CHAPTER V

THE STRUGGLE WITH BECKET

During the time that Henry was campaigning on the Norman borders, in April 1161, Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury died. For nearly a year the king kept the primacy vacant, but at last, in the spring of 1162, he declared his wish that Becket should take the archiepiscopate. The appointment, not unforeseen, of the courtly chancellor seems to have been distasteful to many of the clergy, but the only man who had the courage to brave the king’s wrath by opposing the election of his favourite was Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford, whose opposition was probably increased in vehemence but diminished in effect by the fact that he was himself Becket’s most dangerous rival in the race for the primacy. Foliot’s protest was supported by the Empress Maud, who, as a devoted daughter of the Church, doubtless considered Becket too lax and worldly for the post; but for once Henry disregarded his mother’s opinion. Becket himself must have seen in his promotion the chance of satisfying his ambition; as chancellor he was the second man in the realm, subject only to the king; but, subject to him, often directing the royal policy, but always liable to be checked by an expression of the royal will; as archbishop, with the divine authority of the Church behind him, it would be for him to dictate and for the king to obey. Yet knowing, as he alone knew, the ultra-clerical course which he intended to take, he foresaw that it must sooner or later bring him into collision with Henry, and forebodings for the future, more particularly regret for the inevitable disruption of the ancient bonds of friendship which bound him to the king, made him hesitate to grasp the prize for which he longed. At last the insistence of the king, coupled with the persuasions of Cardinal Henry of Pisa, overcame Becket’s half-hearted resistance, and in May 1162 he sailed for England for consecration.

Besides the business attendant on his elevation to the primacy, the chancellor was charged with the carrying out of arrangements for an expedition against the Welsh and also with the performance of fealty to the king’s eldest son, Henry. The prince, who was at this time eight years old, had been entrusted by his father to Becket’s care, and a very genuine feeling of affection existed between the boy and his guardian, which was to continue, unaffected by the events of later years, until the archbishop’s death. It was therefore not unsuitable that the last recorded act of Becket in his official capacity as chancellor was to head the assembled peers at Westminster in taking the oath of fealty to the young Henry. On the occasion of this ceremony, which seems to have included an informal coronation--for a golden crown and regalia were made for the prince[19]--Becket was formally elected to the see of Canterbury. The right of the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, to appoint the archbishop, who was also nominally their abbot, was so far recognised that they were directed by the king’s messengers, the Bishops of Chichester, Exeter, and Rochester, Richard de Lucy and his brother the Abbot of Battle, to hold an election, but they were told definitely that their choice must fall on the chancellor. This formality over, there arose the question of consecration. The right to perform this ceremony was disputed between Roger, Archbishop of York, as primate, the Bishop of Rochester as Vicar of Canterbury, and the Bishop of Winchester as Precentor of Canterbury, while a claim was also put in by the bishop of one of the Welsh sees as the senior member of the episcopal bench. The see of London, whose bishop, as Dean of Canterbury, would have had the best claim to officiate, was vacant, but the dean and canons appointed Henry, Bishop of Winchester, to act for them, and to him eventually was assigned the honour of officiating.

On Saturday, 2nd June, Becket, who was still in deacons’ orders, was ordained priest, and on the following day he was consecrated archbishop. To commemorate the occasion he ordained that the Sunday following Whitsunday should in future be kept as a great festival in honour of the Holy Trinity,[20] and even the zeal of the Reformers against the cult of Thomas of Canterbury did not blot out from the calendar of the English Church Trinity Sunday.

The consecration of Thomas as Archbishop of Canterbury was indeed an event worthy of commemoration, forming as it did the prelude to the struggle between clerical and lay power which was to occupy the next ten years of Henry’s reign. This struggle presents a curious problem of historical perspective. Seen through the atmosphere of the contemporary chronicle or through the rarified medium of history the Becket controversy presents very different features. To contemporaries it seemed of overpowering importance, eclipsing all other events of the time and entailing issues of enormous weight. To us the points at issue seem of slight significance, while the results appear almost negligible in comparison with the energy and heat expended to produce them. Whichever view, if either, is correct, there can be no doubt of the great part played by this episode, for though in the end the contending parties were left very much where they started the casual results of the struggle influenced the history of the country most powerfully, so that in this controversy the incidents are of greater importance than the main matter of contention.

It is easy to be wise after the event, and Henry is constantly blamed by modern writers for having promoted Becket to the primacy and not having foreseen the consequences. Yet little reflection is required to show that nothing short of the gift of prophecy would have enabled Henry to foresee the position which Thomas was to take up. The chancellor had habitually neglected his duties as Archdeacon of Canterbury, calling down upon himself the rebukes of Archbishop Theobald, and had on several occasions shown very slight regard for the privileges of the Church. At the time of his appointment Gilbert Foliot scoffingly remarked that the king had performed a miracle, for he had converted a knightly courtier into a holy archbishop. Events proved Foliot’s jest a truth, and though it was Becket who wrought the marvellous metamorphosis himself, it remained a miracle unforeshadowed in the past life or character of the man.

Thomas, who was born on 21st December 1118, was the son of Gilbert Becket by Maud his wife. His parents, who were both of Norman extraction[21] but had settled in London before his birth, belonged to the middle class and were comfortably off, and by them he was sent to the school of the canons of Merton Priory. While he was still quite young his mother died, and not long afterwards his father, who was in very reduced circumstances owing to losses by fire, followed her. Fortunately for himself Thomas, who was a good-looking boy of much promise, had attracted the attention of a powerful baron, Richer of L’Aigle, who had been in the habit of putting up at the Beckets’ house whenever he came up to London. Richer interested himself in the orphan, sending him to school in London and allowing him to spend his holidays with him in the country, presumably at his Sussex castle of Pevensey. Here Thomas practised hunting, hawking, and other manly sports, on one occasion nearly losing his life in the endeavour to rescue his falcon from a mill-stream. His patron appears to have sent him to study in Paris, and on his return he entered the service of his kinsman, Osbern Huitdeniers, one of the leading citizens of London. After some three years of official life in the city he determined to try a field more promising for his ambitions. Once again his father’s hospitality proved the means of his advancement, two of Gilbert’s former guests, the Archdeacon Baldwin and his brother, Master Eustace, introducing him to the notice of Archbishop Theobald. The archbishop, finding that the young man’s father had come from his own native town of Thierceville, gladly enrolled him in his household and took a kindly interest in him. There were at this time at the archbishop’s court many men of distinction and learning, and one of these, Roger of Pont l’Evêque, afterwards Archbishop of York, jealous of the favour shown to Thomas, whose powers lay in the direction of showy brilliance rather than sound scholarship, did all that he could to injure and annoy him. Twice Roger persuaded the archbishop to dismiss the young man, but on each occasion Theobald’s brother, Walter, Archdeacon of Canterbury, took up his cause and secured his restoration to favour. As early as 1143, when he was in his twenty-fifth year, Thomas rendered his patron good service at the papal court in the matter of annulling the legatine commission formerly granted to Bishop Henry of Winchester. About this date he appears to have attended the famous law schools at Bologna, and afterwards at Auxerre. By this time he was beginning to become a person of importance; the churches of St. Mary-le-Strand and Otford, and prebends in St. Paul’s and Lincoln had been bestowed upon him, and in March 1148 he, with his rival, Roger of Pont-l’Evêque, attended the archbishop on his venturesome sail across the Channel to the Council of Rheims. Three years later, in 1151, Becket achieved a further diplomatic success in defeating Stephen’s efforts to obtain papal recognition for his son Eustace, and in 1154, when Roger of Pont-l’Evêque became Archbishop of York, Thomas succeeded him as Archdeacon of Canterbury.

