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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Thomas à Becket, by Henry Hart Milman
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: Life of Thomas à Becket
-
-Author: Henry Hart Milman
-
-Release Date: January 10, 2013 [EBook #41811]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF THOMAS À BECKET ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by sp1nd, Charlie Howard, and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive)
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-Transcriber's note: Sidenotes are identified as: [SN: text of sidenote].
-
-
-
-
-  Life of
-  THOMAS À BECKET.
-
-  BY
-
-  HENRY HART MILMAN, D.D.
-  Dean of St. Paul's.
-
-  NEW YORK:
-  SHELDON & COMPANY
-  1860.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-                                    Page
-  Editor's Preface                   iii
-  Life of Thomas à Becket              9
-  Footnotes                following 246
-
-
-
-
-EDITOR'S PREFACE.
-
-
-Perhaps the chapter of English history fullest of romantic interest, is
-that containing the life of Thomas à Becket. In fact, the great struggle
-between Becket and Henry II.,--between individual genius and sovereign
-power, between a subject and his king, between religion and the sword,
-between the Church and the State, is scarcely equaled in the annals of
-the world. And nowhere do we find a parallel to the strange story of
-Becket's life, beginning in Oriental legend, ending in heroic tragedy.
-By an accident of position, he questioned with the terrible power of
-genius the divine right of kings, and the grateful people of England, a
-hundred thousand at a time, flocked as pilgrims to his tomb.
-
-The biography here presented has been taken from Dean Milman's great
-history of Latin Christianity. The style is at once dignified, terse,
-and eloquent. The learning of Milman is abundant and accurate, his
-judgment singularly sound and free from prejudice. One of the gems of
-his history is this life of Becket. A biography of the biographer is
-part of our plan, and we gladly transfer to our pages, from the English
-Cyclopedia, a sketch of Milman's life.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The Rev. HENRY HART MILMAN, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, was
-born February 10th, 1791, in London. He is the youngest son of Sir
-Francis Milman, first baronet, who was physician to George III., and is
-brother to Sir William George Milman. He was educated at Dr. Burney's
-academy at Greenwich, at Eton College, and at Brazenose College, Oxford,
-where he took his degrees of B. A. and M. A., and of which he was
-elected a Fellow. In 1812 he received the Newdegate prize for his
-English poem on the Apollo Belvidere. In 1815 he published "Fazio, a
-Tragedy," which was performed with success at Covent Garden Theatre, at
-a period when theatrical managers seized upon a published play, and
-produced it without an author's consent. Mr. Milman could not even
-enforce the proper pronunciation of the name of "Fazio." He took holy
-orders in 1817, and was appointed vicar of St. Mary's, Reading. In the
-early part of 1818 he published "Samor, Lord of the Bright City, an
-Heroic Poem," of which a second edition was called for in the course of
-the same year. The hero of this poem is a personage of the legendary
-history of Britain in the early part of the Saxon invasions of England.
-The fullest account of his exploits is given in Dugdale's "Baronage,"
-under his title of Earl of Gloucester. Harrison, in the "Description of
-Britain," prefixed to Holinshed's "Chronicle," calls him Eldulph de
-Samor. The Bright City is Gloucester, (Caer Gloew in British.) In 1820
-Mr Milman published "The Fall of Jerusalem," a dramatic poem founded on
-Josephus's narrative of the siege of the sacred city. This, in some
-respects his most beautiful poem, established his reputation. In 1821,
-he was elected Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, and
-published three other dramatic poems, "The Martyr of Antioch,"
-"Balshazzar," and "Anne Boleyn." In 1827 he published sermons at the
-"Bampton Lecture," 8vo., and in 1829, without his name, "The History of
-the Jews," 3 vols. 18vo. A collected edition of his "Poetical Works,"
-was published in 1840, which, besides the works above mentioned, and his
-smaller poems, contains the "Nala and Damayanti," translated from the
-Sanskrit. In the same year he published his "History of Christianity
-from the Birth of Christ, to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman
-Empire," 3 vols. 8vo., in which he professes to view Christianity as a
-historian, in its moral, social, and political influences, referring
-to its doctrines no further than is necessary for explaining the
-general effect of the system. It is the work of an accomplished and
-liberal-minded scholar. At the commencement of 1849 appeared "The Works
-of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, illustrated chiefly from the Remains of
-Ancient Art, with a Life by the Rev. H. H. Milman," 8vo., a beautiful
-and luxurious edition. Mr. Milman's Life of Horace, and critical remarks
-on the merits of the Roman poet, are written with much elegance of
-style, and are very interesting.
-
-In November 1849, Mr. Milman, who had for some years been Rector of St.
-Margaret's, Westminster, and a Canon of Westminster, was made Dean of
-St. Paul's. Dean Milman's latest publication is a "History of Latin
-Christianity, including that of the Popes to the Pontificate of Nicholas
-V.," 3 vols. 8vo. 1854. This work is a continuation of the author's
-"History of Christianity," and yet is in itself a complete work. To
-give it that completeness he has gone over the history of Christianity
-in Rome during the first four centuries. The author states that he is
-occupied with the continuation of the history down to the close of the
-pontificate of Nicholas V., that is, to 1455.[1] Besides the works
-before mentioned, Dean Milman is understood to have contributed numerous
-articles to the "Quarterly Review;" and his edition of Gibbon's "Decline
-and Fall of the Roman Empire," presented the great historian with more
-ample illustrations than he had before received. This edition has been
-republished, with additional notes and verifications, by Dr. W. Smith.
-
-Dean Milman is destined to become a household word in historical
-literature, and we are glad to present the many with this favorable
-specimen of his work.
-
-  May, 1859.
-      O. W. WIGHT.
-
-
-
-
-LIFE OF THOMAS À BECKET.
-
-
-[SN: Legend.]
-
-Popular poetry, after the sanctification of Becket, delighted in
-throwing the rich colors of marvel over his birth and parentage. It
-invented, or rather interwove with the pedigree of the martyr, one of
-those romantic traditions which grew out of the wild adventures of the
-crusades, and which occur in various forms in the ballads of all
-nations. That so great a saint should be the son of a gallant champion
-of the cross, and of a Saracen princess, was a fiction too attractive
-not to win general acceptance. The father of Becket, so runs the legend,
-a gallant soldier, was a captive in the Holy Land, and inspired the
-daughter of his master with an ardent attachment. Through her means he
-made his escape; but the enamored princess could not endure life without
-him. She too fled and made her way to Europe. She had learned but two
-words of the Christian language, London and Gilbert. With these two
-magic sounds upon her lips she reached London; and as she wandered
-through the streets, constantly repeating the name of Gilbert, she was
-met by Becket's faithful servant. Becket, as a good Christian, seems to
-have entertained religious scruples as to the propriety of wedding the
-faithful, but misbelieving, or, it might be, not sincerely believing
-maiden. The case was submitted to the highest authority, and argued
-before the Bishop of London. The issue was the baptism of the princess,
-by the name of Matilda (that of the empress queen,) and their marriage
-in St. Paul's, with the utmost publicity and splendor.
-
-But of this wondrous tale, not one word had reached the ears of any of
-the seven or eight contemporary biographers of Becket, most of them his
-most intimate friends or his most faithful attendants.[2] It was neither
-known to John of Salisbury, his confidential adviser and correspondent,
-nor to Fitz-Stephen, an officer of his court in chancery, and dean of
-his chapel when archbishop, who was with him at Northampton, and at his
-death; nor to Herbert de Bosham, likewise one of his officers when
-chancellor, and his faithful attendant throughout his exile; nor to the
-monk of Pontigny, who waited upon him and enjoyed his most intimate
-confidence during his retreat in that convent; nor to Edward Grim, his
-standard-bearer, who on his way from Clarendon, reproached him with his
-weakness, and having been constantly attached to his person, finally
-interposed his arm between his master and the first blow of the
-assassin. Nor were these ardent admirers of Becket silent from any
-severe aversion to the marvelous; they relate, with unsuspecting faith,
-dreams and prognostics which revealed to the mother the future greatness
-of her son, even his elevation to the see of Canterbury.[3]
-
-To the Saxon descent of Becket, a theory in which, on the authority of
-an eloquent French writer,[4] modern history has seemed disposed to
-acquiesce, these biographers not merely give no support, but furnish
-direct contradiction. The lower people no doubt admired during his life,
-and worshiped after death, the blessed Thomas of Canterbury, and the
-people were mostly Saxon. But it was not as a Saxon, but as a Saint,
-that Becket was the object of unbounded popularity during his life, of
-idolatry after his death.
-
-[SN: Parentage and education.]
