, flung 
 him down, kicked him, and danced upon him till he was 
 almost dead. The cardinal wrung his hands, and charged 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury with having set them on. 
 The Archbishop of York made his way, bruised and bleed- 
 ing, to the king. Both parties in the first heat appealed to 
 the pope. Canterbury on second thoughts rej^ented, went 
 privately to the cardinal, and bribed him to silence. The 
 appeal was withdrawn, the affair dropped, and the council 
 went on with its work. 
 
 So much for the bishops. We may add that Becket's 
 friend John of Salisbury accuses the Archbishop of York, 
 on common notoriety, of having committed the most infa- 
 mous of crimes, and of having murdered the partners of his 
 guilt to conceal it.-^ 
 
 As to the inferior clergy, it miglit be enough to quote the 
 language used about them at the conference at Montmiraux 
 in 1169, where their general character was said to be atro- 
 cious, a great number of them being church-robbers, adulter- 
 ers, highwaymen, thieves, ravishers of virgins, incendiaries, 
 and murderers.^ For special illustration we take a visita- 
 tion of St. Augustine's Abbey at Canterbury in the year 
 1173, undertaken by the pope's order. The visitors re- 
 ported not only that the abbot w^as corrupt, extravagant, 
 and tyrannical, but that he had more children than the pa- 
 triarchs, in one village as many as ten or twelve bastards. 
 
 1 John of Salisbury to the Archbishop of Sens, 1171. The Archbishop 
 of York is spoken of under the name of Caiaphas. 
 
 - " Quum tainen clerici imniundissimi et atrocissimi sunt, utpote qui 
 ex magna parte sacrilegi, adulter!, praedones, fures, raptores virginum, in- 
 cendiarii et homicidie sunt." — John of Salisbury to the Bishop of Exeter. 
 Utters, 11G9. 
 
6 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 " Velut equus hinnit in fceminas,^ they said, " adeo iinpudens 
 ut libidinem nisi quam publicaverit voluptuosam esse iion 
 reputet. Matres et earuiidem filias incestat pariter. For- 
 nication is abusura comparat necessitati." This precious ab- 
 bot was the host and entertainer of the four knights when 
 they came to Canterbury. 
 
 From separate pictures we pass to a sketch of the condi- 
 tion of the Church of England written by a monk of Christ 
 Church, Canterbury, a contemporary of Becket, when the 
 impression of the martyrdom was fresh, and miracles were 
 worked by his relics every day under the writer's eyes. 
 The monk's name was Nigellus. He was precentor of the 
 cathedral. His opinion of the wonders of which he was the 
 witness may be inferred from the shrug of the shoulders 
 with which, after describing the disorders of the times, he 
 says that they were but natural, for the age of miracles was 
 past. In reading him we feel that we are looking on the 
 old England through an extremely keen pair of eyes. We 
 discern too, perhaps, that he was a clever fellow, constitu- 
 tionally a satirist, and disappointed of promotion, and we 
 make the necessary allowances. Two of his works survive, 
 one in verse, the other in serious prose. 
 
 The poem, which is called Speculum Slullorum ("The 
 Looking-Glass of Fools") contains the adventures of a 
 monk who leaves his cloister to better his fortunes. The 
 monk is introduced under the symbolic disguise of an ass. 
 His ambition is to grow a longer tail, and he wanders un- 
 successfully over Europe, meeting as many misfortunes as 
 Don Quixote, in pursuit of his object. Finally he arrives 
 at Paris, where he resolves to remain and study, that at all '' 
 events he may write after his name magister artium. The 
 seven ^^ears' course being finished, he speculates on his fut- 
 ure career. He decides on the whole that he will be a 
 bishop, and pictures to himself the delight of his mother 
 when she sees him in his pontificals. Sadly, however, he 
 
Thomas BecJcet. 
 
 7 
 
 soon remembers that bishops were not made of such stuff 
 as learned members of the universities. Bishops were born 
 in barons' castles, and named as children to the sees which 
 they were to occupy. "Little Bobby" and "little Willy" 
 were carried to Rome in their nurses' arms before they 
 could speak or walk, to have the keys of heaven committed 
 to them. So young were they sometimes that a wat said 
 once that it could not be told whether the bishop elect was a 
 boy or a girl.^ An abbey might suit better, he thought, and 
 he ran over the various attractions of the different orders. 
 All of them were more or less loose rogues, some worse, some 
 better.^ On the whole the monk-ass concluded that he 
 would found a new order, the rules of which should be com- 
 pounded of the indulgences allowed to each of the rest. The 
 pope would consent if approached with the proper tempta- 
 tions ; and he was picturing to himself the delightful life 
 which he was thenceforth to lead, when his master found 
 him and cudgelled him back to the stable. 
 
 More instructive, if less amusing, is the prose treatise 
 Contra Curiales et Officiales clericos ("Against Clerical 
 Courtiers and Officials"), dedicated to De Longchamp, 
 Bishop of Ely, Coeur de Lion's chancellor, who was left in 
 
 1 " Ante prius patrem primum matremque vocare 
 
 Quam sciat, aut possit stare vel ire pedes, 
 Suscipit ecclesiae claves animasque regeudas. 
 
 In cunis positus dummodo vagit adhuc 
 Cum nutrice sua, Romam Robekimus adibit, 
 
 Quern nova sive vetus sportula tecta feret ; 
 Missus et in peram veniet Wilekinus in urbem, 
 
 Curia Roniana tota videbit eum. 
 Impuberes pueros pastores ecclesiarum 
 
 Vidimus effectos pontificesque sacros. 
 Sic dixit quidam de quodam pontificando, 
 
 Cum princeps regni solicitaret eum: 
 'Est puer, et nondum discernere possumus utrum 
 
 Foemina vel mas est, et modo prjesul erit.' " 
 
 Satirical Poems of the Twelfth Century, vol. i. p. 106. 
 
 2 " Omnes sunt fures, quocunque charactere sacro 
 Signati veniant magnif centque Deum." 
 
8 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 charge of the realm when Richard went to Palestine. De 
 Longchamp's rule was brief and stormy. It lasted long 
 enough, however, to induce Tsigellus to appeal to him for a 
 reform of the Church, and to draw a picture of it which ad- 
 mirers of the ages and faith may profitably study. 
 
 At whatever period we get a clear view of the Church of 
 England, it was always in terrible need of reform. In the 
 twelfth century it has been held to have been at its best. 
 Let us look then at the actual condition of it. 
 
 According to Nigellus, the Church benefices in England, 
 almost without exception, were either sold by the patrons 
 to the highest bidders, or were given by them to their iiear 
 relations. The presentees entered into possession more 
 generally even than the bishops when children. 
 
 Infants in cradles (says Nigellus) are made archdeacons, that 
 out of the mouths of babes and sucklings praise may be per- 
 fected. The child is still at the breast and he is a priest of the 
 Church. He can bind and loose before he can speak, and has 
 the keys of heaven before he has the use of his understanding. 
 At an age when an apple is more to him than a dozen churches, 
 he is set to dispense the sacraments, and the only anxiety about 
 him is a fear that he may die. He is sent to no school. He is 
 idle and is never whipped. He goes to Paris to be polished, 
 where he learns " the essentials of a gentleman's education," 
 dice and dominoes, et ccetera quce sequuntur. He returns to Eng- 
 land to hawk and hunt, and would that this were the worst ! but 
 he has the forehead of a harlot, and knows not to be ashamed. 
 To such persons as these a bishop without scruple commits the 
 charge of souls — to men who are given over to the flesh, who 
 rise in the morning to eat, and sit down at evening to drink, 
 who spend on loose women the offerings of the faithful, who do 
 things which make their people blush to speak of them, while 
 they themselves look for the Jordan to flow into their mouths, 
 and expect each day to hear a voice say to them, Friend, go 
 up higher." 
 
 Those who had no money to buy their way with, and no 
 friends to help them, were obliged to study something. 
 
Thomas Beehet, 
 
 9 
 
 Having done with Paris they would go on to Bologna, and 
 come back knowing medicine and law and speaking pure 
 French and Italian. Clever fellows, so furnished, contrived 
 to rise by pushing themselves into the service of bishop or 
 baron, to whom " they were as eyes to the blind and as feet 
 to the lame." They managed the great man's business; 
 they took care of his health. They went to Rome with his 
 appeals, undertook negotiations for him in foreign courts, 
 and were repaid in time by prebends and rectories. Others, 
 in spite of laws of celibacy, married a patron's daughter, 
 and got a benefice along with her. It was illegal, but the 
 bishops winked at it. Others made interest at Rome with 
 the cardinals, and by them were recommended home. 
 Others contrived to be of use to the king. Once on the 
 road to preferment the ascent was easy. The lucky ones, 
 not content with a church or two, would have a benefice in 
 every diocese in England, and would lie, cheat, forget God, 
 and not remember man." Their first gains were spent in 
 bribes to purchase more, and nothing could satisfy them. 
 Fifteen or twenty rectories were not enough without a stall 
 in each cathedral. Next must come a deanery, and then 
 an archdeaconry, and then " peradventure God will yet add 
 unto me something more." 
 
 The " something more " was of course a bishopric, and 
 Nigellus proceeds to describe the methods by which such of 
 these high offices were reached as had not been already as- 
 signed to favorites. The prelates expectant hung about the 
 court, making presents, giving dinners, or offering their ser- 
 vices for difficult foreign embassies. Their friends meanwhile 
 were on the watch for sees likely to be vacant, and inquir- 
 ing into their values. The age and health of the present 
 occupants were diligently watched ; the state of their teeth, 
 their eyes, their stomachs, and reported disorders. If the 
 accounts were conflicting, the aspirant would go himself to 
 the spot under pretence of a pilgrimage. If the wretched 
 bishop was found inconveniently vigorous, rumors were 
 
10 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 spread that he was shamming youth, that he was as old as 
 Nestor, and was in his dotage ; if he was infirm, it was said 
 that men ought not to remain in positions of which they 
 could not discharge the duties ; they should go into a clois- 
 ter. The king and the primate should see to it. 
 
 If intrigue failed, another road was tried. The man of 
 the world became a saint. He retired to one or other of 
 his churches. He was weary of the earth and its vanities, 
 and desired to spend his remaining days in meditating upon 
 heaven. The court dress was laid aside. The wolf clothed 
 himself in a sheepskin, and the talk was only of prayers and 
 ostentatious charities. Be2:2:ars were fed in the streets, the 
 naked were clothed, the sick were visited, the dead were 
 buried. The rosy face grew pale, the plump cheeks be- 
 came thin, and the admiring public exclaimed. *' "Who was 
 like unto this man to keep the law of the Most High ? " 
 Finally some religious order was entered in such a manner 
 that it should be heard of everywhere. Vows were taken 
 with an affectation of special austerities. The worthy per- 
 son (who cannot see and hear him ?) would then bewail the 
 desolations of the Church, speak in a low sad voice, sigh, 
 walk slowly, and droop his eyelids ; kings were charged 
 with tyranny, and priests with incontinency, and all this 
 that it might be spoken of in high places, that, when a see 
 was vacant at last, it might be said to him, " Friend, go up 
 higher ; ' he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.' " 
 
 " Such," said Nigellus, are the steps in our days by which 
 men go up into the house of the Lord." By one or other 
 of these courses success was at last attained ; the recom- 
 mendation of the Crown was secured, and the nomination 
 was sent to the chapter. But the conge d'elire was not yet 
 peremptory. The forms of liberty still retained some 
 shadow of life in them, and fresh efforts were required to 
 obtain the consent of the electors. The religious orders 
 were the persons used on these occasions to produce the re- 
 quired effect ; and flights of Templars, Cistercians, Carthu- 
 
Thomas BecJcet. 
 
 11 
 
 sians, hurried to the Cathedral city to persuade the canons 
 that the pastor whom they had never seen or never heard 
 of, except by rumor, had more virtues than existed together 
 in any other human being. Nigellus humorously describes 
 the language in which these spiritual jackals portrayed their 
 patron's merits. 
 
 He is a John the Baptist for sanctity, a Cato for wisdom, a 
 Tully for eloquence, a Moses for meekness, a Phineas for zeal, 
 an Abraham for faith. Elect him only, and he is all that you 
 can desire. You ask what he has done to recommend him. 
 Granted that he has done nothing, God can raise sons to Abra- 
 ham out of the stones. He is a boy, you say, and too young 
 for such an office ; Daniel was a boy when he saved Susannah 
 from the elders. He is of low birth ; you are choosing a succes- 
 sor to a fisherman, not an heir to Caesar. He is a dwarf; Jere- 
 miah was not large. He is illiterate ; Peter and Andrew were 
 not philosophers when they were called to be apostles. He can 
 speak no English ; Augustine could speak no English, yet Au- 
 gustine converted Britain. He is married and has a wife ; the 
 apostles ordered such to be promoted. He has divorced his 
 wife ; Christ separated St. John from his bride. He is immoral ; 
 so was St. Boniface. He is a fool; God has chosen the foolish 
 things of this world to confound the wise. He is a coward; St. 
 Joseph was a coward. He is a glutton and a wine-bibber ; so 
 Christ was said to be. He is a sluggard ; St. Peter could not 
 remain for an hour awake. He is a striker; Peter struck 
 Malchus. He is quarrelsome ; Paul quarreled with Barnabas. 
 He is disobedient to his superiors; Paul withstood Peter. He is 
 a man of blood; Moses killed the Egyptian. He is blind; so 
 was Paul before he was converted. He is dumb; Zacharias was 
 dumb. He is all faults, and possesses not a single virtue; God 
 will make his grace so much more to abound in him. 
 
 Such eloquence and such advocates were generally irre- 
 sistible. If, as sometimes happened, the Crown had named 
 a person exceptionally infamous, or if the chapter was ex- 
 ceptionally obdurate, other measures lay behind. Govern- 
 ment officers would come down and talk of enemies to the 
 commonwealth. A bishop of an adjoining see would hint 
 
12 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 at excommunication. The canons were worked on sep- 
 arately, bribed, coaxed, or threatened. The younger of 
 them were promised the places of the seniors. The seniors 
 were promised fresh offices for themselves, and promotion 
 for their relations. If there were two candidates and two 
 parties, both sides bribed, and the longest purse gained the 
 day. Finally the field was won. Decent members of the 
 chapter sighed over the disgrace, but reflected that miracles 
 could not be looked for.-^ The see could not remain vacant 
 till a saint could be found to fill it. They gave their voices 
 as desired. The choice was declared, the bells rang, the 
 organ pealed, and the choir chanted Te Deum. 
 
 The one touch necessary to complete the farce was then 
 added : — 
 
 The bishop elect, all in tears for joy, exclaims, " Depart from 
 me, for I am a sinful man. Depart from me, for I am unworthy. 
 I cannot bear the burden which you lay upon me. Alas for 
 my calamity! Let me alone, my beloved brethren — let me 
 alone in my humble state. You know not what you do." .... 
 He falls back and affects to swoon. He is borne to the arch- 
 bishop to be consecrated. Other bishops are summoned to 
 assist, and all is finished. ^ 
 
 The scene now changed. The object was gained, the 
 mask was dropped, and the bishop, having reached the goal 
 of his ambition, could afford to show himself in his true 
 colors. 
 
 He has bound himself (goes on Nigellus) to be a teacher of 
 his flock. How can he teach those whom he sees but once a 
 year, and not a hundredth part of whom he even sees at all ? 
 If any one in the diocese wants the bishop, he is told the bishop 
 is at court on affairs of state. He hears a hasty mass once a 
 
 1 "Xon sunt hpec miraculorum tempora." 
 
 2 Now and then it happened that bishops refused to attend on these 
 occasions, when the person to be consecrated was notoriously infamous. 
 Nigellus says that one bishop at least declined to assist at the consecra- 
 tion of Roger, Archbishop of York. 
 
Thomas Becket, 
 
 13 
 
 day, non sine tcedio (not without being bored). The rest of his 
 time he gives to business or pleasure, and is not bored. The 
 rich get justice from him; the poor get no justice. If his met- 
 ropolitan interferes with him, he appeals to Rome, and Rome 
 protects him if he is Avilling to pay for it. At Rome the abbot 
 buys his freedom from the control of the bishop ; the bishop 
 buys his freedom from the control of the archbishop. The 
 bishop dresses as the knights dress. When his cap is on you 
 cannot distinguish him at council from a peer. The layman 
 swears, the bishop swears, and the bishop swears the hardest. 
 The layman hunts, the bishop hunts. The layman hawks, the 
 bishop hawks. Bishop and layman sit side Jjy side at council 
 and Treasury boards. Bishop and layman ride side by side into 
 battle.! What will not bishops do ? Was ever crime more 
 atrocious than that which was lately committed in the church at 
 Coventry ? ^ When did pagan ever deal with Christian as the 
 bishop did with the monks? I, Nigellus, saw with my own eyes, 
 after the monks were ejected, harlots openly introduced into the 
 cloister and chapter house to lie all night there, as in a brothel, 
 with their paramours.^ Such are the works of bishops in these 
 days of ours. This is what they do, or permit to be done; and 
 so cheap has grown the dignity of the ecclesiastical order that 
 you will easier find a cowherd well educated than a presbyter, 
 and an industrious duck than a literate parson. 
 
 So far Nigellus. We are not to suppose that the state of 
 the Church had changed unfavorably in the twenty years 
 
 1 Even in the discharge of their special functions the spiritual character 
 was scarcely more apparent. When the}' went on visitation, and children 
 were brought to them to be confirmed, they gave a general blessing and 
 did not so much as alight from their horses. Becket was the only prelate 
 who observed common decency on these occasions. "Non enim erat ei 
 ut plerisque, imino ut fere omnibus episcopis moris est, ministerium con- 
 firmationis equo insidendo peragere, sed ob sacramenti venerationem equo 
 desilire et stando pueris manum imponere." — Materials for the History 
 of Thomas Becket, vol. ii. p. 164. 
 
 2 In the year 1191, Hugh, Bishop of Coventry, violently expelled the 
 monks from the cathedral there, and instituted canons in their places. 
 
 3 " Testis mihi Deus est quod dolens et tristis admodum refero quod in 
 ecclesia Coventrensi oculis propriis aspexi. In claustro et capitulo vidi 
 ego et alii nonnuUi ejeetis monachis meretrices publice introductas et totS 
 nocte cum lenonibus decubare sicut in lupanari." 
 
14 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 , which followed Becket's martyrdom, or we should have to 
 conclude that the spiritual enthusiasm which the martyrdom 
 undoubtedly excited had injured, and not improved, public 
 morality. 
 
 The prelates and clergy with whom Henry the Second 
 contended, if different at all from those of the next genera- 
 tion, must have been rather worse than better, and we cease 
 to be surprised at the language in which the king spoke of 
 them at Montmiraux. 
 
 Speaking generally, at the time when Becket declared 
 war against the State, the Church, from the Vatican to the 
 smallest archdeaconry, was saturated with venality. The 
 bishops were mere men of the world. The Church bene- 
 fices were publicly bought and sold, given away as a provi- 
 sion to children, or held in indefinite numbers by ambitious 
 men who cared only for wealth and power. The mass of 
 the common clergy were ignorant, dissolute, and lawless, 
 unable to be legally married, and living with concubines in 
 contempt or evasion of their own rules. In character and 
 conduct the laity were superior to the clergy. They had 
 wives, and were therefore less profligate. They made no 
 pretensions to mysterious power and responsibilities, and 
 therefore they were not hypocrites. They were violent, 
 they were vicious, yet they had the kind of belief in the 
 truth of religion which bound the rope about young Henry's 
 neck and dragged him from his bed to die upon the ashes, 
 which sent them in tens of thousands to perish on the Syr- 
 ian sands to recover the sepulchre of Christ from the infi- 
 del. The life beyond the grave was as assured to them as 
 the life upon earth. In the sacraments and in the priest's 
 absolution lay the one hope of escaping eternal destruction. 
 And while they could feel no respect for the clergy as men, 
 they feared their powers and reverenced their ofhce. Both 
 of laity and clergy the religion was a superstition, but in the 
 laity the superstition was combined with reverence, and 
 implied a real belief in the divine authority which it sym- 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 15 
 
 bolized. The clergy, the supposed depositaries of the su- 
 pernatural qualities assigned to them, found it probably 
 more difficult to believe in themselves, and the unreality re- 
 venged itself upon their natures. 
 
 Bearing in mind these qualities in the two orders, we 
 proceed to the history of Becket. 
 
16 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 Thomas Becket was boru in London in the year 1118.^ 
 His father, Gilbert Becket. was a citizen in moderate cir- 
 cumstances.^ His name denotes Saxon extraction. Few 
 Normans as yet were to be found in the English towns con- 
 descending to trade. Of his mother nothing authentic is 
 known," except that she was a religious woman who brought 
 up her children in the fear of God. Many anecdotes are 
 related of his early years, but the atmosphere of legend in 
 which his history was so early enveloped renders them all 
 suspicious. His parents, at any rate, both died when he 
 was still very young, leaving him, ill provided for, to the 
 care of his father's friends. One of them, a man of wealth, 
 Richard de I'Aigle, took charge of the tall, handsome, clever 
 lad. He was sent to school at Merton Abbey, in Surrey, 
 and afterwards to Oxford. In his vacations he was thrown 
 among young men of rank and fortune, hunting and hawk- 
 ing with them, cultivating his mind with the ease of con- 
 scious ability, and doubtless not inattentive to the events 
 which were going on around him. In his nursery he must 
 have heard of the sinking of the White Ship in the Chan- 
 nel with Henry the First's three children. Prince William, 
 his brother Richard, and their sister. "When he was seven 
 years old, he may have listened to the jests of the citizens 
 
 1 Or 1117. The exact date is uncertain. 
 
 2 "Xec omnino infimi" are Becket's words as to the rank of his 
 parents. 
 
 3 The story that she was a Saracen is a late legend. Becket was after- 
 wards taunted with the lowness of his birth. The absence of any allusion 
 to a fact so curious if it was true, either in the taunt or in Becket's reply 
 to it, may be taken as conclusive. 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 17 
 
 at his father's table over the misadventure in London of the 
 cardinal legate, John of Crema. The legate had come to 
 England to preside at a council and pass laws to part the 
 clergy from their wives. While the council was going 
 forward, his Eminence was himself detected in re meretricid^ 
 to general astonishment and scandal. In the same year the 
 Emperor Henry died. His widow, the English Matilda, 
 came home, and was married again soon after to Geoffrey 
 of Anjou. In 1134 the English barons swore fealty to her 
 and her young son, afterwards King Henry the Second. 
 The year following her father died. Her cousin, Stephen 
 of Blois, broke his oath and seized the crown, and general 
 distraction and civil war followed, while from beyond the 
 seas the Levant ships, as they came up the river, brought 
 news of bloody battles in Syria and slaughter of Christians 
 and infidels. To live in stirring times is the best education 
 of a youth of intellect. After spending three years in a 
 house of business in the city, Becket contrived to recom- 
 mend himself to Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. The 
 archbishop saw his talents, sent him to Paris, and thence to 
 Bologna to study law, and employed him afterwards in the 
 most confidential negotiations. The description by Nigellus 
 of the generation of a bishop might have been copied line 
 for line from Becket's history. The question of the day was 
 the succession to the crown. Was Stephen's son, Eustace, 
 the heir ? Or was Matilda's son, Henry of Anjou ? Theo- 
 bald was for Henry, so far as he dared to show himself. 
 Becket was sent secretly to Rome to move the pope. The 
 struggle ended with a compromise. Stephen was to reign 
 for his life. Henry was peace*ably to follow him. The 
 arrangement might have been cut again by the sword. But 
 Eustace immediately afterwards died. In the same year 
 Stephen followed him, and Henry the Second became king 
 of England., With all these intricate negotiations the fut- 
 ure martyr was intimately connected, and by his remarkable 
 talents especially recommended himself to the new king. 
 2 
 
18 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 No one called afterwards to an important position had better 
 opportunities of acquainting himself with the spirit of the 
 age, or the characters of the principal actors in it.^ If his 
 services were valuable, his reward was magnificent. He 
 was not a priest, but again precisely as Nigellus describes, 
 he was loaded with lucrative church benefices. He was 
 Provost of Beverley, he was Archdeacon of Canterbury, he 
 was rector of an unknown number of parishes, and had stalls 
 in several cathedrals. It is noticeable that afterwards, in 
 the heat of the battle in which he earned his saintship, he 
 was so far from looking back with regret on this accumula- 
 tion of preferments that he paraded them as an evidence of 
 his early consequence.^ A greater rise lay immediately 
 before him. Henry the Second was twenty-two years old 
 at his accession. At this time he was the most jjowerful 
 prince in Western Europe. He was Duke of Normandy 
 and Count of Anjou. His wife Eleanor, the divorced queen 
 of Lewis of France, had brought with her Aquitaine and 
 Poitou. The reigning pope, Adrian the Fourth, was an 
 Englishman, and, to the grief and perplexity of later gene- 
 rations of Irishmen, gave the new king permission to add 
 the Island of the Saints to his already vast dominions. 
 Over Scotland the English monarchs asserted a semi-feudal 
 sovereignty, to which Stephen, at the battle of the' Standard, 
 had given a semblance of reality. Few English princes 
 
 1 Very strange things were continually happening. In 1154 the Arch- 
 bishop of York was poisoned in the Eucharist by gome of his clergy. 
 "Eodem anno Wilhelmus Eboracensis archiepiscopus, proditione clerico- 
 rum suorum post perceptionem Eucharistife infra ablutiones liquore lethali 
 infectus, extinctus est." (Hoveden, vol. i. p. 213.) Becket could not fail 
 to have heard of this piece of villainy and to have made his own reflections 
 upon it. 
 
 2 Foliot, Bishop of London, told him that he owed his rise in life to the 
 king. Becket replied : " Ad tenipus quo me rex ministerio suo praestitit, 
 archidiaconatus Cantuarensis, praepositura Beverlaci, pluriniae ecclesioe, prae- 
 bendse nonnullae, alia etiam non pauca qus nominis mei erant possessio 
 tunc temporis, adeo tenuem ut dicis, quantum ad ea quae mundi sunt con- 
 tradicunt me fuisse." 
 
Thomas Becket. 
 
 19 
 
 have commenced their career with fairer prospects than the 
 second Henry. 
 
 The state of England itself demanded his first attention. 
 The usurpation of Stephen had left behind it a legacy of 
 disorder. The authority of the Crown had been shaken. 
 The barons, secure behind the walls of their castles, limited 
 their obedience by their inclinations. The Church, an im- 
 perium in imperw, however corrupt in practice, was aggres- 
 sive as an institution, and was encroaching on the State 
 with organized system. The principles asserted by Greg- 
 ory the Seventh had been establishing themselves grad- 
 ually for the past century, and in theory were no longer 
 questioned. The power of the Crown, it was freely ad- 
 mitted, was derived from God. As little was it to be 
 doubted that the clergy were the ministers of God in a 
 nearer and higher sense than a layman could pretend to be, 
 holding as they did the power of the keys, and able to pun- 
 ish disobedience .by final exclusion from heaven. The prin- 
 ciple was simple. The application only was intricate. The 
 clergy, though divine as an order, were as frail in their in- 
 dividual aspect as common mortals, as ambitious, as worldly, 
 as licentious, as unprincipled, as violent, as wicked, as much 
 needing the restraint of law and the policeman as their sec- 
 ular brethren, perhaps needing it more. How was the 
 law to be brought to bear on a class of persons who claimed 
 to be superior to law ? King Henry's piety was above sus- 
 picion, but he was at all points a sovereign, especially im- 
 patient of anarchy. The conduct of too many ecclesiastics, 
 regular and secular alike, was entirely intolerable, and a 
 natural impatience was spreading through the country, with 
 which the king perhaps showed early symptoms of sym- 
 pathizing. Archbishop Theobald, at any rate, was uneasy 
 at the part which he might take, and thought that he 
 needed some one at his side to guide him in salutary courses. 
 At Theobald's instance, in the second year of Henry's reign, 
 Becket became Chancellor of England, being then thirty- 
 f^BYen years old. 
 
20 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 In his new dignity he seemed at first likely to disappoint 
 the archbishop's expectations of him. Some of his biog- 
 raphers, indeed, cluim as his perpetual merit that he op- 
 posed the hestias curice, or court wild beasts, as churchmen 
 called the anticlerical party. John of Salisbury, on the 
 other hand, describes him as a magnificent triHer, a scorner 
 of law and the clergy, and given to scurrilous jesting at 
 laymen's parties.^ At any rate, except in the arbitrariness 
 of his character, he show^ed no features of the Becket of 
 Catholic tradition. 
 
 Omnipotent as Wolsey after him, he was no less magni- 
 ficent in his outward bearing. His dress was gorgeous, his 
 retinue of knights as splendid as the king's. His hospitali- 
 ties were boundless. His expenditure was enormous. How 
 the means for it were supplied is uncertain. The revenue 
 was wholly in his hands. The king was often on the conti- 
 nent, and at such times the chancellor governed everything. 
 He retained his Church benefices — the archdeaconry of 
 Canterbury certainly, and probably the rest. Vast sums 
 fell irregularly into Chancery from wardships and vacant 
 sees and abbeys. All this Becket received, and never ac- 
 counted for the whole of them. Whatever might be the 
 explanation, the wealthiest peer in England did not main- 
 tain a more costly household, or appear in public with a 
 more princely surrounding. 
 
 Of his administration his adoring and admiring biog- 
 rapher, the monk Grim, who was present at his martyr- 
 dom, draws a more than unfavorable picture, and even 
 charges him with cruelty and ferocity. "The persons that 
 he slew," says Grim, the persons that he robbed of their 
 property, no one can enumerate. Attended by a large com- 
 pany of knights, he would assail whole communities, destroy 
 
 1 "Dum magnificus erat nugator in curia, dum legis videbatur con- 
 temptor et cleri, dum scurriles, cum potentioribus sectabatur ineptias, mag- 
 nus habebatur, clarus erat et acceptus omnibus." — John of Salisbury to 
 the Bishop of Exeter. Letters, 1166. 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 21 
 
 cities and towns, villages and farms, and, without remorse 
 or pity, would give them to devouring flames." ^ 
 
 Such words give a new aspect to the demand afterwards 
 made that he should answer for his proceedings as chancel- 
 lor, and lend a new meaning to his unwillingness to reply. 
 At this period the only virtue which Grim allows him to 
 have preserved unsullied was his chastity. 
 
 In foreign politics he was meanwhile as much engaged as 
 ever. The anomalous relations of the king with Lewis the 
 Seventh, whose vassal he was for his continental dominions, 
 while he was his superior in power, were breaking continu- 
 ally into quarrels, and sometimes into war. The anxiety of 
 Henry, however, was always to keep the peace, if possible. 
 In 1157 Becket was sent to Paris to negotiate an alliance 
 between the Princess Margaret, Lewis's daughter, and 
 Henry's ehlest son. The prince was then seven years old. 
 the little lady was three. Three years later they were 
 actually married, two cardinals, Henry of Pisa and William 
 of Pavia, coming as legates from the pope to be present on 
 the ausrust occasion. France and Endand had been at that 
 time drawn together by a special danger which threatened 
 Christendom. In 1159 Pope Adrian died. Alexander the 
 Third was chosen to succeed him with the usual formalities, 
 but the election was challenged by Frederic Barbarossa, 
 who set up an antipope. The Catholic Church was split in 
 two. Frederic invaded Italy, Alexander was driven out of 
 Rome and took shelter in France at Sens. Henry and 
 Lewis gave him their united support, and forgot their own 
 quarrels in the common cause. Henry, it was universally 
 admitted, was heartily in earnest for Pope Alexander. 
 The pope, on his part, professed a willingness and an anx- 
 iety to be of corresponding service to Henry. The king 
 
 1 "Quantis autem necem, quantis rerum omnium proscriptionem intu- 
 lerit, quis enumeret? Valida namque stipatus militiim manu civitates ag- 
 gressus est. Delevit urbes et oppida; villas et prsedia absque miserationis 
 intuitu voraci consumpsit incendio." — Materials for the History of Thomas 
 Becket, vol. ii. pp. 364, 3G5. 
 
22 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 considered tlie moment a favorable one for takinof in hand 
 the reform of the clergy, not as against the Holy See, but 
 with the Holy See in active cooperation with him. On this 
 side he anticipated no difficulty if he could find a proper 
 instrument at home, and that instrument he considered him- 
 self to possess in his chancellor. Where the problem was 
 to reconcile the rights of the clergy with the law of the 
 land, it would be convenient, even essential, that the chan- 
 cellorship and the primacy should be combined in the same 
 person. Barbarossa was finding the value of such a combi- 
 nation in Germany, where, with the Archbishop of Cologne 
 for a chancellor of the Empire, he was carrying out an ec- 
 clesiastical revolution. 
 