[Illustration: SEAL OF ROGER, ARCHBISHOP OF YORK (1/1)]

On the accession of Henry II., as we have seen, Thomas was made chancellor by the advice of Archbishop Theobald, with the generous support of Bishop Henry of Winchester, whose claims he had once been instrumental in defeating. Of the splendour and luxury displayed in his household as chancellor something has already been said. The means to satisfy his taste for magnificence and display were furnished not only by the emoluments, regular and irregular,[22] of his office, but by multitudinous extra preferments bestowed upon him, such as the provostship of Beverley, the custody of the Tower of London, which he restored and strengthened, and the honours of Eye and Berkhamstead. He still retained his youthful love of sport and also displayed considerable military ability; during the expedition to Toulouse he was left in command at Cahors, and justified his appointment by leading his troops in person to the capture of three other castles, while somewhat later he overthrew a French knight in single combat. The king could appreciate a man of spirit and a good sportsman, and the two men became fast friends. Henry, on his way to or from the hunt, would often drop in at the chancellor’s house and take a glass of wine with him, or, vaulting the table, sit down and eat, noting with amusement the luxury for which his friend was so famous. The story is well known how, as king and chancellor were riding together through the streets of London one bitter winter’s day, they saw a poor old man clad in rags. Turning to his friend the king said, “Would it not be a meritorious act to give that poor old man a warm cloak?” The chancellor agreeing that it would indeed, Henry exclaimed, “You shall have the merit of this worthy act!” and seizing Becket’s magnificent fur-lined cloak, after a short struggle secured it and flung it to the beggar.

The intimate friend of the king, a courtier, sportsman, and warrior, whose only interest in the Church seemed to be to draw the revenues of his many benefices and to extract money from its prelates for his royal master, no one could have foreseen Becket’s conversion into the most ultra-clerical of archbishops.

Almost the first act of the newly consecrated archbishop was to resign the chancellorship. As Becket must have been fully aware that the king expected him to continue in office and would never have bestowed the primacy upon him if he had declared his intention of resigning, his action was surprising and unjustifiable. Henry, though deeply annoyed, accepted the situation and displayed no ill-feeling towards Thomas. In fact when he landed at Southampton in January 1163, having been detained at Cherbourg over Christmas by bad weather, he greeted the archbishop with all the warmth of affection which he had formerly bestowed upon the chancellor. These good relations continued for some months, Thomas supporting the king’s request to the pope for the translation of Gilbert Foliot from Hereford to the vacant see of London,[23] and Henry visiting the archbishop at Canterbury on his way down to Dover to meet the Count of Flanders in March. But Becket was now throwing himself with his usual thoroughness into the work appropriate to his position as head of the English Church. His taste for display continued unabated, but found new outlets. As archbishop he was the recognised patron of the younger sons of nobles as the king was of their elder sons, while amongst the crowd of high-born youths serving as his esquires was the heir to the throne; his household was as magnificent and his table as well-appointed as ever, but the clerks, who had formerly received little consideration, had now supplanted the knights in the place of honour, while a somewhat ostentatious prominence was given to the daily distribution of alms and feeding of large numbers of poor persons. Thomas himself presided gracefully over the splendid feasts, and, though far from practising the stern asceticism of Gilbert Foliot, observed a strict moderation suitable to the monastic habit which he had assumed; and although there was no lack of gaiety and animation at his table the jesters and minstrels of former days were now replaced by readers of the Holy Scripture.

Soon the erstwhile pluralist chancellor began to attack the bestowal of multiple benefices upon the king’s clerks, laymen in all but name, whose sole connection with their benefices was to draw their revenues. So long as Becket confined himself to this legitimate course of reform the king raised no objections, only insisting that the physician should first heal himself by surrendering the archdeaconry of Canterbury, which he had most inconsistently retained with the archbishopric. But soon Thomas passed from correcting the faults of his clergy to protecting their vices. The complaints of the laity against the extortions and injustice of the archdeacons and their officials had been brought to Henry’s notice in the time of Archbishop Theobald, and one particular case reported from Scarborough roused the king to declare that these clerical officers wrung more money from the people every year than the revenues of the crown. Had not matters of importance obliged Henry to leave England just at this time it is not improbable that he would have carried out, with the assistance of Thomas the Chancellor, some of those measures for the control of the clerical courts which Thomas the Archbishop devoted his life to opposing. The bishops ordained candidates without regard to their fitness, and, contrary to the canons, bestowed orders upon men who had no title. Inevitably the country was overrun with men of low character, without definite means of subsistence, who could laugh alike at the lay courts, which had no jurisdiction over them, and at the ecclesiastical courts, whose proceedings were only too often a farce; for the clerk who held no church deprivation had no terrors, and it was well known that the bishops would rather a guilty clerk were acquitted than that they should be burdened with the cost of his keep in the episcopal prisons. Murders and other crimes were committed by these bastard sons of the Church, and any attempt to bring the offenders to book was foiled by the prelates. Becket, who as chancellor had imprisoned a clerk in the Tower for seduction, now threw the mantle of the Church over an unworthy clerk who had been guilty of a peculiarly atrocious murder and adultery. The king felt strongly in the matter, but it would seem that for a time his old affection kept him from pressing his anti-clerical measures to the point of an actual breach with the archbishop. Other matters, however, more personal, now arose to increase the estrangement between the former friends.

On his return from the Welsh expedition in July 1163, Henry appears to have found his affairs rather involved and to have proposed to increase his revenue by appropriating the annual payment known as the “Sheriff’s aid”; the exact points in dispute are obscure and will be discussed in a later chapter, but it is known that the king swore “by the eyes of God”[24] that the payment should be made part of the Crown revenues and that the archbishop vowed “by his reverence for those same eyes” that no penny of it should be paid from his lands while he lived. In the end Henry had to give way, and he was again defeated by Becket about the same time in another matter still nearer to his heart. During the retreat from Toulouse in 1159 King Stephen’s son, William, Count of Boulogne, and, in right of his wife, Earl of Surrey and Warenne, had died, leaving no children. To prevent the county of Boulogne falling into the hands of any adherent of the King of France, Henry took William’s sister, Mary, out of the nunnery of Romsey, where she was abbess, and married her to Matthew, son of the Count of Flanders, in spite of Becket’s very proper protests. Earl William’s widow, Isabel de Warenne, being still unmarried, the king decided that her heritage would form a suitable provision for his brother William, for whom he had once proposed to conquer Ireland. He therefore began to push the marriage forward, but was stopped by the action of the archbishop, who forbade it on the ground that the contracting parties were related within the prohibited degrees.[25] A papal dispensation had been available for the marriage of Abbess Mary, but the opposition of Thomas the Archbishop proved so much more potent than the protests of Thomas the Chancellor that the projected marriage had to be abandoned. The young William took the matter so much to heart that he retired to the court of his mother, the empress, at Rouen, where he shortly afterwards sickened and died on 30th January 1164.