-
-The father of Becket, according to the distinct words of one
-contemporary biographer, was a native of Rouen, his mother of Caen.[5]
-Gilbert was no knight-errant, but a sober merchant, tempted by
-commercial advantages to settle in London: his mother neither boasted of
-royal Saracenic blood, nor bore the royal name of Matilda: she was the
-daughter of an honest burgher of Caen. His Norman descent is still
-further confirmed by his claim of relationship, or connexion at least,
-as of common Norman descent, with Archbishop Theobald.[6] The parents of
-Becket, he asserts himself, were merchants of unimpeached character, not
-of the lowest class. Gilbert Becket is said to have served the
-honorable office of sheriff, but his fortune was injured by fires and
-other casualties.[7] [SN: Born A. D. 1118.] The young Becket received
-his earliest education among the monks of Merton in Surrey, towards whom
-he cherished a fond attachment, and delighted to visit them in the days
-of his splendor. The dwelling of a respectable London merchant seems to
-have been a place where strangers of very different pursuits, who
-resorted to the metropolis of England, took up their lodging: and to
-Gilbert Becket's house came persons both disposed and qualified to
-cultivate in various ways the extraordinary talents displayed by the
-youth, who was singularly handsome, and of engaging manners.[8] A
-knight, whose name, Richard de Aquila, occurs with distinction in the
-annals of the time, one of his father's guests, delighted in initiating
-the gay and spirited boy in chivalrous exercises, and in the chase with
-hawk and hound. On a hawking adventure the young Becket narrowly escaped
-being drowned in the Thames. At the same time, or soon after, he was
-inured to business by acting as clerk to a wealthy relative, Osborn
-Octuomini, and in the office of the Sheriff of London.[9] His
-accomplishments were completed by a short residence in Paris, the best
-school for the language spoken by the Norman nobility. To his father's
-house came likewise two learned civilians from Bologna, no doubt on some
-mission to the Archbishop of Canterbury. They were so captivated by
-young Becket, that they strongly recommended him to Archbishop
-Theobald, whom the father of Becket reminded of their common honorable
-descent from a knightly family near the town of Thiersy.[10] Becket was
-at once on the high road of advancement. [SN: In the household of the
-Archbishop.] His extraordinary abilities were cultivated by the wise
-patronage, and employed in the service of the primate. Once he
-accompanied that prelate to Rome;[11] and on more than one other
-occasion visited that great centre of Christian affairs. He was
-permitted to reside for a certain time at each of the great schools for
-the study of the canon law, Bologna and Auxerre.[12] He was not,
-however, without enemies. Even in the court of Theobald began the
-jealous rivalry with Roger, afterwards Archbishop of York, then
-Archdeacon of Canterbury.[13] Twice the superior influence of the
-archdeacon obtained his dismissal from the service of Theobald; twice he
-was reinstated by the good offices of Walter, Bishop of Rochester. At
-length the elevation of Roger to the see of York left the field open to
-Becket. He was appointed to the vacant archdeaconry, the richest
-benefice, after the bishoprics, in England. From that time he ruled
-without rival in the favor of the aged Theobald. Preferments were heaped
-upon him by the lavish bounty of his patron.[14] During his exile he
-was reproached with his ingratitude to the king, who had raised him from
-poverty. "Poverty!" he rejoined; "even then I held the archdeaconry of
-Canterbury, the provostship of Beverley, a great many churches, and
-several prebends."[15] The trial and the triumph of Becket's precocious
-abilities was a negotiation of the utmost difficulty with the court of
-Rome. The first object was to obtain the legatine power for Archbishop
-Theobald; the second tended, more than almost all measures, to secure
-the throne of England to the house of Plantagenet. Archbishop Theobald,
-with his clergy, had inclined to the cause of Matilda and her son; they
-had refused to officiate at the coronation of Eustace, son of King
-Stephen. Becket not merely obtained from Eugenius III. the full papal
-approbation of this refusal, but a condemnation of Stephen (whose title
-had before been sanctioned by Eugenius himself,) as a perjured
-usurper.[16]
-
-[SN: Accession of Henry II. Dec. 19, 1154.]
-
-But on the accession of Henry II., the aged Archbishop began to tremble
-at his own work; serious apprehensions arose as to the disposition of
-the young king towards the Church. His connexion was but remote with the
-imperial family (though his mother had worn the imperial crown, and some
-imperial blood might flow in his veins); but the Empire was still the
-implacable adversary of the papal power. Even from his father he might
-have received an hereditary taint of hatred to the Church, for the Count
-of Anjou had on many occasions shown the utmost hostility to the
-Hierarchy, and had not scrupled to treat churchmen of the highest rank
-with unexampled cruelty. In proportion as it was important to retain a
-young sovereign of such vast dominions in allegiance to the Church, so
-was it alarming to look forward to his disobedience. The Archbishop was
-anxious to place near his person some one who might counteract this
-suspected perversity, and to prevent his young mind from being alienated
-from the clergy by fierce and lawless counselors. He had discerned not
-merely unrivaled abilities, but with prophetic sagacity, his
-Archdeacon's lofty and devoted churchmanship. Through the recommendation
-of the primate, Becket was raised to the dignity of chancellor,[17] an
-office which made him the second civil power in the realm, inasmuch as
-his seal was necessary to countersign all royal mandates. Nor was it
-without great ecclesiastical influence, as in the chancellor was the
-appointment of all the royal chaplains, and the custody of vacant
-bishoprics, abbacies, and benefices.[18]
-
-[SN: Becket Chancellor.]
-
-But the Chancellor, who was yet, with all his great preferments, only in
-deacon's orders, might seem disdainfully to throw aside the habits,
-feelings, restraints of the churchman, and to aspire as to the plenitude
-of secular power, so to unprecedented secular magnificence.[19] Becket
-shone out in all the graces of an accomplished courtier, in the bearing
-and valor of a gallant knight; though at the same time he displayed the
-most consummate abilities for business, the promptitude, diligence, and
-prudence of a practiced statesman. The beauty of his person, the
-affability of his manners, the extraordinary acuteness of his
-senses,[20] his activity in all chivalrous exercises, made him the
-chosen companion of the king in his constant diversions, in the chase
-and in the mimic war, in all but his debaucheries. The king would
-willingly have lured the Chancellor into this companionship likewise;
-but the silence of his bitterest enemies, in confirmation of his own
-solemn protestations, may be admitted as conclusive testimonies to his
-unimpeached morals.[21] The power of Becket throughout the king's
-dominions equaled that of the king himself--he was king in all but name:
-the world, it was said, had never seen two friends so entirely of one
-mind.[22] The well-known anecdote best illustrates their intimate
-familiarity. As they rode through the streets of London on a bleak
-Winter day they met a beggar in rags. "Would it not be charity," said
-the king, "to give that fellow a cloak, and cover him from the cold?"
-Becket assented; on which the king plucked the rich furred mantle from
-the shoulders of the struggling Chancellor and threw it, to the
-amazement and admiration of the bystanders, no doubt to the secret envy
-of the courtiers at this proof of Becket's favor, to the shivering
-beggar.[23]
-
-But it was in the graver affairs of the realm that Henry derived still
-greater advantage from the wisdom and the conduct of the Chancellor.[24]
-To Becket's counsels his admiring biographers attribute the pacification
-of the kingdom, the expulsion of the foreign mercenaries who during the
-civil wars of Stephen's reign had devastated the land and had settled
-down as conquerors, especially in Kent, the humiliation of the
-refractory barons and the demolition of their castles. The peace was so
-profound that merchants could travel everywhere in safety, and even the
-Jews collect their debts.[25] The magnificence of Becket redounded to
-the glory of his sovereign. In his ordinary life he was sumptuous beyond
-precedent; he kept an open table, where those who were not so fortunate
-as to secure a seat at the board had clean rushes strewn on the floor,
-on which they might repose, eat, and carouse at the Chancellor's
-expense. His household was on a scale vast even for that age of
-unbounded retainership, and the haughtiest Norman nobles were proud to
-see their sons brought up in the family of the merchant's son. [SN:
-Ambassador to Paris A. D. 1160.] In his embassy to Paris to demand the
-hand of the Princess Margaret for the king's infant son, described with
-such minute accuracy by Fitz-Stephen,[26] he outshone himself, yet might
-seem to have a loyal rather than a personal aim in this unrivaled pomp.
-The French crowded from all quarters to see the splendid procession
-pass, and exclaimed, "What must be the king, whose Chancellor can
-indulge in such enormous expenditure?"
-
-[SN: War in Toulouse.]
-
-Even in war the Chancellor had displayed not only the abilities of a
-general, but a personal prowess, which, though it found many precedents
-in those times, might appear somewhat incongruous in an ecclesiastic,
-who yet held all his clerical benefices. In the expedition made by King
-Henry to assert his right to the dominions of the Counts of Toulouse,
-Becket appeared at the head of seven hundred knights who did him
-service, and foremost in every adventurous exploit was the valiant
-Chancellor. Becket's bold counsel urged the immediate storming of the
-city, which would have been followed by the captivity of the King of
-France. Henry, in whose character impetuosity was strangely molded up
-with irresolution, dared not risk this violation of feudal allegiance,
-the captivity of his suzerain. The event of the war showed the policy as
-well as the superior military judgment of the warlike Chancellor. At a
-period somewhat later, Becket, who was left to reduce certain castles
-which held out against his master, unhorsed in single combat and took
-prisoner a knight of great distinction, Engelran de Trie. He returned to
-Henry in Normandy at the head of 1200 knights and 4000 stipendiary
-horsemen, raised and maintained at his own charge. If indeed there were
-grave churchmen even in those days who were revolted by these
-achievements in an ecclesiastic (he was still only in deacon's orders),
-the sentiment was by no means universal, nor even dominant. With some
-his valor and military skill only excited more ardent admiration. One of
-his biographers bursts out into this extraordinary panegyric on the
-Archdeacon of Canterbury: "Who can recount the carnage, the desolation,
-which he made at the head of a strong body of soldiers? He attacked
-castles, razed towns and cities to the ground, burned down houses and
-farms without a touch of pity, and never showed the slightest mercy to
-any one who rose in insurrection against his master's authority."[27]
-
-[SN: Wealth of Becket.]