 It is not conceivable that on a subject of such vast im- 
 portance the king should have never taken the trouble to 
 ascertain Becket's views. The condition of the clergy was 
 a pressing and practical perplexity. Becket was his confi- 
 dential minister, the one person whose advice he most 
 sought in any difficulty, and on whose judgment he most re- 
 lied. Becket, in all probability, must have led the king to 
 believe that he agreed with him. There can be no doubt 
 whatever that he must have allowed the king to form his 
 plans without having advised him against them, and without 
 having cautioned him that from himself there was to be 
 looked for nothing but opposition. The king, in fiict, ex- 
 pected no opposition. So far as he had known Becket 
 hitherto, he had known him as a statesman and a man of 
 the world. If Becket had ever in this capacity expressed 
 views unfavorable to the king's intentions, he would not 
 have failed to remind him of it in their subsequent contro- 
 versy. That he was unable to appeal for such a purpose to 
 the king's recollection must be taken as a proof that he 
 never did express unfavorable views. If we are not to sup- 
 pose that he was deliberately insincere, we may believe that 
 he changed his opinion in consequence of the German 
 schism. But even so an honorable man would have given 
 
Thomas Beclcet, 
 
 23 
 
 his master warning of the alteration, and it is certain that 
 he did not. He did, we are told, feel some scruples. The 
 ecclesiastical conscience had not wholly destroyed the hu- 
 man conscience, and the king had been a generous master 
 to him. But his difficulties were set aside by the casuistries 
 of a Roman legate. Archbishop Tlieobald died when the 
 two cardinals were in Normandy for the marriage of Prince 
 Henry and the Princess Margaret. There was a year of 
 delay before the choice was finally made. Becket asked 
 the advice of Cardinal Henry of Pisa. Cardinal Henry 
 told him that it was for the interest of the Church that he 
 should accept the archbishopric, and that he need not com- 
 municate convictions which would interfere with his ap- 
 pointment. They probably both felt that, if Becket de- 
 clined, the king would find some other prelate who would 
 be more pliant in his hands. Thus at last the decision was 
 arrived at. The Empress Matilda warned her son against 
 Becket's dangerous character, but the warning was in vain. 
 The king pressed the archbishopric on Becket, and Becket 
 accepted it. The Chief Justice Richard de Luci went over 
 with three bishops to Canterbury in the spring of 1162 to 
 gain the consent of the chapter ; the chapter yielded not 
 without reluctance. The clergy of the province gave their 
 acquiescence at a council held afterwards at Westminster, 
 but with astonishment, misgiving, and secret complaints. 
 Becket at this time was not even a priest, and was known 
 only to the world as an unscrupulous and tyrannical minis- 
 ter. The consent was given, however. The thing was 
 done. On the 2d of June (1162) Becket received his 
 priest's orders from the Bishop of Rochester. On the od 
 he was consecrated in his own cathedral. 
 
24 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 Becket was now forty-four years old. The king was 
 thirty. The ascendency which Becket had hitherto exer- 
 cised over his sovereign through the advantage of age was 
 necessarily diminishing as the king came to maturity, and 
 the two great antagonists, as they were henceforth to be, 
 were more fairly matched than Becket perhaps expected to 
 find them. The archbishop was past the time of life at 
 which the character can be seriously changed. After forty 
 men may alter their opinions, their policy, and their con- 
 duct ; but they rarely alter their dispositions ; and Becket 
 remained as violent, as overbearing, as ambitious, as un- 
 scrupulous, as he had shown himself when chancellor, 
 though the objects at which he was henceforth to aim were 
 entirely different. It would be well for his memory were 
 it possible to credit him with a desire to reform the Church 
 of which he was the head, to purge away the corruption of 
 it, to punish himself the moral disorders of the clergy, while 
 he denied the right to punish them to the State. We seek 
 in vain, however, for the slighest symptoms of any such 
 desire. Throughout his letters there is not the faintest 
 consciousness that anything was amiss. He had been him- 
 self amongst the grossest of pluralists ; so far from being 
 ashamed of it, he still aimed at retaining the most lucrative 
 of his benefices. The idea with which his miud was filled 
 was not the purity of the Church, but the privilege and 
 supremacy of the Church. As chancellor he had been at 
 the head of the State under the king. As archbishop, in 
 the name of the Church, he intended to be head both of 
 State and king ; to place the pope, and himself as the 
 
Thomas Becket. 
 
 25 
 
 pope's legate, in the position of God's vicegerents. Wlien 
 he found it written that " by me kings reign and princes 
 decree judgment," he appropriated the language to himself, 
 and his single aim was to convert the words thus construed 
 into reality. 
 
 The first public intimation which Becket gave of his in- 
 tentions was his resignation of the chancellorship. He had 
 been made archbishop that the offices might be combined ; 
 he was no sooner consecrated than he informed the king 
 that the duties of his sacred calling left him no leisure for 
 secular business. He did not even wait for Henry's return 
 from Normandy. He placed the great seal in the hands of 
 the chief justice, the young prince, and the barons of the 
 Exchequer, demanding and receiving from them a hurried 
 discharge of his responsibilities. The accounts, for all that 
 appears, were never examined. Grim, perhaps, when ac- 
 cusing him of rapine and murder, was referring to a sup- 
 pression of a disturbance in Aquitaine, not to any special 
 act of whic^ he was guilty in England; but the unsparing 
 ruthlessuess wliich he displayed on that occasion was an 
 indication of the disposition which was displayed in all that 
 he did, and he was wise in anticipating inquiry. 
 
 The king had not recovered from his surprise at such 
 unwelcome news when he learned that his splendid min- 
 ister had laid aside his magnificence and had assumed the 
 habit of a monk, that he was always in tears — tears which 
 flowed from him with such miraculous abundance as to evi- 
 dence the working in him of some special grace,^ or else of 
 some special purpose. His general conduct at Canterbury 
 was equally startling. One act of charity, indeed, he had 
 overlooked which neither in conscience nor prudence should 
 have been forgotten. The mother of Pope Adrian the 
 Fourth was living somewhere in his province in extreme 
 
 1 "Ut putaretur possessor irrigui superioris et inferioris." The "supe- 
 rior" fountain of tears was the love of God ; the "inferior" was the fear 
 of hell. 
 
26 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 poverty, starving, it was said, of cold and hunger. The see 
 of Canterbury, as well as England, owed much to Pope 
 Adrian, and Becket's neglect of a person who was at least 
 entitled to honorable maintenance was not unobserved at 
 Rome. Otherwise his generosity was profuse. Archbishop 
 Theobald had doubled the charities of his predecessor, 
 Becket doubled Theobald's. Mendicants swarmed about 
 the gates of the palace ; thirteen of them were taken in 
 daily to have their dinners, to have their feet washed by 
 the archiepiscopal hands, and to be dismissed each with a 
 silver penny in his pocket. The tears and the benevolent 
 humiliations were familiar, in aspirants after high church 
 offices ; but Becket had nothing more to gain. What 
 could be the meaning of so sudden and so startling a trans- 
 formation ? Was it penitence for his crimes as chancellor? 
 The teai's looked like penitence ; but there were other 
 symptoms of a more aggressive kind. He was no sooner 
 in his seat than he demanded the restoration of estates that 
 his predecessors had alienated. He gave judgment in his 
 own court in his own favor, and enforced his own decrees. 
 Knights holding their lands from the Church on military 
 tenure had hitherto done homage for them to the Crown. 
 The new archbishop demanded the homage for himself. 
 He required the Earl of Clare to swear fealty to him for 
 Tunbridge Castle. The Earl of Clare refused and appealed 
 to the king, and the archbishop dared not at once strike 
 so large a quarry. But he showed his teeth with a 
 smaller offender. Sir Willliam Eynesford, one of the 
 king's knights, was patron of a benefice in Kent. The 
 archbishop presented a priest to it. The knight ejected 
 the archbishop's nominee, and the archbishop excommuni- 
 cated the knight. Such peremptory sentences, pronounced 
 without notice, had a special inconvenience when directed 
 against persons immediately about the king. Excommuni- 
 cation was like the plague ; whoever came near the infected 
 body himself caught the contagion, and the king might be 
 
Thomas BecTcet. 
 
 27 
 
 poisoned without his knowledge. It had been usual in 
 these cases to pay the king the courtesy of consulting him. 
 Becket, least of all men, could have pleaded ignorance of 
 such a custom. It seemed that he did not choose to ob- 
 serve it.-^ While courting the populace, and gaining a 
 reputation as a saint among the clergy, the archbishop was 
 asserting his secular authority, and using the spiritual 
 sword to enforce it. Again, what did it mean, this inter- 
 ference with the rights of the laity, this ambition for a 
 personal following of armed knights ? Becket was not a 
 dreamer who had emerged into high place from the cloister 
 or the library. He was a man of the world intimately 
 acquainted with the practical problems of the day, the most 
 unlikely of all persons to have adopted a course so marked 
 without some ulterior purpose. Henry discovered too late 
 that his mother's eyes had been keener than his own. He 
 returned to England in the beginning of 1163. Becket 
 met him at his landing, but was coldly received. 
 
 In the summer of the same year. Pope Alexander held a 
 council at Tours. The English prelates attended. The 
 question of precedence" was not this time raised. The Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury and his suffragans sat on the pope's 
 right hand, the Archbishop of York and his suffragans sat 
 on the pope's left. Whether anything of consequence 
 passed on this occasion between the pope and Becket is not 
 known : probably not ; it is certain, however, that they 
 met. On the archbishop's return to England the disputes 
 between the secular and spiritual authorities broke into 
 open conflict. 
 
 The Church principles of Gregory the Seventh were 
 
 1 *' Quod, quia rege minime certiorate archiepiscopus fecisset, maxi- 
 mam ejus indignationem incurrit. Asserit enim rex juxta dignitatem 
 regni sui, quod nullus qui de rege teneat in capite vel minister ejus citra 
 ipsius conscientiam sit excommunicandus ab aliquo, ne si hoc regem lateat 
 lapsus ignorantia communicet excommunicato ; comitem vel baronem ad 
 Be venientem in osculo vel consilio admittat." — Matthew Paris, Chronica 
 Majora, vol. ii. p. 222. 
 
28 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 making their way through Europe, but were making their 
 way with extreme slowness. Though the celibacy of the 
 clergy had been decreed by law, clerical concubinage was 
 still the rule in England. A focaria and a family were 
 still to be found in most country parsonages. In theory the 
 priesthood was a caste. In practice priests and their flocks 
 were united by common interests, common pursuits, com- 
 mon virtues, and common crimes. The common law of 
 England during the reigns of the Conqueror's sons had re- 
 fused to distinguish between them. Clerks guilty of robbery 
 or murder had been tried like other felons in the ordinary 
 courts, and if found guilty had suffered the same punish- 
 ments. The new pretension was that they were a peculiar 
 order, set apart for God's service, not amenable to secular 
 jurisdiction, and liable to trial only in the spiritual courts. 
 Under the loose administration of Stephen the judges had 
 begun to recognize their immunity, and the conduct of the 
 lower class of clergy was in consequence growing daily 
 more intolerable. Clergy, indeed, a great many of them 
 had no title to be called. They had received only some 
 minor form of orders, of which no sign was visible in their 
 appearance or conduct. They were clerks only so far as 
 they held benefices and claimed special privileges ; for the 
 rest, they hunted, fought, drank, and gambled like other 
 idle gentlemen. 
 
 In the autumn of 1163 a specially gross case of clerical 
 offence brought the question to a crisis. 
 
 Philip de Broi, a young nobleman who held a canonry 
 at Bedford, had killed some one in a quarrel. He was 
 brought before the court of the Bishop of Lincoln, where 
 he made his purgation ecclesiastico jure — that is to say, he 
 paid the usual fees and perhaps a small fine. The relations 
 of the dead man declared themselves satisfied, and Philip 
 de Broi was acquitted. The Church and the relations 
 might be satisfied ; public justice was not satisfied. The 
 sheriff of Bedfordshire declined to recognize the decision, 
 
Thomas Bechet, 
 
 29 
 
 and summoned the canon a second time. The canon in- 
 sulted the sheriff in open court, and refused to plead before 
 him. The sheriff referred the matter to the king. The 
 king sent for Philip de Broi, and cross-questioned him in 
 Becket's presence. It was not denied that he had killed a 
 man. The king inquired what Becket was prepared to do. 
 Becket's answer, for the present and all similar cases, was 
 that a clerk in orders accused of felony must be tried in the 
 first instance in an ecclesiastical court, and punished accord- 
 ing to ecclesiastical law. If the crime was found to be of 
 peculiarly dark kind, the accused might be deprived of his 
 orders, and, if he again offended, should lose his privilege. 
 But for the offence for which he was deprived he was not 
 to be again tried or again punished ; the deprivation itself 
 was to suffice. 
 
 The king, always moderate, was unwilling to press the 
 question to extremity. He condemned the judgment of the 
 Bishop of Lincoln's court. He insisted that the murderer 
 should have a real trial. But he appointed a mixed com- 
 mission of bishops and laymen to try him, the bishops hav- 
 ing the preponderating voice. 
 
 Philip de Broi pleaded that he had made his purgation 
 in the regular manner, that he had made his peace with the 
 family of the man that he had killed, and that the matter 
 was thus ended. He apologized for having insulted the 
 sheriff, and professed himself willing to make reasonable 
 reparation. The sentence of the commission was that his 
 benefices should be sequestered for two years, and that, if 
 the sheriff insisted upon it, he should be flogged. 
 
 So weak a judgment showed Henry the real value of 
 Becket's theory. The criminal clerk was to be amenable 
 to the law as soon as he has been degraded, not before ; and 
 it was perfectly plain, that clerks never would be degraded. 
 They might commit murder upon murder, robbery upon 
 robbery, and the law would be unable to touch them. It 
 could not be. The king insisted that a sacred profession 
 
30 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 should not be used as a screen for the protection of felony. 
 He summoned the whole body of the bishops to meet him 
 in a council at Westminster in October. 
 
 The council met. The archbishop was resolute. He 
 replied for the other bishops in an absolute refusal to make 
 any concession. The judges and the laity generally were 
 growing excited. Had the clergy been saints, the claims 
 advanced for them would have been scarcely tolerable. 
 Being what they were, such pretensions were ridiculous. 
 Becket might speak in their name. He did not speak their 
 real opinions. Arnulf, Bishop of Lisieux, came over to use 
 his influence with Becket, but he found him inexorable. To 
 risk the peace of the Church in so indefensible a quarrel 
 seemed obstinate folly. The Bishop of Lisieux and several 
 of the English prelates wrote privately to the pope to en- 
 treat him to interfere. 
 
 Alexander had no liking for Becket. He had known 
 him long, and had no belief in the lately assumed airs of 
 sanctity. Threatened as he was by the emperor and the 
 antipope, he had no disposition to quarrel with Henry, nor 
 in the particular question at issue does he seem to have 
 thought the archbishop in the right. On the spot he dis- 
 patched a legate, a monk named Philip of Auraone, to tell 
 Becket that he must obey the laws of the realm, and submit 
 to the king's pleasure. 
 
 The king was at Woodstock. The archbishop, tlius com- 
 manded, could not refuse to obey. He repaired to the 
 court. He gave his promise. He undertook, hond fde et 
 sine malo ingenio^ to submit to the laws of the land, what- 
 ever they might be found to be. But a vague engagement 
 of this kind was unsatisfactory, and might afterwards be 
 evaded. The question of the immunities of the clergy had 
 been publicly raised. The attention of the nation had been 
 called to it. Once for all the position in which the clergy 
 were to stand to the law of the land must be clearly and 
 finally laid down. The judges had been directed to inquire 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 31 
 
 into the customs which had been of use in England under 
 the king's grandfather, Henry the First. A second council 
 was called to meet at Clarendon, near Winchester, in the 
 following January, when these customs, reduced to writing, 
 would be placed in the archbishops' and bishops' hands, and 
 they would be required to consent to them in detail. 
 
 The spiritual power had encroached on many sides. 
 Every question, either of person, conduct, or property, in 
 which an ecclesiastic was a party, the Church courts had 
 endeavored to reserve for themselves. Being judges in 
 their own causes, the decisions of the clergy were more sat- 
 isfactory to themselves than to the laity. The practice of 
 appealing to Rome in every cause in which a churchman 
 was in any way connected had disorganized the whole course 
 of justice. The Constitutions (as they were called) of Clar- 
 endon touched in detail on a variety of points on which the 
 laity considered themselves injured. The general provi- 
 sions embodied in these famous resolutions would now be 
 scarcely challenged in the most Catholic country in the 
 world. 
 
 1. During the vacancy of any archbishopric, bishopric, 
 abbey, or priory of royal foundation, the estates were to be 
 in the custody of the Crown. Elections to these prefer- 
 ments were to be held in the royal chapel, with the assent 
 of the king and council. 
 
 2. In every suit to which a clerk was a part}^, proceed- 
 ings were to commence before the king's justices, and these 
 justices were to decide whether the case was to be tried be- 
 fore a spiritual or a civil court. If it was referred to a spir- 
 itual court, a civil officer was to attend to watch the trial, 
 and if a clerk was found guilty of felony the Church was to 
 cease to protect him. 
 
 3. No tenant-in-chief of the king, or officer of his house- 
 hold, was to be excommunicated, or his lands laid under an 
 interdict, until application had been first made to the king, 
 or, in his absence, to the chief justice. 
 
32 ^ Life and Times of 
 
 4. Laymen were not to be indicted in a bishop's court, 
 either for perjury or other similar offence, except in the 
 bishop's presence by a lawful prosecutor and with lawful 
 witnesses. If the accused was of so high rank that no 
 prosecutor would appear, the bishop might require the 
 sheriff to call a. jury to inquire into the case. 
 
 5. Archbishops, bishops, and other great persons were 
 forbidden to leave the realm without the king's permission. 
 
 6. Appeals were to be from the archdeacon to the bishop, 
 from the bishop to tlie archbishop, from the archbishop to 
 the king, and no further; that, by the king's mandate, the 
 case might be ended' in the archbishop's court. 
 
 The last article the king afterwards explained away. It 
 was one of the most essential, but he was unable to main- 
 tain it ; and he was rash, or he was ill-advised, in raising a 
 second question, on which the pope would naturally be sen- 
 sitive, before he had disposed of the first. On the original 
 subject of dispute, whether benefit of clergy was to mean 
 impunity to crime, the pope had already practically decided, 
 and he could have been brought without difficulty to give a 
 satisfiictory judgment upon it. Some limit also might have 
 been assigned to the powers of excommunication which 
 could be so easily abused, and which, if abused, might lose 
 their terrors. But appeals to the pope were the most lucra- 
 tive source of the pope's revenue. To restrict appeals was 
 to touch at once his pride and his exchequer. 
 
 The Constitutions were drafted, and when the council 
 assembled were submitted to Becket for approval. He 
 saw in the article on the appeals a prospect of recovering 
 Alexander's support, and he again became obstinate. None 
 of the bishops, however, would stand by him. There was a 
 general entreaty that he would not reojDen the quarrel, and 
 he yielded so far as to give a general promise of conform- 
 
 1 The Constitutions were seventeen in all. The articles in the text are 
 an epitome of those which the Church found most objectionable. 
 
Thomas Becket. 
 
 33 
 
 itj.^ It was a promise given dishonestly — given with a con- 
 scious intention of not observing it. ' He had been tempted, 
 he afterwards said, by an intimation that, if he would but 
 seem to yield, the king would be satisfied, Becket was a 
 lawyer. He could not really have been under any such 
 illusion. In real truth he did not mean to be bound by the 
 language of the Constitutions at all, but only by his own 
 language, from which it would be easy to escape. The 
 king by this time knew the man with whom he had to deal. 
 The Constitutions were placed in writing before the bishops, 
 who one and all were required to signify their adherence 
 under their several hands and seals. 
 
 Becket, we are innocently told by his biographer Grim, 
 now saw that Jie was to be entrapped. There was no en- 
 trapping if his promise had been honestly given. The use 
 of tlie word is a frank confession that he had meant to 
 deceive Henry by words, and that he was being caught in 
 his own snare. When driven to bay, the archbishop's fiery 
 nature always broke into violence. " Never, never," he 
 said; " I will never do it so long as breath is in my body." ^ 
 In affected penitence for his guilty compliance, he retired to 
 his see to afflict his flesh with public austerities. He sus- 
 pended himself ah altaris officio (from the service of the 
 altar) till the pope should absolve him from his sin. The 
 Bishop of Evreux, who was present at Clarendon, advised 
 him to w]-ite to the pope for authority to sign. He pre- 
 tended to comply, but he commissioned a private friend of 
 
 1 Foliot, however, says that many of the bishops were willing to stand 
 out, and that Becket himself advised a false submission (Foliot to Cecket, 
 Giles, vol. i. p. 381.) 
 
 2 Sanctus archiepiscopus tunc primum dolum quern fuerat suspicatus ad- 
 vertens, interposita fide quam Deo debuit : " Xoa hoc fiet," respondit, 
 " quam diu in hoc vasculo spirat hjec anima." Nam domestici regis secu- 
 rum fecerant archiepiscopum quod nunquam scriberentur leges, nunquani 
 illarum fieret recordatio, si regem verbo tantum in audientia procerum 
 honorasset. Ficta se conjuratione seductum videns, ad animam usque 
 tristabatur." — Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, vol. ii. p. 
 382. 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 his own, John of Salisbury, who was on the continent, to 
 prepare for his reception on the flight which he already 
 meditated from England, and by all methods, fair and foul, 
 to prevent the pope and cardinals from giving the king any 
 further encouragement. The Bishop of Lisieux, on the 
 other hand, whose previous intercession had decided the 
 pope in the king's favor, went to Sens in person to persuade 
 Alexander to cut the knot by sending legatine powers to 
 the Archbishop of York, to override Becket's obstinacy 
 and to consent in the name of the Church instead of him. 
 
 John of Salisbury's account of his proceedings gives a 
 curious picture of the cause of God, as Becket called it, on 
 its earthly and grosser side. 
 
 The Count of Flanders (he wrote to the archbishop) is most 
 anxious to help you. If extremity comes, send the count word, 
 and he will provide ships. ^ Everything which passed in Lon- 
 don and at Winchester (Clarendon) is better known here than 
 in England itself. I have seen the King of France, who un- 
 dertakes to write to the pope in your behalf. The feeling to- 
 wards our king among the French people is of fear and hatred. 
 The pope himself I have avoided so far. I have written to the 
 two cardinals of Pisa and Pavia to explain the injury which 
 will ensue to the Court of Rome if the Constitutions are up- 
 held. I am not sanguine, however. " Many things make 
 against us, few in our favor. Great men will come over here 
 with money to spend, quam nunguam Roma contejiipsit (which 
 Rome never despised). The pope himself has always been 
 against us in this cause, and throws in our teeth that after all 
 which Pope Adrian did for the see of Canterbury you are al- 
 lowing his mother to starve in cold and hunger." ^ You write 
 that if I cannot succeed otherwise I may promise two hundred 
 marks. The other side will give down three or four hundred 
 sooner than be defeated,^ and I will answer for the Romans that 
 
 1 "Naves enim procurabit si hoc necessitas vestra exegerit, et ipse ante, 
 ut oportet, praeraoneatur." — Joannis Sarisbinensis EpistoIcB, vol. i. p. 188. 
 
 2 *' Cuju3 mater apud vos algore torquetur et inedia." 
 
 8 *' Sed scribitis, si alia via non patuerit, promittamus ducentas marcas. 
 At certe pars adversa antequam frustretur trecentas dabit aut quadringen- 
 tas." 
 
Thomas Bechet, 
 
 35 
 
 they will prefer tlie larger sum in hand from the king to the 
 smaller in promise from you. It is true we are contending for 
 the liberties of the Church, but your motive, it will be said, is 
 not the Church's welfare, but your own ambition. They will 
 propose (I have already heard a whisper of it) that the pope 
 shall cross to England in person to crown the young king and 
 take your place at Canterbury for a while. If the Bishop of 
 Lisienx sees the pope, he will do mischief. I know the nature 
 of him.i 
 
 Though the archbishop was convulsing the realm for the 
 sacred right of appeals to Rome, it is plain from this letter 
 that he was aware of the motives by which the papal deci- 
 sions were governed, and that he was perfectly ready to 
 address himself to them. Unfortunately his resources 
 were limited, and John of Salisbury's misgivings were con- 
 firmed. The extraordinary legatine powers were conceded 
 not to the Archbishop of York — it was held inexpedient to 
 set York above Canterbury — but to the king himself. To 
 Becket the pope wrote with some irony on hearing that he 
 had suspended himself. He trusted the archbishop was not 
 creating needless scandal. The promise to the king had 
 been given with good intentions, and could not therefore 
 be a serious sin. If there was anything further on his con- 
 science (did the pope suspect that the promise had been dis- 
 honest?), he might confess it to any discreet priest. He 
 (the pope) meanwhile absolved him, and advised, and even 
 enjoined, him to return to his duties. 
 
 The first campaign was thus over, and the king was so 
 far victorious. The legatine powers having arrived, the 
 Constitutions were immediately acted upon. The number 
 of criminals among the clergy happened to be unusually 
 large.^ Tbey were degraded, sent to trial, and suffered in 
 the usual way by death or mutilation. "Then," say Beck- 
 
 1 John of Salisbury to Becket (abridged). Letters, vol. i. p. 187. 
 
 2 " Sed et ordinatorum inordinati mores inter regem et archiepiscopum 
 auxere malitiam, qui solito abundantius per idem tempus apparebant, pub- 
 licis irretiti criniinibus." — Materials, etc., vol. ii. p. 385. 
 
86 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 et's despairing biographers, " was seen the mournful spec- 
 tacle of priests and deacons who had committed murder, 
 manslaughter, theft, robbery, and other crimes, carried in 
 carts before the king's commissioners, and punished as if 
 they hud been ordinary men." The archbishop clamored, 
 threatened, and, as far as his power went, interfered. The 
 king was firm. He had sworn at his coronation, he said, to 
 do justice in the realm, and there were no greater villains 
 in it than many of the clergy.^ That bishops should take 
 public offenders out of custody, absolve them, and let them 
 go, was not to be borne. It was against law, against usage, 
 against reason. It could not be. The laity were gener- 
 ally of the king's opinion. Of the bishops some four or five 
 agreed privately with Becket, but dared not avow their 
 opinions. The archbishop perceived that the game was 
 lost unless he could himself see the pope and speak to him. 
 He attempted to steal over from Sandwich, but the boatmen 
 recognized him midway across the channel and brought him 
 back. 
 
 1 " In omni scelere et flagitio nequiores." 
 
Thomas Becket, 
 
 37 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The pope had sent legatine powers to the king, and the 
 king had acted upon them ; but something was still wanting 
 for general satisfaction. He had been required to confirm 
 the Constitutions by a bull. He had hesitated to do it, and 
 put off his answer. At length he sent the Archbishop of 
 Rouen to England to endeavor to compromise matters. 
 The formal consent of the Church was still wanting, and in 
 the absence of it persons who agreed with the king in prin- 
 ciple were uneasy at the possible consequences. The clergy 
 might be wicked, but they were magicians notwithstanding, 
 and only the chief magician could make it safe to deal with 
 them. In the autumn of 1164 the king once more sum- 
 moned a great council to meet him at Northampton Castle. 
 The attendance was vast. Every peer and prelate not dis- 
 abled was present, all feeling the greatness of the occasion. 
 Castle, town, and monasteries were thronged to overflowing. 
 Becket only had hesitated to appear. His attempt to es- 
 cape to the continent was constructive treason. It was 
 more than treason. It was a violation of a distinct promise 
 which he had given to the king.^ The storm which he had 
 raised had unloosed the tongues of those who had to com- 
 plain of his ill-usage of them either in his archbishop's 
 court or in the days when he was chancellor. The accounts 
 had been looked into, and vast sums were found to have 
 been received by him of which no explanation had been 
 given. Who was this man, that he should throw the coun- 
 try into confusion, in the teeth of the bishops, in the teeth 
 (as it seemed) of the pope, in the teeth of his own oath 
 1 Foliot to Becket, Giles, vol. ii. p. 387. 
 
38 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 given solemnly to the king at Woodstock ? The Bishop of 
 London, in a letter to Becket, charged him with having 
 directly intended to commit perjur3\-^ The first object of 
 the Northampton council was to inquire into his conduct, 
 and he had good reason to be alarmed at the probable con- 
 sequences. He dared not, however, disobey a peremptory 
 summons. He came, attended by a large force of armed 
 knights, and was entertained at the monastery of St. An- 
 drews. To anticipate inquiry into his attempted flight, he 
 applied for permission on the day of his arrival to go to 
 France to visit the pope. The king told him that he could 
 not leave the realm until he had answered for a decree which 
 had been given in his court. The case was referred to the 
 assembled peers, and he was condemned and fined. It was 
 a bad augury for him. Other charges lay thick, ready to 
 be produced. He was informed officially that he would be 
 required to explain the Chancery accounts, and answer for 
 the money which he had applied to his own purposes. His 
 proud temper was chafed to the quick, and he turned sick 
 with anger.^ His admirers see only in these demands the 
 sinister action of a dishonest tyranny. Oblique accusations, 
 it is said, were raised against him, either to make him bend 
 or to destroy his character. The question is rather whether 
 his conduct admitted of explanation. If he had been un- 
 just as a judge, if he had been unscrupulous as a high offi- 
 cer of state, such faults had no unimportant bearing on his 
 present attitude. He would have done wisely to clear him- 
 self if he could ; it is probable that he could not. He re- 
 fused to answer, and he sheltered himself behind the release 
 which he had received at his election. His refusal was not 
 allowed ; a second summons the next day found him in his 
 
 1 Foliot says that at Clarendon Becket said to the bishops, " It is the 
 Lord's will I should perjure myself. For the present I submit and incur 
 perjury, to repent of it, however, as I best may." — Giles, vol. i. p. 381. 
 Foliot was reminding Becket of what passed on that occasion. 
 
 2 "Propter iram et indignationem quam in animo conceperat decidit in 
 gravem segritudinem." — Hoveden, vol. i. p. 225. 
 
Thomas Bechet, 
 
 39 
 
 bed, which he said that he was too ill to leave. This was 
 on a Saturday. A respite was allowed him until the fol- 
 lowing Monday. On Monday the answer was the same. 
 Messenger after messenger brought back word that the 
 archbishop was unable to move. The excuse might be true 
 ■ — perhaps partially it was true. The king sent two great 
 peers to ascertain, and in his choice of persons he gave a 
 conclusive answer to the accusation of desiring to deal un- 
 fairly with Becket; one was Reginald, Earl of Cornwall, 
 the king's uncle, who as long as Becket lived was the best 
 friend that he had at the court ; the other was the remark- 
 able Robert, Earl of Leicester, named Bossu (the Hunch- 
 back). This Robert was a monk of Leicester Abbey, 
 though he had a dispensation to remain at the court, and so 
 bitter a papist was he that when the schismatic Archbishop 
 of Cologne came afterwards to London he publicly insulted 
 him and tore down the altar at which he had said mass. 
 Such envoys would not have been selected with a sinister 
 purpose. They found that the archbishop could attend if 
 he wished, and they warned him of the danger of trying the 
 king too far. He pleaded for one more day. On the Tues- 
 day morning he undertook to be present. 
 
 His knights, whose first allegiance was to the Crown, had 
 withdrawn from the monastery, not daring or not choosing 
 to stand by a prelate who appeared to be defying his sover- 
 eign. Their place had been taken by a swarm of mendi- 
 cants, such as the archbishop had gathered about him at 
 Canterbury. He prepared for the scene in which he was 
 to play a part with the art of which he was so accomplished 
 a master. He professed to expect to be killed. He rose 
 early. Some of the bishops came to see and remonstrate 
 with him : they could not move his resolution, and they re- 
 tired. Left to himself, he said the mass of St. Stephen in 
 which were the words : " The kings of the earth stood up, 
 and the rulers took counsel together against the Lord and 
 against his anointed." He then put on a black stole and 
 
40 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 cap, mounted his palfrey, and, followed by a few monks and 
 surrounded by his guard of beggars, rode a foot's pace to 
 the castle preceded by his cross-bearer. 
 
 The royal castle of Northampton was a feudal palace of 
 the usual form. A massive gateway led into a quadrangle ; 
 across the quadrangle was the entrance of the great hall, 
 and at the upper end of the hall doors opened into spacious 
 chambers beyond. The archbishop alighted at the gate, 
 himself took his cross in his right hand, and, followed by a 
 small train, passed through the quadrangle, and passed up the 
 hall, " looking like the lion-man of the prophet's vision." ^ 
 The king and the barons were in one chamber, the bishops 
 in another. The archbishop was going in this attitude into 
 the king's presence, that the court might see the person on 
 whom they dared to sit in judgment ; but certain " Temp- 
 lars " warned him to beware. He entered among his breth- 
 ren, and moved through them to a chair at the upper end of 
 the room. 
 
 He still held his cross. The action was unusual ; the 
 cross was the spiritual sword, and to bear it thus conspicu- 
 ously in a deliberative assembly was as if a baron had 
 entered the council in arms. The mass of St. Stephen had 
 been heard of, and in the peculiar temper of men's minds 
 was regarded as a magical incantation.^ The Bishop of 
 Hereford advanced and offered to carry the croso for him. 
 Foliot, Bishop of London {flius hujus scecuU, " a son of 
 this world ") said that if he came thus armed into the court 
 the king would draw a sharper sword, and he would see 
 then what his arms would avail him. Seeing him still ob- 
 stinate, Foliot tried to force the cross out of his hands. 
 The Archbishop of York added his persuasions ; but the 
 Archbishop of York peculiarly irritated Becket, and was 
 
 1 "Assumens faciem hominis, faciem leonis, propheticis illis animali- 
 bus a propheta descriptis simillimus." — Herbert of Bosham. 
 