Becket had deprived the king’s clerks of their benefices, protected criminals from the king’s justice, opposed the king’s financial schemes, and thwarted the king’s plans for his brother’s advance. He had also aggressively asserted the rights of Canterbury against the Earl of Clare and others of the king’s barons and had excommunicated the king’s tenant, William of Eynesford, in a dispute over the advowson of a church, the decision of which was claimed as belonging to the king’s court. Even if he had been entirely in the right in every one of these questions it would not have been extraordinary if the king, a violently self-willed man, had become completely estranged. And now the question of clerical immunities reached a climax. A long list of crimes committed by clerks was presented to the king by his justices, and one of these justices, Simon Fitz-Peter, made a special complaint against Philip de Broi, a canon of Bedford. The canon had been accused of the murder of a knight and had cleared himself by his oath before the Bishop of Lincoln, but Simon Fitz-Peter, who was holding assizes at Dunstaple, apparently considering that the verdict of the ecclesiastical court was contrary to evidence, ordered him to stand his trial before himself; Philip refused, and in course of argument used insulting expressions towards the justice, which the latter reported to the king. Henry, enraged at the insult to his representative, demanded that Philip should be retried on both charges, of murder and contempt of court, before a lay tribunal. This claim Becket successfully combated, and the king had to be content with a trial before an ecclesiastical court. The prelates who formed the court decided that the question of the murder had been finally disposed of by the acquittal before the Bishop of Lincoln and could not be re-opened, but for the insult to the king’s officer they commanded that Philip de Broi should forfeit his prebend and go into exile for two years, and should also make a public apology to Simon Fitz-Peter clad in penitential garb. Henry declared that the sentence was absurdly light, and determined to bring the whole question of clerical and lay jurisdiction to a definite issue.

An opportunity soon offered, and at a council held at Westminster in October 1163, Henry definitely demanded that the bishops should swear to obey the ancient customs of the realm, which, he claimed, allowed a clerk to be indicted before a lay tribunal, sent for trial to the ecclesiastical court, and, if found guilty, degraded and, being no longer a clerk, sent back to the lay court to receive sentence. There was no question of trying clerks before lay judges, but the bishops, headed by Becket, took up the line that the Church’s sentence must of necessity be just,

[Illustration: HENRY II DISPUTING WITH BECKET

(From Cott. M.S. Claud. Dii)]

and that to inflict a further punishment after degradation would be to punish a man twice for one offence; they would therefore only consent to the “ancient customs,” of which they denied the antiquity and legality, “saving the rights of their order,” or in other words reserving the liberty to interpret them as they pleased. The king at once broke up the council, deprived Becket of the custody of the honours of Eye and Berkhamstead, and withdrew the young Prince Henry from his care. An interview between the king and the archbishop outside Northampton did not mend affairs, but by the advice of Arnulf, Bishop of Lisieux, Henry adopted the policy of detaching the bishops from Becket and gradually isolating him. Bishop Hilary of Chichester had from the first been willing to accept the customs, and Gilbert Foliot of London, and Roger, Archbishop of York, lent their aid, more from dislike of the primate than from approval of the king’s schemes. Finding himself almost unsupported the archbishop listened to the arguments of the papal nuncio, Philip, Abbot of Aumône, and Robert of Melun, Bishop-elect of Hereford, and agreed to withdraw the obnoxious reservation and accept the customs. Not content with the verbal promise thus made before him at Oxford, Henry determined to have the acceptance of the customs formally and publicly ratified, and accordingly he summoned a great council to meet at Clarendon in January 1164.

At this Council of Clarendon were present the peers, both spiritual and lay, in full force; the Earls of Cornwall, Leicester, Hertford, Essex and Chester, Arundel, Salisbury and Ferrers; the Counts of Brittany and Eu; Richard de Lucy, the justiciar; Richer of l’Aigle, Becket’s old patron; Simon Fitz-Peter, the insulted justice, and the representatives of such great families as Bohun, Mowbray, Braose, Warenne, Cheyney, Beauchamp, and Dunstanville, all of whom gave their assent to the code of laws now presented on the king’s behalf as embodying the customs of the realm concerning the Church prevalent in the time of his grandfather, Henry I. The prelates had apparently expected that they would be called upon to promise obedience to certain vague and undefined “ancient customs,” which could be subsequently eluded by denying that any particular regulation which infringed their privileges rightly belonged to that category. When they heard the very definite and exact claims advanced by the Crown they met the demand for their assent with an absolute and united refusal, as was indeed to be expected.

The details of these Constitutions of Clarendon will be discussed elsewhere, but the main points were, briefly, as follows. The claim, already referred to, that clerks might be accused before a lay judge, and if condemned and degraded by the ecclesiastical court, the proceedings in which were to be watched by one of the king’s justices, might be sentenced as laymen. That appeals might be made from the bishop’s court to that of the archbishop and from the latter to the king, without whose leave no appeal should be made to the Pope; to strengthen this latter provision it was ordained that no ecclesiastic should leave the kingdom without the royal licence. That no tenant-in-chief should be excommunicated or his lands interdicted without the king’s leave; that pleas touching advowsons should belong to the king’s courts; and that the sons of villeins should not be ordained without the permission of their lords. Becket, as leader of the Church party, rejected the customs completely. He reasserted the finality of sentences passed in ecclesiastical courts, and declared that the proposed sentencing of the condemned clerk by the lay court would be “to bring Christ before Pilate a second time.” The prohibition of papal appeals he denounced as contrary to the consecration oaths of the bishops, by which they were bound to allow such appeals, and the restriction on the passage of the clergy across the seas he declared would place them in a position of inferiority as compared with laymen and would discourage pious pilgrimages. Finally, on the whole question he took up the uncompromising attitude that the Church was the giver of laws and the ruler of kings, and that human laws which interfered with its privileges were of no effect.

Negotiations were opened on the king’s behalf by the Bishops of Norwich and Salisbury, who pointed out to Becket the probable consequences for all the prelates of inflaming the king’s anger, which consequences they themselves would be the first to feel, as they were out of favour with Henry. Their representations proving of no effect, the Earls of Cornwall and Leicester besought him to consider the difficult position in which they and other peers, faithful sons of the Church, would be placed if the king persisted in his demands to the point of ordering the arrest and trial of the archbishop. Finding him obdurate they withdrew, and the next attempt at effecting a compromise was made by two knights of the Order of the Temple, Richard de Hastings, the English Grand Master, and Otes de St. Omer. Combining in themselves the attributes of knights and ecclesiastics, they were well suited to act as arbitrators, and their arguments appear to have had some effect; so that when at last the impatient crowds of courtiers began to threaten and show signs of violence, the wearied archbishop broke down under the strain and condescended to an unworthy act of casuistry. Turning to his astonished fellow prelates he exclaimed, “If the king insists upon my perjuring myself I must do so, and must hope to purge the sin by future penance.” Proceeding to the king’s council chamber he declared his acceptance of the customs, “honestly, in good faith and without deceit,” and at his command the bishops also signified their consent. Henry at once demanded that Becket should swear to observe the customs, and should affix his seal to a written copy thereof. To the first demand Becket replied that a priest’s word was as good as an oath, while the question of sealing he managed to waive for the time being, accepting a copy of the customs by way of protest. Following up his victory, Henry caused both archbishops, of Canterbury and York, to write to the pope desiring him to confirm the customs. This they did, to please the king, knowing well that the pope would refuse to sanction any such infringement of the Church’s privileges. At the same time Henry desired the pope to appoint the Archbishop of York legate for all England. Alexander, while refusing to confirm the customs, granted the legation to Archbishop Roger, but by exempting Becket and the church of Canterbury deprived the grant of its point. Henry indignantly returned the letters of legation and refused a further offer of the legation for himself.