-
-The services of Becket were not unrewarded; the love and gratitude of
-his sovereign showered honors and emoluments upon him. Among his grants
-were the wardenship of the Tower of London, the lordship of the castle
-of Berkhampstead and the honor of Eye, with the service of a hundred and
-forty knights. Yet there must have been other and more prolific sources
-of his wealth, so lavishly displayed. Through his hands as Chancellor
-passed almost all grants and royal favors. He was the guardian of all
-escheated baronies and of all vacant benefices. It is said in his
-praise that he did not permit the king, as was common, to prolong those
-vacancies for his own advantage, that they were filled up with as much
-speed as possible; but it should seem, by subsequent occurrences, that
-no very strict account was kept of the king's monies spent by the
-Chancellor in the king's service and those expended by the Chancellor
-himself. This seems intimated by the care which he took to secure a
-general quittance from the chief justiciary of the realm before his
-elevation to the archbishopric.
-
-But if in his personal habits and occupations Becket lost in some degree
-the churchman in the secular dignitary, was he mindful of the solemn
-trust imposed upon him by his patron the archbishop, and true to the
-interests of his order? Did he connive at, or at least did he not
-resist, any invasion on ecclesiastical immunities, or, as they were
-called, the liberties of the clergy? did he hold their property
-absolutely sacred? It is clear that he consented to levy the scutage,
-raised on the whole realm, on ecclesiastical as well as secular
-property. All that his friend John of Salisbury can allege in his
-defence is, that he bitterly repented of having been the minister of
-this iniquity.[28] "If with Saul he persecuted the Church, with Paul he
-is prepared to die for the Church." But probably the worst effect of
-this conduct as regards King Henry was the encouragement of his fatal
-delusion that, as archbishop, Becket would be as submissive to his
-wishes in the affairs of the Church as had been the pliant Chancellor.
-It was the last and crowning mark of the royal confidence that Becket
-was intrusted with the education of the young Prince Henry, the heir to
-all the dominions of the king.
-
-[SN: April, 1161.]
-
-Six years after the accession of Henry II. died Theobald Archbishop of
-Canterbury. On the character of his successor depended the peace of the
-realm, especially if Henry, as no doubt he did, already entertained
-designs of limiting the exorbitant power of the Church. Becket, ever at
-his right hand, could not but occur to the mind of the king. Nothing in
-his habits of life or conduct could impair the hope that in him the
-loyal, the devoted, it might seem unscrupulous subject, would
-predominate over the rigid churchman. With such a prime minister,
-attached by former benefits, it might seem by the warmest personal love,
-still more by this last proof of boundless confidence, to his person,
-and as holding the united offices of Chancellor and Primate, ruling
-supreme both in Church and State, the king could dread no resistance, or
-if there were resistance, could subdue it without difficulty.
-
-Rumor had already designated Becket as the future primate. A churchman,
-the Prior of Leicester, on a visit to Becket, who was ill at Rouen,
-pointing to his apparel, said, "Is this a dress for an Archbishop of
-Canterbury?" Becket himself had not disguised his hopes and fears.
-"There are three poor priests in England, any one of whose elevation to
-the see of Canterbury I should wish rather than my own. I know the very
-heart of the king; if I should be promoted, I must forfeit his favor or
-that of God."[29]
-
-The king did not suddenly declare his intentions. The see was vacant for
-above a year,[30] and the administration of the revenues must have been
-in the department of the Chancellor. At length as Becket, who had
-received a commission to return to England on other affairs of moment,
-took leave of his sovereign at Falaise, Henry hastily informed him that
-those affairs were not the main object of his mission to England--it was
-for his election to the vacant archbishopric. Becket remonstrated, but
-in vain; he openly warned, it is said, his royal master that as Primate
-he must choose between the favor of God and that of the king--he must
-prefer that of God.[31] In those days the interests of the clergy and of
-God were held inseparable. Henry no doubt thought this but the decent
-resistance of an ambitious prelate. The advice of Henry of Pisa, the
-Papal Legate, overcame the faint and lingering scruples of Becket: he
-passed to England with the king's recommendation, mandate it might be
-called, for his election.
-
-All which to the king would designate Becket as the future Primate could
-not but excite the apprehensions of the more rigorous churchmen. The
-monks of Canterbury, with whom rested the formal election, alleged as an
-insuperable difficulty that Becket had never worn the monastic habit, as
-almost all his predecessors had done.[32] The suffragan bishops would no
-doubt secretly resist the advancement, over all their heads, of a man
-who, latterly at least, had been more of a soldier, a courtier, and a
-lay statesman. Nor could the prophetic sagacity of any but the wisest
-discern the latent churchmanship in the ambitious and inflexible heart
-of Becket. It is recorded on authority, which I do not believe doubtful
-as to its authenticity, but which is the impassioned statement of a
-declared enemy, that nothing but the arrival of the great justiciary,
-Richard de Luci, with the king's peremptory commands, and with personal
-menaces of proscription and exile against the more forward opponents,
-awed the refractory monks and prelates to submission.
-
-[SN: Gilbert Foliot.]
-
-At Whitsuntide Thomas Becket received priest's orders, and was then
-consecrated Primate of England with great magnificence in the Abbey of
-Westminster. The see of London being vacant, the ceremony was performed
-by the once turbulent, now aged and peaceful, Henry of Winchester, the
-brother of King Stephen. One voice alone, that of Gilbert Foliot, Bishop
-of Hereford,[33] broke the apparent harmony by a bitter sarcasm--"The
-king has wrought a miracle; he has turned a soldier and a layman into an
-archbishop." Gilbert Foliot, from first to last the firm and unawed
-antagonist of Becket, is too important a personage to be passed lightly
-by.[34] This sally was attributed no doubt by some at the time, as it
-was the subject afterwards of many fierce taunts from Becket himself,
-and of lofty vindication by Foliot, to disappointed ambition, as though
-he himself aspired to the primacy. Nor was there an ecclesiastic in
-England who might entertain more just hopes of advancement. He was
-admitted to be a man of unimpeachable life, of austere habits, and great
-learning. He had been Abbot of Gloucester and then Bishop of Hereford.
-He was in correspondence with four successive Popes, Coelestine II.,
-Lucius II., Eugenius III., Alexander, and with a familiarity which
-implies a high estimation for ability and experience. He is interfering
-in matters remote from his diocese, and commending other bishops,
-Lincoln and Salisbury, to the favorable consideration of the Pontiff.
-All his letters reveal as imperious and conscientious a churchman as
-Becket himself, and in Becket's position Foliot might have resisted the
-king as inflexibly.[35] He was, in short, a bold and stirring
-ecclesiastic, who did not scruple to wield, as he had done in several
-instances, that last terrible weapon of the clergy which burst on his
-own head, excommunication.[36] It may be added that, notwithstanding his
-sarcasm, there was no open breach between him and Becket. The primate
-acquiesced in, if he did not promote, the advancement of Foliot to the
-see of London;[37] and during that period letters of courtesy which
-borders on adulation were interchanged at least with apparent
-sincerity.[38]
-
-The king had indeed wrought a greater miracle than himself intended, or
-than Foliot thought possible. Becket became at once not merely a decent
-prelate, but an austere and mortified monk: he seemed determined to make
-up for his want of ascetic qualifications; to crowd a whole life of
-monkhood into a few years.[39] Under his canonical dress he wore a
-monk's frock, haircloth next his skin; his studies, his devotions, were
-long, regular, rigid. At the mass he was frequently melted into
-passionate tears. In his outward demeanor, indeed, though he submitted
-to private flagellation, and the most severe macerations, Becket was
-still the stately prelate: his food, though scanty to abstemiousness,
-was, as his constitution required, more delicate; his charities were
-boundless. Archbishop Theobald had doubled the usual amount of the
-primate's alms, Becket again doubled that; and every night in privacy,
-no doubt more ostentatious than the most public exhibition, with his
-own hands he washed the feet of thirteen beggars. His table was still
-hospitable and sumptuous, but instead of knights and nobles, he admitted
-only learned clerks, and especially the regulars, whom he courted with
-the most obsequious deference. For the sprightly conversation of former
-times were read grave books in the Latin of the Church.