 - It was said to have been done per artem mngicam et in contemptu 
 ver/is. (Hoveden.) He had the eucharist concealed under his dress. 
 
Thomas Beeket. 
 
 41 
 
 silenced by a violent answer. " Fool thou hast ever been," 
 said the Bishop of London, " and from thy folly I see plainly 
 thou wilt not depai't." Cries burst out on all sides. 
 " Fly ! " some one whispered in the archbishop's ear ; " fiy^ 
 or you are a dead man." The Bishop of Exeter came in 
 at the moment, and exclaimed that unless the archbishop 
 gave way they would all be murdered. Becket never 
 showed to more advantage than in moments of personal 
 danger. To the Bishop of Exeter he gave a sharp answer, 
 telling him that he savored not the things of God. But he 
 collected himself. He saw that he was alone. He stood 
 up, he appealed to the pope, charged the bishops on peril of 
 their souls to excommunicate any one who dared to lay 
 hands on him, and moved as if he intended to withdraw. 
 The Bishop of Winchester bade him resign the archbishop- 
 ric. With an elaborate oath (cum interminahili juratione) 
 he swore that he would not resign. The Bishop of Chi- 
 chester then said : " As our primate we are bound to obey 
 you, but you are our primate no longer ; you have broken 
 your oath. You swore allegiance to the king, and you 
 subvert the common law of the realm. We too appeal to 
 the pope. To his presence we summon you." " 1 hear 
 what you say," was all the answer which Becket deigned to 
 return. 
 
 The doors from the adjoining chamber were now flung 
 open. The old Earl of Cornwall, the hunchback Leicester, 
 and a number of barons entered. " My lord," said the Earl 
 of Leicester to the archbishop, "the king requires you to 
 come to his presence and answer to certain things which will 
 then be alleged against you, as you promised yesterday to 
 do." " My lord earl," said Becket, " thou knowest how 
 long and loyally I served the king in his worldly affairs. 
 For that cause it pleased him to promote me to the office 
 which now I hold. I did not desire the office ; I knew my 
 infirmities. When I consented it was for the sake of the 
 king alone. When I was elected I was formally acquitted 
 
42 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 of my responsibilities for all that I had done as chancellor. 
 Therefore I am not bound to answer, and I will not an- 
 swer." 
 
 The earls carried back the reply. The peers by a swift 
 vote declared that the archbishop must be arrested and 
 placed under guard. 
 
 The earls reentered, and Leicester approached him and 
 began slowly and reluctantly to announce the sentence. 
 " Nay," said Becket, lifting his tall meagre figure to its haugh- 
 tiest height, "do thou first listen to me. The child may not 
 judge his father. The king may not judge me, nor may you 
 judge me. I will be judged under God by the pope alone, 
 to whom in your presence I appeal. I forbid you under 
 anathema to pronounce your sentence. And you, my breth- 
 ren," he said, turning to the bishops, "since you will obey 
 man rather than God, I call you too before the same judg- 
 ment-seat. Under the protection of the Apostolic See, I 
 depart hence." 
 
 No hand was raised to stop him. He swept through the 
 chamber and flung open the door of the hall. He stumbled 
 on the threshold, and had almost fallen, but recovered him- 
 self. The October evening was growing into twilight. The 
 hall was thronged with the retinues of the king and the 
 barons. Dinner was over. The floor was littered with 
 rushes and fragments of rolls and broken meat. Draughts 
 of ale had not been wanting, and young knights, pages, and 
 retainers were either lounging on the benches or talking 
 in eager and excited groups. As Becket appeared among 
 them, fierce voices were heard crying, " Traitor ! traitor ! 
 Stop the traitor ! " Among the loudest were Count Hame- 
 lin, the king's illegimate brother, and Sir Ranulf de Broc, 
 one of the Canterbury knights. Like a bold animal at bay, 
 Becket turned sharply on these two. He called Count Ha- 
 melin a bastard boy. He reminded De Broc of some near 
 kinsman of his who had been hanged. The cries rose into 
 a roar ; sticks and knots of straw were flung at him. An- 
 
Thomas BecJcet, 
 
 43 
 
 other rash word, and he might have been torn in pieces. 
 Some high official hearing the noise came in and conducted 
 him safely to the door. 
 
 In the quadrangle he found his servants waiting with his 
 palfrey. The great gate was locked, but the key was hang- 
 ing on the wall ; one of them took it and opened the gate, 
 the porters looking on, but not interfering. Once outside 
 he was received with a cheer of delight from the crowd, and 
 with a mob of people about him he made his way back to 
 the monastery. The king had not intended to arrest him, 
 but he could not know it, and he was undoubtedly in danger 
 from one or other of the angry men with whom the town 
 was crowded. • He prepared for immediate flight. A bed 
 was made for him in the chapel behind the altar. After a 
 hasty supper with a party of beggars whom he had intro- 
 duced into the house, he lay down for a few hours of rest. 
 At two in the morning, in a storm of wind and rain, he stole 
 away disguised with two of the brethren. He reached Lin- 
 coln soon after daybreak, and from Lincoln, going by cross 
 paths, and slipping from hiding-place to hiding-place, he 
 made his way in a fortnight to a farm of his own at Eastry, 
 near Sandwich. He was not pursued. It was no sooner 
 known that he was gone from Northampton than a procla- 
 mation was sent through the country forbidding every man 
 under pain of death to meddle with him. The king had 
 determined to allow the appeal, and once more to place the 
 whole question in the pope's hands. The Earl of Arundel 
 with a dozen peers and bishops was dispatched at once to 
 Sens to explain what had happened, and to request Alex- 
 ander to send legates to England to investigate the quarrel 
 and to end it. The archbishop, could he have consented to 
 be quiet, might have remained unmolested at Canterbury 
 till the result could be ascertained. But he knew too well 
 the forces which would be at work in the papal court to 
 wait for its verdict. His confidence was only in himself. 
 Could he see the pope in person, he thought that he could 
 
44 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 influence him. He was sure of the friendship of Lewis of 
 France, who was meditating a fresh quarrel with Henry, and 
 would welcome his support. His own spiritual weapons 
 would be as effective across the Channel as if used in Eng- 
 land, while he would himself be in personal security. One 
 dark night he went down with his two companions into 
 Sandwich, and in an open boat crossed safely to Grave- 
 lines. At St. Omer he fell in with his old friend Chief 
 Justice de Luci, who was returning from a mission to the 
 court of France. De Luci urged him to return to P^ngland 
 and wait for the pope's decision, warning him of the con- 
 sequences of persisting in a course which was really treason- 
 able, and undertaking that the king would forgive him if he 
 would go back at once. Entreaties and waitings were alike 
 thrown away. He remained and dispatched a letter to the 
 pope saying briefly that he had followed the example of his 
 holiness in resisting the encroachments of princes, and had 
 fled from his country. He had been called to answer before 
 the king as if he had been a mere layman. The bishops, 
 who ought to have stood by him, had behaved like cow- 
 ards. If he was not sustained by his holiness, the Church 
 would be ruined, and he would himself be doubly con- 
 founded. 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 45 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The king and the English bishops looked with reason- 
 able confidence to the result of their appeal. Becket had 
 broken his promise to accept the Constitutions, and had so 
 broken it as to show that the promise had been given in 
 conscious bad faith. He was a defaulting public officer. 
 He had been unjust as a judge. He had defied the Crown 
 and the estates of the realm. He had refused to answer for 
 his conduct, and had denied his responsibilities. He had 
 deserted his post, and had fled from the realm, although the 
 king's proclamation had left him without the excuse that he 
 was in fear of personal violence. He was an archbishop, 
 and possessed, in virtue of his office, of mysterious powers 
 which the laity had not learned to defy. But the pope was 
 superior to him in his own sphere, and on the pope the king 
 naturally felt that he had a right to rely. The Earl of 
 Arundel with the other peers, the Archbishop of York, and 
 the Bishops of London, Chichester, and Exeter, were 
 chosen as envoys, and were dispatched immediately on the 
 dissolution of the Northampton meeting. They crossed 
 the Channel on the same night that Becket crossed, and 
 after a hasty and unsatisfactory interview with Lewis at 
 Compiegne they made their way to Sens. Becket ought to 
 have met them there. But Becket preferred to feel his 
 ground and make friends in France before presenting him- 
 self. He was disappointed in the Count of Flanders, who 
 declined to countenance him. He escaped in disguise over 
 the French frontier, and addressed himself to Lewis at Sois- 
 sons. Lewis, who meant no good to Henry, received him 
 warmly, and wrote in his favor to the pope. At the French 
 
46 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 court lie remained till he saw how matters would go at 
 SeDS, sending forward his confidential friend, Herbert of 
 Bosham, to watch the proceedings, and speak for him to the 
 pope and cardinals. 
 
 He might have easily been present himself, since Herbert 
 reached Sens only a day after the arrival of the English 
 ambassadors. The bishops stated their case. They laid the 
 blame of the quarrel on the archbishop's violence. They 
 explained the moderation of the king's demands. They 
 requested the pope's interposition. The Earl of Arundel 
 followed in the name of the English barons. He dwelt on 
 the fidelity with which the king had adhered to the Holy 
 See in its troubles, and the regret with which, if justice was 
 denied them, the English nation might be compelled to 
 look elsewhere. He requested, and the bishops requested, 
 that Becket should be ordered to return to Canterbury, and 
 that a legate or legates should be sent with plenary powers 
 to hear the cause and decide upon it. 
 
 Seeing that the question immediately before the pope did 
 not turn on the Constitutions, but on the liability of the 
 archbisliop to answer for his civil administration, the king 
 was making a large concession. Many cardinals had their 
 own good reasons for being on the the king's side, and, if left 
 to himself, the pope would have been glad to oblige a valu- 
 able friend. But to favor Henry was to offend Lewis under 
 whose shelter he had taken refuge. The French bishops 
 were many of them as violent as Becket himself The 
 French people were on the same side from natural enmity 
 to England, and Pope Alexander was in the same difficulty 
 in which Pope Clement found himself three centuries later 
 between Henry the Eighth and Charles the Fifth. He said 
 that he could form no " resolution till he had heard what 
 Becket had to say. He suggested that the English envoys 
 should wait for Becket's arrival ; but it was uncertain 
 when Becket might arrive; his French friends were gather- 
 ing in their rear, and might intercept their return. A pro- 
 
Thomas Becket, 
 
 47 
 
 tracted stay was impossible, and they again pressed for a 
 legate. Alexander agreed to send some one, but without 
 the ample powers which the envoys desired. He reserved 
 the final decision for himself 
 
 The influences by which the papal court was determined 
 were already too grossly notorious. A decision given in 
 France would be the decision which would please the King 
 of France. The envoys went home, taking with them a 
 complimentary nuncio from the pope, and they had some dif- 
 ficulty in escaping an attempt to waylay and capture them. 
 
 They had no sooner gone than Becket appeared at Sens. 
 He was received with no great warmth by the pope, and 
 still more coldly by the cardinals " whose nostrils the scent 
 of lucre had infected."^ French pressure, however, soon 
 produced its effect. He had come magnificently attended 
 from Soissons. His cause was openly espoused by the 
 French nation. At his second interview, on his knees at 
 Alexander's feet he represented that he was the victim of 
 his devotion to the Holy See and the Catholic faith. He 
 had only to yield on the Constitutions to be restored at 
 once to favor and power. The Constitutions were read 
 over, and he asked how it was possible for him to acknowl- 
 edge laws which reduced the clergy into common mortals, 
 and restricted appeals to the last depositary of justice on 
 earth. 
 
 Herbert of Bosham states that the pope and cardinals 
 had never yet seen the Constitutions, but had only heard of 
 them. This is simply incredible, and, like many other 
 stories of this interesting but interested writer, is confuted 
 by the facts of the case. John of Salisbury had said that 
 the proceedings at Clarendon were better known on the con- 
 tinent than in England. They had been watched in Fi-ance 
 for almost a year with the closest attention. Bishops and 
 abbots had gone to and fro between the pope and the Eng- 
 lish court with no other object than to find some terms of 
 1 "Quorum nares odor lucri infecerat." 
 
48 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 compromise. It is not conceivable that after sending an 
 order to Becket to submit, after Becket had first consented, 
 had then suspended himself for the sin of acquiesence, and 
 had been absolved by Alexander himself, the Holy Father 
 should never have acquainted himself with the particulars 
 of the controversy. It is no less incredible, therefore, that, 
 after hearing the Constitutions read, the pope should have 
 severely blamed Becket, as Herbert also says that he did, 
 for having ever consented at all. Be this as it may, the 
 Constitutions found no favor. Parts of them were found 
 tolerable, but parts intolerable, especially the restriction of 
 the appeals. Again the pope took time for reflection. 
 English money had secured a powerful faction among his 
 advisers, and they were not ungrateful. Henry, they said, 
 would no doubt modify the objectionable articles ; and it 
 was unsafe to alienate him at so dangerous a time. In pri- 
 vate they sharply blamed Becket for having raised so inop- 
 portune a storm ; and but for his own adroitness the arch- 
 bishop would have been defeated after all. Once more he 
 sought the pope's presence. He confessed his sins, and he 
 tempted Alexander with the hope of rescuing the nomina- 
 tion to the see of Canterbury from secular interference. 
 He had been intruded into Christ's sheej^fold, he said, by the 
 secular power ; and from this source all his subsequent 
 troubles had arisen. The bishops at Northampton had bade 
 him resign. He could not resign at their bidding, but he 
 • threw himself and his office on his holiness's mercy. He 
 had accepted the archbishopric nncanouically. He now re- 
 linquished it, to be restored or not restored as the pope 
 might please. 
 
 It was a bold stroke, and it nearly failed. Many cardi- 
 
 1 " Ascendi in ovile Christi. sed non per ipsum ostium: velut quern non 
 canonica vocavit electio, sed terror publicce potestatis intrusit." — Materials 
 for the History of Thomas a Becket, vol. ii. p. 243. But all these accounts 
 of conversations must be received with caution. The accounts vary irrec- 
 oncilably; and the enthusiasm of the biographers for their master and his 
 cause infects every line of their narrative. 
 
TJiomas Becket, 
 
 49 
 
 nals saw in the offer a road out of the difficulty. Terms 
 could now be arranged with Henry, and Becket could be 
 provided for elsewhere. For some hours or days his friends 
 thought his cause was lost. But the balance wavered at 
 last so far in his favor that the sacrifice was not permitted. 
 He was not, as he had expected, to be sent back in triumph 
 to England supported by threats of interdict and excommu- 
 nication to triumph over his enemies. But he was reinstated 
 as archbishop. He was assigned a residence at the Cister- 
 cian monastery of Pontigny, thirty miles from Sens ; and 
 there he was directed to remain quiet and avoid for the 
 present irritating the king further.^ 
 
 The king was sufficiently irritated already. The support 
 which Lewis had given to Becket meant too probably that 
 war with France was not far off. Becket himself was virt- 
 ually in rebellion, and his character made it easy to foresee 
 the measures which he would adopt if not prevented. The 
 posts were watched, strangers were searched for letters. 
 English subjects were forbidden to introduce brief, bull, or 
 censure either from the pope or from the archbishop. The 
 archbishop's estates were sequestrated. AVere he allowed 
 to retain his large income and spend it abroad, he would 
 use it to buy friends among the cardinals. The see was 
 put under administrators — the rents, so Henry afterwards 
 swore, were chiefly laid out in management, and the surplus 
 was distributed in charity. The incumbents of the arch- 
 bishop's benefices being his special creatures were expelled, 
 and loyal priests were put in their places. Another harder 
 measure was adopted. All his relations, all his connections 
 and dependents, except a few who gave securities for good 
 conduct, were banished from England, four hundred of 
 them, men, women, and children. Either it was feared the 
 
 1 The answer supposed to have been given by the pope, permitting him 
 to use the censures, belongs to the following year. It refers to the seques- 
 tration of the Canterbury estates, and this did not take place till after Becket 
 had been settled at Pontigny. 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 archbishop would employ them to disturb the country, or it 
 was mere vengeance, or it was to make Becket an expen- 
 sive guest to Lewis. 
 
 All tliis Becket was obliged to bear with. Armed as he 
 was with lightnings, he was forbidden to make use of them. 
 Xay, worse, the pope himself could not even yet be de- 
 pended on. Angry as he was, the king wrote to propose 
 that Alexander should visit him in England, or, if this were 
 impossible, that the pope, Lewis, and Henry should meet in 
 Normandy and take measures together for the common 
 welfare of Christendom. Henry had no wish to join Bar- 
 barossa if he could help it ; and neither the pope nor Lewis 
 could wish to force him. If such a meeting came off, it was 
 easy to foresee the issue. John of Salisbury, who was 
 Becket's agent at the French court, when he heard what 
 was intended, wrote that it must be prevented at all haz- 
 ards. In terms not very complimentary to the holy father's 
 understanding, the archbishop imiDlored Alexander to con- 
 sent to no meeting with the Iving of England, except one 
 at which he should himself be present. " The king," he 
 said, " is so subtle with his words that he would confound 
 the apostolic religion itself. He will find the weak points 
 of the pope's character, and will trip him up to his destruc- 
 tion." ^ 
 
 The Kinp: of France (John of Salisbury wrote to Becket) ad- 
 mits that he fears to urge the pyope to use the censures in your 
 behalf. If this be so now, how will it be when our king is here 
 in person, arguing, promising, and threatening with the skill 
 which you know that he possesses? He has secured the Count of 
 Flanders — the countess, like a prudent matron, is thinking of 
 marriages for her children — and has sent him three hundred ells 
 of linen to make shirts. The Archbishop of Rheims is the count's 
 
 dear friend I advise you, therefore, to trust in God and 
 
 give yourself to prayer. Put away thoughts of this world ; pray 
 
 1 " Sed et citiiis poterit apostolica circumveniri religio ex varietate ver- 
 borum regis .... et si rex infirmiora domini papfe prienoverit exitus via- 
 rum suarum obstruet offendiculis."' — Materials, vol. ii. p. 346. 
 
Thomas Bechet, 
 
 51 
 
 and meditate. The Psalms will be better reading for you than 
 philosophy; and to confer with spiritual men, whose example 
 may influence your devotion, will profit you more than indulg- 
 ing in litigious speculations. I say this from my heart: take it 
 as you please. 
 
 These words show Becket to us as through an inverted 
 telescope, the magnifying mist blown away, in his true out- 
 lines and true proportions. The true Becket, as the pope 
 knew him, was not the person peculiarly fitted to be the 
 Church's champion in a cause which was really sacred. 
 John of Salisbury thought evidently at this time that there 
 was no longer any hope that the archbishop would really 
 succeed. He wished, he said in a letter to the Bishop of 
 Exeter, to make his peace with the king. He could not 
 desert the archbishop, but he was loyal to his sovereign. 
 He called God to witness how often he had rebuked the 
 archbishop for his foolish violence.-^ He could not promise 
 that he would quit his old master's service, but in all else he 
 would be guided by the Bishop of Exeter's advice. 
 
 1 " Novit enim cordium inspector quod saspius et asperins quam aliquis 
 niortalium corripuerim doininum archiepiscopum de his in quibus ab initio 
 doniinum regem et suos zelo qiiodam inconsultius visus est ad amaritudi- 
 nem provocasse," etc. — Letters, vol. i. p. 203, ed. Giles. 
 
52 
 
 Life a) id Times of 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 Meanwhile the quarrel between Becket and the King 
 of England became the topic of the hour throughout 
 Europe. Which was right and which was wrong, what the 
 pope wouhl do or ought to do, and whether England w^ould 
 join Germany in the schism — these questions were the 
 theme of perpetual discussions in council and conclave, 
 were debated in universities, and were fought over at con- 
 vent and castle dinner-tables. Opinions were so divided 
 that, in a cause which concerned Heaven so nearly, people 
 were, looking for Heaven to give some sign. As facts were 
 wanting, legend took the place of them, and stories began to 
 spread, either at the time or immediately after, of direct 
 and picturesque manifestations of grace which had been 
 vouchsafed in Becket's favor. It was said that when dining 
 with Pope Alexander he had twice unconsciously turned 
 water into wine. At Pontigny he had been graciously 
 visited by our Lady herself. He had left England ill pro- 
 vided with clothes. His wardrobe was in disorder; his 
 drawers especially, besides being dirty, were in holes. He 
 was specially delicate in such matters, and was too modest 
 to confess his difficulties. He stayed at home one day alone 
 to do the repairs himself. He was pricking his fingers and 
 succeeding indifferently, when our Lady — who, as the biog- 
 raphers tell us, had been taught to sew when she was at 
 Nazareth — came in, sat down, took the drawers out of the 
 archbishop's hand, mended them excellently, and went as 
 she had come. The archbishop had not recognized his 
 visitor. Soon after a singular case of church discipline was 
 referred to his decision. A young Frenchman, specially 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 53 
 
 devoted to the Virgin Mary, had built a chapel in her honor 
 not fur from Pontigny, had placed her image over the altar, 
 and had obtained ordination himself that he might make his 
 daily offerings there. But he neither would nor could re- 
 peat any mass but the mass of the Virgin. The authorities 
 reprimanded him but to no purpose. Our Lady filled his 
 soul, and left no room for any other object. The irregular- 
 ity was flagrant — the devotion was commendable. Becket 
 was consulted as to what should be done, and Becket sent 
 for the offender and gently put before him that he was 
 making a scandal which must positively cease. The youth 
 rushed away in despair, and flung himself before our Lady's 
 imao^e, declarinfr that his love was for her and for her alone. 
 She must save him from interference, or he would pull the 
 chapel down and do other wild and desperate things. The 
 eyes of the image began to smile, the neck bent, the lips 
 opened. " Have no fear, carissime,^' it said : " go to the 
 archbishop. Entreat again to be allowed to continue your 
 devotions to me. If he refuses, ask him if he remembers 
 who mended his drawers." We may guess how the story 
 ended. 
 
 With tales of this kind floating in the air, the first year of 
 Becket's exile wore out, the pope giving uncertain answers 
 to the passionate appeals which continued to be made to him, 
 according to the fortune of the Emperor Frederick in Italy. 
 Frederick being at last driven out of Lombardy, the pope 
 recovered heart, and held out brighter prospects. He sent 
 Becket permission to excommunicate the persons in occu- 
 pation of his estates and benefices, and he promised to ratify 
 his sentence if opportunely issued. He did not permit, but 
 also did not specially forbid, him to excommunicate the 
 king, while Lewis, with Becket's knowledge, and in the 
 opinion of the cardinals who came afterwards to inquire 
 into his conduct, at Becket's direct instigation, prepared to 
 invade Normandy. Henry, well informed of what was 
 coming, began now to turn to Germany in earnest. By 
 
54 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 the advice of his barons, as he said, he wrote to Reginald, 
 Frederick's archbishop chancellor, to tell him that he was 
 about to send an embassy to the pope to demand that he 
 should be relieved of Becket, and that the Constitutions 
 should be ratified. If justice was refused him, he and his 
 people were prepared to renounce their allegiance to Alex- 
 ander and to unite with Germany.^ The chancellor was 
 himself invited to England to arrange a marriage be- 
 tween the Princess Matilda and the Duke of Saxony. A 
 decided step of this kind it was thought might bring the 
 pope to his senses. 
 
 Separation from Rome, indeed, was the true alternative : 
 and had the country been prepared to follow Henry, and 
 had Henry himself been prepared at the bottom of his mind 
 to defy the pope and the worst that he could do, the great 
 schism between the Teutonic and Latin races might havef 
 been antedated, and the course of history been changed. 
 But Henry was threatening with but half a heart, and the 
 country was less prepared than he. In Germany itself, the 
 pope in the end proved too strong for the emperor. In 
 England, even Wickliife was premature. With all its enor- 
 mous faults, the Roman Catholic organization in both coun- 
 tries was producing better fruits on the whole than any 
 other which could have been substituted for it ; and almost 
 three centuries had yet to pass, bringing with them accumu- 
 lating masses of insincerities and injustices, before Europe 
 could become ripe for a change. A succession of Beckets 
 would have precipitated a rupture, whatever might be the 
 cost or consequences ; but the succeeding prelates were 
 men of the world as well as statesmen, and were too wise to 
 press theories to their logical consequences. 
 
 The Archbishop of Cologne came to London with the 
 taint of his schism upon him. The court entertained him. 
 The German marriage was arranged. But Henry received 
 a startling intimation that he must not try the barons too 
 1 Giles, vol. i. p. 316. 
 
TJiomas Beehet. 
 
 55 
 
 far. They had supported him in what they held to be 
 reasonable demands to which the pope might be expected 
 to consent. They were not ready to support him in a re- 
 volt from Rome, even thoudi disojuised behind the name of 
 an antipope. The liunchbacked Earl of Leicester refused 
 Barbarossa's chancellor the kiss of peace in open court at 
 Westminster, and on his departure the altars at which the 
 schismatic prelate had said mass were destroyed.^ 
 
 Alexander meanwhile had written to Foliot, directing 
 him and the Bishop of Hereford to remonstrate with the 
 king, to entreat him to act in conformity with his past repu- 
 tation and to put an end to the scandal which he had caused^ 
 hinting that if Henry persisted in refusing he might be un- 
 able to restrain the archbishop from excommunicating liim. 
 The two bishops discharged their commission. "The king," 
 Foliot replied to the pope, " took what we said in excellent 
 part. He assured us that his affection towards your holiness 
 remained as it had been, but he said that he had stood by 
 you in your misfortunes, and that he had met with a bad 
 return. He had hindered no one from going to you on 
 your invitation, and he meant to hinder no one. As to 
 appeals, he merely claimed that each case should be first 
 thoroughly heard in his own courts. If justice could not 
 be had there, appeals to Rome might remain without ob- 
 jection from himself If the emperor was excommunicated, 
 he promised to break off correspondence with him. As to 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, he had not been expelled 
 from England ; he had left it of his own accord, and might 
 return when he pleased. To the Church, now as always, 
 he wished to submit his differences with the archbishop." 
 
 If this was not all which the pope might expect, Foliot 
 advised him to be contented with it. " The king," he con- 
 tinued, "having consented to defer to the Church, considers 
 that right is on his side. Let your holiness therefore be- 
 ware of measures which may drive him and his subjects into 
 1 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, 1165. 
 
56 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 revolt. A wounded limb may be healed ; a limb cut off is 
 lost forever. Some of us may bear persecution on your 
 account, but there will not be wanting those who will bow 
 their knee to Baal. Men can be found to fill the English 
 sees who will obey the antipope. Many, indeed, already 
 wish for the change." ^ 
 
 The pope, who did not understand the English character, 
 was as much disturbed as Henry could have desired to see 
 him. He found that he had encouraged Becket too far. 
 He wrote to press upon him that the days were evil ; that 
 he must endeavor to conciliate the king ; that he must on 
 no account excommunicate him, or lay England under in- 
 terdict, or venture any violent courses, at any rate before 
 the ensuing Easter.^ He wrote affectionately to Henry 
 himself. He thanked the two bishops with the utmost 
 warmth, and expressed himself delighted with the accounts 
 which he received of the king's frame of mind.^ The Arch- 
 bishop of Rouen and the Empress Matilda had written to 
 him to the same purpose, and had given him equal pleasure. 
 If Foliot could bring about a reconciliation, he would love 
 him forever. Meanwhile he would follow Foliot's advice 
 and keep Becket quiet. 
 
 A very slight concession from Becket would now have 
 made an arrangement possible, for Henry was tired of the 
 quarrel. He invited the Norman prelates to meet him at a 
 conference at Chinon. The archbishop was expected to 
 attend, and peace was then to have been arranged. In this 
 spirit the Bishop of Hereford addressed the archbishop him- 
 self, entreating him to agree to moderate conditions. Far 
 away was Becket from concessions. He knew better than 
 the pope the state of English feeling. He was in corre- 
 spondence (it is likely enough) with the Earl of Leicester. 
 At all events he must have heard of Leicester's treatment 
 
 ^ Foliot to the Pope, 1165. Hoveden (ed. Giles), vol. i. p. 231. 
 
 2 Giles, vol. i. p. 324. 
 
 3 " Gaudemus et exultamus super ea devotione ejiisdem regis." 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 57 
 
 of Reginald of Coloojne. He knew that in fearinoj that 
 England would go into schism the pope was frightened by 
 a shadow. He had not defied king, peers, and bishops at 
 Northampton that the fight should end in a miserable com- 
 promise. Sharply he rebuked the Bishop of Hereford for 
 his timid counsels. For you," he said, " I am made anath- 
 ema, and when you should stand by me you advise me to 
 yield. You should rather have bidden me draw the sword 
 of Peter and avenge the blood of the saints. I mourn over 
 you as over my firstborn. Up, my son. Cry aloud and 
 cease not. Lift up your voice, lest God's anger fall on you 
 and all the nation perish. I grieve for the king. Tribula- 
 tion impends over him. They have devoured Jacob and 
 laid waste his dwelling-place." ^ 
 
 To John of Salisbury Becket announced that his patience 
 was exhausted, that when Easter was passed he would be 
 free, and that in his own opinion he ought to forbear no 
 longer. He desired to know how far his friend agreed 
 with him. John of Salisbury was more prudent than his 
 master. " Precipitate action," he said, " may expose you to 
 ridicule and ruin. You ask my advice. I recommend you 
 not to rely on the Holy See. Write to the empress mother, 
 write to the Archbishop of Rouen and the other prelates. 
 Tell them you are ready to obey the law and go back if 
 you are treated with justice. The adversary will not agree 
 to conditions really fiir, but you will have set yourself right 
 with the world. Should the king be more moderate than I 
 think he will be, do not stand upon securities. Content 
 yourself with a promise under the king's hand and the as- 
 surance of the empress mother. Do not try the censures. 
 Y^'ou know my opinion about this, and you once agreed with 
 me. The king is not afraid of excommunication. The bish- 
 ops and most of the clergy have stood by him ; some may 
 be with us in heart, but they are not to be depended on." ^ 
 
 1 Becket to the Bishop of Hereford, Hoveclen. I am obliged greatly to 
 compress the diffuse rhetoric of the archbi>hop. 
 
 2 John of Salisbury to Becket, April, 11G6 (abridged). 
 
58 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 Becket, like most persons of his temperament, asked ad- 
 vice without meaning to follow it. He addressed the king 
 in a letter which Herbert describes as being of extreme 
 sweetness. It was to entreat him to let loose the bride of 
 Christ whom he held in captivity, and to warn him that if 
 he persevered in his wicked ways, " Christ would gird his 
 sword upon his thigh," and would descend from heaven to 
 punish him. Inflated language of this kind was not general 
 at that time. It was peculiar to Becket, and we need not 
 be surprised that it produced no effect on Henry. He went 
 to Normandy to the Chinon conference immediately after 
 Easter, 1166, hoping there to meet Becket and speak with 
 him and with the other prelates as with reasonable men. 
 He did not find Becket there, but he found a second letter 
 from him, which from a saint would ha^ e tried the temper 
 of a more patient sovereign than Henry, and from a man 
 whom he had known so lately as a defaulting chancellor 
 and unscrupulous politician was insolent and absurd. After 
 reproaching the king for allowing him to live on the charity 
 of Lewis of France, the archbishop proceeded : — 
 
 Yon are my king, my lord, and my spiritual son. As you are 
 my kinp:, I owe you reverence and admonition; as you are my 
 lord, I owe you such obedience as consists with the honor of 
 God; as you are my son, I owe you the chastisement which is 
 due from the father to the child. You hold your authority from 
 the Church, which consists of clergy and laymen. The clergy 
 have sole charge of things spiritual : kings, earls, and counts 
 ha-ve ])Oweis delefrated to them from the Church, to preserve 
 peace and the Church's unity. Delegated from the Church, I 
 say. Therefore it rests not with you to tell bishops whom they 
 may excommunicate, or to force clergy to their answers in secu- 
 lar courts, or to interfere with tithes, or do any of those things 
 to which you pretend in the name of custom. Remember your 
 coronation oath. Restore my property. Allow me to return to 
 Canterbury, and I will obey you as far as the honor of God and 
 the Uoly See and our sacred order permits me. Refuse, and be 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 59 
 
 assured you will not fail to experience the severe displeasure of 
 Almighty God.^ 
 
 This letter appears to have been placed in Henry's hands 
 immediately before he met the Norman bishops. On en- 
 tering the conference he was ill with agitation. Persons 
 present said that he was in tears. He told the bishops that 
 Becket was aiming at his destruction, soul and body. He 
 said they were no better than traitors for not protecting 
 him more effectually from the violence of a single man.^ 
 The Archbishop of Rouen protested against the word "trai- 
 tors." But it was no time for niceties of expression. War 
 with France was on the point of breaking out, and Becket, 
 it was now plain, meant to give it the character of a sacred 
 war by excommunicating Henry. Easter was past: he 
 was free to act, and clearly enough he meant to act. The 
 Bishop of Lisieux advised an instant appeal to the pope, 
 which would keep Becket's hands tied for the moment. 
 He and another bishop rushed off to Pontigny to serve the 
 notice on him. They arrived too late. Before launching 
 his thunderbolts Becket had gone to Soissons, there to pre- 
 pare for the operation. 
 