Becket left Clarendon deeply humiliated at his own weakness, and even went so far as to suspend himself from the performance of divine service for a time. A letter to the pope explaining and lamenting his action received a sympathetic reply virtually absolving him from the promise which he had made but had never intended to keep. Not content with this, however, he determined to visit the papal court, at this time established at Sens, in person, and actually set sail from Romney with that intention, but was foiled in his attempt to cross the Channel by contrary winds, coupled with the boatmen’s fear of incurring the king’s anger. This infringement of one of the articles of the Clarendon Constitutions was reported to Henry, and served to embitter him yet more against Becket and to precipitate the crisis which now arose. One of the king’s officers, John the Marshal, having brought an action in the archbishop’s court touching an estate held of the manor of Pagham in Sussex, being defeated in his claim availed himself of the section in the Constitutions which permitted an appeal to the king, and made such an appeal, taking oath that justice had not been done to him. The archbishop was accordingly ordered to attend and answer the plea at Westminster on 14th September 1164. On that day Becket was unwell, and sent four knights with letters from himself and from the sheriff of Kent testifying that he was ill, and alleging that John’s case ought to be set aside as he had deceitfully sworn upon a tropiary, or hymn-book, instead of upon the Gospels. The king vowed that Becket’s plea of illness was false, stormed at the knights, refused to listen to them, and named a fresh day, 6th October, for hearing the suit at Northampton. By this time the breach between the once inseparable friends had so widened that the king would not send even formal documents direct to the archbishop, as to do so would involve addressing him with a polite formula of salutation which was very far from expressing his real feelings. For the council to be held at Northampton, therefore, Becket, instead of receiving the personal summons due to his rank, was summoned through the sheriff, and when he greeted the king at Northampton he was refused the kiss of welcome.

John the Marshal was absent on the king’s business at the Exchequer on the first day of the council, but next day he duly appeared in court, and Becket was ready to answer him. Henry, however, swept aside Becket’s arguments and pleadings, accused him of contempt of court for not having appeared in person on the previous occasion, and demanded sentence against him. The court, fearing the king and considering that Becket had been guilty of contempt, condemned him to be “at the king’s mercy.” Theoretically this meant that he forfeited all his chattels to the king, but in practice the forfeiture was commutable for a fixed sum, which varied in different parts of the country: for a citizen of London the fine was a hundred shillings, for a man of the privileged county of Kent only forty shillings. In this case, however, the court arbitrarily departed from the established custom and pronounced sentence of complete forfeiture. To decide on the verdict was one thing, to pronounce sentence against the head of the English Church was another; the barons declined to do so, and said it was clearly a task for the spiritual peers; the latter retorted that they could not be expected to sentence their own head; but finally by the king’s order sentence was pronounced by the aged Bishop Henry of Winchester, a thorough supporter of Becket’s ecclesiastical policy. Hardly had this been done when Henry demanded of the archbishop an account of three hundred pounds owing for the honours of Eye and Berkhamstead which he had held of the king’s grant. Thomas very rightly replied that he had had no notice of any such demand, and further stated that he had laid out the whole amount, and more, in building operations on the king’s behalf. So far as Berkhamstead is concerned, the Pipe Rolls seem to show that all arrears due to the king had been paid the previous year; but as the honour of Eye was not accounted for while Becket held it as chancellor, it is possible that there might have been some foundation for the claim, though nothing could justify the way in which it was advanced. Whatever the rights of the case the verdict was, of course, against Becket, and when he protested against the indignity of being called upon to find sureties for payment he was told that his goods having been declared forfeit he was no longer a man of substance. Accordingly, the Archdeacon of Canterbury became his surety for one hundred pounds, and the Earl of Gloucester, the Count of Eu, and William of Eynesford for one hundred marks apiece.[26]

Next day Henry renewed his attack upon the same lines, demanding back five hundred marks which he had lent Thomas as chancellor at the time of the Toulouse expedition, and calling for an account of all the issues of vacant sees and abbeys which had been in his custody during the period of his chancellorship. The king’s intention of breaking the archbishop by fair means or foul was now so clear that the time-serving lords who had till lately been proud to pay court to Becket now avoided him; his old friend and supporter the Bishop of Winchester advised him to resign his see, and Hilary of Chichester urged the same course, which other counsellors as strongly discountenanced. Worn out by the strain, Becket fell ill and was unable to appear in court on the sixth day, Monday, 12th October; Henry again disbelieved his excuse, and sent a number of barons to see him and report. Thomas undertook to come next morning even if he had to be carried in a litter. He now determined to bring matters to a crisis and prepared to face the worst. His preparations were significant, if somewhat theatrical. Early in the morning he went into the chapel of St. Andrew’s Priory, where he was lodging, and going to the altar of St. Stephen celebrated the mass of the proto-martyr. After this his intention had been to proceed to the court in full canonicals, barefooted and carrying his own cross; from such an ostentatious defiance to the king to do his worst his friends managed to dissuade him, and he rode in the usual way to the castle. But when he had dismounted at the entrance to the hall he took the processional cross from the hands of Alexander Llewellyn, his Welsh cross-bearer, and insisted upon carrying it himself. Such a plain challenge to the king, signifying his appeal to the protection of the Cross from the royal injustice and violence, horrified his followers. The Archdeacon of Lisieux besought the Bishop of London to prevent it; Foliot replied, “My good friend, he always was a fool and always will be!” Nevertheless he attempted to dissuade the archbishop from his fatal course, claiming the right to carry the cross himself, as Dean of Canterbury, and even endeavouring to wrest it from Becket by force. Finding his efforts of no avail he desisted, contenting himself with the remark that if the king now drew his sword they would make a fine pair. Becket then entered and seated himself apart, holding his cross and attended by Herbert of Bosham and William Fitz-Stephen. Meanwhile the bishops had been called in to speak with the king, and Becket’s old enemy, Roger, Archbishop of York, had availed himself of the opportunity to insult his fallen rival by having his archiepiscopal cross carried before him, a deliberate infringement of the privileges of the see of Canterbury, within whose province Northampton lay.[27] While the course that events would take was still uncertain, Becket’s attendants were giving him very contradictory advice: Herbert of Bosham, the fiery theologian, counselled him to hurl the thunders of excommunication against his enemies if they dared to offer violence to his person, but the cautious and level-headed lawyer, William Fitz-Stephen, deprecated such a course and urged him to imitate the saints of old and suffer wrong with meekness and patience.

The archbishop having inhibited the bishops from sitting in judgment upon him for any plea touching matters prior to his consecration, and having also appealed to Rome against the excessive and unprecedented sentence of forfeiture, Gilbert Foliot at once lodged a counter appeal and Bishop Hilary of Chichester protested against Becket’s breach of the Constitutions, which he, and at his suggestion all the bishops, had so recently promised on their priestly word to obey “honestly, in good faith and without deceit.” Becket’s defence was to the effect that the very qualifying words which Hilary quoted justified his action, for nothing could be observed in good faith that was contrary to the Christian faith, or honestly which was against the Church’s honour; adding that if they had shown weakness at Clarendon it was the more necessary that they should be strong now. Finding all hope of compromise gone, the king sent the Earl of Leicester to pronounce sentence upon the archbishop. The sentence would most probably have involved imprisonment, but it was never pronounced, for Becket indignantly ordered the earl to desist from uttering sentence against his spiritual father, further declaring with justice that he had been summoned to answer only in the case of John the Marshal and could not be called upon to account for all his doings as chancellor without summons, especially as at the time of his consecration the king’s ministers had expressly undertaken that he should not be called to account for any of his acts as chancellor.