-
-But the change was not alone in his habits and mode of life. The King
-could not have reproved, he might have admired, the most punctilious
-regard for the decency and the dignity of the highest ecclesiastic in
-the realm. But the inflexible churchman began to betray himself in more
-unexpected acts. While still in France Henry was startled at receiving a
-peremptory resignation of the chancellorship, as inconsistent with the
-religious functions of the primate. This act was as it were a bill of
-divorce from all personal intimacy with the king, a dissolution of their
-old familiar and friendly intercourse. It was not merely that the holy
-and austere prelate withdrew from the unbecoming pleasures of the court,
-the chase, the banquet, the tournament, even the war; they were no more
-to meet at the council board, and the seat of judicature. It had been
-said that Becket was co-sovereign with the king, he now appeared (and
-there were not wanting secret and invidious enemies to suggest, and to
-inflame the suspicion) a rival sovereign.[40] The king, when Becket met
-him on his landing at Southampton, did not attempt to conceal his
-dissatisfaction; his reception of his old friend was cold.
-
-It were unjust to human nature, to suppose that it did not cost Becket a
-violent struggle, a painful sacrifice, thus as it were to rend himself
-from the familiarity and friendship of his munificent benefactor. It was
-no doubt a severe sense of duty which crushed his natural affections,
-especially as vulgar ambition must have pointed out a more sure and safe
-way to power and fame. Such ambition would hardly have hesitated between
-the ruling all orders through the king, and the solitary and dangerous
-position of opposing so powerful a monarch to maintain the interests and
-secure the favor of one order alone.
-
-[SN: Becket at Tours. May 19, 1163.]
-
-Henry was now fully occupied with the affairs of Wales. Becket, with the
-royal sanction, obeyed the summons of Pope Alexander to the Council of
-Tours. Becket had passed through part of France at the head of an army
-of his own raising, and under his command; he had passed a second time
-as representing the king; he was yet to pass as an exile. At Tours,
-where Pope Alexander now held his court, and presided over his council,
-Becket appeared at the head of all the Bishops of England, except those
-excused on account of age or infirmity. So great was his reputation,
-that the Pope sent out all the cardinals except those in attendance on
-his own person to escort the primate of England into the city. In the
-council at Tours not merely was the title of Alexander to the popedom
-avouched with perfect unanimity, but the rights and privileges of the
-clergy asserted with more than usual rigor and distinctness. Some
-canons, one especially which severely condemned all encroachments on
-the property of the Church, might seem framed almost with a view to the
-impending strife with England.
-
-[SN: Beginning of strife.]
-
-That strife, so impetuous might seem the combatants to join issue, broke
-out, during the next year, in all its violence. Both parties, if they
-did not commence, were prepared for aggression. The first occasion of
-public collision was a dispute concerning the customary payment of the
-ancient Danegelt, of two shillings on every hide of land, to the
-sheriffs of the several counties. The king determined to transfer this
-payment to his own exchequer: he summoned an assembly at Woodstock, and
-declared his intentions. All were mute but Becket; the archbishop
-opposed the enrolment of the decree, on the ground that the tax was
-voluntary, not of right. "By the eyes of God," said Henry, his usual
-oath, "it shall be enrolled!" "By the same eyes, by which you swear,"
-replied the prelate, "it shall never be levied on my lands while I
-live!"[41] On Becket's part, almost the first act of his primacy was to
-vindicate all the rights, and to resume all the property which had been
-usurped, or which he asserted to have been usurped, from his see.[42] It
-was not likely that, in the turbulent times just gone by, there would
-have been rigid respect for the inviolability of sacred property. The
-title of the Church was held to be indefeasible. Whatever had once
-belonged to the Church might be recovered at any time; and the
-ecclesiastical courts claimed the sole right of adjudication in such
-causes. The primate was thus at once plaintiff, judge, and carried into
-execution his own judgments. The lord of the manor of Eynsford in Kent,
-who held of the king, claimed the right of presentation to that
-benefice. Becket asserted the prerogative of the see of Canterbury. On
-the forcible ejectment of his nominee by the lord, William of Eynsford,
-Becket proceeded at once to a sentence of excommunication, without
-regard to Eynsford's feudal superior the king. [SN: Claims of Becket.]
-The primate next demanded the castle of Tunbridge from the head of the
-powerful family of De Clare; though it had been held by De Clare, and it
-was asserted, received in exchange for a Norman Castle, since the time
-of William the Conqueror. The attack on De Clare might seem a defiance
-of the whole feudal nobility: a determination to despoil them of their
-conquests, or grants from the sovereign.
-
-[SN: Immunities of the clergy.]
-
-The king, on his side, wisely chose the strongest and more popular
-ground of the immunities of the clergy from all temporal jurisdiction.
-He appeared as guardian of the public morals, as administrator of equal
-justice to all his subjects, as protector of the peace of the realm.
-Crimes of great atrocity, it is said, of great frequency, crimes such as
-robbery and homicide, crimes for which secular persons were hanged by
-scores and without mercy, were committed almost with impunity, or with
-punishment altogether inadequate to the offence by the clergy; and the
-sacred name of clerk, exempted not only bishops, abbots, and priests,
-but those of the lowest ecclesiastical rank from the civil power. It was
-the inalienable right of the clerk to be tried only in the court of his
-bishop; and as that court could not award capital punishment, the utmost
-penalties were flagellation, imprisonment, and degradation. It was only
-after degradation, and for a second offence (for the clergy strenuously
-insisted on the injustice of a second trial for the same act,)[43] that
-the meanest of the clerical body could be brought to the level of the
-most highborn layman. But to cede one tittle of these immunities, to
-surrender the sacred person of a clergyman, whatever his guilt, to the
-secular power, was treason to the sacerdotal order: it was giving up
-Christ (for the Redeemer was supposed actually to dwell in the clerk,
-though his hands might be stained with innocent blood) to be crucified
-by the heathen.[44] To mutilate the person of one in holy orders was
-directly contrary to the Scripture (for with convenient logic, while the
-clergy rejected the example of the Old Testament as to the equal
-liability of priest and Levite with the ordinary Jew to the sentence of
-the law, they alleged it on their own part as unanswerable.) It was
-inconceivable, that hands which had but now made God should be tied
-behind the back, like those of a common malefactor, or that his neck
-should be wrung on a gibbet, before whom kings had but now bowed in
-reverential homage.[45]
-
-The enormity of the evil is acknowledged by Becket's most ardent
-partisans.[46] The king had credible information laid before him that
-some of the clergy were absolute devils in guilt, that their wickedness
-could not be repressed by the ordinary means of justice, and were daily
-growing worse.
-
-Becket himself had protected some notorious and heinous offenders. A
-clerk of the diocese of Worcester had debauched a maiden and murdered
-her father. Becket ordered the man to be kept in prison, and refused to
-surrender him to the king's justice.[47] Another in London, guilty of
-stealing a silver goblet, was claimed as only amenable to the
-ecclesiastical court. Philip de Brois, a canon of Bedford, had been
-guilty of homicide. The cause was tried in the bishop's court; he was
-condemned to pay a fine to the kindred of the slain man. Some time
-after, Fitz-Peter, the king's justiciary, whether from private enmity or
-offence, or dissatisfied with the ecclesiastical verdict, in the open
-court at Dunstable, called De Brois a murderer. De Brois broke out into
-angry and contumelious language against the judge. The insult to the
-justiciary was held to be insult to the king, who sought justice, where
-alone he could obtain it, in the bishop's court. Philip de Brois this
-time incurred a sentence, to our notions almost as disproportionate as
-that for his former offence. He was condemned to be publicly whipped,
-and degraded for two years from the honors and emoluments of his
-canonry. But to the king the verdict appeared far too lenient; the
-spiritual jurisdiction was accused as shielding the criminal from his
-due penalty.
-
-[SN: Character of the King.]
-
-Such were the questions on which Becket was prepared to confront and to
-wage war to the death with the king; and all this with a deliberate
-knowledge both of the power and the character of Henry, his power as
-undisputed sovereign of England and of continental territories more
-extensive and flourishing than those of the king of France. These
-dominions included those of the Conqueror and his descendants, of the
-Counts of Anjou, and the great inheritance of his wife, Queen Eleanor,
-the old kingdom of Aquitaine; they reached from the borders of Flanders
-round to the foot of the Pyrenees. This almost unrivaled power could not
-but have worked with the strong natural passions of Henry to form the
-character drawn by a churchman of great ability, who would warn Becket
-as to the formidable adversary whom he had undertaken to oppose,--"You
-have to deal with one on whose policy the most distant sovereigns of
-Europe, on whose power his neighbors, on whose severity his subjects
-look with awe; whom constant successes and prosperous fortune have
-rendered so sensitive, that every act of disobedience is a personal
-outrage; whom it is as easy to provoke as difficult to appease; who
-encourages no rash offence by impunity, but whose vengeance is instant
-and summary. He will sometimes be softened by humility and patience, but
-will never submit to compulsion; everything must seem to be conceded by
-his own free will, nothing wrested from his weakness. He is more
-covetous of glory than of gain, a commendable quality in a prince, if
-virtue and truth, not the vanity and soft flattery of courtiers, awarded
-that glory. He is a great, indeed the greatest of kings, for he has no
-superior of whom he may stand in dread, no subject who dares to resist
-him. His natural ferocity has been subdued by no calamity from without;
-all who have been involved in any contest with him, have preferred the
-most precarious treaty to a trial of strength with one so pre-eminent
-in wealth, in the number of his forces, and the greatness of his
-puissance."[48]
-
-A king of this character would eagerly listen to suggestions of
-interested or flattering courtiers, that unless the Primate's power were
-limited, the authority of the king would be reduced to nothing. The
-succession to the throne would depend entirely on the clergy, and he
-himself would reign only so long as might seem good to the Archbishop.