 At Soissons were to be found in special presence the 
 Blessed Virgin and St. Gregory, whose assistance the arch- 
 bishop considered would be peculiarly valuable to him ; and 
 not they only, but another saint, Beatus Drausius, the 
 patron of pugilists and duellists, who promised victory to 
 intending combatants on their passing a night at his shrine.^ 
 
 1 Becket to the King, May, 1166 (abridged). 
 
 2 " Tandem dixit quod omnes proditores erant, qui eum adhibita opera 
 et diligentia ab unius hominis infestatione nolebant impedire." 
 
 3 " Archiepiscopus noster in procinctu ferendae sententite constitutus iter 
 arripuerat ad urbem Suessionum orationis causa, ut Beatae Virgini, cujusibi 
 memoria Celebris est, et Beato Drausio, ad quern confugiunt pugnaturi, et 
 Beato Gregorio Anglicanae Ecclesise fundatori, qui in eadeni urbe requiescit, 
 agonem suum precibus commendaret. Est autem Beatus Drausius gloriosis- 
 simus confessor qui, sicut Franci et Lotharingi credunt, pugiles qui ad me- 
 moriam ejus pernoctant reddit invictos." — John of Salisbury to the Bishop 
 of Exeter. Letters, vol. i. p. 227, ed. Giles. 
 
60 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 Becket gave St. Drausius three nights — or perhaps one 
 to each saiut — and thus fortified he betook himself to 
 Yezelay, where at AVhitsuntide vast numbers of people 
 assembled from all parts of France. There from the pulpit 
 after sermon on Whitsuntide, with the appropriate cere- 
 monies of bells and lighted candles quenched, he took ven- 
 geance at last upon his enemies. He suspended the Bishop 
 of Salisbury. He cursed John of Oxford and tlie Arch- 
 deacon of Ilchester, two leadino^ churchmen of the kinij's 
 party. He cursed Chief Justice de Luci, who had directed 
 the sequestration of his see. He cursed Ranulf de Broc 
 and every person employed in administering his estates. 
 Finally he cursed every one who maintained the Constitu- 
 tions of Clarendon, and he released the bishops from their 
 promise to observe them, A remnant of prudence or a re- 
 port of the king's illness led him partially to withhold his 
 hand. He did not actually curse Henry, but he threatened 
 that he shortly would curse him unless he repented. 
 
 In high delight with himself tlie archbishop issued a 
 pastoral to the bishops of England telling them what he 
 had done, talking in his usual high style of the rights of 
 priests over kings and princes, and ordering them at their 
 souls' peril to see that the sentence was obeyed. He wrote 
 at the same time to the pope inclosing the terms of the 
 excommunication, his condemnation of the Constitutions, 
 and the threats which he had addressed to the king. These 
 threats he declared his intention of carrying into effect un- 
 less the king showed speedy signs of submission, and he 
 required Alexander in a tone of imperious consequence to 
 confirm what he had done. 
 
 On the arrival of the censures in England the bishops 
 met in London and determined on a further appeal to the 
 pope. They addressed a unanimous and remarkable re- 
 monstrance to him, going into the origin of the quarrel, in- 
 sisting on the abominable conduct of many of the clergy, 
 the necessity of reform, and the moderation which the king 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 61 
 
 had shown.^ The Constitutions which he had adopted they 
 declared to have been taken from the established customs 
 of the realm. If they appeared objectionable, his holiness 
 need but point to the articles of which he disapproved, and 
 they should be immediately altered. The archbishop's un- 
 called-for violence had been the sole obstacle to an arrange- 
 ment. 
 
 With this letter and others from the king an embassy 
 was dispatched to Rome, John of Oxford, whom Becket 
 had personally excommunicated, being significantly one of 
 its members. 
 
 Pending the result of the appeal, the English bishops in 
 a body remonstrated with Becket himself. They reminded 
 him of his personal obligations to the king, and of the 
 dangers which he was provoking. The king, they said, 
 had listened coldly hitherto to the advances of Germany. 
 But these good dispositions might not last forever. For 
 the archbishop to scatter curses without allowing the per- 
 sons denounced an opportunity of answering for themselves, 
 was against reason and precedent; and they had placed 
 themselves under the protection of his holiness. 
 
 Becket was not to be frightened by threats of German al- 
 liance. He knew better. He lectured the bishops for their 
 want of understanding. He rebuked them for their coward- 
 ice and want of faith. The Bishop of London had recalled 
 to him unpleasant passages in his own past history. The 
 tone of Foliot as well as his person drove Becket wild. He 
 spoke of the Bishop of London as an Ahitophel and a Doeg. 
 
 Your letter (he replied to him) is like a scorpion with a sting 
 in its tail. You profess obedience to me, and to avoid obe- 
 dience you appeal to the pope. Little will you gain by it. You 
 have no feeling for me, or for the Church, or for the king, whose 
 
 1 " Qui cum pacem regni sui enormi insolentium quorundam clericorum 
 excessu non mediocriter turbari cognosceret, clero debitam exhibens rever- 
 entiam eorundem excessus ad ecclesiae judices retulit episcopos. ut gladiua 
 gladio subveniat." — Ad Alexandrum Pontifcem. Hoveden, vol. i. p. 266. 
 
62 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 soul is perishing. You blame me for threatening him. What 
 father will see his son go astray and hesitate to restrain that 
 son? Who will not use the rod that he may spare the sword ? 
 The ship is in the storm : I am at the helm, and you bid me 
 sleep. To him who speaks thus to me I reply, " Get thee be- 
 hind me, Satan I" The king, you say, desires to do what is 
 right. ^ly clergy are banished, my possessions are taken from 
 me, the sword hangs over my neck. Do you call this right? 
 Tell the king that the Lord of men and angels has established 
 two powers, princes and priests — the first earthly, the second 
 spiritual; the first to obey, the second to command. He who 
 breaks this order breaks the ordinance of God. Tell him it is 
 no dishonor to him to submit to those to whom God himself 
 defers, calling them gods in the sacred writings. For thus he 
 speaks: " I have said ye are gods; " and again, " I will make 
 thee a God unto Pharaoh; " " Thou shalt take nothing from the 
 gods " (i. e. the priests).^ .... The king may not judge his 
 •judges; the lips of the priest shall keep wisdom. It is written, 
 " Thou shalt require the law at his mouth, for he is the angel of 
 God." 
 
 The Catholic Church would have had but a brief career 
 in this world if the rulers of it had been so wild of mind as 
 this astonishing martyr of Canterbury. The air-bubble, 
 when blown the fullest and shining the brightest, is nearest 
 to collapsing into a drop of dirty water. John of Salisbury, 
 sympathizing with him and admiring him as he generally 
 did, saw clearly that the pope could never sanction so pre- 
 posterous an attitude. " I have little trust in the Church 
 of Rome," he said. " I know the ways of it and the needs 
 of it too well. So greedy, so dishonest are the Romans, 
 that they use too often the license of power, and take dis- 
 pensations to grant what they say is useful to the common- 
 wealth, however fatal it may be to religion." ^ 
 
 1 " Xon indignetur itaque dominus noster deferre illis quibus omnium 
 Summus deferre non dedignatur, deos appellans eos saepius in sacris Ute- 
 ris. Sic enira dicit, 'Ego dixi, Dii estis,' etc.; et iterum, 'Constitui te 
 deum Pharaonis,' ' Et diis non detrahes,' i. e. sacerdotibus," etc. — Becket 
 to Foliot. Hoveden, vol. i. p. 261. 
 
 2 ''Kecde ecclesia Romana, cujus mores et necessitates nobis innotu- 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 63 
 
 The first practical effect of the excommunication was the 
 recoil of the blow upon the archbishop's entertainers. In 
 the shelter of a Cistercian abbey in France, an English 
 subject was committing treason and levying war against his 
 sovereign and his country. A chapter of the Cistercian 
 Order was held in September. King Henry sent a message 
 to the general, that, if his abbot continued to protect Becket, 
 the Cistercians in England would be suppressed, and their 
 property confiscated. The startled general did not dare to 
 resist ; a message was sent to Pontigny ; in the fluttered 
 dovecote it was resolved that Becket must go, and it was a 
 cruel moment to him. A fresh asylum was provided for 
 him at Sens. But he had grown accustomed to Pontigny, 
 and had led a pleasant life there. On his first arrival he 
 had attempted asceticisms, but his health had suffered, and 
 his severities had been relaxed. He was out of spirits at 
 his departure. His tears were flowing. The abbot cheered 
 him up, laughed at his dejection, and told him there was 
 nothing in his fate so particularly terrible. Becket said that 
 he had dreamt the night before that he was to be martyred. 
 " Martyrdom ! " laughed the abbot ; " what has a man who 
 eats and drinks like you to do with martyrdom ? The cup 
 of wine which you drink has small affinity with the cup of 
 martyrdom." " I confess," said Becket, " that I indulge in 
 pleasures of the flesh. Yet the good God has deigned to 
 reveal my fate to me." ^ 
 
 Sad at heart, the archbishop removed to Sens ; yet if the 
 pope stood firm, all might yet be well. 
 
 erunt, miiltum confido. Tot et tantse sunt necessitates, tanta aviditas et 
 improbitas Romanorum, ut interdiim utatur licentia potestatis, procuret- 
 que ex dispensatione quod reipublicae dicitur expedire, etsi nou expediat 
 religioni." — To Becket. Letters, 1166. 
 
 1 Ergo m arty rio interibis ? Quid esculento et temulentoet martyri? 
 Non bene conveniunt, nec in una sede morantur, 
 calix vini quod potas et calix martyrii.' 'Fateor,' inquit, ' corporeis vo- 
 luptatibus indulgeo. Bonus tamen Dominus, qui justificat impiura, in- 
 digno dignatus est revelare mysterium.' " — Materials^ vol. i. p. 51. 
 
lAfe and Times of 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The archbishop's letters show conclusively that the Con- 
 stitutions were not the real causes of the dispute with the 
 king. The king was willing to leave the Constitutions to 
 be modified by the pope. The archbishop's contest, lying 
 concealed in his favorite phrases, " saving my order," " sav- 
 ing the honor of God," was for the supremacy of the Church 
 over the Crown ; for the degradation of the civil power into 
 the position of delegate of the pope and bishops. All 
 authority was derived from God. The clergy were the di- 
 rect ministers of God. Therefore all authority was derived 
 from God through them. However well the assumption 
 might appear in theory, it would not work in practice, and 
 John of Salisbury was right in concluding that the pope 
 would never sanction an assumption which, broadly stated 
 and really acted on, would shake the fabric of the Church 
 throughout Europe. Alexander was dreaming of peace 
 when the news reached him of the excommunications at Ve- 
 zelay. The news that Chief Justice de Luci had hanged 
 500 felonious clerks in England would have caused him less 
 annoyance. Henry's envoys brought with them the bishops' 
 appeal, and renewed the demand for cardinal legates to be 
 sent to end the quarrel. This time the pope decided that 
 the legates should go, carrying with them powers to take off 
 Becket's censures. He prohibited Becket himself from 
 pursuing his threats further till the cardinals' arrival. To 
 Henry he sent a private letter — which, however, he per- 
 mitted him to show if circumstances made it necessary — 
 declaring beforehand that any sentences which the arch- 
 
Thomas Becket. 
 
 65 
 
 bishop might issue against himself or his subjects should be 
 void.-^ 
 
 The humiliation was terrible ; Becket's victims were free, 
 and even rewarded. John of Oxford came back from Rome 
 with the Deanery of Salisbury. Worst of all, the cardinals 
 were coming, and those the most dreaded of the whole 
 body, Cardinal Otho and Cardinal William of Pavia. One 
 of them, said John of Salisbury, was light and uncertain, the 
 other crafty and false, and both made up of avarice. These 
 were the ministers of the Holy See, for whose pretensions 
 Becket was fiffhtino^. This was his estimate of them when 
 they were to try his own cause. His letters at this moment 
 were filled with despair. " Ridicule has fallen on me," he 
 said, ''and shame on the pope. I am to be obeyed no 
 longer. I am betrayed and given to destruction. My de- 
 position is a settled thing. Of this, at least, let the pope 
 assure himself : never will I accept the Cardinal of Pavia for 
 my judge. When they are rid of me, I hear he is to be 
 my successor at Canterbury."^ 
 
 Becket, however, was not the man to leave the field while 
 life was in him. There was still hope, for war had broken 
 out at last, and Henry and Lewis were killing and burning 
 in each other's territories. If not the instigator, Becket was 
 the occasion, and Lewis, for his own interests, would still be 
 forced to stand by him. He was intensely superstitious. 
 His cause, he was convinced, was God's cause. Hitherto 
 God had allowed him to fail on account of his own deficien- 
 cies, and the deficiencies required to be amended. Like 
 certain persons who cut themselves with knives and lancets, 
 he determined now to mortify his flesh in earnest. When 
 settled in his new life at Sens, he rose at daybreak, prayed 
 in his oratory, said mass, and prayed and wept again. Five 
 times each day and night his chaplain flogged him. His 
 food was bread and water, his bed the floor. A hair shirt 
 
 1 The Pope to Henry, December 20, 1166. 
 
 2 Becket's Letters, Giles, vol. ii. p. 60. 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 was not enough without hair drawers which reached his 
 knees, and both were worn till they swarmed with vermin.^ 
 The cardinals approached, and the prospect grew hourly 
 blacker. The pope rebuked Lewis for the war. The op- 
 portunity of the cardinals' presence was to be used for res- 
 toration of peace. Poor as Becket was, he could not ap- 
 proach these holy beings on their accessible side. "The 
 Cardinal of Pavia," said John of Salisbury, "thinks only of 
 the king's money, and has no fear of God in him. Cardinal 
 Otho is better : Romanus tamen et cardinalis (but he is a 
 Roman and a cardinal). If we submit our cause to them, 
 we lose it to a certainty. If we refuse we offend the King 
 of France." The Cardinal of Pavia wrote to announce to 
 Becket his arrival in France and the purpose of his mission. 
 Becket replied with a violent letter, of which he sent a copy 
 to John of Salisbury, but dispatched it before his friend 
 could stop him. John of Salisbury thought that the arch- 
 bishop had lost his senses. " Compare the cardinal's letter 
 and your answer to it," he said. " What had the cardinal 
 done that you should tell him he was giving you poison ? 
 You have no right to insult a cardinal and the pope's legate 
 on his first communication with you. Were he to send 
 your letter to Rome, you might be charged with contu- 
 macy. He tells you he is come to close the dispute to the 
 honor of God and the Church. What poison is there in 
 this ? He is not to blame because he cautions you not to 
 provoke the king further. Your best friends have often 
 given you the same advice." 
 
 With great difficulty Becket was brought to consent to 
 
 1 Myths gathered about the state of these garments. One day, we are 
 told, he was dining with the Queen of France. She observed that his 
 sleeves were fastened unusually ti^^htly at the wrist, and that something 
 moved inside them. He tried to evade her curiosity, for the moving 
 things were maggots. But she pressed her questions till he was obliged 
 to loosen the strings. Pearls of choicest size and color rolled upon the 
 table. The queen wished to keep one, but it could not be. The pearls 
 were restored to the sleeve, and became maggots as before. — Materials^ 
 vol. ii. p. 296. 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 67 
 
 see the cardinals. They came to him at Sens, but stayed 
 for a short time only, and went on to the king in Nor- 
 mandy. The archbishop gathered no comfort from his 
 speech with them. He took to his bell and candles again, 
 and cursed the Bishop of London. He still intended to 
 curse the king and declare an interdict. He wrote to a 
 friend. Cardinal Hyacinth, at Rome, to say that he would 
 never submit to the arbitration of the cardinal legates, and 
 bidding him urge the pope to confirm the sentences which 
 he was about to pronounce.^ He implored the pope him- 
 self to recall the cardinals and unsheath the sword of Peter. 
 To his entire confusion, he learned that the king held a 
 letter from the pope declaring that his curses would be so 
 much wasted breath. 
 
 The pope tried to soothe him. Soft words cost Alex- 
 ander nothing ; and, while protecting Henry from spiritual 
 thunders, he assured the archbishop himself that his power 
 should not be taken from him. Nor, indeed, had the vio- 
 lence of Becket's agitation any real occasion. Alexander 
 wished to frighten him into submission, but had no inten- 
 tion of compromising himself by an authoritative decision. 
 Many months passed away, and Becket still refused to 
 plead before the cardinals. At length they let out that 
 their powers extended no further than advice, and Becket, 
 thus satisfied, consented to an official conference. The meet- 
 ing was held near Gisors, on the frontiers of France and 
 Normandy, on the 18th of November, 1167. The arch- 
 bishop came attended by his exiled English friends. With 
 the cardinals were a large body of Norman bishops and 
 abbots. The cardinals, earnest for peace if they could bring 
 their refractory patient to consent to it, laid before him the 
 general unfitness of the quarrel. They accused him of in- 
 gratitude, of want of loyalty to his sovereign, and, among 
 other things, of having instigated the war.^ 
 
 1 Giles, vol. ii. p. 86. 
 
 2 " Imponens ei inter cjetera quod excitaverat guerram regis Franco- 
 rum." — Materials, vol. i. p. 66. 
 
68 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 The last charge the archbishop sharply denied, and Lewis 
 afterwards acquitted him also. For the rest he said that the 
 king had begun by attacking the Church. He was willing 
 to consent to any reasonable terms of arrangement, with 
 security for God's honor, proper respect for himself, and 
 the restoration of his estates. They asked if he would recog- 
 nize the Constitutions ; he said that no such engagement had 
 been required of his predecessors, and ought not to be re- 
 quired of him. " The book of abominations," as he called 
 the Constitutions, was produced and read, and he challenged 
 the cardinals to affirm that Christian men should obey such 
 laws. 
 
 Henry was prepared to accept the smallest concession ; 
 nothing need be said about the Constitutions if Becket 
 would go back to Canterbury, resume his duties, and give 
 a general promise to be quiet. The archbishop answered 
 that there was a proverb in England that silence gave con- 
 sent. The question had been raised, and could not now be 
 passed over. The cardinals asked if he would accept their 
 judgment on the whole cause. He said that he would go 
 into court before them or any one whom the pope might 
 appoint, as soon as his property was restored to him. In 
 his present poverty he could not encounter the exi^ense of 
 a lawsuit. 
 
 Curious satire on Becket's whole contention, none the 
 less so that he was himself unconscious of the absurdity ! 
 He withdrew from the conference, believing that he had 
 gained a victory, and he again began to meditate drawing 
 his spiritual sword. Messengers on all sides again flew off 
 to Eome, from the king and English bishops, from the car- 
 dinals, from Becket himself. The king and bishops placed 
 themselves under the pope's protection should the arch- 
 bishop begin his curses. The Constitutions were once more 
 placed at the pope's discretion to modify at his pleasure. 
 The cardinals wrote charging Becket with being the sole 
 cause of the continuance of the quarrel, and, in spite of his 
 
Thomas Becket. 
 
 69 
 
 denials, persisting in accusing him of having caused the war. 
 Becket prayed again for the cardinals' recall, and for the 
 pope's sanction of more vigorous action. 
 
 He had not yet done with the cardinals ; they knew him, 
 and they knew his restless humor. Pending fresh resolu- 
 tions from Rome, they suspended him, and left him inca- 
 pable either of excommunicating or exercising any other 
 function of spiritual authority whatsoever. Once more he 
 was plunged into despair. 
 
 Through those legates, he cried in his anguish to the 
 pope, " We are made a derision to those about us. My 
 lord, have pity on me. You are my refuge. I can scarcely 
 breathe for anguish. My harp is turned to mourning, and 
 my joy to sadness. The last error is worse than the first.'* 
 
 The pope seemed deaf to his lamentations. The suspen- 
 sion was not removed. Plans were formed for his transla- 
 tion from Canterbury to some other preferment. He said 
 he would rather be killed. The pope wrote so graciously 
 to Henry that the king said he for the first time felt that 
 he was sovereign in his own realm. John of Salisbury's 
 mournful conviction was that the game was at last played 
 out. " We know those Romans," he sighed : " qui munere 
 potentior est, potentior est jure. The antipope could not 
 have done more for the king than they have done. It will 
 be written in the annals of the Holy See that the herald of 
 truth, the champion of liberty, the preacher of the law of 
 the Lord, has been deprived and treated as a criminal at 
 the threats of an English prince." 
 
 It is hard to say what influence again turned the scale. 
 Perhaps Alexander was encouraged by the failures of Bar- 
 barossa in Italy. Perhaps Henry had been too triumphant, 
 and had irritated the pope and cardinals by producing their 
 letters, and speaking too frankly of the influences by which 
 the holy men had been bound to his side.^ In accepting 
 Henry's money they had not bargained for exposure. They 
 ^ John of Salisburj', Letters, vol. ii. p. 144, ed. Giles 
 
70 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 were ashamed aud sore, and Becket grew again into favor. 
 The pope at the end of 1168 gave him back his powers, 
 permitting him to excommunicate even Henry himself un- 
 less he repented before the ensuing Easter. The legates 
 were recalled as Becket desired. Cardinal Otho recom- 
 mended the king to make his peace on the best terms which 
 he could get. John of Salisbury, less confident, but with 
 amused contempt of the chameleonlike Alexander, advised 
 Henry, through the Bishop of Poitiers, to treat with the 
 archbishop immediately, nec mediante Romano episcopo, nec 
 rege Francice nec opera cardinalium, without help either of 
 pope, of French king or cardinals. Since Becket could not 
 be frightened, Alexander was perhaps trying what could be 
 done with Henry ; but he was as eager as any one for an 
 end of some kind to a business which was now adding dis- 
 grace and scandal to its other mischiefs. Peace was ar- 
 ranged at last between Lewis and Henry. The English 
 king gave up a point for which he had long contended, and 
 consented to do homage for Normandy and Anjou. The 
 day after Epiphany, January 7, 1169, the two princes met 
 at Montmirail, between Chartres and Le Mans, attended by 
 their peers and prelates. 
 
 In the general pacification the central disturber was, if 
 possible, to be included. The pope had sent commissioners, 
 as we should call them — Simon, prior of Montdieu, Engel- 
 bert, prior of Val St. Pierre, and Bernard de Corilo — to 
 advise and, if possible, guide Becket into wiser courses. 
 The political ceremonies were accomplished, Lewis and 
 Henr}^ were reconciled amidst general satisfaction and en- 
 thusiasm. Becket was then introduced, led in by the 
 Archbishop of Sens, the son of the aged Theobald, Count of 
 Blois. Henry and he had not met since the Northampton 
 council. He threw himself in apparent humility at the 
 king's feet. " My lord," he said, I ask you to forgive me. 
 I place myself in God's hands and in yours." ^ At a pre- 
 
 1 '* Miserere mei, domine, quia pouo me in Deo et vobis ad honorem Dei 
 et vestrum." 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 71 
 
 liminary meeting the pope's envoys and the French clergy 
 had urged him to submit without conditions. He had in- 
 sisted on his usual reservation, but they had objected to 
 saving clauses. He seemed now inclined really to yield, so 
 Herbert de Bosham says, and Herbert whispered to him to 
 stand firm. 
 
 " My lord king," said Henry, after Becket had made his 
 general submission, " and you my lords and prelates, what I 
 require of the archbishop is no more than that he will ob- 
 serve the laws which have been observed by his predeces- 
 sors. I ask him now to give me that promise." Becket no 
 longer answered with the reservation of his order : he 
 changed the phrase. He promised obedience, saving the 
 honor of God. 
 
 " You wish," replied Henry, powerfully disappointed and 
 displeased, " to be king in my place. This man," he con- 
 tinued, turning to Lewis, " deserted his Church of his own 
 will, and he tells you and all men that his cause is the cause 
 of the Church. He has governed his Church with as much 
 freedom as those who have gone before him, but now he 
 stands on God's honor to oppose me wherever he pleases, 
 as if I cared for God's honor less than he. I make this 
 proposal. Many kings have ruled in England before me, 
 some less, some greater than I am ; many holy men have 
 been Archbishops of Canterbury before him. Let him be- 
 have to me as the most sainted of his predecessors behaved 
 to the least worthy of mine, and I am content." 
 
 The king's demand seemed just and moderate to all pres- 
 ent.^ The archbishop hesitated. Lewis asked him if he 
 aspired to be greater than acknowledged saints. His pred- 
 ecessors, he said, had extirpated some abuses but not all. 
 There was work which remained to be done. He was 
 stopped by a general outcry that the king had yielded 
 enough ; the saving clause must be dropped. At once, at 
 the tone of command, Becket's spirit rose. Priests and 
 1 " Rem justam et modestara visus est omnibus postulare." 
 
72 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 bishops, he answered defiantly, were not to submit to men of 
 this world save with reservations ; he for one would not do 
 it. 
 
 The meeting broke .up in confusion. A French noble 
 said that the archbishop was abusing their hospitality, and 
 did not deserve any longer protection. Henry mounted his 
 horse and rode sadly away. The pope's agents followed 
 him, wringing their hands and begging for some slight ad- 
 ditional concession. The king told them that they must 
 address themselves to the archbishop, Let the archbishop 
 bind himself to obey the laws. If the laws were amiss, 
 they should be modified by the pope's wishes. In no 
 country in the world, he said, had the clergy so much liberty 
 as in England, and in no country were there greater villains 
 among them. For the sake of peace he did not insist on 
 terms precisely defined. The archbishop was required to 
 do nothing beyond what had been done by Anselm. 
 
 Becket, however, was again immovable as stone. Lewis, 
 after a brief coldness, took him back into favor. His power 
 of cursing had been restored to him. The doubt was only 
 whether the pope had recalled the safeguards which he had 
 given to the king. The pope's agents, on the failure of the 
 conference, gave Henry a second letter, in which Alexander 
 told him that, unless peace was made, he could not restrain 
 the archbishop longer. Again representatives of the vari- 
 ous parties hurried off to Rome, Becket insisting that if the 
 pope would only be firm the king would yield, Henry em- 
 barrassing the pope more completely than threats of schism 
 could have done by placing the Constitutions unreservedly 
 in his hands, and binding himself to adopt any change 
 which the pope might suggest. Becket, feverish and impa- 
 tient, would not wait for the pope's decision, and preferred 
 to force his hand by action. He summoned the Bishops of 
 London and Salisbury to appear before him. They ap- 
 pealed to Rome, but their appeal was disregarded. Appeals, 
 as Becket characteristically said, were not allowed in order 
 
Thomas BecheL 
 
 73 
 
 to shield the guilty, but to protect the innocent. On Palm. 
 Sunday, at Clair vaux, he took once more to his bell and 
 candles. He excommunicated the two bishops and every 
 one who had been concerned with his property — the Earl 
 of Norfolk, Sir Ranulf de Broc, whom he peculiarly hated, 
 Robert de Broc, and various other persons. The chief 
 justice he threatened. The king he still left unmentioned, 
 for fear of provoking the pope too far. 
 
 Harassed on both sides, knowing perfectly well on which 
 * side good sense and justice lay, yet not daring to declare 
 Becket wrong, and accept what, after all that had passed, 
 would be construed into a defeat of the Church, the unfort- 
 unate Alexander drifted on as he best could, writing letters 
 in one sense one day and contradicting them the next. On 
 the surface he seemed hopelessly false. The falsehood was 
 no more than weakness, a specious anxiety to please the 
 king without offending the archbishop, and trusting to time 
 and weariness to bring about an end. There is no occasion 
 to follow the details of his duplicities. Two legates were 
 again sent — not cardinals this time, but ecclesiastical law- 
 yers, Gratian and Vivian — bound by oath this time to 
 cause no scandal by accepting bribes. As usual, the choice 
 was impartial ; Gratian for Becket, Vivian for the king. 
 So long as his excommunications were allowed to stand, 
 Becket cared little who might come. He added the chief 
 justice to the list of the accursed, as he had threatened to do. 
 He wrote to the Bishop of Ostia that the king's disposition 
 could only be amended by punishment. The serpent head 
 of the iniquit}'' must now be bruised, and he bade the bishop 
 impress the necessity of it upon the pope. Gratian was 
 taken into Becket's confidence. Vivian he treated coldly 
 and contemptuously. According to Herbert and Becket's 
 friends, Gratian reported that the king was shifty and false, 
 and that his object was to betray the Church and the arch- 
 bishop. Henry himself declared that he assented to all that 
 they proposed to him, and Diceto says that the legates were 
 
74 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 on the point of giving judgment in Henry's favor when the 
 Archbishop of Sens interposed and forbade them. In the 
 confusion of statement the actions of either party alone can 
 be usefully attended to, and behind the acts of all, or at 
 least of the pope, there was the usual ambiguity. Alexander 
 threatened the kmg. He agam empowered Becket to use 
 whatever power he possessed to bring him to submission, 
 and he promised to confirm his sentences.-^ As certainly he 
 had secret conferences at Rome with Henry's envoys, and 
 promised, on the other hand, that the archbishop should not 
 be allowed to hurt him. Becket, furious and uncontrollable, 
 called the Bishop of London a parricide, an infidel, a Go- 
 liath, a son of Belial ; he charged the Bishop of Hereford 
 to see that the sentence against Foliot and his brother of 
 Salisbury should be observed in England. Henry, on the 
 other hand, assured Foliot of protection, and sent him to 
 Rome with letters from himself to pursue his appeal and 
 receive absolution from the pope himself. The Count of 
 Flanders interposed, the Count of Mayence interposed, but 
 without eflTect. At length on the 18th of November, the 
 anniversary of the conference with the cardinals at Gisors, 
 Henry and Lewis met again at Montmartre outside Paris, 
 Becket and his friends being in attendance in an adjoining 
 chapel. Gratian had returned to Rome. Vivian was pres- 
 ent, and pressed Lewis to bring the archbishop to reason. 
 Lewis really exerted himself, and not entirely unsuccess- 
 fully. Henry was even more moderate than before. The 
 Constitutions, by the confession of Becket's biographer, 
 Herbert, who was with him on the spot, were practically 
 abandoned. Henry's only condition was that the archbishop 
 should not usurp the functions of the civil power; he, on 
 his part, undertaking not to strain the prerogative. Becket 
 dropped his saving clause, and consented to make the prom- 
 ise required of him, if the king would restore his estates, 
 and give him compensation for the arrear rents, which he 
 1 " Quod ea quae statuerit non mutabuntur.'* ^ 
 
Thomas Bechet, 
 
 75 
 
 estimated at 20,000^. Lewis said that money ought not to 
 be an obstacle to peace. It was unworthy of the archbishop 
 to raise so poor a difficulty. But here, too, Henry gave 
 way. An impartial estimate should be made, and Becket 
 was to be repaid. 
 
 But now, no more than before, had the archbishop any 
 real intention of submitting. His only fear was of offend- 
 ing Lewis. The Archbishop of Sens had gone to Rome to 
 persuade the pope to give him legatine powers over Hen- 
 ry's French dominions. The censures of the Church might 
 be resisted in England. If Normandy, Anjou, and Aqui- 
 taine were laid under interdict, these two spiritual conspir- 
 ators had concluded that the king would be forced to sur- 
 render. Becket was daily expecting a favorable answer, 
 and meanwhile was protracting the time. He demanded 
 guarantees. He did not suspect the king, he said, but he 
 suspected his courtiers. John of Salisbury had cautioned 
 him, and the pope had cautioned him, against so indecent a 
 requisition. Lewis said it was unreasonable. Becket said 
 then that he must have the kiss of peace as a sign that the 
 king was really reconciled to him. He probably knew that 
 the kiss would and must be withheld from him until he had 
 given proofs that he meant in earnest to carry out his en- 
 gagements. The king said coldly that he did not mean, and 
 had never meant, to injure the Church. He was willing to 
 leave the whole question between himself and the archbishop 
 either to the peers and prelates of France or to the French 
 universities. More he could not do. The conference at 
 Montmartre ended, as Becket meant that it should end, in 
 nothing. 
 
 He sent off dispatches to the Archbishop of Sens and to 
 his Roman agents, entirely well satisfied with himself, and 
 bidding them tell the pope that Normandy had only to be 
 laid under interdict, and that the field was won. Once 
 more he had painfully to discover that he had been building 
 on a quicksand. Instead of the interdict, the pope sent 
 
76 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 orders to the Archbisliop of Rouen and the Bishop of 
 Nevers to absolve a second time the victims whom he had 
 excommunicated at Clairvaux. Instead of encouragement 
 to go on and smite the king with the spiritual sword, he 
 received a distinct command to abstain for another interval. 
 Last of all, and worst of all, the pope informed him that at 
 the king's request, for certain important purposes, he had 
 granted a commission, as legate over all England, to his 
 rival and enemy the Archbishop of York. The king's 
 envoys had promised that the commission should not be 
 handed to the Archbishop of York till the pope had been 
 again consulted. But the deed was done. The letter had 
 been signed and delivered.-^ The hair shirt and the five 
 daily floggings had been in vain then ! Heaven was still 
 inexorable. The archbishop raved like a madman. Satan 
 was set free for the destruction of the Church." " At Rome 
 it was always the same. Barabbas was let go, and Christ 
 was crucified." "Come what might, he would never sub- 
 mit, but he would trouble the Roman Church no more." ^ 
 
 1 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, pp. 249, 250. 
 
 2 Becket to Cardinal Albert. Giles, vol. ii. p. 251. 
 
Thomas BecJcet. 
 