The earl retired abashed, and after a decent interval Becket rose and, still carrying his cross, left the hall. As he went he stumbled against a faggot, and Randulf de Broc cried out that he stumbled like the traitor that he was. The taunt of traitor was taken up and repeated in particular by Hamelin, the king’s illegitimate brother, now Earl of Surrey and Warenne by his marriage with the Countess Isabel. Turning angrily on the earl, Becket exclaimed, “If it were not for my cloth I would show you whether I am a traitor or not!” The clamour reached the king’s ears, and he at once sent a messenger to proclaim that no one was to insult or molest the archbishop. He accordingly reached his quarters at St. Andrew’s safely, and while seated at supper meditating upon his further course of action he received an omen which confirmed the intention, already half formed in his mind, of flight, for in the evening lection occurred the passage, “If men persecute you in one city, flee unto another.” As he heard this phrase read out, Thomas looked across significantly at Herbert of Bosham, and as soon as he had an opportunity of speaking to him in private he bade him hasten to Canterbury, obtain as much money as possible from the archiepiscopal estates, and then cross to the monastery of St. Bertin at St. Omer and await his coming. Then he expressed his intention of keeping vigil throughout the night in the church, refusing the proffered company of the monks; and a little before daybreak he stole away in disguise under the guidance of a canon of Sempringham, with only two other companions.

When Henry heard next morning of the archbishop’s flight he sent orders to Dover and other ports to prevent his crossing, and then turned with some relief to the business of the approaching expedition against the Welsh. Meanwhile Thomas, knowing that search would be made for him in Kent, had turned north, reaching Grantham on the first day, and then on to Lincoln, where he stayed at the house of a fuller. From Lincoln he went by water to Sempringham Priory and so to Boston. Probably finding that that port was watched, he turned south, and after visiting Haverholme proceeded by unfrequented paths into Kent, travelling chiefly at night, and for a week lay hidden at Eastry, until on the evening of 2nd November circumstances enabled him to set sail. After a rough voyage he landed in Flanders near Gravelines; but he was not yet in safety, for Henry, whose embassy to the papal court had just crossed the Channel, had warned the Count of Flanders of the possibility of Becket’s landing in his territory, and the count bore the archbishop ill-will for the opposition which he had offered to the marriage of the Abbess Mary of Boulogne to the count’s brother. Worn out by the hardships of the sea voyage Thomas found himself unable to walk, and the only means of conveyance obtainable proved to be a pack-horse. Laying their garments in place of the lacking saddle his companions lifted the weary archbishop on to the horse, and in this humble guise he, whose gorgeous cavalcade had once been a nine days’ wonder, entered Gravelines. Yet, though in poor dress, treated by his companions with a careful absence of ceremony and passing as “Brother Christian,” there were little distinctions between him and his friends which nothing could efface, and which did not escape the notice of the innkeeper at whose house he put up. The man and his servant, who also recognised the archbishop, proved honest, and Thomas safely accomplished the remainder of his journey to St. Omer. Here he met not only his faithful Herbert of Bosham but also the justiciar, Richard de Luci. The justiciar having vainly endeavoured to persuade Becket to return to England, promising him his own good services with the king, formally renounced all allegiance to him and departed.

To follow the course of the struggle between king and archbishop during the six years of Becket’s exile in detail is a wearisome and unprofitable task. Constant efforts at mediation, incessant appeals and counter-appeals to Rome, broadcast excommunications involving the most prominent men at Henry’s court and all who had dealings with them, till hardly a person of eminence stood outside the Church’s ban, mutual recriminations, and anything and everything except reason and compromise. The king’s absolute insistence upon the Constitutions of Clarendon was met by Becket with a blank refusal. So far as we can judge Henry might have been persuaded to accept a compromise had the archbishop shown the least inclination to meet him half-way, and such a course would certainly have had powerful support from the wiser and more temperate royal officers. As it was, it is remarkable that, while a considerable number of prominent ecclesiastics were in opposition to Becket, he does not seem to have had the support of a single English or Norman layman of any eminence.

Henry, in a moment of anger at Becket’s flight, had sent an imperious letter to King Louis demanding the return of Thomas, “late Archbishop of Canterbury”; Louis inquired, with some justice, who had deposed the archbishop, adding that he in his kingdom could not displace the meanest clerk; the request for the return of Thomas he refused, going out of his way to offer the fugitive cordial hospitality. Henry’s embassy to the pope at Sens, consisting of the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of Chichester, London, and Worcester, the Earl of Arundel and others, met with equal unsuccess. The archbishop and the Bishops of London and Chichester all spoke with great vehemence against Becket, but the papal court was more amused at certain slips of accent and construction in their Latin than convinced by their argument, and it was only the calm and reasoned speech of the Earl of Arundel, who spoke in his native French, that produced any impression. The pope refused to do anything until Becket had come to state his own case, and the embassy, having strict orders to return at once, withdrew. Thomas on his arrival produced his copy of the Constitutions, which the pope had not previously seen. They were, naturally, declared to be intolerable infringements of the rights of the Church and St. Peter, and the pope sternly rebuked Thomas for ever having given his consent to them. At this time, apparently, Becket surrendered the primacy into the pope’s hands, receiving it back again from him. By so doing he was not only confirmed in full possession of the see but was in the position to deny that he owed his archbishopric to the king. Pope Alexander was now very awkwardly placed, for while his position as head of the Church compelled him to uphold Becket, his recognition as pope had been largely due to Henry’s support, and if that support were withdrawn and given to the schismatic antipope, Alexander’s hold on the papacy would be dangerously weakened. The reality of this danger was soon made clear, when, in May 1165, Henry’s ambassadors, Richard of Ilchester, Archdeacon of Poictiers, and John of Oxford, who were present at the Emperor Frederic’s council at Wurzburg nominally on business touching the proposed marriage of Henry’s daughter Maud, virtually pledged their royal master to support the emperor and the antipope against Alexander. Feeling, however, ran too strongly against Henry in this matter, and he had to repudiate the action of his ambassadors.

The pope, cautiously avoiding a complete breach with Henry, declared that certain of the Constitutions were quite inadmissible but that others were tolerable, and, by refraining from any definite pronouncement as to any particular sections, left an opening for negotiations. At the same time he attempted to bring the king to reason through the mediation of the Bishops of London and Hereford, Archbishop Rotrou of Rouen, and the Empress Maud. But matters had already gone too far for any friendly arrangement to be possible. Becket, who after his interview with the pope had established himself, in December 1164, at the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, was determined to yield nothing, and had already commenced the campaign of letters, argumentative, mandatory, supplicatory and threatening, with which he disturbed the peace of Western Europe for the next five years; and Henry, at his Christmas council at Marlborough, had retorted by confiscating the property of the see of Canterbury. Not content with this legitimate seizure of the archbishop’s revenues, the king extended his attack to all persons connected with Becket by family or official ties, and all his poor relations and such of his clerks as had proved themselves faithful to his cause were stripped of their possessions and sent into exile under a vow to join their patron. This step, designed to worry Becket and to strain his already straitened finances, seems to have owed its full rigour if not its inception to Ranulf de Broc, into whose hands the property of the see had been committed, and was opposed by Bishop Hilary of Chichester on the ground that, while so manifestly unjust an act would put the king in the wrong, the chief effect would be to strengthen Becket by surrounding him with a crowd of faithful servants.