-Nor were they the baser courtiers alone who feared and hated Becket.
-The nobles might tremble from the example of De Clare, with whose
-powerful house almost all the Norman baronage was allied, lest every
-royal grant should be called in question.[49] Even among the clergy
-Becket had bitter enemies; and though at first they appeared almost as
-jealous as the Primate for the privileges of their order, the most able
-soon espoused the cause of the King; those who secretly favored him were
-obliged to submit in silence.
-
-[SN: Parliament of Westminster.]
-
-The King, determined to bring these great questions to issue summoned a
-Parliament at Westminster. He commenced the proceedings by enlarging on
-the abuses of the archidiaconal courts. The archdeacons kept the most
-watchful and inquisitorial superintendence over the laity, but every
-offence was easily commuted for a pecuniary fine, which fell to them.
-The King complained that they levied a revenue from the sins of the
-people equal to his own, yet that the public morals were only more
-deeply and irretrievably depraved. He then demanded that all clerks
-accused of heinous crimes should be immediately degraded and handed over
-to the officers of his justice, to be dealt with according to law; for
-their guilt, instead of deserving a lighter punishment, was doubly
-guilty: he demanded this in the name of equal justice and the peace of
-the realm. Becket insisted on delay till the next morning, in order that
-he might consult his suffragan bishops. This the King refused: the
-bishops withdrew to confer upon their answer. The bishops were disposed
-to yield, some doubtless impressed with the justice of the demand, some
-from fear of the King, some from a prudent conviction of the danger of
-provoking so powerful a monarch, and of involving the Church in a
-quarrel with Henry at the perilous time of a contest for the Papacy
-which distracted Europe. Becket inflexibly maintained the inviolability
-of the holy persons of the clergy.[50] The King then demanded whether
-they would observe the "customs of the realm." "Saving my order,"
-replied the Archbishop. That order was still to be exempt from all
-jurisdiction but its own. So answered all the bishops except Hilary of
-Chichester, who made the declaration without reserve.[51] The King
-hastily broke up the assembly, and left London in a state of
-consternation, the people and the clergy agitated by conflicting
-anxieties. He immediately deprived Becket of the custody of the Royal
-Castles, which he still retained, and of the momentous charge, the
-education of his son. The bishops entreated Becket either to withdraw or
-to change the offensive word. At first he declared that if an angel from
-Heaven should counsel such weakness, he would hold him accursed. At
-length, however, he yielded, as Herbert de Bosham asserts out of love
-for the King,[52] by another account at the persuasion of the Pope's
-Almoner, said to have been bribed by English gold.[53] He went to Oxford
-and made the concession.
-
-[SN: Jan. 1164.]
-
-[SN: Council of Clarendon.]
-
-The King, in order to ratify with the utmost solemnity the concession
-extorted from the bishops, and even from Becket himself, summoned a
-great council of the realm to Clarendon, a royal palace between three
-and four miles from Salisbury. The two archbishops and eleven bishops,
-between thirty and forty of the highest nobles, with numbers of inferior
-barons, were present. It was the King's object to settle beyond dispute
-the main points in contest between the Crown and the Church; to
-establish thus, with the consent of the whole nation, an English
-Constitution in Church and State. Becket, it is said, had been assured
-by some about the King that a mere assent would be demanded to vague and
-ambiguous, and therefore on occasion disputable customs. But when these
-customs, which had been collected and put in writing by the King's
-order, appeared in the form of precise and binding laws, drawn up with
-legal technicality by the Chief Justiciary, he saw his error, wavered,
-and endeavored to recede.[54] The King broke out into one of his
-ungovernable fits of passion. One or two of the bishops who were out of
-favor with the King and two knights Templars on their knees implored
-Becket to abandon his dangerous, fruitless, and ill-timed resistance.
-The Archbishop took the oath, which had been already sworn to by all the
-lay barons. He was followed by the rest of the bishops, reluctantly
-according to one account, and compelled on one side by their dread of
-the lay barons, on the other by the example and authority of the
-Primate, according to Becket's biographers, eagerly and of their own
-accord.[55]
-
-[SN: Constitutions of Clarendon.]
-
-These famous constitutions were of course feudal in their form and
-spirit. But they aimed at the subjection of all the great prelates of
-the realm to the Crown to the same extent as the great barons. The new
-constitution of England made the bishops' fiefs to be granted according
-to the royal will, and subjected the whole of the clergy equally with
-the laity to the common laws of the land.[56] I. On the vacancy of every
-archbishopric, bishopric, abbey, or priory, the revenues came into the
-King's hands. He was to summon those who had the right of election,
-which was to take place in the King's Chapel, with his consent, and the
-counsel of nobles chosen by the King for this office. The prelate elect
-was immediately to do homage to the King as his liege lord, for life,
-limb, and worldly honors, excepting his order. The archbishops, bishops,
-and all beneficiaries, held their estates on the tenure of baronies,
-amenable to the King's justice, and bound to sit with the other barons
-in all pleas of the Crown, except in capital cases. No archbishop,
-bishop, or any other person could quit the realm without royal
-permission, or without taking an oath at the King's requisition, not to
-do any damage either going, staying, or returning, to the King or the
-kingdom.
-
-II. All clerks accused of any crime were to be summoned before the
-King's Courts. The King's justiciaries were to decide whether it was a
-case for civil or ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Those which belonged to
-the latter were to be removed to the Bishops' Court. If the clerk was
-found guilty or confessed his guilt, the Church could protect him no
-longer.[57]
-
-III. All disputes concerning advowsons and presentations to benefices
-were to be decided in the King's Courts; and the King's consent was
-necessary for the appointment to any benefice within the King's
-domain.[58]
-
-IV. No tenant in chief of the King, none of the officers of the King's
-household, could be excommunicated, nor his lands placed under
-interdict, until due information had been laid before the King; or, in
-his absence from the realm, before the great Justiciary, in order that
-he might determine in each case the respective rights of the civil and
-ecclesiastical courts.[59]
-
-V. Appeals lay from the archdeacon to the bishop, from the bishop to the
-Archbishop. On failure of justice by the Archbishop, in the last resort
-to the King, who was to take care that justice was done in the
-Archbishop's Court; and no further appeal was to be made without the
-King's consent. This was manifestly and avowedly intended to limit
-appeals to Rome.
-
-All these statutes, in number sixteen, were restrictions on the
-distinctive immunities of the clergy; one, and that unnoticed, was
-really an invasion of popular freedom; no son of a villein could be
-ordained without the consent of his lord.
-
-Some of these customs were of doubtful authenticity. On the main
-question, the exorbitant powers of the ecclesiastical courts and the
-immunity of the clergy from all other jurisdiction, there was an
-unrepealed statute of William the Conqueror. Before the Conquest the
-bishop sate with the alderman in the same court. The statute of William
-created a separate jurisdiction of great extent in the spiritual court.
-This was not done to aggrandize the Church, of which in some respects
-the Conqueror was jealous, but to elevate the importance of the great
-Norman prelates whom he had thrust into the English sees. It raised
-another class of powerful feudatories to support the foreign throne,
-bound to it by common interest as well as by the attachment of race. But
-at this time neither party took any notice of the ancient statute. The
-King's advisers of course avoided the dangerous question; Becket and the
-Churchmen (Becket himself declared that he was unlearned in the
-customs), standing on the divine and indefeasible right of the clergy,
-could hardly rest on a recent statute granted by the royal will, and
-therefore liable to be annulled by the same authority. The Customs, they
-averred, were of themselves illegal, as clashing with higher
-irrepealable laws.
-
-To these Customs Becket had now sworn without reserve. Three copies were
-ordered to be made--one for the Archbishop of Canterbury, one for York,
-one to be laid up in the royal archives. To these the King demanded the
-further guarantee of the seal of the different parties. The Primate,
-whether already repenting of his assent, or under the vague impression
-that this was committing himself still further (for oaths might be
-absolved, seals could not be torn from public documents), now
-obstinately refused to make any further concession. The refusal threw
-suspicion on the sincerity of his former act. The King, the other
-prelates, the nobles, all but Becket,[60] subscribed and sealed the
-Constitutions of Clarendon as the laws of England.
-
-[SN: April 1.]
-
-As the Primate rode from Winchester in profound silence, meditating on
-the acts of the council and on his own conduct, one of his attendants,
-who has himself related the conversation, endeavored to raise his
-spirits. "It is a fit punishment," said Becket, "for one who, not
-trained in the school of the Saviour, but in the King's court, a man of
-pride and vanity, from a follower of hawks and hounds, a patron of
-players, has dared to assume the care of so many souls."[61] De Bosham
-significantly reminded his master of St. Peter, his denial of the Lord,
-his subsequent repentance. On his return to Canterbury Becket imposed
-upon himself the severest mortification, and suspended himself from his
-function of offering the sacrifice on the altar. He wrote almost
-immediately to the Pope to seek counsel and absolution from his oath. He
-received both. The absolution restored all his vivacity.