 77 
 
 CHAPTER Vni. 
 
 Becket had now been for more than five years in exile. 
 He had fought for victory with a tenacity which would 
 have done him credit had his cause been less preposterous. 
 At length it seemed that hope was finally gone. At the 
 supreme moment another opportunity was thrust into his 
 hands. Henry's health was uncertain ; he had once been 
 dangerously ill. The succession to the English crown had 
 not yet settled into fixed routine. Of the Conqueror's sons 
 William had been preferred to Robert. Stephen sup- 
 planted Matilda; but the son of Stephen was set aside for 
 Matilda's son. To prevent disputes it had been long de- 
 cided that Prince Henry must be crowned and receive the 
 homage of the barons while his father was still living. 
 
 The pope in person had been invited to perform the cer- 
 emony. The pope had found it impossible to go, and 
 among the other inconveniences resulting from Becket's 
 absence the indefinite postponement of this coronation had 
 not been the lightest. The king had been reluctant to in- 
 vade the acknowledged privilege of the Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury, and put it off from year to year. But the country 
 was growing impatient. The archbishop's exile might now 
 be indefinitely protracted. The delay was growing danger- 
 ous, and the object of the commission for which the king 
 had asked, and which the pope had granted to the Arch- 
 bishop of York, was to enable the Archbishop of York to 
 act in the coronation ceremony. The commission in its 
 terms was all that Henry could desire ; the pope not only 
 permitted the Archbishop of York to ofiiciate, but enjoined 
 him to do it. Promises were said to have been given that 
 
78 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 it was not to be used without the pope's consent; but in 
 such a labyrinth of lies little reliance can be placed on state- 
 ments unconfirmed by writing. The pope did not pretend 
 that he had exacted from the English envoys any written 
 engagement. He had himself signed a paper giving the 
 Archbishop of York the necessary powers, and this paper 
 was in the king's hands.^ The coronation was the symbol 
 of the struggle in which Becket was now engaged. The 
 sovereign, according to his theory, was the delegate of the 
 Church. In receiving the crown from the hands of the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, the sovereign formally admitted 
 his dependent position ; and so long as it could be main- 
 tained that the coronation would not hold unless it was per- 
 formed either by the Archbishop of Canterbury or by the 
 pope himself, the sovereign's subject state was a practical 
 reality. 
 
 Becket saw the favorable moment, and instantly snatched 
 at it. He had many powerful friends in England among 
 the peers and knights. The lay peers, he says in his let- 
 ters, had always been truer to him than the clergy, they 
 on their part having their own differences with the crown. 
 He had ascertained that the coronation could not be post- 
 poned ; and if he could make the validity of it to depend 
 on his own presence, he might redeem his past mortifica- 
 tions, and bring Henry to his feet after all. He knew Al- 
 exander's nature and set his agents to work upon him. He 
 told them to say that if the coronation was accomplished 
 without his own presence the power of the Roman see in 
 England was gone ; and thus, when all seemed lost, he 
 gained the feeble and uncertain pope to his side once more. 
 In keeping with his conduct throughout the whole Becket 
 difficulty, Alexander did not revoke his previous letter. He 
 left it standing as something to appeal to, as an evidence of 
 his goodwill to Henry. But he issued another injunction to 
 
 1 Giles, vol. ii. pp. 2-57, 258. The commission quoted by Giles is evi- 
 dently the same as that to which the pope referred in his letter to Becket 
 
Thomas BecTcet, 
 
 79 
 
 the Archbishop of York, strictly forbidding him to officiate ; 
 and he inclosed the injunction to Becket to be used by him 
 in whatever manner he might think fit. The Archbishop 
 of York never received this letter. It was given, we are 
 told, to the Bishop of Worcester, who was in Normandy, and 
 was on the point of returning to England. The Bishop of 
 Worcester was detained, and it did not reach its destination. 
 So runs the story ; but the parts will not fit one another, 
 and there is a mystery left unexplained.-^ This only is 
 certain, that the inhibition was not served on the Arch- 
 bishop of York. Rumor may have reached England that 
 such a thing had been issued ; but the commission which had 
 been formerly granted remained legally unrevoked, and on 
 the 18th of June Prince Henry was crowned at West- 
 minster in his father's presence by the Archbishop of York 
 and the Bishops of London, Durham, Rochester, and Salis- 
 bury. 
 
 It was easy now for Becket to represent to Alexander 
 that the English bishops had rewarded his kindness to 
 them by defying his positive injunctions. To the super- 
 stitious English barons the existence of the inhibition threw 
 a doubt on the legality of the coronation, and as men's 
 minds then were, and with the wild lawless disposition of 
 such lion cubs as the Plantagenet princes, a tainted title 
 would too surely mean civil war. By ill-fortune offence 
 was given at the same time to Lewis, who considered that 
 his daughter should have been crowned with her husband, 
 and he resented what he chose to regard as a wilful slight. 
 
 1 It would appear from a letter of John of Salisbury that the prohibi- 
 tory letter had been purposely withheld by Becket, who was allowing 
 himself to be guided by some idle vaticinia or prophecies. John of Salis- 
 bury writes to him (Letters, vol. ii. p. 236): "Memineritis quantum peri- 
 culum et infortunium ad see traxerit mora porrigendi .... prohibito- 
 
 rias Eboracensi archiepiscopo et episcopis transmarinis Subtilitatem 
 
 vestram vaticinia quae non erant a Spiritu deluserunt Vaticiniis 
 
 ergo renunciemus in posterum, quia nos in hac parte gravius infortunia 
 perculerunt." 
 
80 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 The pope was told that the coronation oath had been al- 
 tered, that the liberties of the Church had been omitted, 
 and that the young king had been sworn to maintain the 
 Constitutions of Clarendon. Becket made the most of his 
 opportunity ; mistakes, exaggerations, wilful lies, and cul- 
 pable credulity did their work effectively ; Lewis went to 
 war again, and invaded Normandy ; the pope, believing 
 that he had been tricked and insulted, commanded Henry 
 to make peace with the archbishop under threat of instant 
 personal excommunication of himself and an interdict over 
 his whole dominions. Henry flew back from England to 
 Normandy. In a month he dispelled the illusions of Lewis, 
 and restored peace. It was less easy to calm Alexander, 
 who regard6d himself, if not openly defied, yet as betrayed 
 by the breach of the promise that the commission to the 
 Archbishop of York should not be used without a fresh 
 permission from himself. Henry knew that a sentence of 
 excommunication against himself, and an interdict over his 
 French dominions, was seriously possible. The risk was 
 too great to be incurred without another effort to compose 
 the weary quarrel. The archbishop, too, on his side had 
 been taught by often repeated experience that the pope 
 was a broken reed. Many times the battle seemed to have 
 been won, and the pope's weakness or ill-will had snatched 
 the victory from him. He had left England because he 
 thought the continent a more promising field of battle for 
 him. He began to think that final success, if he was ever 
 to obtain it, would only be possible to him in his own see, 
 among his own people, surrounded by his powerful friends. 
 He too, on his side, was ready for a form of agreement 
 which would allow him to return and repossess himself of 
 the large revenues of which he had felt the want so terribly. 
 More than once he and Henry met and separated without a 
 conclusion. At length at Freteval in Vendome, on St. 
 Mary Magdalen's day, July 22, an interview took place in 
 the presence of Lewis and a vast assemblage of prelates 
 
Thomas BecTcet, 
 
 81 
 
 and knights and nobles ; where, on the terms which had 
 been arranged at Montmartre, the king and the archbishop 
 consented to be reconciled. The kiss which before had 
 been the difficulty was not offered by Henry and was not 
 demanded by Becket ; but according to the account given 
 by Herbert, who describes what he himself witnessed, and 
 relates what Becket told him, after the main points were 
 settled, the king and the archbishop rode apart out of hear- 
 ing of every one but themselves. There the archbishop 
 asked the king whether he might censure the bishops who 
 had officiated at the coronation. The king, so the arch- 
 bishop informed his friends, gave his full and free consent. 
 The archbishop sprang from his horse in gratitude to the 
 king's feet. The king alighted as hastily, and held the 
 archbishop's stirrup as he remounted. These gestures the 
 spectators saw and wondered at, unable, as Herbert says, 
 to conjecture what was passing till it was afterwards ex- 
 plained to them. 
 
 That the king should have consented as absolutely and 
 unconditionally as Becket said that he did, or even that he 
 should have consented at all in Becket's sense of the word, 
 to the excommunication of persons who had acted by his 
 own orders and under a supposed authority from the pope, 
 is so unlikely in itself, so inconsistent with Henry's conduct 
 afterwards, that we may feel assured that Henry's account 
 of what took place would, if we knew it, have been singu- 
 larly different. But we are met with a further difficulty. 
 Herbert says positively that the conversation between 
 Becket and the king was private between themselves, that 
 no one heard it or knew the subject of it except from 
 Becket's report. Count Theobald of Blois asserted, in a 
 letter to the pope, that in his presence {me prcesente) the 
 archbishop complained of the conduct of the English prel- 
 ates, and that the king empowered him to pass sentence on 
 them. Yet more remarkably, the archbishop afterwards at 
 Canterbury insisted to Reginald Fitzurse that the king's 
 6 
 
82 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 promises to him had been given in the audience of 500 
 peers, knights, and prelates, and that Sir Reginald him- 
 self was among the audience. Fitzurse denied that he heard 
 the king give any sanction to the punishment of the bish- 
 ops. He treated Becket's declaration as absurd and incred- 
 ible on the face of it. The Count of Blois may have 
 confounded what he himself heard with what Becket told 
 him afterwards, or he may have referred to some other 
 occasion. The charge against the king rests substantially 
 on Becket's own uncorrected word ; while, on the other 
 side, are the internal unlikelihood of the permission in it- 
 self and the inconsistency of Becket's subsequent action 
 with a belief that he had the king's sanction for what he 
 intended to do. Had he supposed that the king would ap- 
 prove, he would have acted openly and at once. Instead 
 of consulting the king, he had no sooner left the Freteval 
 conference than he privately obtained from the pope letters 
 of suspension against the Archbishop of York and the 
 Bishop of Durham, and letters of excommunication against 
 the Bishops of London, Salisbury, and Rochester ; and 
 while he permitted Henry to believe that he was going 
 home to govern his diocese in peace,^ he had instruments 
 in his portfolio which were to explode in lightning the mo- 
 ment that he set foot in England, and convulse the country 
 once more. 
 
 1 " Archiepiscopus pacem mecum fecit ad voluntatem meam." 
 
Thomas BecJcet, 
 
 83 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 By the terms of the peace of Freteval, the archbishop 
 was to be restored to his estates and dignity. He on his 
 part had given assurances of his intentions with which 
 Henry had professed himself satisfied. Private communi- 
 cations had passed between him and the king, the nature of 
 which is only known to us through the archbishop's repre- 
 sentations to his friends. Tliat the reconciliation, however, 
 was left incomplete, is evident both from Becket's conduct 
 and from Henry's. The king had made the return of his 
 favor conditional on Becket's conduct. Either he did not 
 trust Becket's promises, or the promises were less ample 
 than he desired. 
 
 Immediately after the interview the king became danger- 
 ously ill, and for a month he believed that he was dying. 
 Becket returned to Sens, and sent messengers to England 
 to young Henry announcing his approaching return, and 
 requesting that his estates should be made over at once to 
 his own people. The messengers were instructed privately 
 to communicate with his English friends, and ascertain the 
 state of public feeling. The young king named a day on 
 which the trust should be made over to the archbishop's 
 officials, and advised that the archbishop should remain for a 
 while on the continent, and endeavor to recover his father's 
 confidence. The messengers reported that he had many 
 staunch supporters, the Earl of Cornwall among them ; but 
 they were unanimously of opinion that it would be unwise 
 for the archbishop to reappear at Canterbury so long as the 
 old king's distrust continued. The peace of Freteval, there- 
 fore, was obviously understood to have been inconclusive by 
 
84 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 all parties. The inconclusiveness was made still more ap- 
 parent immediately after. 
 
 At the beginning of September, Henry had partially re- 
 covered. The archbishop sent John of Salisbury and Her- 
 bert of Bosham to him to complain of the delay with the 
 estates. He had been watched, perhaps, more closely than 
 he was aware. The king knew nothing as yet of the in- 
 tended excommunication of the bishops. But he knew 
 Becket's character. He felt it more than probable that 
 mischief was meditated. He said that he must wait to see 
 how the archbishop conducted himself. 
 
 Passionate as usual, the archbishop complained to the 
 pope; he intimated that only his holiness's orders pre- 
 vented him from revenging his ill-treatment. Prudence, 
 however, told him that if he was to make an effective use 
 of the excommunications which the pope had trusted to him, 
 he must for the present restrain himself. Twice again he 
 saw the king at Tours, and afterwards at Amboise. Henry 
 was reserved, but not unkind. The archbishop had pro- 
 fessed a wish for peace. If his behavior after his return 
 to England proved that he was in earnest in these profes- 
 sions — if he remained quietly in his province, and made no 
 further disturbances — the king said that he was prepared 
 to show him every possible kindness. 
 
 The king needed no more complete justification of his 
 suspicions than an expression which Becket used in relating 
 this conversation to his friend Herbert. " As the king was 
 speaking," he said, " I thought of the words : * All these 
 things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship 
 me.' " It is evident on the face of the narrative that the 
 king never gave the conscious sanction to violent measures 
 against the bishops, which Becket pretended afterwards 
 that he had received. In answer to his complaints at 
 Amboise, Henry may have told him that the rights of the 
 see of Canterbury should be assured, and that, if those 
 rights had been impaired, satisfaction should be made to 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 85 
 
 him. To this last conference, and to some sucli words as 
 these, the Count of Blois may have referred in his letter to 
 the pope. But Becket and his friends put a construction 
 upon the promises which none knew better than they that 
 Henry did not intend. It is as certain that Becket's own 
 professions were no less equivocal — that when he spoke of 
 peace he was thinking only of a peace of which he was to 
 dictate the terms, and that he had already determined to 
 reopen the war on a new stage on the instant of his return 
 to his cathedral. 
 
 But the return was now determined on, be the conse- 
 quences what they might. The English bishops had their 
 friends among the cardinals. In the course of the autumn 
 it became known in England that the archbishop had ap- 
 plied for censures against the bishops, and that the pope 
 had granted them. They advised the king to insist that 
 Becket should bind himself by some more explicit engage- 
 ments before he should be allowed to land, that he should 
 be examined especially as to whether he had any letters of 
 excommunication from Rome, and that if he were in pos- 
 session of such letters he should surrender them. Henry 
 preferred to trust to the archbishop's honor, or to the 
 watchfulness of the wardens of the ports. He was weary 
 of the struo^o-le. Doubtless he had his miso;ivinojs, as the 
 bishops had ; but he had made up his mind that the experi- 
 ment should be tried, with, on his part at least, a faithful 
 discharge of his own enojao-ements. 
 
 The archbishop had gone to Rouen in November to set- 
 tle accounts with creditors who had advanced him money. 
 He had meant to see Henry once more, but Henry wrote 
 to say that the delay of his return had led to disquieting 
 rumors which ought not to continue. He desired the arch- 
 bishop to go back to Canterbury at once; and, that he 
 might be subjected to no inconvenience on landing, he sent 
 John of Oxford, whose person was well known, to accom- 
 pany and protect him. John of Oxford's instructions were, 
 
86 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 after seeing Becket safe at Canterbury, to go on to the 
 young king and give orders for the immediate restoration 
 of the property of the see. 
 
 The die was cast. The archbishop resolved to go. 
 There was abundant disaffection in England. In the spring 
 of this very year the king had been obliged to suspend the 
 sheriffs in every county, and ultimately to remove many of 
 them, for extortion and oppression.^ The clergy were 
 lukewarm in his interests ; but there were better reasons 
 for relying upon the nobles. The king had thrust a bridle 
 in their mouths, restraining what they called their liberties, 
 and many of them, as was afterwards proved, were ready 
 to make common cause with the Church against the Crown. 
 The archbishop was perfectly right in expecting to find 
 among the laity a party who would stand by him. He 
 went <once more to Sens to take leave of his entertainers. 
 After an affectionate parting with Lewis and the Queen of 
 France, retaining still his old taste for magnificence, he 
 rode down to the coast with an escort of a hundred cavaliers, 
 and there once more, separated from him but by a few hours' 
 sail,- lay the white cliffs of England. 
 
 It was thought likely, if it was not known for certain, 
 that Becket would bring with him letters from the pope, 
 and the introduction of such letters, if to the hurt of any 
 English subject, was against the law, without a written 
 license from the king. The duty of the wardens of the 
 ports was to search the persons and the baggage of any one 
 whom there was ground for suspecting, and on reaching the 
 coast Becket learned that the three prelates who were to be 
 excommunicated, the Sheriff of Kent, Sir Ranulf de Broc, 
 and Sir Reginald de Warenne, one of the council of the 
 young king, were waiting for him at Dover to ascertain 
 whether he was the bearer of any such explosive missile. 
 The future martyr was not select in his language. " Arch- 
 devils," " priests of Baal," " standard-bearers of the Balaam- 
 1 Benedict. 
 
Thomas BecJcet. 
 
 87 
 
 ites," "children of perdition," were the common phrases 
 with which he described the unfortunate bishops who were 
 thus trying to escape their sentences. To outwit their vigi- 
 lance, a day or two before he meant to sail, he sent over a 
 boy in a small vessel whose insignificant appearance would 
 attract no attention. The boy or nun (for there is reason 
 to suppose that the bearer was a woman disguised) pre- 
 sented himself suddenly before the Archbishop of York in 
 St. Peter's Oratory at Dover, placed the letter of suspension 
 in his hands, and disappeared before he had time to learn its 
 contents. In the same hour, and by the same instrument, 
 the still more terrible letters of excommunication were 
 served on the Bishops of London and Salisbury. Their 
 precautions had been baffled. The shots had been fired 
 which opened the new campaign, and the mark had been 
 successfully hit. Sir Ranulf de Broc searched the town 
 with a drawn sword for the audacious messenger, but the 
 messenger had vanished. 
 
 It would have gone ill with Becket had he landed in the 
 midst of the storm which the delivery of the letters instantly 
 kindled. The ground of the censures was the coronation of 
 the young king. To excommunicate the bishops who had 
 officiated was to deny the young king's title to the crown. 
 The archbishop had come back then, it seemed, to defy the 
 government and light a civil war. The next morning, when 
 he and his friends were examining the vessel in which they 
 were about to embark, an English boat ran into the harbor. 
 Some one leaped on shore, and, coming straight to Herbert, 
 told him that if the archbishop went to Dover he was a dead 
 man ; the excommunications had set the country on fire. 
 A rapid council was held. Several of the priests were 
 frightened. The certain displeasure of the king was ad- 
 mitted with a frankness which showed how little Becket 
 really supposed that Henry would approve what he had 
 done. Becket asked Herbert for advice. Herbert, always 
 the worst adviser that he could have consulted, said that 
 
88 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 tliey must advance or fall into disgrace. Let the archbishop 
 go boldly forward, and he would tread the dragon under 
 his feet. The worst that could befall him was a glorious 
 martyrdom. 
 
 Much of this fine language may have been an after- 
 thought. The archbishop, when a choice of conduct lay 
 before him, was certain to choose the most rash. He de- 
 cided, however, to avoid Dover, and on the morning of the 
 1st of December he sailed up the river to Sandwich, with 
 his cross raised conspicuously above the figure-head of his 
 ship. Sandwich was his own town. The inhabitants were 
 lieges of the see, and a vast and delighted crowd was gath- 
 ered on the quay to receive him. The change of destination 
 was known at Dover Castle. Sir Reginald de Warenne, 
 the Sheriff of Kent, and Ranulf de Broc, had ridden across, 
 and had arrived at Sandwich before the archbishop landed. 
 John of Oxford hurried to them with the king's orders that 
 the archbishop was to be received in peace. They advanced 
 in consequence without their arms, and inquired the mean- 
 ing of the excommunication of the bishops. To their 
 extreme surprise, they were told that the letters had been 
 issued with the king's knowledge and permission. To so 
 bold an assertion no immediate answer was possible. They 
 pointed to his train, among whom were some French clergy. 
 Strangers coming into England without a passport were 
 required to swear allegiance for the time of their stay. 
 The sheriff said that the priests must take the usual oaths. 
 Becket scornfully answered that no clerk in his company 
 should take any oath at all. He declined further conversa- 
 tion, and bade them come to him after two days to the pal- 
 ace of Canterbury if they had more to say. 
 
 Becket passed the remainder of the day at Sandwich. 
 The next morning he set out for his cathedral. Seven 
 years he had been absent, and for all those years his name 
 had been a household word in castle and parsonage, grange 
 and cabin. In England people sympathize instinctively 
 
Thomas JBecJcet. 
 
 89 
 
 with every one who opposes the Crown, and between Sand- 
 wich and Canterbury Becket was among his own tenants, to 
 whom he had been a gentler master than Ranulf de Broc. 
 The short winter day's ride was one long triumphal proces- 
 sion. Old men, women, and children lined the roads on their 
 knees to beg his blessing. Clergy came at the head of their 
 parishioners with garlands and banners. Boys chanted 
 hymns. Slowly at a foot's pace the archbishop made his 
 way among the delighted multitudes. It was evening before 
 he reached Canterbury. He went direct to the cathedral. 
 His face shone as he entered, " like the face of Moses when 
 he descended from the mount." He seated himself on his 
 throne, and the monks came one by one and kissed him. 
 Tears were in all eyes. " My lord," Herbert whispered to 
 Him, " it matters not now when you depart hence. Christ 
 has conquered. Christ is now king." " He looked at me." 
 says Herbert, " but he did not speak." 
 
 Strangely in that distant century, where the general his- 
 tory is but outline, and the colors are dim, and the lights 
 and shadows fall where modern imagination chooses to 
 throw them, and the great men and women who figured on 
 the world's stage are, for the most part, only names, the 
 story of Becket, in these last days of it especially, stands out 
 as in some indelible photograph, every minutest feature of 
 it as distinct as if it were present to our eyes. We have the 
 terrible drama before us in all its details. We see the actors, 
 we hear their very words, we catch the tones of their voices, 
 we perceive their motives ; we observe them from day to 
 day, and hour to hour; we comprehend and sympathize 
 with the passions through the fierce collision of which the 
 action was worked out to its catastrophe. The importance 
 of the questions which were at issue, the characters of the 
 chief performers, and the intense interest with which they 
 were watched by the spectators, raise the biographies and 
 letters in which the story is preserved to a level of literary 
 excellence far beyond what is to be found in all contempo- 
 rary writings. 
 
90 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 The archbishop slept in his desolate palace. No prepara- 
 tions had been made for him. The stores had not been 
 laid in. The barns and byres were empty. Ranulf de Broc 
 had swept up the last harvest, and had left the lands bare. 
 In the morning (December 3) de Wareune and the sheriff 
 reappeared with the chaplains of the three bishops. They 
 had been led to hope, they said, that the archbishop would 
 come home in peace. Instead of peace he had brought a 
 sword. By scattering excommunications without notice, he 
 was introducing confusion into ever}" department of the 
 realm. The very crown was made dependent on the arch- 
 bishop's will. The law of England was reduced to the arch- 
 bishop's edicts. Such a assumption could not and would not 
 be allowed. The excommunication of the bishops was a 
 dii'ect blow at the authority of the young king. For the 
 archbishop's own sake they advised him, and in the king's 
 name they commanded him, to take the censures off, or a 
 time might come when he would regret his violence too late 
 to repair it. 
 
 Until the issue of the sentences against the three bishops, 
 Alexander had not committed himself to any positive act in 
 Becket's favor, and it had been to compromise the papacy 
 distinctly in the quarrel that the pope's letters had been 
 thus immediately discharged. Becket answered that the 
 excommunications had been issued by the supreme pontiff, 
 and that he could not undo the work of his superior. He 
 admitted, with exasperating satire, that he was not dis- 
 pleased to see his holiness defend the Church with his own 
 hands. To punish men who had broken the law was not 
 to show contempt of the king. He had himself complained 
 to the king of the bishops' conduct, and the king had prom- 
 ised that he should have satisfaction. For the rest he ac- 
 knowledged no right in the king or any man to challenge 
 his conduct. He bore the spiritual sword, and did not mean 
 to shrink from drawinj; it against sinners, whatever might 
 be the inconvenience. If the bishops would take an oath to 
 
Thomas Becket, 
 
 91 
 
 submit to any sentence which the pope might pass upon 
 them, he would strain a point and absolve them ; without 
 such an oath, never. 
 
 The answer was carried to Dover. Foliot and the Bishop of 
 Salisbury were willing, it was said, to have sworn as Becket 
 prescribed. The archbishop declared that he would spend 
 the last forth ing that he possessed rather than yield to such 
 insolence. The young king was at Winchester.^ De Wa- 
 renne hastened to him to report Becket's behavior, and 
 probably to ask instructions as to what the bishops should 
 do. They crossed eventually to the old king's court in 
 Isormandy, but not till after a delay of more than a fort- 
 night at Dover. Obviously the conduct which they were 
 to pursue was carefully canvassed and deliberately resolved 
 upon. Becket himself, too, found it prudent to offer ex- 
 planations, and send the Prior of Dover after De Warenue 
 to Winchester to report the archbishop's arrival, and to ask 
 permission for him to present himself. From the rapidity 
 with which events now passed, the prior must have ridden 
 night and day. Young Henry being still under age, the 
 archbishop's messenger was received by his guardians, whom 
 he found in towering indignation. The excommunication 
 was regarded as an invitation to rebellion, and had Henry 
 died in August there undoubtedly would have been rebellion. 
 " Does the archbishop mean to make pagans of us, with his 
 suspensions and curses?" they said; "does he intend to 
 upset the throne ? " The prior asked to be allowed to see 
 the young king himself. He assured them that the arch- 
 bishop had meant no injury to him. No one in the realm 
 besides his ftither loved the prince more deai'ly. The dis- 
 pleasure was only that other hands than those of the primate 
 had placed the crown upon his head. He repeated tlie 
 story that the old king knew what was to be done to the 
 bishops. He trusted that the young king would not refuse 
 to receive a person who only desired to do him loyal service. 
 
 1 Not Woodstock, as is generally said. William of Canterbuiy, with 
 special reference to localities, says Wintonia. 
 
92 Life and Times of 
 
 The court was evidently perplexed by the confident as- 
 sertions with respect to Henry. The Earl of Cornwall 
 advised that Becket should be allowed to come ; they could 
 hear from himself an explanation of the mystery. Geoffrey 
 Ridel, the Archdeacon of Salisbury, happened, however, to 
 be present. Ridel was one of Henry the Second's most 
 confidential advisers, whom Becket had cursed at Vezelay 
 and habitually spoke of as an archdevil. He had been inti- 
 mately acquainted with the whole details of the quarrel from 
 its commencement, and was able to affirm positively that 
 things were not as Becket represented. He recommended 
 the guardians to consult the king before the archbishop was 
 admitted ; and the Prior of Dover was, in consequence, dis- 
 missed without an answer. 
 
 The archbishop had committed himself so deeply that he 
 could not afford to wait. His hope was to carry the coun- 
 try with him before the king could interfere, or at least to 
 have formed a party too strong to be roughly dealt with. 
 The Prior of Dover not having brought back a positive 
 prohibition, he left Canterbury professedly to go himself to 
 Winchester : but he chose to take London in his way ; it 
 was easy to say that he had been long absent ; that his flock 
 required his presence ; that there were children to be con- 
 firmed, candidates for the priesthood to be ordained — holy 
 rites of all kinds, too long neglected, to be attended to. 
 There was no difficulty in finding an excuse for a circuit 
 through the province ; and the archiepiscopal visitation as- 
 sumed the form of a military jDarade. Few as the days had 
 been since he had set his foot on the English shore, he had 
 contrived to gather about him a knot of laymen of high 
 birth and station. Quidam illustres, certain persons of dis- 
 tinction, attended him with their armed retainers, and, sur- 
 rounded by a steel-clad retinue with glancing morions and 
 bristling lances, the archbishop set out for London a week 
 after his return from the Continent. Rochester lay in his 
 way. Rochester Castle was one of the strongholds which 
 
Thomas Bechet, 
 
 93 
 
 he had challenged for his own. The gates of the castle re- 
 mained closed against him, but the townsmen received him 
 as their liege lord. As he approached Southwark the cit- 
 izens poured out to greet the illustrious Churchman who 
 had dared to defy his sovereign. A vast procession of three 
 thousand clergy and scholars formed on the road, and went 
 before him chanting a Te Deum ; and this passionate dis- 
 play had a deliberate and dangerous meaning which every 
 one who took part in it understood. To the anxious eyes 
 of the court it was a first step in treason, and in the midst 
 of the shouts of the crowd a voice was distinguished, saying, 
 " Archbishop, 'ware the knife ! " 
 
 It was on December 13 that Becket reached London 
 Bridge. He slept that night close by, at the palace of 
 the old Bishop of Winchester. His movements had been 
 watched. The next morning Sir Jocelyn of Arimdel and 
 another knight waited on him with an order from the court 
 at Winchester to return instantly to Canterbury, and to 
 move no more about the realm with armed men. The arch- 
 bishop had not ventured so far to be frightened at the first 
 hard word. He received Sir Jocelyn as a king might re- 
 ceive a rebel feudatory. With lofty fierceness he said he 
 would go back at no man's bidding if Christmas had not 
 been so near, when he desired to be in his cathedral.^ May 
 I not visit my diocese?" he demanded. "Will the king 
 drive off the shepherd that the wolf may tear the flock ? 
 Let God see to it ! " Arundel said that he had come to 
 deliver the king's commands, not to dispute about them. 
 " Carry back, then, my commands to your king," said the 
 archbishop.^ " Your commands ! " Arundel retorted ; ad- 
 dress your commands to those of your own order." Turn- 
 ing sternly to tlie young lords in the archbishop's suite. 
 
 1 "Spiritu fervens respondit se nullatenus propter inhibitionem banc 
 regressurum, nisi quia tunc jam festus tam solemnis urgebat dies quo ec- 
 clesije suae abesse noluit." 
 
 * "Si et mandata mea regi vestro renunciaturi estis." — William of 
 Canterbu'-y. 
 
94 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 he bade them remember their duties, and rode off with his 
 companion. 
 
 To obey was to lose the game. Instead of obeying, 
 the archbishop went on to Harrow, a benefice of his own 
 into which an incumbent had been intruded by the Crown. 
 From Harrow he sent for the old Abbot of St. Albans, and 
 dispatched him to Winchester with a list of complaints. 
 At the same time, and to learn the strength of the party at 
 court which he supposed to be ready to stand by him, he 
 sent a monk — apparently William of Canterbury, who tells 
 the story — on a secret and dangerous mission to the Earl 
 of Cornwall. The monk went disguised as a physician, 
 Becket bidding him write word how things were going. 
 The words in which he gave the order show his intention 
 beyond possibility of question. The pretended physician 
 was to go velut alter Cushy, and Cushy was the messenger 
 who brought word to David that the Lord had avenged 
 him of his enemies, and that the young king Absalom was 
 dead.^ 
 
 The Earl of Cornwall was well-disposed to Becket, but 
 was true to his king and his country. When the rebellion 
 actually broke out, three years after, the Earl of Cornwall's 
 loyalty saved Henry's crown. He was willing to befriend 
 the archbishop within the limits of law, but not to the 
 extent upon which Becket counted. He received the dis- 
 guised monk into his household ; he examined him closely 
 as to the archbishop's intentions. He would perhaps have 
 allowed him to remain, but a servant of the young king 
 recognized the man through his assumed character as one 
 of Becket's immediate followers, two days after his arrival. 
 The earl bade him begone on the instant, and tell his mas- 
 ter to look to himself ; his life was in perilf 
 
 The Abbot of St. Albans had travelled more slowly 
 The discovery was a bad preparation for his reception. 
 Sir Jocelyn of Arundel had brought back Becket's insolent 
 1 2 Samuel xviii. 31. 
 
Thomas BecheL 
 
 95 
 
 answer, and the open disobedience of the order to return to 
 Canterbury could be construed only as defiance. To the 
 alarmed guardians it seemed as if an insurrection might 
 break out at any moment. The abbot found the court at 
 Breamore, near Fordingbridge, in Hampshire. He was 
 admitted, and he presented his schedule of wrongs, which, 
 after all, was trifling. The archbishop's clergy were forbid- 
 den to leave the realm. He had been promised restitution 
 of his property, but it had been given back to him in ruins. 
 His game had been destroyed ; his woods had been cut 
 down ; his benefices were detained from him. As a last 
 outrage, since his return Sir Ranulf de Broc had seized a 
 cargo of wine which he had brought over with the old 
 king's permission. The vessel in which it had arrived had 
 been scuttled, and the crew had been incarcerated. God 
 was injured when his clergy were injured, the abbot said, 
 and in Becket's name he demanded redress. 
 