During the year 1165 little worthy of note occurred, but with the spring of 1166 Becket began to adopt more vigorous measures. Assured in his own mind of the support of the pope, who on 24th April appointed the archbishop Legate of England, Thomas wrote three successive letters to King Henry, couched in language of increasing severity, warning and threatening him. The king, who was at Chinon, could only tie Becket’s hands by an appeal to Rome against his threatened action, and accordingly sent the Bishops of Séez and Lisieux to Pontigny to give notice of his appeal. On their arrival at Pontigny on Ascension Day, 2nd June, they found that Thomas had gone to Soissons to visit the shrine of St. Drausius, a favourite resort of persons about to fight a judicial duel. Invigorated by his visit to the combative saint, Becket went on to the abbey of Vézelay, and on Whitsunday, 22nd June, to the astonishment and dismay of his unsuspecting companions, publicly excommunicated Richard de Luci and Joscelin de Bailliol as authors of the Clarendon Constitutions, Richard of Ilchester and John of Oxford for taking part with the schismatics at Wurzburg, John of Oxford being further condemned for accepting the Deanery of Salisbury in spite of prohibition, and Randulf de Broc and others for usurping the possessions of the church of Canterbury, while the king himself was threatened with a similar fate. The sentences created little excitement outside the circle of Becket’s own audience; most of those against whom they were fulminated were becoming seasoned to excommunication, and the king was sustained by the comfortable knowledge that the pope would support him. In the previous May Henry had given orders for a levy throughout his dominions on behalf of the Crusade, and some months earlier he had shown further evidence of his zeal for the Church by presiding at Oxford over a council which condemned a little band of German or Flemish heretics who had settled in England. These heretics, humble weavers under the leadership of one Gerard, seem to have held opinions similar to those of the Waldensian Protestants; they met with little or no success in their missionary efforts, and, having refused to recant, were branded and scourged and turned out into the snow, to perish of cold and hunger. Fortified with the knowledge of his good services to the Church, Henry did not even hesitate to appoint the excommunicate John of Oxford as envoy, with John Cumin and Ralph of Tamworth, to the papal court. On their arrival Pope Alexander gave them a friendly welcome, absolved John of Oxford and confirmed him in possession of the Deanery of Salisbury, quashed Becket’s sentences and ordered him to refrain from molesting the king, at the same time promising to appoint commissioners to arbitrate between the king and the archbishop.

Towards the end of the year 1166 Henry had been successful in procuring Becket’s removal from Pontigny by threats against the Cistercian order. His star was distinctly in the ascendant, and he could afford to await with equanimity the long-delayed arrival of the papal commissioners, the cardinals Otto and William of Pavia. Becket, on the other hand, was angered by the pope’s action and especially by the appointment of Cardinal William, and expressed himself with a vehemence which even his friend John of Salisbury considered excessive. The enormous mass of correspondence concerned with the Becket controversy which has been preserved is throughout remarkable rather for vigour than elegance. In letters which are a mosaic of quotations and reminiscences from the Vulgate, with an occasional phrase from a classical poet, the writer’s adversaries are compared to the most notorious villains of Scripture, while contempt is poured on them by means of sarcastic puns, Richard de Luci, the great justiciar, becoming “Luscus”--the one-eyed or half-blind--and the Archdeacon of Canterbury figuring as the “archdemon.” The whole correspondence breathes a spirit of intolerance which augured ill for the efforts of would-be mediators. Of these mediators the one of whom most might have been hoped, Henry’s mother, the Empress Maud, died at Rouen on 10th September 1167. As a devoted daughter of the Church she had condemned the excessive severity of her son’s anti-clerical legislation, though as “a daughter of tyrants” she had approved the general trend of the Clarendon Constitutions. Her influence with Henry was great, and if compromise had been possible it would no doubt have been exerted to that end, but, as it was, she could do nothing beyond such moderating measures as interfering on behalf of an imprisoned and tortured bearer of papal letters.

When the papal legates at last opened negotiations in November 1167, by an interview with the archbishop at Planches on the borders of France and Normandy, they found him resolute to agree to nothing without the addition of the disputed phrase “saving the liberty of the Church,” and all their arguments were useless. When they made their report to Henry he dismissed them angrily with some uncomplimentary remarks on the subject of cardinals. A renewed appeal by the English bishops tied Becket’s hands till November 1168, and in May of that year the pope remonstrated with him and ordered him to take no action against the king until the beginning of Lent, 5th March 1169. At the same time Alexander made an effort to bring matters to a settlement by appointing two monks, the Prior of Mont Dieu and Simon de Coudre of Grammont, as commissioners. They did not act until 7th January 1169, when Henry and Louis met at Montmirail to negotiate a treaty. Becket was with the French king, and when the commissioners had presented to Henry a letter from the pope urging him to a speedy reconciliation, the archbishop came forward with every appearance of humility and expressed his desire for peace. Henry was willing to receive him back into favour if he would undertake to act loyally, but Becket would only pledge himself to obedience “saving the honour of God,” or in other words “the liberty of the Church.” In vain Henry offered him every right and possession that his predecessors in the see of Canterbury had held, provided that he would obey the laws that they, many of them saints, had obeyed. A suggestion that Thomas should return to his post without any definite mention being made of the Constitutions, with a tacit understanding that the more objectionable sections should be modified, was also rejected, and the conference broke up.

Shortly after this the commissioners presented to Henry letters from the pope couched in stern language and warning him of the consequences if he did not soon come to terms with Becket. Nevertheless Alexander was not prepared to take extreme measures, and accordingly he appointed yet other mediators, the Cardinals Gratian and Vivian, and wrote to Becket ordering him to take no action against the king or his supporters until they had performed their mission. Before this order reached the archbishop at Sens, where he had fixed his headquarters since his expulsion from Pontigny, he had availed himself of the expiration of the term of inaction previously set him, and early in March excommunicated the Bishop of Salisbury, Earl Hugh of Norfolk, and other offenders, laymen and clerks, following this up on Palm Sunday, 13th April, with the excommunication of the Bishop of London and the announcement of a similar fate in store for Geoffrey Ridel, archdeacon of Canterbury, Richard of Ilchester, Richard de Luci, and others. Anticipating his action the two bishops had already made provisional appeals to the pope, while precautions were taken to prevent the delivery of the notice of excommunication. But on Ascension Day, 29th May, during the celebration of mass in St. Paul’s, a young Frenchman, Berenger by name, under pretence of making an oblation, handed to the priest celebrant the archbishop’s letters, charging him to deliver them to the Bishop of London and publicly denouncing the latter excommunicate. Bishop Foliot, while accepting the sentence as valid, renewed his appeal to the pope, who strongly disapproved of Becket’s action and ordered him to suspend his sentences until the nuncios had seen the king.