-
-But the King had likewise his emissaries with the Pope at Sens. He
-endeavored to obtain a legatine commission over the whole realm
-of England for Becket's enemy, Roger Archbishop of York, and a
-recommendation from the Pope to Becket to observe the "customs" of the
-realm. Two embassies were sent by the King for this end: first the
-Bishops of Lisieux and Poitiers; then Geoffrey Ridel, Archdeacon of
-Canterbury (who afterwards appears so hostile to the Primate as to be
-called by him that archdevil, not archdeacon), and the subtle John of
-Oxford. The embarrassed Pope (throughout it must be remembered that
-there was a formidable Antipope), afraid at once of estranging Henry,
-and unwilling to abandon Becket, granted the legation to the Archbishop
-of York. To the Primate's great indignation, Roger had his cross
-borne before him in the province of Canterbury. On Becket's angry
-remonstrance, the Pope, while on the one hand he enjoined on Becket the
-greatest caution and forbearance in the inevitable contest, assured him
-that he would never permit the see of Canterbury to be subject to any
-authority but his own.[62]
-
-Becket secretly went down to his estate at Romney, near the sea-coast,
-in the hope of crossing the straits, and so finding refuge and
-maintaining his cause by his personal presence with the Pope. Stormy
-weather forced him to abandon his design. He then betook himself to the
-King at Woodstock. He was coldly received. The King at first dissembled
-his knowledge of the Primate's attempt to cross the sea, a direct
-violation of one of the constitutions; but on his departure he asked
-with bitter jocularity whether Becket had sought to leave the realm
-because England could not contain himself and the King.[63]
-
-The tergiversation of Becket, and his attempt thus to violate one of the
-Constitutions of Clarendon, to which he had sworn, showed that he was
-not to be bound by oaths. No treaty could be made where one party
-claimed the power of retracting, and might at any time be released from
-his covenant. In the mind of Henry, whose will had never yet met
-resistance, the determination was confirmed, if he could not subdue the
-Prelate, to crush the refractory subject. Becket's enemies possessed
-the King's ear. Some of those enemies no doubt hated him for his former
-favor with the King, some dreaded lest the severity of so inflexible a
-prelate should curb their license, some held property belonging to or
-claimed by the Church, some to flatter the King, some in honest
-indignation at the duplicity of Becket and in love of peace, but all
-concurred to inflame the resentment of Henry, and to attribute to Becket
-words and designs insulting to the King and disparaging to the royal
-authority. Becket, holding such notions as he did of Church power, would
-not be cautious in asserting it; and whatever he might utter in his
-pride would be embittered rather than softened when repeated to the
-King.
-
-Since the Council of Clarendon Becket stood alone. All the higher
-clergy, the great prelates of the kingdom, were now either his open
-adversaries or were compelled to dissemble their favor towards him.
-Whether alienated, as some declared, by his pusillanimity at Clarendon,
-bribed by the gifts or overawed by the power of the King, whether
-conscientiously convinced that in such times of schism and division it
-might be fatal to the interests of the Church to advance her loftiest
-pretensions, all, especially the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of
-London, Salisbury and Chichester, were arrayed on the King's side.
-Becket himself attributed the chief guilt of his persecution to the
-bishops. "The King would have been quiet if they had not been so tamely
-subservient to his wishes."[64]
-
-[SN: Parliament at Northampton. Oct. 6, 1164.]
-
-Before the close of the year Becket was cited to appear before a great
-council of the realm at Northampton. All England crowded to witness
-this final strife, it might be between the royal and the ecclesiastical
-power. The Primate entered Northampton with only his own retinue; the
-King had passed the afternoon amusing himself with hawking in the
-pleasant meadows around. The Archbishop, on the following morning after
-mass, appeared in the King's chamber with a cheerful countenance. The
-King gave not, according to English custom, the kiss of peace.
-
-The citation of the Primate before the King in council at Northampton
-was to answer a charge of withholding justice from John the Marshall
-employed in the king's exchequer, who claimed the estate of Pagaham from
-the see of Canterbury. Twice had Becket been summoned to appear in the
-king's court to answer for this denial of justice: once he had refused
-to appear, the second time he did not appear in person. Becket in vain
-alleged an informality in the original proceedings of John the
-Marshall.[65] The court, the bishops, as well as the barons, declared
-him guilty of contumacy; all his goods and chattels became, according to
-the legal phrase, at the king's mercy.[66] The fine was assessed at 500
-pounds. Becket submitted, not without bitter irony: "This, then, is one
-of the new customs of Clarendon." But he protested against the
-unheard-of audacity that the bishops should presume to sit in judgment
-on their spiritual parent; it was a greater crime than to uncover their
-father's nakedness.[67] Sarcasms and protests passed alike without
-notice. But the bishops, all except Foliot, consented to become sureties
-for this exorbitant fine. [SN: Demands on Becket.] Demands rising one
-above another seemed framed for the purpose of reducing the Archbishop
-to the humiliating condition of a debtor to the King, entirely at his
-disposal. First 300 pounds were demanded as due from the castles of Eye
-and Berkhampstead. Becket pleaded that he had expended a much larger sum
-on the repairs of the castles: he found sureties likewise for this
-payment, the Earl of Gloucester, William of Eynsford, and another of
-"his men." The next day the demand was for 500 pounds lent by the King
-during the siege of Toulouse, Becket declared that this was a gift, not
-a loan;[68] but the King denying the plea, judgment was again entered
-against Becket. At last came the overwhelming charge, an account of all
-the monies received during his chancellorship from the vacant
-archbishopric and from other bishoprics and abbeys. The debt was
-calculated at the enormous sum of 44,000 marks. Becket was astounded at
-this unexpected claim. As chancellor, in all likelihood, he had kept no
-very strict account of what was expended in his own and in the royal
-service; and the King seemed blind to this abuse of the royal right, by
-which so large a sum had accumulated by keeping open those benefices
-which ought to have been instantly filled. Becket, recovered from his
-first amazement, replied that he had not been cited to answer on such
-charge; at another time he should be prepared to answer all just demands
-of the Crown. He now requested delay, in order to advise with his
-suffragans and the clergy. He withdrew; but from that time no single
-baron visited the object of the royal disfavor. Becket assembled all the
-poor, even the beggars, who could be found, to fill his vacant board.
-
-[SN: Takes counsel with the bishops.]
-
-In his extreme exigency the Primate consulted separately first the
-bishops, then the abbots. Their advice was different according to their
-characters and their sentiments towards him. He had what might seem an
-unanswerable plea, a formal acquittance from the Chief Justiciary De
-Luci, the King's representative, for all obligations incurred in his
-civil capacity before his consecration as archbishop.[69] The King,
-however, it was known, declared that he had given no such authority.
-Becket had the further excuse that all which he now possessed was
-the property of the Church, and could not be made liable for
-responsibilities incurred in a secular capacity. The bishops, however,
-were either convinced of the insufficiency or the inadmissibility of
-that plea. Henry of Winchester recommended an endeavor to purchase the
-King's pardon; he offered 2000 marks as his contribution. Others urged
-Becket to stand on his dignity, to defy the worst, under the shelter of
-his priesthood; no one would venture to lay hands on a holy prelate.
-Foliot and his party betrayed their object.[70] They exhorted him as the
-only way of averting the implacable wrath of the King at once to resign
-his see. "Would," said Hilary of Chichester, "you were no longer
-archbishop, but plain Thomas. Thou knowest the King better than we do;
-he has declared that thou and he cannot remain together in England, he
-as King, thou as Primate. Who will be bound for such an amount? Throw
-thyself on the King's mercy, or to the eternal disgrace of the Church
-thou wilt be arrested and imprisoned as a debtor to the Crown." The next
-day was Sunday; the Archbishop did not leave his lodgings. On Monday the
-agitation of his spirits had brought on an attack of a disorder to which
-he was subject: he was permitted to repose. On the morrow he had
-determined on his conduct. At one time he had seriously meditated on a
-more humiliating course: he proposed to seek the royal presence
-barefooted with the cross in his hands, to throw himself at the King's
-feet, appealing to his old affection, and imploring him to restore peace
-to the Church. What had been the effect of such a step on the violent
-but not ungenerous heart of Henry? But Becket yielded to the haughtier
-counsels more congenial to his own intrepid character. He began by the
-significant act of celebrating, out of its due order, the service of
-St. Stephen, the first martyr. It contained passages of holy writ (as no
-doubt Henry was instantly informed) concerning "kings taking counsel
-against the godly." The mass concluded; in all the majesty of his holy
-character, in his full pontifical habits, himself bearing the
-archiepiscopal cross, the Primate rode to the King's residence, and
-dismounting entered the royal hall. [SN: Becket in the King's hall.] The
-cross seemed, as it were, an uplifting of the banner of the Church, in
-defiance of that of the King, in the royal presence;[71] or it might be
-in that awful imitation of the Saviour, at which no scruple was ever
-made by the bolder churchmen--it was the servant of Christ who himself
-bore his own cross. "What means this new fashion of the Archbishop
-bearing his own cross?" said the Archdeacon Lisieux. "A fool," said
-Foliot, "he always was and always will be." They made room for him; he
-took his accustomed seat in the centre of the bishops. Foliot endeavored
-to persuade him to lay down the cross. "If the sword of the King and the
-cross of the Archbishop were to come in conflict, which were the more
-fearful weapon?" Becket held the cross firmly, which Foliot and the
-Bishop of Hereford strove, but in vain, to wrest from his grasp.