 The abbot had spoken firmly, but in language and man- 
 ner he had at least recognized that he was a subject address- 
 ing his sovereign. A priest in his train, with Becket's own 
 temper in him, thundered out as the abbot had ended: 
 " Thus saith the Lord Primate, ' Let man so think of us as 
 ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. 
 If justice be not done as right demands, ye need not doubt 
 that we will do our part and use the powers which God has 
 committed to us.' " The fierce message was delivered 
 amidst scowling groups of knights and nobles. Hot youths 
 clenched their fists and clutched their dagger-hilts. A 
 courtier told the bold priest that, but for the honor of the 
 king's presence, he should suffer for his insolence. Sir 
 Reginald de Warenne, who was present, said, The bows 
 are bent on both sides." The Earl of Cornwall, fresh from 
 his conference with Becket's secret messenger, muttered, 
 " Ere Lent there will be wild work in Enorland." 
 
 o 
 
 The archbishop was still at Harrow when the abbot came 
 back with an account of his reception. Many things the 
 
96 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 abbot must have been able to tell him which have been left 
 unrecorded. Thus much, at any rate, must have been made 
 plain — that the archbishop could not count on any imme- 
 diate armed intervention. For the moment, at least, he 
 would be left to face alone the storm which he had raised. 
 The best that he could now hope to effect would be to bury 
 himself and his enemies in common ruin. He foretold his 
 fate to the abbot, and, resisting entreaties to spend Christ- 
 mas at St. Albans, went back to Canterbury, where he had 
 still work before him which could be accomplished only in 
 his own cathedral. 
 
I 
 
 Thomas BeeJcet. 
 
 97 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The story now turns to Henry's court in Normandy. 
 Between Southampton and the Norman coast communica- 
 tions were easy and rapid ; and the account of the arriyal 
 of the censured bishops, with the indignant words which 
 burst from the king at the unwelcome news which he heard 
 from them for the first time, is an imperfect legend in 
 which the transactions of many days must haye been epit- 
 omized. 
 
 The bishops did not leave England till the 20th or 21st 
 of December,^ and before their appearance the king must 
 haye heard already not only of the excommunications and 
 of the daring misuse of his own name, but of the armed 
 progress to London, of the remarkable demonstration there, 
 of the archbishop's defiance of the goyernment, of the mis- 
 sion of the Abbot of St. Albans, of the threats of the priest, 
 and of tlie imminent danger of a general rebellion. Dur- 
 ing the first three weeks of this December many an anxious 
 council must haye been held in the Norman court, and many 
 a scheme talked oyer and rejected for dealing with this im- 
 practicable firebrand. What could be done with him ? No 
 remedy was now ayailable but a yiolent one. The law 
 could not restrain a man who claimed to be superior to law 
 and whose claims the nation was not prepared directly to 
 deny. Three centuries later the solution would haye been 
 a formal trial, with the block and axe as the sequel of a 
 judicial sentence. Ecclesiastical pretensions were still for- 
 midable under Tudors, but the State had acquired strength 
 
 1 Herbert says that they arrived at Bayeux paucis diebus ante natalem 
 Domini. 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 to control them. In our own day the phantom has been 
 
 exorcised altogether, and an archbishop who used Becket's 
 language would be consigned to an asylum. In Becket's 
 own time neither of these methods was possible. Becket 
 himself could neither be borne with, consistently with the 
 existence of the civil government, nor resisted save at the 
 risk of censures w^hich even the king scarcely dared to en- 
 counter. A bishop might have committed the seven deadly 
 sins, but his word was still a spell which could close the 
 gates of heaven. The allegiance of the people could not be 
 depended upon for a day if Becket chose to declare the 
 king excommunicated, unless the pope should interfere ; 
 and the pope was an inadequate resource in a struggle for 
 the supremacy of the Church over the State. It was not 
 until secular governments could look popes and bishops in 
 the fiice, and bid them curse till they were tired, that the 
 relations of Church and State admitted of legal definition. 
 Till that time should arrive the ecclesiastical theory was 
 only made tolerable by submitting to the checks of tacit 
 compromise and practical good sense. 
 
 Necessities for compromises of this kind exist at all 
 times. In the most finished constitutions powers are as- 
 signed to the diflferent branches of the State which it would 
 be inconvenient or impossible to remove, yet which would 
 cause an immediate catastrophe if the theory were made 
 the measure of practice. Tlie Crown retains a prerogative 
 at present which would be fatal to it if strained. Par- 
 liament would make itself intolerable if it asserted the 
 entire privileges which it legally possesses. The clergy in 
 the twelfth century were allowed and believed to be minis- 
 ters of God in a sense in which neither Crown nor baron 
 dared appropriate the name to themselves. None the less 
 the clergy could not be allowed to reduce Crown and barons 
 into entire submission to themselves. If either churchman 
 or king broke the tacit bargain of mutual moderation which 
 enabled them to work together harmoniously, the relations 
 
Thomas Bechef, 
 
 99 
 
 between the two orders might not admit of more satisfac- 
 tory theoretic adjustment ; but there remained the resource 
 to put out of the way the disturber of the peace. 
 
 Fuel ready to kindle was lying dry throughout Henry's 
 dominions. If Becket was to be allowed to scatter excom- 
 munications at his own pleasure, to travel through the 
 country attended by knights in arms, and surrounded by 
 adoring fools who regarded him as a supernatural being, it 
 was easy to foresee the immediate future of England and 
 of half France. To persons, too, who knew the archbishop 
 as well as Henry's court knew him, the character of the 
 man himself who was causing so much anxiety must have 
 been peculiarly irritating. Had Becket been an Anselm, 
 he might have been credited with a desire to promote the 
 interests of the Church, not for power's sake, but for the 
 sake of those spiritual and moral influences which the 
 Catholic Church was still able to exert, at least in some 
 happy instances. But no such high ambition was to be 
 traced either in Becket's agitation or in Becket's own dis- 
 position. He was still the self-willed, violent, unscrupulous 
 chancellor, with the dress of the saint upon him, but not 
 the nature. His cause was not the mission of the Church 
 to purify and elevate mankind, but the privilege of the 
 Church to control the civil government, and to dictate the 
 law in virtue of magical powers which we now know to 
 have been a dream and a delusion. His personal religion 
 was not the religion of a regenerated heart, but a religion 
 of self-torturing asceticism, a religion of the scourge and the 
 hair shirt, a religion in which the evidences of grace were 
 to be traced not in humbleness and truth, but in the worms 
 and maggots which crawled about his body. He was the 
 impersonation, not of what was highest and best in the 
 Catholic Church, but of what was falsest and worst. The 
 fear which he inspired was not the reverence willingly 
 offered to a superior nature, but a superstitious terror like 
 that felt for witches and enchanters, which brave men at 
 the call of a higher duty could dare to defy. 
 
100 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 No one knows what passed at Bayeux during the first 
 weeks of that December. King and council, knights and 
 nobles, squires and valets niust have talked of little else 
 but Becket and his doings. The pages at Winchester laid 
 their hands on their dagger-hilts when the priest delivered 
 his haughty message. The peers and gentlemen who sur- 
 rounded Henry at Bayeux are not likely to have felt more 
 gently as each day brought news from England of some 
 fresh audacity. At length a few days before Christmas, the 
 three bishops arrived. Two were under the curse, and 
 could not be admitted into the king's presence. The Arch- 
 bishop of York, being only suspended, carried less contami- 
 nation with him. At a council the archbishop was intro- 
 duced, and produced Alexander's letters. From these it 
 appeared not only that he and the other bishops were de- 
 nounced by name, but that every person who had taken any 
 part in the young king's coronation was by implication ex- 
 communicated also. It is to be remembered that the king 
 had received a positive sanction for the coronation from 
 Alexander ; that neither he nor the bishops had received 
 the prohibition till the ceremony was over; and that the pro- 
 hibitory letter, which it is at least possible that the king 
 would have respected, had been kept back by Becket himself. 
 
 The Archbishop of York still advised forbearance, and 
 an appeal once more to Rome. The pope would see at 
 last what Becket really was, and would relieve the country 
 of him. But an appeal to Rome would take time, and 
 England meanwhile might be in flames. "By God's eyes," 
 said the king, " if all are excommunicated who were con- 
 cerned in the coronation, I am excommunicated also." 
 Some one (the name of the speaker is not mentioned) said 
 that there would be no peace while Becket lived. With 
 the fierce impatience of a man baffled by a problem which 
 he has done his best to solve, and has failed through no 
 fault of his own, Henry is reported to have exclaimed : " Is 
 this varlet that I loaded with kindness, that came first to 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 101 
 
 court to me on a lame mule, to insult me and my children, 
 and take my crown from me ? What cowards have I about 
 me, that no one will deliver me from this lowborn priest ! " 
 It is very likely that Henry used such words. The greatest 
 prince that ever sat on throne, if tried as Henry had been, 
 would have said the same ; and Henry had used almost the 
 same language to the bishops»at Chinon in 1166. But it is 
 evident that much is still untold. These passionate denun- 
 ciations can be no more than the outcome of long and in- 
 effectual deliberation. Projects must have been talked 
 over and rejected ; orders were certainly conceived which 
 were to be sent to the archbishop, and measures were de- 
 vised for dealing with him short of his death. He was to 
 be required to absolve the censured bishops. If he refused, 
 he might be sent in custody to the young king, he might be 
 brought to Normandy, he might be exiled from the English 
 dominions, or he might be imprisoned in some English 
 castle. Indications can be traced of all these plans ; and 
 something of the kind would probably have been resolved 
 upon, although it must have been painfully clear also that, 
 without the pope's help, none of them would really meet 
 the difficulty. But the result was that the knights about 
 the court, seeing the king's perplexity, determined to take 
 the risk on themselves, and deliver both him and their 
 country. If the king acted, the king might be excommuni- 
 cated, and the empire might be laid under interdict, with 
 the consequences which every one foresaw. For their own 
 acts the penalty would but fall upon themselves. They did 
 not know, perhaps, distinctly what they meant to do, but 
 something might have to be done which the king must con- 
 demn if they proposed it to him. 
 
 But being done unknown, 
 He would have found it afterwards well done. 
 
 Impetuous loyalty to the sovereign was in the spirit of 
 the age. 
 
102 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 Among the gentlemen about his person whom Henry 
 had intended to employ, could he have resolved upon the 
 instructions which were to be given to them, were four 
 knights of high birth and large estate — Sir Reginald Fitz- 
 urse, of Somersetshire, a tenant in chief of the Crown, whom 
 Becket himself had originally introduced into the court ; Sir 
 Hugh de Morville, custodian of Knaresborough Castle, and 
 justiciary of Northumberland ; Sir William de Tracy, half 
 a Saxon, with royal blood in him ; and Sir Richard le 
 Breton, who had been moved to volunteer in the service by 
 another instance of Becket's dano-erous meddlinjj. Le Bre- 
 ton was a friend of the king's brother William, whom the 
 archbishop had separated from the lady to whom he was 
 about to be married, on some plea of consanguinity. Sir 
 William de Mandeville and others were to have been joined 
 in the commission. But these four chose to anticipate both 
 their companions and their final orders, and started alone. 
 Their disappearance was observed. An express was sent 
 to recall them, and the king supposed that they had re- 
 turned. But they had gone by separate routes to separate 
 ports. The weather was fair for the season of the year, 
 with an east wind perhaps ; and each had found a vessel 
 without difficulty to carry him across the Channel. The 
 rendezvous was Sir Ranulf de Broc's castle of Saltwood, 
 near Hythe, thirteen miles from Canterbury. 
 
 The archbishop meanwhile had returned from his adven- 
 turous expedition. The young king and his advisers had 
 determined to leave him no fair cause of complaint, and had 
 sent orders for the restoration of his wine and the release 
 of the captured seamen ; but the archbishop would not wait 
 
 1 Mandeville came afterwards to Canterbury, and being a>ked what he 
 had been prepared to do if he had found the archbishop alive, he said 
 "that he would have taken the archbishop sharply to task for his attacks 
 upon his sovereign : if the archbishop had been reasonable, there would 
 have been peace; if he had persisted in his obstinacy and presumption, 
 beyond doubt he would have been compelled to yield." Mandeville, indis- 
 putably, had direct instructions from the king. — Materials, vol. i. p. 126. 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 103 
 
 for the State to do him justice. On Christmas Eve he was 
 further exasperated by the appearance at the gate of his 
 palace of one of his sumpter mules, which had been brutally- 
 mutilated by Sir Ranulf de Broc's kinsman Robert. " The 
 viper's brood," as Herbert de Bosham said, " were lifting up 
 their heads. The hornets were out. Bulls of Bashan com- 
 passed the archbishop round about." The Earl of Corn- 
 wall's warning had reached him, but "fight, not flight," was 
 alone in his thoughts. He, too, was probably weary of the 
 strife, and may have felt that he would serve his cause 
 more effectually by death than by life. On Christmas day 
 he preached in the cathedral on the text " Peace to men of 
 good will." There was no peace, he said, except to men 
 of good will. He spoke passionately of the trials of the 
 Church. As he drew towards an end he alluded to the pos- 
 sibility of his own martyrdom. He could scarcely articu- 
 late for tears. The congregation were sobbing round him. 
 Suddenly his face altered, his tone changed. Glowing with" 
 anger, with the fatal candles in front of him, and in a voice 
 of thunder, the solemn and the absurd strangely blended in 
 the overwhelming sense of his own wrongs, he cursed the 
 intruders into his churches; he cursed Sir Ranulf de Broc; 
 he cursed Robert de Broc for cutting off his mule's tail; 
 he cursed by name several of the old king's most intimate 
 councillors who were at the court in Normandy. At each 
 fierce imprecation he quenched a light, and dashed down 
 a candle. "As he spoke," says the enthusiastic Herbert, 
 "you saw the very beast of the pro)»hf^t's vision, with the 
 face of a lion and the face of a man. " He had drawn the 
 spiritual sword, as he had sworn that ne would. So expe- 
 rienced a man of the world could not have failed to foresee 
 that he was provoking passions which would no longer 
 respect his office, and that no i-ising in England would 
 now be in time to save him. He was in better spirits, it 
 was observed, after he had dischaiged his anathema. The 
 Christmas festival was held in the hall. Asceticism was a 
 
104 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 virtue which was never easy to him. He indulged his natu- 
 ral inclinations at all permitted times, and on this occasion 
 he ate and drank more copiously than usual. 
 
 The next day Becket received another warning that he 
 was in personal danger. He needed no friends to tell him 
 that. The only attention which he paid to these 'messages 
 was to send his secretary Herbert and his crossbearer Alex- 
 ander Llewellyn to France, to report his situation to Lewis 
 and to the Archbishop of Sens.-^ He told Herbert at part- 
 ing that he would see his 'face no more. 
 
 So passed at Canterbury Saturday, Sunday, and Mon- 
 day, the 26th, 27th, and 28th of December. On that same 
 Monday afternoon the four knights arrived at Saltwood. 
 They were expected, for Sir Ranulf with a party of men- 
 at-arms had gone to meet them. There on their arrival 
 they learned the fresh excommunications which had been 
 pronounced against their host and against their friends at 
 the court. The news could only have confirmed whatever 
 resolutions they had formed. 
 
 On the morning of the 29th they rode with an escort of 
 horse along the old Roman road to Canterbury. They 
 halted at St. Augustine's Monastery, where they were en- 
 tertained by the abbot elect, Becket's old enemy, the scan- 
 dalous Clarembald. They perhaps dined there. At any 
 rate they issued a proclamation bidding the inhabitants re- 
 main quiet in their houses, in the king's name, and then, 
 with some of Clarembald's armed servants in addition to 
 their own party, they went on to the great gate of the 
 archbishop's palace. Leaving their men outside, the four 
 knights alighted and entered the court. They unbuckled 
 their swords, leaving them at the lodge, and, throwing 
 gowns over their armor, they strode across to the door of the 
 hall. Their appearance could hardly have been unexpected. 
 
 1 One of his complaints, presented by the Abbot of St. Albans, had been 
 that his clergy were not allowed to leave the realm. There seems to have 
 been no practical difficulty. 
 
Thomas BecTcet. 
 
 105 
 
 It was now between three and four o'clock in the afternoon. 
 They had been some time in the town, and their arrival 
 could not fail to have been reported. The archbishop's 
 midday meal was over. The servants were dining on the 
 remains, and the usual company of mendicants were waiting 
 for their turn. The archbishop had been again disturbed at 
 daybreak by intimation of danger. He had advised any of 
 his clergy who were afraid to escape to Sandwich ; but none 
 of them had left him. He had heard mass as usual. He 
 had received his customary floggings. At dinner he had 
 drunk freely, observing, when some one remarked upon it, 
 that he that had blood to lose needed wine to support him. 
 Afterwards he had retired into an inner room with John of 
 Salisbury, his chaplain Fitzstephen, Edward Grim of Cam- 
 bridge, who was on a visit to him, and several others, and 
 was now sitting in conversation with them in the declining 
 light of the winter afternoon till the bell should ring for 
 vespers. 
 
 The knights were recognized, when they entered the hall, 
 as belonging to the king's court. The steward invited them 
 to eat. They declined, and desired him to inform the arch- 
 bishop that they had arrived with a message from the Court. 
 This was the first communication which the archbishop had 
 received from Henry since he had used his name so freely 
 to cover acts which, could Henry have anticipated them, 
 would have barred his return to Canterbury forever. The 
 insincere professions of peace had covered an intention of 
 provoking a rebellion. The truth was now plain. There 
 was no room any more for excuse or palliation. What 
 course had the king determined on ? 
 
 The knights were introduced. They advanced. The 
 archbishop neither spoke nor looked at them, but continued 
 talking to a monk who was next him. He himself was 
 sitting on a bed. The rest of the party present were on the 
 floor. The knights seated themselves in the same manner, 
 and for a few moments there was silence. Then Becket's 
 
106 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 black, restless eye glanced from one to the other. He 
 slightly noticed Tracy ; and Fitzurse said a few unrecorded 
 sentences to him, which ended with God help you ! " To 
 Becket's friends the words sounded like insolence. They 
 may have meant no more than pity for the deliberate fool 
 who was forcing destruction upon himself. 
 
 Becket's face flushed. Fitzurse went on : " We bring 
 you the commands of the king beyond the sea ; will you 
 hear us in public or in private? " Becket said he cared not. 
 
 In private, then," said Fitzurse. The monks thought 
 afterwards that Fitzurse had meant to kill the archbishop 
 where he sat. If the knights had entered the palace, 
 thronged as it was with men, with any such intention, they 
 would scarcely have left their swords behind them. The 
 room was cleared, and a short altercation followed, of which 
 nothing is known save that it ended speedily in high words 
 on both sides. Becket called in his clergy again, his lay 
 servants being excluded,^ and bade Fitzurse go on. " Be it 
 so," Sir Reginald said. " Listen then to what the king says. 
 When the peace was made, he put aside all his complaints 
 against you. He allowed you to return, as you desired, 
 free to your see. You have now added contempt to your 
 other offences. You have broken the treaty. You have 
 allowed your pride to tempt you to defy your lord and mas- 
 ter to your own sorrow. You have censured the bishops 
 by whose administration the prince was crowned. You 
 have pronounced an anathema against the king's ministers, 
 by whose advice he is guided in the management of the 
 Empire. You have made it plain that if you could you 
 would take the prince's crown from him. Your plots and 
 contrivances to attain your ends are notorious to all men. 
 Say, then, will you attend us to the king's presence, and 
 there answer for yourself? For this we are sent." 
 
 The archbishop declared that he had never wished any 
 hurt to the prince. The king had no occasion to be dis- 
 1 " Laicis omnibus exclusis. " 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 107 
 
 pleased if crowds came about him in the towns and cities 
 after having been so long deprived of his presence. If he 
 had done any wrong he would make satisfaction, but he 
 protested against being suspected of intentions which had 
 never entered his mind. 
 
 Fitzurse did not enter into an altercation with him, but 
 continued : "The king commands further that you and your 
 clerks repair without delay to the young king's presence, 
 and swear allegiance, and promise to amend your faults." 
 
 The archbishop's temper was fast rising. "I will do 
 whatever may be reasonable," he said, " but I tell you 
 plainly the king shall have no oaths from me, nor from 
 any one of my clergy. There has been too much perjury 
 already. I have absolved many, with God's help, who had 
 perjured themselves.-^ I will absolve the rest when He 
 permits. 
 
 " I understand you to say that you will not obey," said 
 Fitzurse ; and went on in the same tone : " The king com- 
 mands you to absolve the bishops whom you have excom- 
 municated without his permission {absque licentid sua) J' 
 
 " The pope sentenced the bishops," the archbishop said. 
 " If you are not pleased, you must go to him. The affair is 
 none of mine." 
 
 Fitzurse said it had been done at his instigation, which 
 he did not deny ; but he proceeded to reassert that the king 
 had given him permission. He had complained at the time 
 of the peace of the injury which he had suffered in the 
 coronation, and the king had told him that he might obtain 
 from the pope any satisfaction for which he liked to ask. 
 
 If this was all the consent which the king had given, the 
 pretence of his authority was inexcusable. Fitzurse could 
 scarce hear the archbishop out with patience. " Ay, ay ! " 
 said he ; " will you make the king out to be a traitor, then ? 
 The king gave you leave to excommunicate the bishops 
 
 1 He was alluding to the bishops who had sworn to the Constitutions of 
 Clarendon. 
 
108 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 when they were acting by his own order ! It is more than 
 we can bear to listen to such monstrous accusations." 
 
 John of Salisbury tried to, check the archbishop's impru- 
 dent tongue, and whispered to him to speak to the knights 
 in private : but when the passion was on him, no mule was 
 more ungovernable than Becket. Drawing to a conclusion, 
 Fitzurse said to him : " Since you refuse to do any one of 
 those things which the king requires of you, his final com- 
 mands are that you and your clergy shall forthwith depart 
 out of this realm and out of his dominions, never more to 
 return.-"- You have broken the peace and the king cannot 
 trust you again." 
 
 Becket answered wildly that he would not go — never 
 again would he leave England. Nothing but death should 
 now part him from his church. Stung by the reproach of 
 ill-faith, he poured out the catalogue of his own injuries. 
 He had been promised restoration, and instead of restora- 
 tion he had been robbed and insulted. Ranulf de Broc had 
 laid an embargo on his wine. Robert de Broc had cut off 
 his mule's tail, and now the knights had come to menace 
 him. 
 
 De Morville said that if he had suffered any wrong he 
 had only to appeal to the council, and justice would be 
 done. 
 
 Becket did not wish for the council's justice. " I have 
 complained enough," he said ; " so many wrongs are daily 
 heaped upon me that I could not find messengers to carry 
 the tale of them. I am refused access to the court. Nei- 
 ther one kinfj nor the other will do me riijht. I will endure 
 it no more. I will use my own powers as archbishop, and 
 no child of man shall prevent me." 
 
 1 "Hoc est praeceptum regis, ut de regno et terra quae ipsius subjacet 
 imperio cum tuis omnibus egrediaris; neque enim pax erit tibi vel tuorum 
 cuiquam ab hac die, quia pacem violasti." These remarkable words are 
 given by Grim, who heard them spoken. After the deliberate fraud of 
 which Becket had been guilty towards the pope in suppressing the 
 inhibitory letter addressed to the Archbishop of York, Alexander might 
 perhaps have been induced at last to approve of such a measure. 
 
Thomas BecJcet. 
 
 109 
 
 You w\\\ lay the realm under interdict, then, and ex- 
 communicate the whole of us ? " said Fitzurse. 
 
 So God help me," said one of the others, " he shall not 
 do tliat. He has excommunicated over-many already. We 
 have borne too long with him." 
 
 The knights sprang to their feet, twisting their gloves 
 and swinging their arms. The archbishop rose. In the 
 general noise words could no longer be accurately heard. 
 At length the knights moved to leave the room, and, ad- 
 dressing the archbishop's attendants, said, " In the king's 
 name we command you to see that this man does not 
 escape." 
 
 Do you think I shall fly, then ? " cried the archbishop. 
 Neither for the king nor for any living man will I fly. 
 You cannot be more ready to kill me than I am to die. . . . 
 Here you will find me," he shouted, following them to the 
 door as they went out, and calling after them. Some of 
 his friends thought that he had asked De Morville to come 
 back and speak quietly with him, but it was not so. He 
 returned to his seat still excited and complaining. 
 
 " My lord," said John of Salisbury to him, " it is strange 
 that you will never be advised. What occasion was there 
 for you to go after these men and exasperate them with 
 your bitter speeches ? You would have done better surely 
 by being quiet and giving them a milder answer. They 
 mean no good, and you only commit yourself" 
 
 The archbishop sighed, and said, I have done with ad- 
 vice. I know what I have before me." 
 
 It was four o'clock when the knights entered. It was 
 now nearly five ; and unless there were lights the room 
 must have been almost dark. Beyond the archbishop's 
 chamber was an ante-room, beyond the ante-room the hall. 
 The knights, passing through the hall into the quadrangle, 
 and thence to the lodge, called their men to arms. The 
 great gate was closed. A mounted guard was stationed 
 outside with orders to allow no one to go out or in. The 
 
110 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 knights threw off their cloaks and buckled on their swords. 
 This was the work of a few minutes. From the cathedral 
 tower the vesper bell was beginning to sound. The arch- 
 bishop had seated himself to recover from the agitation of 
 the preceding scene, when a breathless monk rushed in to 
 say that the knights were arming. " Who cares ? Let 
 them arm," was all that the archbishop said. His clergy- 
 were less indifferent. If the archbishop was ready for 
 death they were not. The door from the hall into the 
 court was closed and barred, and a short respite was thus 
 secured. The intention of the knights, it may be pre- 
 sumed, was to seize the archbishop and carry him off to 
 Salt-wood, or to De Morville's castle at Knaresborough, or 
 perhaps to Normandy. Coming back to execute their pur- 
 pose, they found themselves stopped by the hall door. To 
 burst it open would require time ; the ante-room between 
 the hall and the archbishop's apartments opened by an oriel 
 window and an outside stair into a garden. Robert de 
 Broc, who knew the house well, led the way to it in the 
 dark. The steps were broken, but a ladder was standing 
 against the window, by which the knights mounted, and 
 the crash of the falling casement told the fluttered group 
 about tlie archbishop that their enemies were upon them. 
 There was still a moment. The party who entered by the 
 window, instead of turning into the archbishop's room, first 
 went into the hall to open the door and admit their com- 
 rades. From the archbishop's room a second passage, little 
 used, opened into the noi-thwest corner of the cloister, and 
 from the cloister there was a way into the north transept of 
 the cathedral. The cry was, To the church. To the 
 church." There at least there would be immediate safety. 
 
 The archbishop had told the knights that they would 
 find him where they left him. He did not choose to show 
 fear, or he was afraid, as some thought, of losing his martyr- 
 dom. He would not move. The bell had ceased. They 
 reminded him that vespers had begun, and that he ought to 
 
Thomas Beeket. 
 
 Ill 
 
 be in the cathedral. Half yielding, half resisting, his friends 
 swept him down the passage into the cloister. His cross 
 had been forgotten in the haste. He refused to stir till it 
 was fetched and carried before him as usual'. Then only, 
 himself incapable of fear, and rebuking the terror of the 
 rest, he advanced deliberately to the door into the south 
 transept.^ His train was scattered behind him, all along 
 the cloister from the passage leading out of the palace. As 
 he entered the church cries were heard from which it be- 
 came plain that the knights had broken into the arch- 
 bishop's room, had found the passage, and were following 
 him. Alrnost immediately Fitzurse, Tracy, De Morville, 
 and Le Breton were discerned, in the dim light, coming 
 through the cloister in their armor, with drawn swords, and 
 axes in their left hands. A company of men-at-arms was 
 behind them. In front they were driving before them a 
 frightened flock of monks. 
 
 From the middle of the transept in which the arclibishop 
 was standing a single pillar rose into the roof On the 
 eastern side of it opened a chapel of St. Benedict, in which 
 were the tombs of several of the old primates. On the 
 w^est, running, of course, parallel to the nave, was a lady 
 chapel. Behind the pillar steps led up into the choir, 
 where voices were already singing vespers. A faint light 
 may have been reflected into the transept from tlie choir 
 tapers, and candles may perhaps have been burning before 
 the altars in the two chapels — of light from without through 
 the windows at that hour there could have been none. See- 
 incr the knights comino- on, the clerirv who had entered with 
 the archbishop closed the door and barred it. " What do 
 
 1 Those who desire a more particular account of the scene about to be 
 described should refer to Dean Stanley's essay on the mui'der of Becket, 
 which is printed in his Antiquities of Canterbury. Alon,^ with an exact 
 knowledge of the localities and a minute acquaintance Avith the contempo- 
 rary narratives, Dr. Stanley combines the far more rare power of histor- 
 ical imagination, which enables him to replace out of his materials an ex- 
 act picture of what took place. 
 
112 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 you fear?" he cried in a clear, loud voice. "Out of the 
 way, you cowards ! The Church of God must not be made 
 a fortress." He stepped back and reopened the door with 
 his own hands, to let in the trembling wretches who had 
 been shut out among the wolves. They rushed past him, and 
 scattered in the hiding-places of the vast sanctury, in the 
 crypt, in the galleries, or behind the tombs. All, or almost 
 all, even of his closest friends, William of Canterbury, Ben- 
 edict, John of Salisbury himself forsook him to shift for 
 themselves, admitting frankly that they were unworthy of 
 martyrdom. The archbishop was left alone with his chap- 
 lain Fitzstephen, Robert of Merton his old master, and Ed- 
 ward Grim, the stranger from Cambridge — or perhaps with 
 Grim only, who says that he was the only one who stayed, 
 and was the only oue certainly who showed any sign of cour- 
 age. A cry had been raised in the choir that armed men 
 were breaking into the cathedral. The vespers ceased ; the 
 few monks assembled left their seats and rushed to the edge 
 of the transept, looking wildly into the darkness. 
 
 The archbishop was on the fourth step beyond the central 
 pillar ascending into the choir when the knights came in. 
 The outline of his figure may have been just visible to 
 them, if light fell upon it from caudles in the lady chapel. 
 Fitzurse passed to the right of the pillar, De Morville, 
 Tracy, and Le Breton to the left. Robert de Broc and 
 Hugh Mauclerc, another apostate priest, remained at the 
 door by which they entered. A voice cried, ''Where is the 
 traitor? Where is Thomas Becket ? " There was silence; 
 such a name could not be acknowledged. " Where is the 
 archbishop?" Fitzurse shouted. "I am here," the arch- 
 bishop replied, descending the steps, and meeting the knights 
 full in the face. " What do you want with me ? I am 
 not afraid of your swords. I will not do what is unjust." 
 The knights closed round bim. "Absolve the persons 
 whom you have excommunicated," they said, " and take off 
 the suspensions." " They have made no satisfaction," he 
 
Thomas Becket, 
 
 113 
 
 answered ; " I will not." " Then you shall die as you have 
 deserved," they said. 
 
 They had not meant to kill him — certainly not at that 
 time and in that place. One of them touched him on the 
 shoulder with the flat of his sword, and hissed in his ears, 
 " Fly, or you are a dead man." There was still time ; with 
 a few steps he would have been lost in the gloom of the 
 cathedral, and could have concealed him in any one of a 
 hundred hiding-places. But he was careless of life, and he 
 felt that his time was come. " I am ready to die," he said. 
 " May the Church through my blood obtain peace and 
 liberty ! I charge you in the name of God that you hurt 
 no one here but me. The people from the town were now 
 pouring into the cathedral ; De Morville was keeping them 
 back with difficulty at the head of the steps from the choir, 
 and there was danger of a rescue. Fitzurse seized him, 
 meaning to drag him off as a prisoner. He had been calm 
 so far ; his pride rose at the indignity of an arrest. " Touch 
 me not, thou abominable wretch ! " he said, wrenching his 
 cloak out of Fitzui'se's grasp. " Off, thou pander, thou ! " ^ 
 Le Breton and Fitzurse grasped him again, and tried to 
 force him upon Tracy's back. He gra^^jiled with Tracy and 
 flung him to the ground, and then stood with his back 
 against the pillar, Edward Grim supporting him. Fitzurse, 
 stung by the foul epithet which Becket had thrown at him, 
 swept his sword over him and dashed off his cap. Tracy, 
 rising from the pavement, struck direct at his head. Grim 
 raised his arm and caught the blow. The arm fell broken, 
 and the one friend found faithful sank back disabled against 
 the wall. The sword, with its remaining force, wounded 
 the archbishop above the forehead, and the blood trickled 
 down his face. Standing firmly, with his hands clasped, he 
 bent his neck for the death-stroke, saying in a low voice, 
 " I am prepared to die for Christ and for His Church." 
 
 1 "Lenonem appellans." In extreme moments Becket was never able 
 to maintain his dignity. 
 
 8 
 
114 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 These were his last words. Tracy again struck him. He 
 fell forward upon his knees and hands. In that position 
 Le Breton dealt him a blow which severed the scalp from 
 the head and broke the sword against the stone, saying, 
 ''Take that for my Lord William." De Broc or Mauclerc 
 — the needless ferocity was attributed to both of them — 
 strode forward from the cloister door, set his foot on the 
 neck of the dead lion, and spread the brains upon the pave- 
 ment with his sword's point. "We may go," he said; "the 
 traitor is dead, and will trouble us no more." 
 