Gratian and Vivian reached Damfront on 23rd August, and next day had an interview with the king, in which he endeavoured to dictate to them, insisting that the excommunicates should be absolved at once. For a week no progress was made, but on 31st August, at Bayeux, Henry undertook that if the excommunicates were absolved at once he would receive back the archbishop and his friends and allow him to hold his church and former possessions “to the honour of God, of the Church, of the king and of the king’s sons.” Next day, however, he insisted upon the further significant addition of the phrase “saving the dignity of my realm.” Even to get so far as this had proved a difficult task. The meeting had been held in the open air, and twice Henry had mounted his horse and turned to ride off in a rage, expressing his contempt for the nuncios and their threats of excommunication and interdict. A proposal to counterbalance the “dignity of the realm” with “the liberty of the Church” having failed, negotiations were broken off. Becket, as papal legate for England, having threatened to lay England under the dread sentence of interdict, by which all public services and religious ministrations were suspended, Henry issued orders that the bearer of such a sentence and any persons who obeyed it should be held guilty of high treason, at the same time prohibiting all monks and clergy from crossing the seas without his leave, and ordering the search of all laymen coming into England from foreign countries. He further consented to another meeting with the archbishop at Montmartre, whither he had gone to visit King Louis.

The negotiations at Montmartre in November 1169 turned chiefly upon the question of the restoration of Becket’s estates. While the king was willing to restore him to the possession of what he held when he left the country, Thomas insisted upon full payment of all arrears, the surrender of certain disputed estates and the displacement of such clergy as had been presented by the king to Canterbury livings during his exile. Offers of arbitration were refused by Becket; and, while Henry consented that he should have all that his predecessors had on the same terms by which they held, his promise of due service to the king was qualified by the obnoxious phrase, “saving the honour of God.” Henry therefore refused Becket the “kiss of peace,” and the conference broke up. The terms offered by Henry appear to have made a favourable impression upon Pope Alexander, and he determined to make a final effort for a settlement on those lines. Accordingly, in the early spring of 1170, the Archbishop of Rouen and the Bishop of Nevers were appointed to negotiate; the Canterbury estates were to be restored in full, but the question of arrears might be waived; there was to be no reference to the Constitutions, and the kiss of peace was to be given by either the king or his son. If Henry refused to come to terms sentence of interdict should be laid upon his continental domains.

Negotiations remained for some little time in abeyance, as Henry had crossed to England, for the first time for four years, landing at Portsmouth on 3rd March, after a stormy passage during which at least one of his forty ships was lost. The chief matter necessitating the king’s return to England was his intention of establishing the succession to the throne beyond all doubt by the coronation of his eldest son, Henry, now sixteen years old. The need for this coronation of the heir during his father’s lifetime, for which precedents could be found on the Continent but not in England, is far from clear, and its ultimate results were to prove disastrous. The most immediate result was the creation of a fresh grievance for Becket. It would seem that the pope, willing to please Henry and not knowing that the right to crown kings was a privilege of the Archbishops of Canterbury, had granted permission for the Archbishop of York to crown the young Henry, or else such permission had been granted during the vacancy of Canterbury in 1162. When the news of the proposed coronation reached Becket he wrote letters to Archbishop Roger and the English bishops in general prohibiting them from officiating, and similar letters were sent by the pope; but none of these appear to have been delivered, and on Sunday, 14th June, the younger Henry was crowned at Westminster by Archbishop Roger, the Bishops of London, Durham, Salisbury, and Rochester assisting. For some reason the young king’s wife, Margaret,

[Illustration: SEAL OF THE “YOUNG KING” HENRY (1/1)]

had not been crowned with him, although a royal outfit had been provided for her,[28] and she had been ordered to hold herself in readiness at Caen, where the queen was in residence. The omission was taken by Margaret’s father, King Louis, as a deliberate insult, and was possibly so intended; but it is far more probable that Henry had intended her to be crowned with her husband, but had been obliged to hasten the coronation in order to avoid the publication of the prohibitory papal letters.

Returning to Normandy, Henry met the papal commissioners at Falaise and agreed to accept the terms which they proposed. They then had an interview with Becket and persuaded him to come to Fréteval, where the French and English kings were to hold a conference. On 22nd July, therefore, Thomas rode out to meet Henry. The king was in an excellent temper, and as soon as he saw the archbishop he pressed forward, doffing his cap and saluting him affectionately. The two then withdrew and held a long private consultation. Becket began by reproaching Henry for his action in regard to the coronation. The king defended himself, pleading historical precedents, which Becket rejected as unsound, and producing papal letters granting leave for the Archbishop of York to crown the young Henry; these letters, however, dated from 1162, when, as we have seen, some such coronation was mooted if not actually performed, and were issued during the vacancy of the see of Canterbury. In the end Henry promised to do justice in the matter, and added some ambiguous remarks to the effect that he would punish all who played either him or the archbishop false. No word was said about the Constitutions, but the king promised to restore to Becket all that he had held three months before the date of his exile and to receive him and his friends back into favour. Becket dismounted and knelt before the king, but the latter leapt from his horse, raised the archbishop and held his stirrup while he remounted. The two old friends, once more united, rode back together and announced the conclusion of peace, to the amazement of all; and even a passage of arms between the excommunicate Archdeacon of Canterbury and Becket, due to the latter’s refusal to reciprocate the king’s general amnesty by absolving the excommunicates, was not allowed to disturb the serenity of the atmosphere. The only cloud was the king’s persistent refusal of the kiss of peace, based on the rash oath which he had sworn in the presence of the French that he would never give it. On this Henry was resolute, though he expressed his willingness to kiss “his mouth, and his hands, and his feet a hundred times” when he returned to England. So much importance did Becket attach to this symbolic act that he endeavoured to obtain the kiss by a ruse at Amboise in October. For this purpose he came to the chapel where Henry was going to hear mass, in the course of which service the king would be obliged to give the ceremonial kiss; but, warned by the much excommunicated Nigel de Sackville, Henry ordered the celebration of a mass for the dead, in which the ceremony of the _pax_ is omitted.

About this time Henry wrote to the young king and the regency council in England announcing the conclusion of peace between himself and the archbishop, and ordering the restoration of the former possessions of the see and the holding of a judicial inquiry into the question of the honour of Saltwood. Early in November the king sent a message to Becket regretting that military affairs in Auvergne prevented his meeting him at Rouen, but urging him to delay his departure no longer, and appointing John of Oxford, Dean of Salisbury, to accompany him. Becket accordingly proceeded to Witsand, whence he was to cross to England. During the previous three months he had been busy corresponding with the pope, and had procured from him letters suspending and excommunicating the Archbishop of York, the bishops who had taken part with him, and the inevitable Archdeacon of Canterbury. The sentence against York, London, and Salisbury, Becket despatched from Witsand to Dover, where those prelates happened to be, before his own departure. At last, on 1st December 1170, the archbishop set sail, and, avoiding Dover, landed at Sandwich. Here he was met by Randulf de Broc, Reynold de Warenne, and Gervase of Cornhill, sheriff of Kent. Their threats of violence were restrained by John of Oxford, and after reproaching the archbishop for coming into the realm with fire and sword they suffered him to proceed to Canterbury, where he was joyfully welcomed by the clergy and populace.