-
-The bishops were summoned into the King's presence: Becket sat alone in
-the outer hall. The Archbishop of York, who, as Becket's partisans
-asserted, designedly came later that he might appear to be of the
-King's intimate council, swept through the hall with his cross borne
-before him. Like hostile spears cross confronted cross.[72]
-
-During this interval De Bosham, the archbishop's reader, who had
-reminded his master that he had been standard-bearer of the King of
-England, and was now the standard-bearer of the King of the Angels, put
-this question, "If they should lay their impious hands upon thee, art
-thou prepared to fulminate excommunication against them?" Fitz-Stephen,
-who sat at his feet, said in a loud clear voice, "That be far from thee;
-so did not the Apostles and Martyrs of God: they prayed for their
-persecutors and forgave them." Some of his more attached followers
-burst into tears. "A little later," says the faithful Fitz-Stephen of
-himself, "when one of the King's ushers would not allow me to speak to
-the Archbishop, I made a sign to him and drew his attention to the
-Saviour on the cross."
-
-[SN: Condemnation of Becket.]
-
-The bishops admitted to the King's presence announced the appeal of the
-Archbishop to the Pope, and his inhibition to his suffragans to sit in
-judgment in a secular council on their metropolitan.[73] These were
-again direct infringements on two of the constitutions of Clarendon,
-sworn to by Becket in an oath still held valid by the King and his
-barons. The King appealed to the council. Some seized the occasion of
-boldly declaring to the King that he had brought this difficulty on
-himself by advancing a low-born man to such favor and dignity. All
-agreed that Becket was guilty of perjury and treason.[74] A kind of low
-acclamation followed which was heard in the outer room and made Becket's
-followers tremble. The King sent certain counts and barons to demand of
-Becket whether he, a liegeman of the King, and sworn to observe the
-constitutions of Clarendon, had lodged this appeal and pronounced this
-inhibition? The Archbishop replied with quiet intrepidity. In his long
-speech he did not hesitate for a word; he pleaded that he had not been
-cited to answer these charges; he alleged again the Justiciary's
-acquittance; he ended by solemnly renewing his inhibition and his
-appeal: "My person and my Church I place under the protection of the
-sovereign Pontiff."
-
-The barons of Normandy and England heard with wonder this defiance of
-the King. Some seemed awe-struck and were mute; the more fierce and
-lawless could not restrain their indignation. "The Conqueror knew best
-how to deal with these turbulent churchmen. He seized his own brother,
-Odo Bishop of Bayeux, and chastised him for his rebellion; he threw
-Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, into a fetid dungeon. The Count of
-Anjou, the King's father, treated still worse the bishop elect of Seez
-and many of his clergy: he ordered them to be shamefully mutilated and
-derided their sufferings."
-
-The King summoned the bishops, on their allegiance as barons, to join in
-sentence against Becket. But the inhibition of their metropolitan had
-thrown them into embarrassment, and perhaps they felt that the offence
-of Becket, if not capital treason, bordered upon it. It might be a
-sentence of blood, in which no churchman might concur by his
-suffrage--they dreaded the breach of canonical obedience. They entered
-the hall where Becket sat alone. The gentler prelates, Robert of Lincoln
-and others, were moved to tears; even Henry of Winchester advised the
-archbishop to make an unconditional surrender of his see. The more
-vehement Hilary of Chichester addressed him thus: "Lord Primate, we have
-just cause of complaint against you. Your inhibition has placed us
-between the hammer and the anvil: if we disobey it, we violate our
-canonical obedience; if we obey, we infringe the constitutions of the
-realm and offend the King's majesty. Yourself were the first to
-subscribe the customs at Clarendon, you now compel us to break them. We
-appeal, by the King's grace, to our lord the Pope." Becket answered "I
-hear."
-
-They returned to the King, and with difficulty obtained an exemption
-from concurrence in the sentence; they promised to join in a
-supplication to the Pope to depose Becket. The King permitted their
-appeal. Robert Earl of Leicester, a grave and aged nobleman, was
-commissioned to pronounce the sentence. Leicester had hardly begun when
-Becket sternly interrupted him. "Thy sentence! son and Earl, hear me
-first! The King was pleased to promote me against my will to the
-archbishopric of Canterbury. I was then declared free from all secular
-obligations. Ye are my children; presume ye against law and reason to
-sit in judgment on your spiritual father? I am to be judged only, under
-God, by the Pope. To him I appeal, before him I cite you, barons and my
-suffragans, to appear. Under the protection of the Catholic Church and
-the Apostolic See I depart!"[75] He rose and walked slowly down the
-hall. A deep murmur ran through the crowd. Some took up straws and threw
-them at him. One uttered the word "Traitor!" The old chivalrous spirit
-woke in the soul of Becket. "Were it not for my order, you should rue
-that word." But by other accounts he restrained not his language to this
-pardonable impropriety--he met scorn with scorn. One officer of the
-King's household he upbraided for having had a kinsman hanged. Anselm,
-the King's brother, he called "bastard and catamite." The door was
-locked, but fortunately the key was found. He passed out into the
-street, where he was received by the populace, to whom he had endeared
-himself by his charities, his austerities, perhaps by his courageous
-opposition to the king and the nobles, amid loud acclamations. They
-pressed so closely around him for his blessing that he could scarcely
-guide his horse. He returned to the church of St. Andrew, placed his
-cross by the altar of the Virgin. "This was a fearful day," said
-Fitz-Stephen. "The day of judgment," he replied, "will be more fearful."
-After supper he sent the Bishops of Hereford, Worcester, and Rochester
-to the King to request permission to leave the kingdom: the King coldly
-deferred his answer till the morrow.
-
-[SN: Flight of Becket. Oct. 13.]
-
-Becket and his friends no doubt thought his life in danger: he is said
-to have received some alarming warnings.[76] It is reported, on the
-other hand, that the King, apprehensive of the fierce zeal of his
-followers, issued a proclamation that no one should do harm to the
-archbishop or his people. It is more likely that the King, who must have
-known the peril of attempting the life of an archbishop, would have
-apprehended and committed him to prison. Becket expressed his intention
-to pass the night in the church: his bed was strewn before the altar. At
-midnight he rose, and with only two monks and a servant stole out of the
-northern gate, the only one which was not guarded. He carried with him
-only his archiepiscopal pall and his seal. The weather was wet and
-stormy, but the next morning they reached Lincoln, and lodged with a
-pious citizen--piety and admiration of Becket were the same thing. At
-Lincoln he took the disguise of a monk, dropped down the Witham to a
-hermitage in the fens belonging to the Cistercians of Sempringham;
-thence by crossroads, and chiefly by night, he found his way to Estrey,
-about five miles from Deal, a manor belonging to Christ Church in
-Canterbury. He remained there a week. On All Souls Day he went on board
-a boat, just before morning, and by the evening reached the coast of
-Flanders. To avoid observation he landed on the open shore near
-Gravelines. His large, loose shoes made it difficult to wade through the
-sand without falling. He sat down in despair. After some delay was
-obtained for a prelate, accustomed to the prancing war-horse or stately
-cavalcade, a sorry nag without a saddle, and with a wisp of hay for a
-bridle. But he soon got weary and was fain to walk. He had many
-adventures by the way. He was once nearly betrayed by gazing with
-delight on a falcon upon a young squire's wrist: his fright punished him
-for his relapse into his secular vanities. The host of a small inn
-recognized him by his lofty look and the whiteness of his hands. At
-length he arrived at the monastery of Clair Marais, near St. Omer: he
-was there joined by Herbert de Bosham, who had been left behind to
-collect what money he could at Canterbury; he brought but 100 marks and
-some plate. While he was in this part of Flanders the Justiciary,
-Richard de Luci, passed through the town on his way to England. He tried
-in vain to persuade the archbishop to return with him: Becket suspected
-his friendly overtures, or had resolutely determined not to put himself
-again in the King's power.
-
-In the first access of indignation at Becket's flight the King had sent
-orders for strict watch to be kept in the ports of the kingdom,
-especially Dover. The next measure was to pre-occupy the minds of the
-Count of Flanders, the King of France, and the Pope against his fugitive
-subject. Henry could not but foresee how formidable an ally the exile
-might become to his rivals and enemies, how dangerous to his extensive
-but ill-consolidated foreign dominions. He might know that Becket would
-act and be received as an independent potentate. The rank of his
-ambassadors implied the importance of their mission to France. They were
-the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of London, Exeter, Chichester, and
-Worcester, the Earl of Arundel, and three other distinguished nobles.