 Such was the murder of Becket, the echoes of which are 
 still heard across seven centuries of time, and which, be the 
 final judgment upon it what it may, has its place among the 
 most endurhig incidents of English history. Was Becket 
 a martyr, or was he justly executed as a traitor to his sover- 
 eign ? Even in that supreme moment of terror and won- 
 der, opinions were divided among his own monks. That 
 very night Grim heard one of them say, " He is no martyr, 
 he is justly served." Another said, scarcely feeling, per- 
 haps, the meaning of the words, " He wished to be king 
 and more than king. Let him be king, let him be king." 
 Whether the cause for which he died was to prevail, or 
 whether the sacrifice had been in vain, hung on the answer 
 which would be given to this momentous question. In a 
 few days or weeks an answer came in a form to which in 
 that age no rejoinder was possible, and the only uncertainty 
 which remained at Canterbury was whether it was lawful 
 to use the ordinary prayers for the repose of the dead man's 
 soul, or whether, in consequence of the astounding miracles 
 which were instantly worked by his remains, the pope's 
 judgment ought not to be anticipated, and the archbishop 
 ought not to be at once adored as a saint in heaven. 
 
Thomas Becket. 
 
 115 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Martyr for the Church of Christ, or turbulent incen- 
 diary justly punished for his madness or presumption ? 
 That was the alternative which lay before the judgment of 
 the Christian world. On the response which would be 
 given depended interests which stretched far beyond the 
 limits of Becket's own island home. How vast were the 
 issues, how possible was an unfavorable conclusion, may be 
 seen in the passionate language in which Benedict of Can- 
 terbury describes the general feeling, and relates the influ- 
 ences by which alone the popular verdict was decided in 
 the archbishop's favor. 
 
 Our crowned head was taken from us, the glory of angels and 
 of Angles. We were orphans who had lost their father. The 
 mother Cliurch was desolate, and her children were not lament- 
 ing. She sought for some to comfort her, yet found she none. 
 She was weeping, and her children were glad. Our own noble 
 monastery was speechless, and cruel mockers said it was well 
 done. The brethren mingled their bread with tears, but they 
 kept silence. Had not light risen upon us from on high, we 
 had been lost forever. Praised be He who looked upon us in 
 the day of our affliction! All generations shall now call us 
 blessed. When the martyr was slain our young men saw 
 visions, our old men dreamed dreams; and then came the mira- 
 cles, and we knew that God had exalted the horn of his anointed 
 one. 
 
 The sheep were scattered: the hirelings had fled. There had 
 not been found a man who would stand beside the lord of Can- 
 terbury against the workers of iniquity. The second part of 
 Christendom had gone astray after the idol Baal, the apostate, 
 the antipope. Who can say what the end might not have 
 been? In the blood of the martyr of Canterbury the Most 
 
116 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 High provided an expiation for the sins of the world. The 
 darkness passed away before the splendor of the mh-acles. The 
 seed of the word sprang up. Unnumbered sinners are con- 
 verted daily, and beat their breasts and turn back into the fold. 
 Our anointed Gideon had his lamp in a pitcher : the clay of 
 the earthly body was broken, and light shone out. The schis- 
 matic Octavian was at once condemned, and Pope Alexander 
 was established in Peter's chair. If Alexander had not been 
 our true father, the martyr who adhered to him would have 
 been defiled by the pitch which he had touched. His miracles 
 prove that he had not been defiled. No man could do such 
 wonders unless God was with him. 
 
 And as he died for the Universal Church, so especially he 
 died for the Church of Canterbury. Let his successor not aban- 
 don the rights which our holy martyr defended. Let him not 
 despise the law of the Church, or depart from obedience to Pope 
 Alexander. Let his holiness be glad that in these last times, 
 and in the ends of the earth, he has found such a son. Let the 
 children of Canterbury rejoice that the consolation of such 
 miracles has been vouchsafed to them. Let the whole earth 
 exult, and they that dwell therein. On those who walked in 
 darkness the light has shined. The fearful shepherds have 
 learned boldness; the sick are healed; the repenting sinner is 
 forgiven. Through the merits of our blessed martyr the blind 
 see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the 
 dead are raised up, the poor have the Gospel preached to them. 
 In him all the miracles of the Gospel are repeated, and find their 
 full completion. Four times the lamps about his tomb have 
 been kindled by invisible hands. An innocent man who was 
 mutilated by the executioner called on the martyr for help and 
 is restored : new eyes and new members have been granted to 
 him. Never anywhere, so soon after death and in so brief a 
 time, has saint been made illustrious by so many and so mighty 
 tokens of God's favor.^ 
 
 Miracles come when they are needed. They come not 
 of fraud, but they come of an impassioned credulity which 
 creates what it is determined to find. Given an enthusiastic 
 desire that God should miraculously manifest Himself, the 
 1 Materials, vol. ii. p. 21 (abridged). 
 
Thomas Becket. 
 
 117 
 
 religious imagination is never long at a loss for facts to 
 prove that He has done so ; and in proportion to the mag- 
 nitude of the interests at stake is the scale of the miraculous 
 interposition. In the eyes of Europe, the cause in which 
 Becket fell was the cause of sacerdotalism as against the 
 prosaic virtues of justice and common sense. Every super- 
 stitious mind in Christendom was at work immediately, gen- 
 erating supernatural evidence which should be universal 
 and overwhelming. Wlien once the impression was started 
 that Becket's relics were working miracles, it spread like 
 an epidemic. Either the laws of nature were suspended, or 
 for the four years which followed his death the power and 
 the wish were gone to distinguish truth from falsehood. 
 The most ordinary events were transfigured. That version 
 of any story was held to be the truest which gave most 
 honor to the martyr. That was the falsest which seemed 
 to detract from his glory. As Becket in his life had repre- 
 sented the ambition and arrogance of the Catholic Church, 
 and not its genuine excellence, so it was his fate in death to 
 represent beyond all others the false side of Catholic teach- 
 ing, and to gather round himself the most amazing agglom- 
 erate of lies. 
 
 The stream which was so soon to roll in so mighty a 
 volume rose first in the humble breast of Benedict the 
 monk. After the murder the body was lifted by the 
 tremblhig brotherhood from. the spot where it had fallen, 
 and was laid for the night in front of the high altar. The 
 monks then sought their pallets with one thought in the 
 minds of all of them. Was the archbishop a saint, or was 
 he a vain dreamer ? God only could decide. Asleep or 
 awake — he was unable to say which — Benedict conceived 
 that he saw the archbishop going towards the altar in his 
 robes, as if to say mass. He approached him trembling. 
 "My lord," he supposed himself to have said, "are you 
 not dead ? " The archbishop answered, " I was dead, but I 
 have risen again." " If you are risen, and, as we believe, a 
 
118 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 martyr," Benedict said, " will you not manifest yourself to 
 the world?*' The archbishop showed Benedict a lantern 
 with a candle dimly burning in it. " I bear a light," he 
 said, " but a cloud at present conceals it." He then seemed 
 to ascend the altar steps. The monks in the choir began 
 the introit. The archbishop took the word from them, and 
 in a rich, full voice poured out, " Arise, why sleepest thou, 
 O Lord ? Arise, and cast us not forth forever." 
 
 Benedict was dreaming ; but the dream was converted 
 into instant reality. The word went round the dormitory 
 that the archbishop had risen from the dead and had ap- 
 peared to Benedict. The monks, scarcely knowing whether 
 they too were awake or entranced, flitted into the cathedral 
 to gaze on the mysterious form before the altar. In the 
 dim winter dawn the}'" imagined they saw the dead man's 
 arm raised as if to bless theiji. The candles had burnt out. 
 Some one placed new candles in the sockets and lighted 
 them. Those who did not know whose hand had done it 
 concluded that it was an angel's. Contradiction was un- 
 heard or unbelieved ; at such a moment incredulity was 
 impious. Rumors flew abroad that miracles had already 
 begun, and when the cathedral doors were opened the 
 townspeople flocked in to adore. They rushed to the scene 
 of the murder. They dipped their handkerchiefs in the 
 sacred stream which lay moist upon the stones. A woman 
 whose sight had been weak from some long disease touched 
 her eyes with the blood, and cried aloud that she could 
 again see clearly. Along with the tale of the crime there 
 spread into the country, gathering volume as it rolled, the 
 story of the wonders which had begun ; and every pious 
 heart which had beat for the archbishop when he was alive 
 was set bounding with delighted enthusiasm. A lady in 
 Sussex heard of the miracle with the woman. Her sight, 
 too, was failing. Divinitus inspirata, under a divine in- 
 spiration, which anticipated the judgment of the Church, 
 she prayed to the blessed martyr St. Thomas, and was in- 
 
Thomas Beclcet. 
 
 119 
 
 stantly restored. Two days later a man at Canterbury who 
 was actually blind recovered his sight. The brothers at the 
 cathedral whose faith had been weak were supernaturally 
 strengthened. The last doubter among them was converted 
 by a vision. 
 
 In the outside world there were those who said that the 
 miracles were delusion or enchantment; but with the scoffs 
 came tales of the retribution which instantly overtook the 
 scoffers. A priest at Nantes was heard to say that if strange 
 things had happened at Canterbury the cause could not be 
 the merits of the archbishop, for God would not work mira- 
 cles for a traitor. As "the man of Belial" uttered his 
 blasphemies his eyes dropped from their sockets, and he 
 fell to the ground foaming at the mouth. His compan- 
 ions carried him into a church, replaced the eyeballs, and 
 sprinkled them with holy water, and prayed to St. Thomas 
 for pardon. St. Thomas was slowly appeased, and the 
 priest recovered, to be a sadder and a wiser man. 
 
 Sir Thomas of Ecton had known Becket in early youth, 
 and refused to believe that a profligate scoundrel could be a 
 saint. Sir Thomas was seized with a quinsy which almost 
 killed him, and only saved his life by instant repentance. 
 
 In vain the De Brocs and their friends attempted to stem 
 the torrent by threatening to drag the body through the 
 streets, to cut it in pieces, and fling it into a cesspool. The 
 mob of Kent would have risen in arms, and burnt their 
 castle over their heads, had they dared to touch so precious 
 a possession. The archbishop was laid in a marble sarcoph- 
 agus before the altar of St. John the Baptist in the crypt. 
 The brain which De Broc's rude sword had spread out was 
 gathered up by reverent hands, the blood stains were scraped 
 off the stones, and the precious relics were placed on the 
 stone lid where they could be seen by the faithful. When 
 the body was stripped for burial, on the back were seen the 
 
 1 " Martyrem libidinosi et nebulonis elogio notans." — William of Can- 
 terbury. Materuils, vol. i. 
 
120 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 marks of the stripes which he had received on the morning 
 of his death. The hair shirt and drawers were found 
 swarming (scaturientes) with vermin. These transcendent 
 evidences of sanctity were laid beside the other treasures, 
 and a wall was built round the tomb to protect it from 
 profanation, with openings through which the sick and « 
 maimed, who now came in daily crowds for the martyr's 
 help, could gaze and be healed. 
 
 Now came the more awful question. The new saint was 
 jealous of his honor: was it safe to withold his title from 
 him till the pope had spoken? He had shown himself 
 alive — was it permitted to pray for him as if he were dead? 
 Throughout England the souls of the brethren were exer- 
 cised by this dangerous uncertainty. In some places the 
 question was settled in the saint's favor by an opportune 
 dream. At Canterbury itself more caution was necessary, 
 and John of Salisbury wrote to the Bishop of Poitiers for 
 advice : 
 
 The blind see (he said), the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the 
 lame walk, the devils are cast out. To pray for the soul of one 
 ■whom God had distinguished by miracles so illustrious is injuri- 
 ous to him, and bears a show of unbelief. We should have 
 sent to consult the pope, but the passages are stopped, and no 
 one can leave the harbors without a passport For ourselves, 
 we have concluded that we ourjht to recognize the will of God 
 without waiting for the holy father's sanction. ^ 
 
 The pope's ultimate resolution it was impossible to doubt. 
 The party of the antipope in England had been put an end 
 to by the miracles. Many people had begun to waver in 
 their allegiance, and now all uncertainty was gone. It was 
 universally admitted that these wonders displayed in favor 
 of a person who had been on Alexander's side conclusively 
 
 1 John of Salisbury to the Bishop of Poitiers. Letters, vol. ii- pp. 257, 
 258 (abridged). How John of Salisbur}' was able to write both to the 
 Bishop of Poitiers and to the Archbishop of Sens, if he was unable to write 
 to Rome because the passages were stopped, does not appear. 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 121 
 
 decided the question.^ Alexander would do well, however, 
 John of Salisbury thought, to pronounce the canonization 
 with as little delay as possible 
 
 The epidemic was still in its inflmcy. The miracles al- 
 ready mentioned had been worked in comparative privacy 
 in the first few weeks which succeeded the martyrdom. Be- 
 fore the summer the archbishop's admirers were contending 
 with each other in every part of Europe which could report 
 the most amazing miracles that had been worked by his 
 intervention or by the use of his name. Pilgrims began to 
 stream to Canterbury with their tales of marvel and their 
 rich thankso^ivinor ofFerincfs. A committee of monks was 
 appointed to examine each story in detail. Their duty was 
 to assure themselves that the alleged miracle was reality 
 and not imagination. Yet thousands were allowed to pass 
 as adequately and clearly proved. Every day under their 
 own eyes the laws of nature were set aside. The aperture 
 in the wall round the tomb contracted or enlarged according 
 to the merit of the visitants. A small and delicate woman 
 could not pass so much as her head through it to look at 
 the relics. She was found to be living in sin. A monster 
 of a man possessed by a devil, but honestly desirous of sal- 
 vation, plunged through, body and all. The spectators 
 (Benedict among them, who tells the story) supposed it 
 would be necessary to pull the wall down to get him free. 
 He passed out with the same ease with which he had 
 entered. But when the monks told him to repeat the ex- 
 periment, stone and mortar had resumed their properties. 
 
 The blood gathered on the handkerchiefs from the pave- 
 ment had shown powers so extraordinary that there was a 
 universal demand for it. The difficulty from the limitation 
 of quantity was got over in various ways. At first it ex- 
 
 1 "Dubitatur a plurimis an pars clomini papae in qua stamiis de justitia 
 niteretur, sed earn a crimine gloriosus martyr absolvit, qui si fautor erat 
 schisniatis nequaquam tantis niiraculis coruscaret" — To the Archbishop 
 of Sens. Letters, vol. ii. p. 263. 
 
122 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 hibited a capacity for self-multiplication. A siugle drop 
 might be poured into a bottle, and the bottle would be 
 found full. Afterwards a miraculous fountain broke out in 
 the crypt, with the water from which the blood was mixed. 
 The smallest globule of blood, fined down by successive 
 recombinations to a fraction of unimaginable minuteness, 
 imparted to the water the virtues of the perfect original. 
 St. Thomas's water became the favorite remedy for all dis- 
 eases throughout the Christian world, the sole condition of 
 a cure being that doctor's medicines should be abjured. The 
 behavior of the liquid, as described by Benedict, who re- 
 lates what he professes to have continually seen, was eccen- 
 tric and at first incomprehensible. A monk at the fountain 
 distributed it to the pilgrims, who brought wooden boxes 
 in which to carry it away. When poured into these boxes 
 it would sometimes effervesce or boil. More often the box 
 would split in the pilgrim's hand. Some sin unconfessed was 
 supposed to be the cause, and the box itself, after such a 
 misfortune, was left as an offering at the tomb. The split- 
 tins: action after a time ^I'ew less violent, and was confined 
 to a light crack. One day a woman brought a box which 
 became thus slightly injured. The monk to whom she gave 
 it thouo-ht it was too ofood to be wasted, and was meditatinor 
 in his own mind that he would keep it for himself. At the 
 moment that the wicked thought formed itself the box flew 
 to pieces in his hands with a loud crash. He dropped it, 
 shrieking that it was possessed. Benedict and others ran 
 in, hearing him cry, to find him in an agony of terror. The 
 amusement with w^hich Benedict admits that they listened 
 to his story suggests a suspicion that in this instance at least 
 the incident was not wholly supernatural.'^ Finding boxes 
 liable to these misfortunes, the pilgrims next tried stone 
 bottles, but with no better success — the stone cracked like 
 the wood. A youth at Canterbury suggested tin ; the burst- 
 
 1 " Hoc miraculuni tam joco et risui raultis extitit quam admirationi." 
 — Materials^ vol. ii. 
 
Thomas Beclcet. 
 
 123 
 
 > ing miracle ceased, and the meaning of it was then per- 
 ceived. The pilgrims were intended to carry St. Thomas's 
 water ronnd the world, hung about their necks in bottles 
 which could be at once secure and sufficiently diminutive for 
 transport. A vessel that could be relied on being thus 
 obtained, the trade became enormous. Though the holy 
 thing might not be sold, the recipient of the gift expressed 
 his gratitude by corresponding presents; and no diamond 
 mine ever brought more wealth to its owners than St. 
 Thomas's water brought to the monks of Canterbury. 
 
 As time went on the miracles grew more and more pro- 
 digious. At first weak eyes were made strong ; then sight 
 was restored which was wholly gone. At first sick men 
 were made whole ; then dead men were brought back to 
 life. At first there was the unconscious exaggeration of 
 real phenomena ; then there was incautious embellishment. 
 Finally, in some instances of course with the best inten- 
 tions, there was perhaps deliberate lying. To which of 
 these classes the story should be assigned which has now 
 to be told the reader must decide for himself. No miracle 
 in sacred liistory is apparently better attested. The more 
 complete the evidence, the more the choice is narrowed to 
 the alternative between a real supernatural occurrence and 
 an intentional fraud. 
 
 In the year which followed Becket's death there lived 
 near Bedford a small farmer named Aylward. This Ayl- 
 ward, unable to recover otherwise a debt from one of his 
 neighbors, broke into his debtor's house, and took posses- 
 sion of certain small articles of furniture to hold as security. 
 The debtor pursued him, wounded him in a scuffle, and car- 
 ried him before the head constable of the district, who 
 happened to be Aylward's personal enemy. A charge of 
 burglary was brought against him, with the constable's sup- 
 port. Aylward was taken before the sheriff, Sir Richard 
 Fitzosbert, and committed to Bedford Gaol to await his 
 trial. The gaol chaplain in the interval took charge of his 
 
124 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 soul, gave him a whip with which to flog himself five times a 
 day, and advised him to consign his cause to the Virgin, 
 and especially to the martyr Thomas. At the end of a 
 month he was brought before the justices at Leigh ton Buz- 
 zard. The constable appeared to prosecute ; and his own 
 story not being received as true, he applied for wager of 
 battle with his accuser, or else for the ordeal of hot iron. 
 Through underhand influence the judges refused either of 
 these comparatively favorable alternatives, and sentenced 
 the prisoner to the ordeal of water, which meant death by 
 drowning or else dismemberment. The law of the Con- 
 queror was still in force. The penalty of felony was not 
 the axe or the gallows, but mutilation ; and the water ordeal 
 being over, which was merely a form, Aylward, in the pres- 
 ence of a large number of clergy and laity, was delivered 
 to the knife. He bled so much that he was supposed to be 
 dying, and he received the last sacrament. A compassionate 
 neighbor, however, took him into his house, and attended 
 to his wounds, which began slowly to heal. On the tenth 
 night St. Thomas came to his bedside, made a cross on his 
 forehead, and told him that if he presented himself the next 
 day with a candle at the altar of the Virgin in Bedford 
 Church, and did not doubt in his heart, but believed that 
 God was able and willing to cure him, his eyes would be 
 restored. In the morning he related his vision. It was 
 reported to the dean, who himself accompanied him to the 
 altar, the townspeople coming in crowds to witness the prom- 
 ised miracle. The blinded victim of injustice and false 
 evidence believed as he was directed, and prayed as he was 
 directed. The bandages were then removed from the empty 
 eye sockets, and in the hollows two small glittering spots 
 were seen, the size of the eyes of a small bird, with which 
 Aylward pronounced that he could again see. He set off 
 at once to offer his thanks to his preserver at Canterbury. 
 The rumor of the miracle had preceded him, and in London 
 he was detained by the bishop till the truth had been in- 
 
Thomas BecTcet. 
 
 125 
 
 quired into. The result was a deposition signed by the 
 Mayor and Corporation of Bedford, declaring that they had 
 ascertained the completeness of the mutilation beyond all 
 possibility of doubt. 
 
 Very curiously, precisely the same miracle was repeated 
 under similar conditions three years later. Some cavil had 
 perhaps been raised on the sufficiency of the evidence. The 
 burgesses of a country town were not, it may have been 
 thought, men of sufficient knowledge and education to be 
 relied upon in so extraordinary a case. The very ability 
 of a saint to restore parts of the human body w hich had 
 been removed may have been privately called in question, 
 and to silence incredulity the feat was performed a second 
 time. There appeared in Canterbury in 1176 a youth 
 named Rogers, bringing with him a letter from Hugh, 
 Bishop of Durham, to the prior of the monastery. The 
 letter stated that in the preceding September the bearer 
 had been convicted of theft, and had been mutilated in the 
 usual manner. He had subsequently begged his living in 
 the Durham streets, and was well known to every one in 
 the town to be perfectly blind. In this condition he had 
 prayed to St. Thomas. St. Thomas had appeared to him 
 in a red gown, with a mitre on his head and three wax 
 candles in his hand, and had promised him restoration. 
 From that moment his sight began to return, and in a short 
 time he could discern the smallest objects. Though, as at 
 Bedford, the eyes were modiccB quantitatis, exceedingly 
 minute, the functions were perfect. The bishop, to leave 
 no room for mistake, took the oaths of the executioner and 
 the witnesses of the mutilation. The cathedral bells were 
 rung, and thanksgiving services were offered to God and 
 St. Thomas. 
 
 So far the Bishop of Durham. But the story received a 
 further confirmation by a coincidence scarcely less singular. 
 When the subject of the miracle came to Canterbury, the 
 judge who had tried him happened to be on a visit to the 
 
126 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 monastery. The meeting was purely accidental. The 
 judge had been interested in the boy, and had closely ob- 
 served him. He was able to swear that the eyes which he 
 then saw were not the eyes which had been cut out by the 
 executioner at Durham, being different from them in form 
 and color.-^ 
 
 When the minds of bishops and judges were thus affected, 
 we cease to wonder at the thousand similar stories which 
 passed into popular belief. Many of them are childish, 
 many grossly ridiculous. The language of the archbishop 
 on his miraculous appearances was not like his own, but was 
 the evident creation of the visionary who was the occasion 
 of his visit ; and his actions were alternately the actions of 
 a benevolent angel or a malignant imp. But all alike were 
 received as authentic, and served to swell the flood of illu- 
 sion which overspread the Christian world. For four years 
 the entire supernatural administration of the Clnii-cli econ- 
 omy was passed over to St. Thomas ; as if Heaven designed 
 to vindicate the cause of the martyr of Canterbury by 
 special and extraordinary favor. In vain during those 
 years were prayers addressed to the Blessed Virgin ; in 
 vain the cripple brought his offerings to shrines where a 
 miracle had never been refused before. The Virgin and 
 the other dispensers of divine grace had been suspended 
 from activity, that the champion of the Church might have 
 the glory to himself. The elder saints had long gone to 
 and fro on errands of mercy. They were now allowed to 
 repose, and St. Thomas was all in all.^ 
 
 1 MateriaU, vol. i. p. 423. 
 
 2 William of Canterbury mentions the case of a man in distress who 
 prayed without effect to the Virgin. "Hujusmodi prec us," he says, 
 " saepius et propensius instabat; similiter et aliorum sanctorum suffragia 
 postulabat, sed ad invocationem sui nominis non exaudierunt, qui retro 
 tempora sua glorificationis habuerunt, ut et sua tenipora propitiationis 
 martyr modernus haberet. Pridem cucurrerant quantum potuerunt et 
 quantum debuerunt signis et prodigiis coruscantes : nunc tandem erat et 
 novo martyri currendum, ut in catalog© sanctorum mirificus haberetur, 
 
Thomas Becket, 
 
 127 
 
 Greater for a time than the Blessed Virgin, greater than 
 the saints ! — nay, another superiority was assigned to him 
 still more astounding. The sacrifice of St. Thomas was 
 considered to be wider and more gracious in its operation 
 than the sacrifice on Calvary. Foliot, Bishop of London, 
 so long his great antagonist, was taken ill a few years after 
 the murder, and was thought to be dying. He was speech- 
 less. The Bishop of Salisbury sat by him, endeavoring to 
 hear his confession before giving him the sacrament. The 
 voice was choked, the lips were closed ; he could neither 
 confess his sins nor swallow his viaticum, and nothing lay 
 before him but inevitable hell, when, by a happy thought, 
 sacrament was added to sacrament — the wafer was sprin- 
 kled with the water of St. Thomas, and again held to the 
 mouth of the dying prelate. Marvel of marvels! the tight- 
 ened sinews relaxed. The lips unclosed ; the tongue re- 
 sumed its office ; and when all ghostly consolation had been 
 duly offered and duly received, Foliot was allowed to re- 
 cover. 
 
 " O martyr full of mercy ! " exclaims the recorder of the 
 miracle, "blessedly forgetful art thou of thy own injuries, 
 who didst thus give to drink to thy disobedient and rebel- 
 lious brother of the fountain of Ihy own blood. O deed 
 without example ! O act incomparable ! Christ gave his 
 flesh and blood to be eaten and drunk by sinners. St. 
 Thomas, who imitated Christ in his passion, imitates Him 
 also in the sacrament. But there is this difference, that 
 Christ damns those who eat and drink Him unworthily, or 
 takes their lives from them, or afflicts them with diseases. 
 The blessed Thomas, doing according to his Master's prom- 
 ise greater things than He, and being more full of mercy 
 than He, gives his blood to his enemies as well as to his 
 friends ; and not only does not damn his enemies, but calls 
 
 Domino dispensante quae, a quibus, et quibus temporibus fieri debeant. 
 Eo namque currente et magna spatia transcurrente, illis tanquam vetera- 
 nis et emeritis interim debebatur otium." — Materials, vol. i. p. 290. 
 
128 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 them back into the ways of peace. All men, therefore, may 
 come to him and drink without fear, and they shall find sal- 
 vation, body and soul." ' 
 
 The details of the miracles contain many interesting pict- 
 ures of old English life. St. Thomas was kind to persons 
 drowned or drowning, kind to prisoners, especially kind to 
 children. He was interested in naval matters — launching 
 vessels from the stocks when the shipwrights could not 
 move them, or saving mariners and fishermen in shipwrecks. 
 According to William of Canterbury, the archbishop in his 
 new condition had a weakness for the married clergy, many 
 miracles being worked by him for a focaria. Dead lambs, 
 geese, and pigs were restored to life, to silence Sadducees 
 who doubted the resurrection. In remembrance of his old 
 sporting days, the archbishop would mend the broken wings 
 and legs of hawks which had suffered from the herons. 
 Boys and girls found him always ready to listen to their 
 small distresses. A Suffolk yeoman, William of Ramshott, 
 had invited a party to a feast. A neighbor had made him 
 a present of a cheese, and his little daughter Beatrice had 
 been directed to put it away in a safe place. Beatrice did 
 as she was told, but went to play with her brother Hugh, 
 and forgot what she had done with it. The days went on ; 
 the feast day was near. The children hunted in every cor- 
 ner of the house, but no cheese could be found. The near- 
 est town was far off. They had no money to buy another 
 if they could reach it, and a whipping became sadly prob- 
 able. An idea struck the little Hugh. " Sister," he said, 
 " I have heard that the blessed Thomas is good and kind. 
 Let us pray to Thomas to help us." They went to their 
 beds, and, as Hugh foretold, the saint came to them in their 
 dreams. Don't you remember," he said, " the old crock 
 in the back kitchen, where the butter used to be kept?" 
 They sprang up, and all was well. 
 
 The original question between the king and the arch- 
 1 Materials, vol. i. pp. 251, 252. 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 129 
 
 bishop still agitated men's minds, and was still so far from 
 practical settlement that visions were necessary to convert 
 the impenitent. A knight of the court, who contended for 
 the Constitutions of Clarendon, and continued stubborn, was 
 struck with paralysis. Becket came and bade him observe 
 that the Judge of truth had decided against the king by 
 signs and wonders, and that it was a sin to doubt any fur- 
 ther. The knight acknowledged his error. Others were 
 less penetrable. The miracles, it was still said, might be 
 deceptive ; and, true or false, miracles could not alter mat- 
 ters of plain right or wrong. Even women were found who 
 refused to believe ; and a characteristic story is told, in 
 which we catch a glimpse of one of the murderers. 
 
 A party of gentlemen were dining at a house in Sussex. 
 Hugh de Morville was in the neighborhood, and while they 
 were sittino- at dinner a note was brouo-ht in from him ask- 
 ing one of the guests who was an old acquaintance to call 
 and see him. The person to whom the note was addressed 
 read it with signs of horror. When the cause was ex- 
 plained, the lady of the house said, " Is that all ? What is 
 there to be alarmed about ? The priest Thomas is dead : 
 well, why need that trouble us ? The clergy were putting 
 their feet on the necks of us all. The archbishop wanted 
 to be the king's master, and he has not succeeded. Eat 
 your victuals, neighbor, like an honest man." The poor 
 lady expressed what doubtless many were feeling. An ex- 
 ample was necessary, and one of her children was at once 
 taken dangerously ill. The county neighbors said it was a 
 judgment ; she was made to confess her sins and carry her 
 child to Canterbury to be cured, where, having been the 
 subject of divine interposition, he was " dedicated to God " 
 and was brought up a monk. 
 
 Through the offerings the monastery at Canterbury be- 
 came enormously rich, and riches produced their natural 
 effect. Giraldus Cambrensis, when he paid a visit there a 
 few years later, found the moi^ks dining more luxuriously 
 9 
 
130 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 than the king. According to Nigellus, the precentor of the 
 cathedral, their own belief in the wonders which they daily 
 witnessed was not profound, since in the midst of them 
 Nigellus could write deliberately, as the excuse for the 
 prevalent profligacy of churchmen, " that the age of mir- 
 acles was past." It was observed, and perhaps commented 
 on, that unless the offerings were handsome the miracles 
 were often withheld. So obvious was this feature that 
 William of Canterbury was obliged to apologize for it. 
 
 The question rises," he says, " why the martyr takes such 
 delight in these donations, being now, as he is, in heaven, 
 where covetousness can have no place. Some say that the 
 martyr, when in the body, on the occasion of his going into 
 exile, borrowed much money, being in need of it for his 
 fellow exiles, and to make presents at court. Being unable 
 to repay his creditors in life, he may have been anxious 
 after death that his debts should be discharged, lest his 
 good name should suffer. And therefore it may be that all 
 these kings and princes, knights, bishops, priests, monks, 
 nuns, all ages and conditions, are inspired by God to come 
 in such troops and take so many vows on them to grant 
 pensions and annuities." ^ 
 
 There is no occasion to pursue into further details the 
 history of this extraordinary alliance between religion and 
 lying, which forced on Europe the most extravagant sacer- 
 dotalism by evidence as extravagant as itself. By an ap- 
 propriate affinity the claims of the Church to spiritual 
 supremacy were made to rest on falsehood, whether uncon- 
 scious or deliberate, and when the falsehood ceased to be 
 credible the system which was based upon it collapsed. 
 Thus all illusions work at last their own retribution. Eccle- 
 siastical miracles are not worked in vindication of purity of 
 life or piety of character. They do not intrude themselves 
 into a presence to which they can lend no increase of beauty 
 and furnish no additional authority. They are the spurious 
 
 1 Materials, vol. i. p. 327. 
 
« 
 
 Tfiomas Becket. 131 
 
 offspring of the passion of theologians for their own most 
 extravagant assumptions. Thej are believed, they become 
 the material of an idolatry, till the awakened conscience of 
 the better part of mankind rises at last in revolt, and the 
 fantastic pretensions and the evidence alleged in support of 
 them depart together and cumber the world no more. We 
 return to authentic history. 
 