The messengers whom he had sent over after the conclusion of peace between himself and the king had warned him that the estates of the see had been plundered, and their appeal to the royal officers for the promised restoration of property had been postponed long enough to enable the actual holders to secure the rents payable at Michaelmas. Becket now found that most of the Christmas rents had been anticipated, and the manors so thoroughly pillaged that nothing but empty barns and ruinous houses remained. He had, however, other matters to occupy his mind: the representatives of the censured prelates came to him desiring him to absolve their masters. So far as Archbishop Roger was concerned Becket professed inability, the pope having reserved his case to himself, but he was ready to absolve the Bishops of London and Salisbury, conditionally on their undertaking to submit to the pope’s demands. This they were willing to do, but they were dissuaded by Archbishop Roger, and all three went over to Normandy to make complaint to the king. Becket, anxious from personal affection as well as from policy to pay his respects to the young king, sent Richard, Prior of St. Martin’s, to Winchester to announce his intention, and presented Henry with three magnificent chargers gaily caparisoned. The king, or rather his council, declined the archbishop’s proffered visit, but undeterred he started for Winchester, intending after his visit to the court to make a tour of visitation throughout his province. The first night he spent at Rochester and the next at the Bishop of Winchester’s house in Southwark, but here he was met by Joscelin of Arundel, brother of Queen Adelisa, who ordered him to return to Canterbury. This he did, taking with him a small escort of some five or six men-at-arms. The existence of this escort was magnified by his enemies into a charge of riding about with a great army to capture the king’s castles, but it was certainly necessary, for threats were being openly made against his life, and the Brocs at Saltwood were indulging in a regular campaign of outrage and insult. They seized his wine, they hunted in his preserves, poached his deer and stole his hounds, and as a culminating insult cut off the tail of his pack-horse.

Becket was not a man to suffer insult patiently, and on Christmas Day he preached in the cathedral, and, after alluding to the probability of his murder, delivered a furious denunciation of his enemies, and excommunicated Robert de Broc and a number of other offenders. The news of his action was at once conveyed to King Henry, who was keeping Christmas at Bur-le-Roi, near Bayeux. Infuriated by this fresh breach of the peace, Henry uttered a wild tirade against the upstart priest and against his courtiers who sat idle and allowed their master to be insulted without avenging him. Four knights, William de Tracy, Hugh de Moreville, Reynold Fitz-Urse, and Richard le Breton, determined to gain the king’s favour by the murder of the archbishop. Taking horse at once they made for the coast, and favoured by the wind reached Saltwood Castle on Monday, 28th December. Meanwhile Henry, while refusing to go so far as Engelger de Bohun and William Mauvoisin, who urged the archbishop’s execution, had determined on his arrest. Richard de Humet was sent to England to Hugh de Gundeville and William Fitz-John, the young king’s guardians, while Earl William de Mandeville and Saer de Quincy watched the continental ports in case Becket should try to escape. The four knights, openly proclaiming that the king had decreed Becket’s death, collected a considerable force from the garrisons of the neighbouring castles, and on Tuesday, 29th December, rode into Canterbury. Failing to persuade the town authorities to assist them, they warned them not to interfere and rode on to the palace. Striding into the room where the archbishop and his attendants were sitting, the four knights, without a word of greeting, sat down in front of him. After a pause Reynold Fitz-Urse ordered him, in the king’s name, to absolve the excommunicates and afterwards to stand his trial before the young king at Winchester. Before they delivered their ultimatum, Becket, understanding that they had a private message from the king, had caused his attendants to withdraw, but he now recalled them and delivered a calm and dignified reply justifying his action and explaining his position. To their threats he replied that the king had granted him his peace, but that in any case he would never yield or waver in his obedience to God and the pope for fear of death.

The knights had entered the archbishop’s presence unarmed, and they now withdrew, uttering threats and defiance, to bring the argument of steel to bear where words had proved unavailing. The Brocs and others of their associates had seized the gatehouse of the palace and placed it in charge of Simon de Crioill and William Fitz-Nigel, the archbishop’s steward, who had joined the conspirators; Becket’s own esquire, Robert Legge, was forced by Reynold Fitz-Urse to assist in arming him, and one of the archbishop’s knights, Ralph Morin, was placed under arrest. As the armed crowd pressed forward the great door of the archbishop’s apartments was shut and bolted and for a moment they were foiled, but Robert de Broc knew the palace well, and, snatching up an axe left on the stairs by a workman, attacked a wooden partition that would give access to their victim’s room. Hearing the crash and splintering of the woodwork the monks and clerks, powerless against the mail-clad assassins, seized Becket, and in spite of his protests and resistance hurried him by a private entrance into the church. Contrary to his wishes the door was shut behind him, but when the pursuers began to thunder upon it he insisted upon its being opened, that the church might not seem to be turned into a fortress. The four knights and their followers rushed in, headed by Reynold Fitz-Urse, who flung down the axe with which he had attacked the door and brandished his sword. Hugh de Moreville faced the terrified people clustered in the body of the church, while his comrades searched for their victim. In the pillared gloom of the dim evening Becket was not at first visible, and he could easily have escaped into the darkness of the crypt or by the neighbouring stairway to the safety of the roof, but hearing cries of “Where is the traitor? Where is the archbishop?” he stepped forward, saying, “Here am I, no traitor but the priest of God. And I marvel that you are come into the church of God in such guise. What will ye with me?” To their threats of instant death he replied by commending his soul to God, St. Mary, St. Denis, and St. Elphage, and their endeavours to drive or drag him out of the church he resisted with all his strength, striking William Tracy a blow which almost felled him to the ground. Tracy replied with a cut at his head, but Edward Grim, one of the only three clerks who had remained with their master, intercepted the blow with his arm. Although most of the force of the stroke was spent on Edward Grim it drew blood from the archbishop’s head. A second blow, from Reynold’s sword, drove Becket

[Illustration: THE MURDER OF BECKET

(From Harl. MS. 5102)]

to his knees, and with the third he fell with his arms stretched out towards the altar of St. Benedict. As he fell Richard le Breton struck him again with such violence that his sword broke upon the pavement, crying, “Take that for the love of my lord William, the king’s brother,” Richard having served the young William, whose early death was attributed to the foiling of his matrimonial schemes by Becket. As the assassins turned to leave the church, one Hugh Mauclerc, whose name is unknown to history save for this infamy, thrust his sword into Becket’s gaping skull and scattered his brains upon the pavement. Thus fell Thomas Becket, the obstinate and imperious archbishop, and thus rose from his dead body Thomas of Canterbury, martyr and virtual patron saint of England.

Having wreaked their vengeance on the archbishop the murderers turned to the plunder of his palace. Everything of value they seized, sending off a parcel of papal bulls and similar documents to their royal master. Then they rode off, the four knights soon afterwards retiring to Moreville’s castle of Knaresborough, while the Brocs remained at Saltwood, whence they threatened to return to Canterbury and outrage the martyr’s body. Hearing of their threats the monks of Canterbury, by the advice of the Abbot of Boxley and the Prior of Dover, proceeded at once to bury the body, which, after lying for some time neglected during the panic which followed the murder, had been reverently placed before the high altar. Accordingly the martyred archbishop was laid in a marble tomb in the crypt, clad in the penitential hair-shirt, which, to the surprise of all, he was found to have worn beneath his other garments, and in the vestments worn at the time of his ordination and preserved by him against his burial. The church having been polluted by bloodshed, Mass could not be said in it, and so without the rites and services of the Church were laid to rest the remains of him whose shrine was to be for future generations the great national centre of prayer and pilgrimage.