132 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 When tlie news of the catastrophe at Canterbury arrived 
 in Normandy, the kmg was for a time stunned. None 
 knew better tlian he the temper of his subjects on the pres- 
 ent condition of the dispute with the Church. The death 
 of the grea^ disturber was natural, and may, perhaps, have 
 been inevitable. Nevertheless, if the result of it as seemed 
 too likely to be the case, was his own excommunication 
 and an interdict on his dominions, a rebellion in Normandy 
 was certain, and a rebellion in England was only too prob- 
 able. Firm as might have been his own grasp, his hold on 
 his continental duchies was not strengthened by his English 
 sovereignty. The Norman nobles and prelates saw their 
 country sliding into a province of the island kingdom which 
 their fathers had subdued. If they were to lose their inde- 
 pendence, their natural affinity was towards the land with 
 which they were geographically combined. The revolu- 
 tionary forces were already at work which came to maturity 
 in the next generation, and if Normandy and Anjou were 
 laid under interdict for a crime committed in England and 
 for an English cause, an immediate insurrection might be 
 anticipated with certainty. The state of England was 
 scarcely more satisfactory. The young princes, who had 
 been over-indulged in childhood, were showing symptoms 
 of mutiny. The private relations between an English sov- 
 ereign and his family were not yet regarded as the prop- 
 erty of his subjects ; the chroniclers rarely indulged in de- 
 tails of royal scandals, and the dates of Henry's infidelities 
 are vaguely given. Giraldus says that he remained true to 
 his queen till she tempted her sons into rebellion, but Elea- 
 
Thomas Bechet, 
 
 133 
 
 nor herself might have told the story differently, and the 
 fire which was about to burst so furiously may have been 
 long smouldering. As to the people generally, it was evi- 
 dent that Becket had a formidable faction among them. 
 The humpbacked Earl of Leicester was dead, but his son, 
 the new earl, was of the same temper as his father. The 
 barons resented the demolition of their castles, which the 
 king had already begun, and the curtailment of their feudal 
 authority. An exasperating inquiry was at that moment 
 going forward into the conduct of the sheriffs. They had 
 levied tax and toll at their pleasure, and the king's inter- 
 ference with them they regarded as an invasion of their 
 liberties. Materials for complaint were lying about in 
 abundance, and anything might be feared if to the injuries 
 of the knights and barons were added the injuries of the 
 Church, and rebellion could be gilded with a show of sanc- 
 tity. The same spirit which sent them to die under the 
 walls of Acre might prompt them equally to avenge the 
 murder of the archbishop. Henry himself was a repre- 
 sentative of his age. He, too, really believed that the 
 clergy were semi-supernatural beings, whose curse it might 
 be dangerous to undergo. The murder itself had been ac- 
 companied with every circumstance most calculated to make 
 a profound impression. The sacrilege was something, but 
 the sacrilege was not the worst. Many a bloody scene had 
 been witnessed in that age in church and Cathedral ; abbots 
 had invaded one another at the head of armed parties ; 
 monks had fought and been killed within consecrated walls, 
 and sacred vessels and sacred relics had been carried off 
 among bleeding bodies. High dignitaries were occasionally 
 poisoned in the sacramental wine, and such a crime, though 
 serious, was not regarded as exceptionally dreadful. But 
 Becket had but just returned to England after a formal rec- 
 onciliation in the presence of all Europe. The King of 
 France, the Count of Flanders, and the Count of Blois had 
 pledged their words for his safety. He had been killed in 
 
134 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 his own cathedral. He had fallen with a dignity, and even 
 grandeur, which his bitterest enemies were obliged to ad- 
 mire. The murderers were Henry's own immediate attend- 
 ants, and Henry could not deny that he had himself used 
 words which they might construe into a sanction of what 
 they had done. 
 
 Giraldus Cambrensis, who when young had seen and 
 spoken with him, has left us a sketch of Henry the Second's 
 appearance and character more than usually distinct. Henry 
 was of middle height, with a thick short neck and a square 
 chest. His body was stout and fleshy, his arms sinewy and 
 long. His head was round and large, his hair and beard 
 reddish-brown, his complexion florid, his eyes gray, with 
 fire glowing at the bottom of them. His habits were ex- 
 ceptionally temperate; he ate little, drank little, and was 
 always extremely active. He was on horseback, at dawn, 
 either hunting or else on business. When off his horse he 
 was on his feet, and rarely sat down till supper time. He 
 was easy of approach, gracious, pleasant, and in conversation 
 remarkably agreeable. Notwithstanding his outdoor habits 
 he had read largely, and his memory was extremely tena- 
 cious. It was said of him, tliat he never forgot a face 
 which he had once seen, or a thing which he had heard or 
 read that was worth remembering. He was pious too, Gir- 
 aldus says, pietate spectabilis. The piety unfortunately, in 
 Giraldus's eyes, took the wrong shape of an over-zeal for 
 justice, which brought him into his trouble with the Church, 
 while to his technical "religious duties" he was less atten- 
 tive than he ought to have been. He allowed but an hour a 
 day for mass, and while mass was being said he usually 
 thought oftsomething else. To the poor he was profusely 
 charitable, "filling the hungry with good things, and send- 
 ing the rich empty away." He was largus in publico, parvus 
 in privato ; he spent freely in the public service and little 
 on himself. As a statesman he was reserved, seldom show- 
 ing his own thoughts. He was a good judge of character, 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 135 
 
 rarely changing an opinion of a man which he had once 
 formed. He was patient of opposition, and trusted much to 
 time to find his way through difiiculties. In war he was 
 dangerous from his energy and his intellect. But he had no 
 love for war, he was essentially a friend of peace, and after 
 a battle could not control his emotion at the loss of his men. 
 "In short," Giraldus concludes, " if God had but elected 
 him to grace and converted him to a right understanding of 
 the privileges of his Church, he would have been an incom- 
 parable prince." ^ Such was Henry, the first of the Eng- 
 lish Plantagenet kings, a man whose faults it is easy to 
 blame, whose many excellences it would have been less easy 
 to imitate — a man of whom may be said what can be 
 affirmed but rarely of any mortal, that the more clearly his 
 history is known the more his errors will be forgiven, the 
 more we shall find to honor and admire. 
 
 He was at Artrenteuil when the fatal account was brought 
 to him. He shut himself in his room, ate nothing for three 
 days, and for five weeks remained in penitential seclusion. 
 Time was precious, for his enemies were not asleep. Lewis 
 and the Archbishop of Sens wrote passionately to the pope, 
 charging the king with the guilt of the murder, and insist- 
 ing that so enormous an outrage should be punished at once 
 and with the utmost severity. The Archbishop of Sens, 
 on his own authority as legate, laid Normandy under inter- 
 dict, and Alexander, startled into energy at last, sent per- 
 sons to the spot to confirm the archbishop's action, and to 
 extend the censures over England. Henry roused himself 
 at last. He dispatched the Archbishop of Rouen and two 
 other bishops^ to explain what had happened, so far as ex- 
 planation was possi'hle ; and as the danger was pressing and 
 bishops travelled slowly, three other churchmen, the Abbot 
 
 1 Giraldus, vol. v. p. 301, etc. 
 
 2 The Bishop of Worcester was one of them. The Bishop of Worcester 
 could explain to the pope why his inhibitory letter on the coronation had 
 never been delivered in England. 
 
136 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 of Valaise and the Archdeacons of Lisieux and Salisbury, 
 pushed on before them. On their first arrival these envoys 
 were refused an audience. When they were admitted to 
 Alexander's presence at last, the attempt at palliation was 
 listened to with horror. Two of Becket's clergy were at 
 the papal court, and had possession of pope and cardinals, 
 and it appeared only too likely that at the approaching 
 Easter Alexander himself would declare Henry excommu- 
 nicated. By private negotiations with some of the cardinals 
 they were able to delay the sentence till the coming of the 
 bishops. The bishops brought them a promise on Henry's 
 part to submit to any penance which the pope might enjoin, 
 and to acquiesce in any order which the pope might pre- 
 scribe for the government of the clergy. An immediate 
 catastrophe was thus averted. Cardinals Albert and Theo- 
 doric were commissioned at leisure to repair to Normandy 
 and do what might be found necessary. To the mortifica- 
 tion of Lewis the censures were meanwhile suspended, and 
 the interdict pronounced by the Archbishop of Sens was not 
 confirmed. 
 
 Henry on his part prepared to deserve the pope's forgive- 
 ness. Uncertain what Alexander might resolve upon, he 
 returned to England as soon as he had recovered his energy. 
 He renewed the orders at the ports against the admission 
 of strangers and af^ainst the introduction of briefs from 
 Rome, which might disturb the public peace. He then at 
 once undertook a duty which long before had been enjoined 
 upon him by Alexander's predecessor, and had been left too 
 long neglected. 
 
 Ireland had been converted to the Christian faith by an 
 apostle from the Holy See, but in seven centuries the Irish 
 Church had degenerated from its original purity. Customs 
 had crept in unknown in other Latin communions, and 
 savoring of schism. No regular communication had been 
 maintained with the authorities at Rome ; no confirmation 
 of abbots and bishops had been applied for or paid for. At 
 
Thomas Bechet, 
 
 137 
 
 a council held in 1151 a papal legate had been present, 
 and an arrangement had been made for the presentation of 
 the palls of the four Irish archbishoprics. But the legate's 
 general account of the state of Irish affairs increased the 
 pope's anxiety for more vigorous measures. Not only 
 Peter's pence and first fruits were not paid to himself — not 
 only tithes were not paid to the clergy — but the most 
 sacred rites were perverted or neglected. In parts of the 
 island children were not baptized at all. Where baptism 
 was observed, it more resembled a magical ceremony than 
 a sacrament of the Church. Any person who happened to 
 be present at a birth dipped the child three times in water 
 or milk, without security for the use of the ajDpointed words. 
 Marriage scarcely could be said to exist. An Irish chief 
 took as many wives as he pleased, and paid no respect to 
 degrees of consanguinity.-^ Even incest was not uncom- 
 mon ^ among them. The clergy, though not immoral in the 
 technical sense, were hard drinkers. The bishops lived in 
 religious houses, and preferred a quiet life to interfering 
 with lawlessness and violence. The people of Ireland, ac- 
 cording to Giraldus, who was sent over to study their char- 
 acter, were bloodthirsty savages, and strangers who settled 
 among them caught their habits by an irresistible instinct. 
 But Ireland, religious Ireland especially, had something in 
 its history which commanded respect and interest. A thou- 
 sand saints had printed their names and memories on Irish 
 soil. St. Patrick and St. Bride had worked more miracles 
 than even the water of St. Thomas. Apostles from Ireland 
 had carried the Christian faith into Scotland, into Iceland, 
 and into Scandinavia. 
 
 The popes felt the exclusion of so singular a country 
 from the Catholic commonwealth to be a scandal which 
 ought no longer to be acquiesced in. In 1155 Pope Adrian 
 
 1 "Plerique enim iHoriim quot volebant uxores habebant, et etiam cog- 
 natas suas germanas habere solebant sibi uxores." — Benedict, vol. i. p. 28. 
 
 2 "Non incestus vitant." — Giraldus Cambrensis, vol. v. p. 138. 
 
138 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 had laid before Henry the Second the duty imposed on 
 Christian princes to extend the truth among barbarous 
 nations, to eradicate vice, and to secure Peter's pence to 
 the Holy See; and a bull had been issued, sanctioning and 
 enjoining the conquest of Ireland.^ 
 
 Busy with more pressing concerns, Henry had put off 
 the expedition from year to year; Meanwhile, the Irish 
 chiefs and kings were quarrelling among themselves. 
 MacMorrough of Leinster was driven out, and had come to 
 England for help. The king hesitated in his answer; but 
 volunteers had been found for the service in Sir Robert 
 Fitzstephen, Sir Maurice Prendergast, Sir Maurice Fitz- 
 gerald, Earl Richard Strigul, with other knights and gen- 
 tlemen who were eager for adventure; and a Norman 
 occupation had been made good along the eastern coast of 
 Munster and Leinster. The invasion had been undertaken 
 without the king's consent. He had affected to reo^ard it 
 with disapproval ; and the Irish of the west, rallying from 
 their first panic, were collecting in force to drive the in- 
 truders into the sea. The desirableness of doing something 
 to entitle him to the pope's gratitude, the convenience of 
 absence from home at a time when dano-erous notices miifht 
 be served upon him, and the certainty that Alexander would 
 hesitate to pronounce him excommunicated when engaged 
 in a conquest which, being undertaken under a papal sane- 
 ly Irish Catholic historians pretend that the bull was a Xorman forgery. 
 The bull was alleged to have been granted in 1155: in 1170 it was acted 
 upon. In 1171-72 a council was held at Cashel, in which the reforms de- 
 manded by Pope Adrian were adopted, and the Irish Church was remod- 
 elled, and a report of the proceedings was forwarded to Alexander the 
 Third. In 1174 a confirmation of the original bull was published, profess- 
 ing to have been signed by Alexander. In 1177 Cardinal Vivian came 
 as legate from Rome, who, in a synod at Dublin, declared formally in the 
 pope's name that the sovereignty of Ireland was vested in the English 
 king, and enjoined the Irish to submit sub pcznd anathematis. It requires 
 some hardihood to maintain in the face of these undisputed facts that the 
 pope was kept in ignorance that the island had been invaded and con- 
 quered under a sanction doubly forged, and that Cardinal Vivian was 
 either a party to the fraud, or that when in Ireland he never discovered it. 
 
Thomas Bechet, 
 
 139 
 
 tion, resembled a crusade, determined Henry to use the 
 opportunity, and at last accomplish the mission which 
 Adrian had imposed upon him. After his return from 
 Normandy, he passed rapidly through England. He col- 
 lected a fleet at JMilford Haven, and landed at Waterford 
 on October 18, 1171. All Ireland, except the north, at 
 once submitted. The king spent the winter in Dublin in a 
 palace of wattles, the best lodging which the country could 
 afford. In the spring he was able to report \o Alexander 
 that the obnoxious customs were abolished, that Catholic 
 discipline had been introduced, and that the Irish tribute 
 would be thenceforward punctually remitted to the papal 
 treasury. 
 
 Could he have remained in Ireland for another year, the 
 conquest would have been completed ; but in April he was 
 recalled to meet the two cardinals who had arrived in Nor- 
 mandy to receive his submission for Becket's death. The 
 Irish annexation was of course a service which was permit- 
 ted to be counted in his favor, but the circumstances of the 
 murder, and Henry's conduct in connection with it, both 
 before and after, still required an appearance of scrutiny. 
 Not the least remarkable feature in the story is that the 
 four knights had not been punished. They had not been 
 even arrested. They had gone together, after leaving Can- 
 terbury, to De Morville's Castle of Knaresborough. They 
 had been excommunicated, but they had received no further 
 molestation. It has been conjectured that they owed their 
 impunity to Becket's own claim for the exclusive jurisdic- 
 tion of the spiritual courts in cases where spiritual persons 
 were concerned. But the wildest advocates of the immuni- 
 ties of the Church had never dreamed of protecting laymen 
 who had laid their hands on clerks. The explanation was 
 that the king had acted honorably by taking the responsi- 
 bility on himself, and had not condescended to shield his 
 own reputation by the execution of men whose fault had 
 been over-loyalty to himself. Elizabeth might have re- 
 
140 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 memhered with advantage the example of her ancestor 
 when she punished Davison, under circumstances not wholly 
 dissimilar, for the execution of the Queen of Scots. 
 
 The king met the cardinals at Caen in the middle of 
 May. At the first interview the difficulty was disposed of 
 which was most immediately pressing, and arrangements 
 were made for a repetition of the ceremony which had been 
 the occasion of the excommunication of the bishops. Prince 
 Henr}' and the Princess Margaret were again crowned at 
 Winchester on the 27th of August by the Archbishop of 
 Rouen and the Bishops of Evreux and Worcester, the same 
 prelates who had gone on the mission to Rome. At 
 Avranches on the 27th of September, at a second and more 
 solemn assembly, the king confessed his guilt for the arch- 
 bishop's death. He had not desired it, he said, and it had 
 caused him the deepest sorrow ; but he admitted that he had 
 used words which the knights had naturally misconstrued. 
 He attempted no palliation, and declared himself willing to 
 endure any penalty which the cardinals might be pleased to 
 impose. 
 
 The conditions with which the cardinals were satisfied 
 implied an admission that in the original quarrel the right 
 had lain with the king. All the miracles at Canterbury 
 had made no difference in this essential point. The king 
 promised to continue his support to Alexander as long as 
 Alexander continued to recognize him as a Catholic sov- 
 ereign — as long, that is, as he did not excommunicate him. 
 He promised not to interfere with appeals to Rome in ec- 
 clesiastical causes, but with the reservation that if he had 
 ground for suspecting an invasion of the rights of the crown, 
 he might take measures to protect himself. He promised 
 to abandon any customs complained of by the Church 
 which had been introduced in his own reign ; but such 
 customs, he said, would be found to be few or none. He 
 pardoned Becket's friends ; he restored the privileges and 
 the estates of the see of Canterbury. For himself, he took 
 
Thomas Bechet, 
 
 141 
 
 the cross, with a vow to serve for three years in the Holy 
 Land, unless the pope perceived that his presence was 
 needed elsewhere. Meanwhile he promised to maintain 
 two hundred Templars there for a year. 
 
 On these terms Henry was absolved. GeofFi ey Ridel and 
 John of Oxford, Becket's active opponents, whom he had 
 twice cursed, were promoted to bishoprics. The four knights 
 must have been absolved also, since they returned to the 
 court, and, like their master, took the vows as Crusaders. 
 The monastic chroniclers consign them to an early and 
 miserable death. The industry of Dean Stanley has dis- 
 covered them, two years after the murder, to have been 
 again in attendance on the sovereign. Tracy became Jus- 
 ticiary of Normandy, and was at Falaise in 1174, when 
 William the Lion did homage to Henry. De Morville, 
 after a year's suspension, became again Justiciary of Nor- 
 thumberland. Fitzurse apparently chose Ireland as the 
 scene of his penance. A Fitzurse was in the second flight 
 of Norman invaders, and was the founder of a family known 
 to later history as the MacMahons, the Irish equivalent of 
 the Son of the Bear. 
 
 But Henry was not yet delivered from the consequences 
 of his contest with Becket, and the conspiracy wdiich had 
 been formed against him under the shelter of Becket's name 
 was not to be dissolved by the spell of a papal absolution. 
 Lewis of France had taken up Becket's cause, not that 
 felonious clerks might go unhanged, but that an English 
 king might not divide his own land with him. The Earl 
 of Leicester had torn down Reginald of Cologne's altars, 
 not alone because he was an orthodox Catholic, but that, 
 with the help of an ambitious ecclesiasticism, he might 
 break the power of the crown. Through France, through 
 England, through Normandy, a combination had been 
 formed for Henry's humiliation, and although the pope no 
 longer sanctioned it, the purpose was deeply laid, and could 
 not lightly be surrendered. 
 
142 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 Unable to strike at his rival as a spiritual outlaw, 
 Lewis found a point where he was no less vulnerable in the 
 jealousy of his queen and the ambition and pride of his 
 sons. His aim was to separate England from its French 
 dependencies. He, and perhaps Eleanor, instigated Prince 
 Henry to demand after the second coronation that his 
 father should divide his dominions, and make over one part 
 or the other to him as an independent sovereign. The 
 king of course refused. Prince Henry and his wife escaped 
 to Lewis per consilium comitum et hnronum Anglice et Nor- 
 mannice qui patrem suum odio hahehant} The younger 
 princes, Richard and Geoffrey, followed them ; and a coun- 
 cil was held at Paris, where the Count of Flanders the 
 Count of Boulogne, William the Lion, and the Earl of 
 Huntingdon from Scotland, and the English and Norman 
 disaffected nobles, combined with Lewis for a general attack 
 upon the English king. England w^as to rise. Normandy 
 was to rise. William was to invade Northumberland. The 
 Count of Flanders was to assist the English insurgents in 
 the eastern counties. Lewis himself was to lead an army 
 into Normandy, where half the barons and bishops were 
 ready to join him. The tliree English princes, embittered, 
 it may be, by their mother's injuries, swore to make no 
 peace with their father without consent of their allies. 
 
 For a time it seemed as if Henry must be overwhelmed. 
 Open enemies were on all sides of him. Of his professed 
 friends too many were disloyal at heart. The Canterbury 
 frenzy added fuel to the conflagration by bringing God 
 into the field. The Earl of Norfolk and Lord Ferrars rose 
 in East Anglia. Lewis and young Henry crossed the 
 frontier into Normandy. The Scots poured over the Tweed 
 into Northumberland. Ireland caught the contagion unin- 
 vited; the greater part of the force which had remained 
 there was recalled, and only a few garrisons were left. 
 Had Alexander allowed the Church to lend its help, the 
 1 Benedict. 
 
Thomas Beehet, 
 
 143 
 
 king must have fallen ; but Alexander honorably adhered 
 to his engagement at Avranches. 
 
 The king himself remained on the continent, struggling 
 as he best could against war and treason. Chief Justice de 
 Luci and Humfrey de Bohun faced the Scots beyond New- 
 castle, and drove them back to Berwick. In the midst of 
 their success they learned that the Earl of Leicester had 
 landed in Norfolk with an army of Flemings. They left 
 the north to its fate. They flew back. Lord Arundel 
 joined them, and the old Earl of Cornwall, who befriended 
 Becket while he could, but had no sympathies with rebel- 
 lion. They fell on the Flemings near Bury St. Edmunds, 
 and flung them into total wreck. Ten thousand were 
 killed. Leicester himself and the rest were taken, and 
 scarce a man escaped to carry back the news to Grave- 
 lines.^ 
 
 The victory in Norfolk was the first break in the cloud. 
 The rebellion in England had its back broken, and waver- 
 ers began to doubt, in spite of the miracles, whether God 
 was on its side. Bad news, however, came from the north. 
 The Scots flowed back, laying waste Cumberland and 
 Northumberland with wild ferocity. At the opening of 
 the summer of 1174 another army of French, Flemings, 
 and insurgent English was collected at Gravelines to re- 
 venge the defeat at Bury, and this time the Earl of 
 Flanders and Prince Henry were to come in person at the 
 head of it. 
 
 An invasion so lead and countenanced could only be re- 
 sisted by the king in person. The barons had sworn alle- 
 giance to the prince, and the more loyal of them might be 
 uncertain in what direction their duties lay. Sad and 
 stern, prepared for the worst, yet resolute to contend to the 
 last against the unnatural coalition, Henry crossed in July 
 to Southampton ; but, before repairing to London to col- 
 lect his forces, he turned aside out of his road for a singular 
 and touching purpose. 
 
 1 October 16, 1173. 
 
144 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 Although the conspiracy against which he was fighting 
 was condemned by the pope it had grown nevertheless too 
 evidently out of the contest with Becket, which had ended 
 so terribly. The combination of his wife and sons with his 
 other enemies was something off the course of nature — 
 strange, dark, and horrible. He was abler than most of 
 his contemporaries, but his piety was (as w^ith most wise 
 men) a check upon his intellect. He, it is clear, did not 
 share in the suspicion that the miracles at the archbishop's 
 tomb were the work either of fraud or enchantment. He 
 was not a person who for political reasons would affect 
 emotions which he despised. He had been Becket's friend. 
 Becket had been killed, in part at least, through his own 
 fault ; and, though he might still believe himself to have 
 been essentially right in the quarrel, the miracles showed 
 that the archbishop had been really a saint. A more com- 
 plete expiation than the pope had enjoined might be neces- 
 sary before the avenging spirit, too manifestly at work, could 
 be pacified. 
 
 From Southampton he directed his way to Canterbury, 
 where the bishops had been ordered to meet him. He 
 made offerings at the various churches which he passed on 
 his way. On reaching Harbledown, outside the city, he 
 alighted at the Chapel of St. Nicholas, and thence went-^ on 
 foot to St. Dunstan's Oratory, adjoining the wall. At the 
 oratory he stripped off his usual dress. He put on a hair 
 penitential shirt, over which a coarse pilgrim's cloak was 
 thrown ; and in this costume, with bare and soon bleeding 
 feet, Henry, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of 
 Normandy, and Count of Anjou, walked through the streets 
 to the cathedral. Pausing at the spot where the archbishop 
 had fallen, and kissing the stone, he descended into the 
 crypt to the tomb, burst into tears, and flung himself on the 
 ground. There, surrounded by a group of bishops, knights, 
 and monks, he remained long upon his knees in silent 
 1 July 12. 
 
Thomas Bechet. 
 
 145 
 
 prayer. The Bisliop of London said for him, what he had 
 said at Avranches, that he had not commanded the murder, 
 but had occasioned it by his hasty words. AVheu the bishop 
 ended, he rose, and repeated his confession with his own 
 lips. He had caused the archbishop's death ; therefore he 
 liad come in person to acknowledge his sin, and to entreat 
 the brothers of the monastery to pray for him. 
 
 At the tomb he offered rich silks and wedges of gold. 
 To the chapter he gave lands. For himself he vowed to 
 erect and endow a religious house, which should be dedi- 
 cated to St. Thomas. Thus amply, in the opinion of the 
 monks, reconciliori 7neruif, he deserved to be forgiven. 
 But the satisfaction was still incomplete. The martyr's 
 injuries, he said, must be avenged on his own person. He 
 threw off his cloak, knelt again, and laid his head upon the 
 tomb. Each bishop and abbot present struck him five times 
 with a whip. Each one of the eighty monks struck him 
 thrice. Strange scene ! None can be found more charac- 
 teristic of the age ; none more characteristic of Henry Plan- 
 tagenet. 
 
 The penance done, he rose and resumed his cloak ; and 
 there by the tomb through the remainder of the July day, 
 and through the night till morning, he remained silently 
 sitting, without food or sleep. The cathedral doors were 
 left open by his orders. The people of the city came freely 
 to gape and stare at the singular spectacle. There was the 
 terrible King Henry, who had sent the knights to kill their 
 archbishop, sitting now in dust and ashes. The most in- 
 genious cunning could not have devised a better method of 
 winning back the affection of his subjects ; yet with no act 
 of king or statesman had ingenious cunning ever less to do. 
 In the morning he heard mass, and presented oflPerings at 
 the various altars. Then he became king once more, and 
 rode to Loudon to prepare for the invader. If his humilia- 
 tion was an act of vain superstition, Providence encouraged 
 him in his weakness. On the day which followed it William 
 10 
 
146 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 the Lion was defeated and made prisoner at Alnwick. A 
 week later came news that the array at Gravelines had 
 dissolved, and that the invasion was abandoned. Delivered 
 from peril at home, Henry flew back to France and flung 
 Lewis back over his own frontier. St. Thomas was now 
 supposed to be fighting for King Henry. Imagination be- 
 comes reality when it gives to one party certainty of vic- 
 tory, to the other the anticipation of defeat. By the spring 
 of 1175 the great combination was dissolved. The princes 
 returned to their duty ; the English and Norman rebels to 
 their allegiance ; and with Alexander's mediation Henry 
 and Lewis and the Count of Flanders were for a time once 
 more reconciled. 
 
Thomas Bechet, 
 
 147 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Though the formal canonization of Becket could not be 
 accomplished with the speed which his impatient friends 
 demanded, it was declared with the least delay which the 
 necessary forms required. A commission which was sent 
 from Kome to inquire into the authenticity of the miracles 
 having reported satisfactorily, the promotion of the arch- 
 bishop was immediately decreed, and the monks were able 
 to pray to him without fear of possible irregularity. Due 
 honor having been thus paid to the Church's champion, it 
 became possible to take up again the ever-pressing problem 
 of the Church's reform. 
 
 Between the pope and the king there had never really 
 been much difference of opinion. They were now able to 
 work harmoniously together. A successor for Becket at 
 Canterbury was found in the Prior of Dover, for whose 
 good sense we have a sufficient guarantee in the abhorrence 
 with which he was regarded by the ardent champions of 
 Church supremacy. The reformation was commenced in 
 Normandy. After the ceremony at Avranches the cardinals 
 who had come from Rome to receive Henry's confession held 
 a council there. The resolutions arrived at show that the 
 picture of the condition of the clergy left to us by Nigellus 
 is not really overdrawn. It was decided that children were 
 to be no more admitted to the cure of souls — a sufficient 
 proof that children had been so admitted. It was decided 
 that the sons of priests should not succeed to their father's 
 preferments — an evidence not only of the habits of the 
 incumbents, but of the tendency of Church benefices to be- 
 come hereditary. Yet more significantly the guilty bargains 
 
148 
 
 Life and Times of 
 
 were forbidden by which benefices were let out to farm, 
 and lay patrons presented incumbents on condition of shar- 
 ing the offertory money ; while pluralist ecclesiastics, of 
 whom Becket himself had been a conspicuous instance, were 
 ordered to give a third, at least, of their tithes to the vicars. 
 At the close of the war, in 1175, a similar council was held 
 at Westminster under the new primate. Not only the 
 Avranches resolutions were adopted there, but indications 
 appeared that among the English clergy simony and license 
 were at a yet grosser point than on the Continent. Bene- 
 fices had been publicly set up to sale. The religious houses 
 received money for the admission of monks and nuns. 
 Priests, and even bishops, had demanded fees for the ad- 
 ministration of the sacraments ; while as regarded manners 
 and morals, it was evident that the priestly character sat 
 lightly on the secular clergy. They carried arms ; they 
 wore their hair long like laymen ; they frequented taverns 
 and more questionable places ; the more reputable among 
 them were sheriffs and magistrates. So far as decrees of a 
 council could alter the inveterate habits of the order, a 
 better state of things was attempted to be instituted. In 
 the October followinof, Cardinal Hucjezun came from Rome 
 to arrange the vexed question of the liability of clerks to 
 trial in the civil courts. The customs for which Henry 
 pleaded seem at that time to been substantially recognized. 
 Offenders were degraded by their ordinaries and passed 
 over to the secular judges. For one particular class of 
 offences definite statutory powers were conceded to the 
 State. The clergy were notorious violators of the forest 
 laws. Deer-stealing implied a readiness to commit other 
 crimes, and Cardinal Hugezun formally consented that or- 
 ders should be no protection in such cases. The betrayal 
 of their interests on a matter which touched so nearly the 
 occupation of their lives was received by the clergy with a 
 scream of indicrnation. Their lanoruasre on the occasion is 
 an illustration of what may have been observed often, be- 
 
Thomas BecJcet, 
 
 149 
 
 fore and since, that no order of men are less respectiul to 
 spiritual authority when they disapprove its decrees. 
 
 " The aforesaid cardinal," wrote Benedict and Walter of 
 Coventry, " conceded to the king the right of impleading the 
 clerks of his realm under the forest laws, and of punishing 
 them for taking deer. Limb of Satan that he was ! merce- 
 nary satellite of the devil himself! Of a shepherd he was 
 made a robber. Seeing the wolf coming, he fled away and 
 left the sheep whom the supreme pontiff had committed to 
 his charge." ^ 
 
 The angry advocates of ecclesiastical license might have 
 spared their passion. The laws of any country cannot be 
 maintained above the level of the average iutellisrence of 
 the people ; and in another generation the clergy would be 
 free to carry their cross-bows without danger of worse con- 
 sequences than a broken crown from the staff of a game- 
 keeper. " Archbishop Richard," says Giraldus, " basely 
 surrendered the rights which the martyr Thomas had fought 
 for and won, but Archbishop Stephen recovered them." 
 The blood of St. Thomas had not been shed, and the martyr 
 of Canterbury had not been allowed a monopoly of wonder- 
 working, that a priest should be forbidden to help himself 
 to a haunch of vension on festival days. In the great 
 Charter of English freedom the liberties of the Church were 
 comprehended in the form, or almost in the form, in which 
 Becket himself would have defined them. The barons paid 
 for the support of the clergy on that memorable occasion by 
 the concession of their most extravagant demands. Ben- 
 efit of clergy thenceforward was permitted to throw an en- 
 chanted sliield, not round deer-stealers only, but round 
 thieves and murderers, and finally round every villain that 
 could read. The spiritual courts, under the name of liberty, 
 were allowed to develop a system of tyranny and corrup- 
 
 1 " Ecce membrum SatanjB ! ecce ipsius Satanoe conductus satelles ! qui 
 tarn subito factus cle pastore raptor videns lupum venientem fugitet dimisit 
 oves sibi a summo pontifice commissas." 
 
150 Life and Times of Thomas Bechet. 
 
 tion unparalleled in the administrative annals of any time 
 or country. The English laity were for three centuries 
 condemned to writhe under the yoke which their own cred- 
 ulous folly had imposed on them, till the spirit of Henry 
 the Second at length revived, and the aged iniquity was 
 brought to judgment at the Reformation. 
 
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-A- r> E L I Gr HXFTJ JL, BOOK. 
 
 Charles Kingsley: 
 
 HIS LETTERS 
 
 AND 
 
 MEMORIES OF HIS LIFE. 
 
 EDITED BY HIS WIFE. 
 
 WITH STEEL PORTRAIT AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 ABniliGEJ) EDITION, 
 One volume 8vo. 500 Pages, Cloth, $2.50. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE FOREIGN PRESS. 
 
 From the London Saturday Review. 
 •'The book discharges very completely the most essential functions of a biography. It enables 
 us to know Mr. Kingsley thoroughly well ; to appreciate his strongest motives ; to understand what 
 he thought about himself and his performances ; and to form a tolerably complete estimate of his 
 work. Mr. Kingsley was a man of sufficient force and versatility to deserv-e such a treatment ; and 
 everj'body who sympathizes with some of his aims — a phrase which includes nearly everj' one who 
 wishes well to his race — or who has been interested by Hypatia or Alton Locke, which again in- 
 cludes all readers of the best modem English literature, will find the volume full of interest." 
 
 From the London Daily Neivs. 
 " Will be heartily welcomed by the public. . . . This estimate of him wDl probably be 
 that which posterity will accept, now that in these letters and memories the man himself may be 
 known as only his nearest friends knew him while he lived." 
 
 From the British Quarterly Review. 
 " Mrs. Kingsley has edited these memorials of her distinguished husband with good taste and 
 great care. . . . The book is worthy of the subject, intensely interesting alike fh)m the wide 
 circle of subjects it touches, and the beautiful, gifted, humane, and sympathetic spirit which it 
 brings so near to us. 
 
 EARLY ORDERS SOLICITED. 
 
 The above hook for sale by all booksellers^ »r will he sent, j>ost or excess chargtt 
 paid, ujion receipt of the price hy 
 
 SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., Publishers, 
 
 743 & 745 Broadway, New York, 
 
BW5097 .T4F94 
 
 Life and times of Thomas Becket. 
 
 Princeton Thepiogicai Semms^v-Sref ' ^ t-i-^ 
 
 1 1012 00034 6934