-The same day that Becket passed to Gravelines, they crossed from Dover
-to Calais.[77]
-
-[SN: Becket in exile.]
-
-The Earl of Flanders, though with some cause of hostility to Becket, had
-offered him a refuge; yet perhaps was not distinctly informed or would
-not know that the exile was in his dominions.[78] He received the King's
-envoys with civility. The King of France was at Compiègne. The strongest
-passions in the feeble mind of Louis VII. were jealousy of Henry of
-England, and a servile bigotry to the Church, to which he seemed
-determined to compensate for the hostility and disobedience of his
-youth. Against Henry, personally, there were old causes of hatred
-rankling in his heart, not the less deep because they could not be
-avowed. [SN: From 1152 to 1164.] Henry of England was now the husband of
-Eleanor, who, after some years of marriage, had contemptuously divorced
-the King of France as a monk rather than as a husband, had thrown
-herself into the arms of Henry and carried with her a dowry as large as
-half the kingdom of France. There had since been years either of fierce
-war, treacherous negotiations, or jealous and armed peace, between the
-rival sovereigns.
-
-[SN: Louis of France.]
-
-Louis had watched, and received regular accounts of the proceedings in
-England; his admiration of Becket for his lofty churchmanship and
-daring opposition to Henry was at its height, scarcely disguised. He
-had already in secret offered to receive Becket, not as a fugitive, but
-as the sharer in his kingdom. The ambassadors appeared before Louis and
-presented a letter urging the King of France not to admit within his
-dominions the traitor Thomas, late Archbishop of Canterbury. "Late
-Archbishop! and who has presumed to depose him? I am a king, like my
-brother of England; I should not dare to depose the meanest of my
-clergy. Is this the King's gratitude for the services of his Chancellor,
-to banish him from France, as he has done from England?"[79] Louis wrote
-a strong letter to the Pope, recommending to his favor the cause of
-Becket as his own.
-
-[SN: Ambassadors at Sens.]
-
-The ambassadors passed onwards to Sens, where resided the Pope
-Alexander III., himself an exile, and opposing his spiritual power to
-the highest temporal authority, that of the Emperor and his subservient
-Antipope. Alexander was in a position of extraordinary difficulty: on
-the one side were gratitude to King Henry for his firm support, and the
-fear of estranging so powerful a sovereign, on whose unrivaled wealth he
-reckoned as the main strength of his cause; on the other, the dread of
-offending the King of France, also his faithful partisan, in whose
-dominions he was a refugee, and the duty, the interest, the strong
-inclination to maintain every privilege of the hierarchy. To Henry
-Alexander almost owed his pontificate. His first and most faithful
-adherents had been Theobald the primate, the English Church, and Henry
-King of England; and when the weak Louis had entered into dangerous
-negotiations at Lannes with the Emperor; when at Dijon he had almost
-placed himself in the power of Frederick, and his voluntary or enforced
-defection had filled Alexander with dread, the advance of Henry of
-England with a powerful force to the neighborhood rescued the French
-king from his perilous position. And now, though Victor the Antipope was
-dead, a successor, Guido of Crema, had been set up by the imperial
-party, and Frederick would lose no opportunity of gaining, if any
-serious quarrel should alienate him from Alexander, a monarch of such
-surpassing power. An envoy from England, John Cummin, was even now at
-the imperial court.[80]
-
-Becket's messengers, before the reception of Henry's ambassadors by Pope
-Alexander, had been admitted to a private interview. The account of
-Becket's "fight with beasts" at Northampton, and a skillful parallel
-with St. Paul, had melted the heart of the Pontiff, as he no doubt
-thought himself suffering like persecutions, to a flood of tears. How in
-truth could a Pope venture to abandon such a champion of what were
-called the liberties of the Church? He had, in fact, throughout been in
-secret correspondence with Becket. Whenever letters could escape the
-jealous watchfulness of the King, they had passed between England and
-Sens.[81]
-
-[SN: The King's ambassadors at Sens.]
-
-The ambassadors of Henry were received in state in the open consistory.
-Foliot of London began with his usual ability; his warmth at length
-betrayed him into the Scriptural citation,--"The wicked fleeth when no
-man pursueth." "Forbear," said the Pope. "I will forbear him," answered
-Foliot. "It is for thine own sake, not for his, that I bid thee
-forbear." The Pope's severe manner silenced the Bishop of London.
-Hilary, Bishop of Chichester, who had overweening confidence in his
-eloquence, began a long harangue; but at a fatal blunder in his Latin,
-the whole Italian court burst into laughter.[82] The discomfited orator
-tried in vain to proceed. The Archbishop of York spoke with prudent
-brevity. The Count of Arundel, more cautious or less learned, used his
-native Norman. His speech was mild, grave, and conciliatory, and
-therefore the most embarrassing to the Pontiff. Alexander consented to
-send his cardinal legates to England; but neither the arguments of
-Foliot, nor those of Arundel, who now rose to something like a menace of
-recourse to the Antipope, would induce him to invest them with full
-power. The Pope would entrust to none but to himself the prerogative of
-final judgment. Alexander mistrusted the venality of his cardinals, and
-Henry's subsequent dealing with some of them justified his mistrust.[83]
-He was himself inflexible to tempting offers. The envoys privately
-proposed to extend the payment of Peter's Pence to almost all classes,
-and to secure the tax in perpetuity to the see of Rome. The ambassadors
-retreated in haste; their commission had been limited to a few days. The
-bishops, so strong was the popular feeling in France for Becket, had
-entered Sens as retainers for the Earl of Arundel: they received
-intimation that certain lawless knights in the neighborhood had
-determined to waylay and plunder these enemies of the Church, and of the
-saintly Becket.
-
-[SN: Becket at Sens.]
-
-Far different was the progress of the exiled primate. From St. Bertin he
-was escorted by the Abbot, and by the Bishop of Terouenne. He entered
-France; he was met, as he approached Soissons, by the King's brothers,
-the Archbishop of Rheims, and a long train of bishops, abbots, and
-dignitaries of the church; he entered Soissons at the head of three
-hundred horsemen. The interview of Louis with Becket raised his
-admiration into passion. As the envoys of Henry passed on one side of
-the river, they saw the pomp in which the ally of the King of France,
-rather than the exile from England, was approaching Sens. The cardinals,
-whether from prudence, jealousy, or other motives, were cool in their
-reception of Becket. The Pope at once granted the honor of a public
-audience; he placed Becket on his right hand, and would not allow him to
-rise to speak. Becket, after a skillful account of his hard usage,
-spread out the parchment which contained the Constitutions of Clarendon.
-They were read; the whole Consistory exclaimed against the violation of
-ecclesiastical privileges. On further examination the Pope acknowledged
-that six of them were less evil than the rest; on the remaining ten he
-pronounced his unqualified condemnation. He rebuked the weakness of
-Becket in swearing to these articles, it is said, with the severity of a
-father, the tenderness of a mother.[84] He consoled him with the
-assurance that he had atoned by his sufferings and his patience for his
-brief infirmity. Becket pursued his advantage. The next day, by what
-might seem to some trustful magnanimity, to others, a skillful mode of
-getting rid of certain objections which had been raised concerning his
-election, he tendered the resignation of his archiepiscopate to the
-Pope. Some of the more politic, it was said, more venal cardinals,
-entreated the Pontiff to put an end at once to this dangerous quarrel by
-accepting the surrender.[85] But the Pontiff (his own judgment being
-supported among others by the Cardinal Hyacinth) restored to him the
-archiepiscopal ring, thus ratifying his primacy. He assured Becket of
-his protection, and committed him to the hospitable care of the Abbot of
-Pontigny, a monastery about twelve leagues from Sens. "So long have you
-lived in ease and opulence, now learn the lessons of poverty from the
-poor."[86] Yet Alexander thought it prudent to inhibit any proceedings
-of Becket against the King till the following Easter.
-
-[SN: Effect on King Henry.]
-
-Becket's emissaries had been present during the interview of
-Henry's ambassadors with the Pope. Henry, no doubt, received speedy
-intelligence of these proceedings with Becket. He was at Marlborough
-after a disastrous campaign in Wales.[87] [SN: Wrath of Henry.] He
-issued immediate orders to seize the revenues of the Archbishop, and
-promulgated a mandate to the bishops to sequester the estates of all the
-clergy who had followed him to France. He forbade public prayers for the
-Primate. In the exasperated state, especially of the monkish mind,
-prayers for Becket would easily slide into anathemas against the king.
-The payment of Peter's Pence[88] to the Pope was suspended. All
-correspondence with Becket was forbidden. But the resentment of Henry
-was not satisfied. He passed a sentence of banishment, and ordered at
-once to be driven from the kingdom all the primate's kinsmen,
-dependents, and friends. Four hundred persons, it is said, of both
-sexes, of every age, even infants at the breast were included (and it
-was the depth of winter) in this relentless edict. Every adult was to
-take an oath to proceed immediately to Becket, in order that his eyes
-might be shocked, and his heart wrung by the miseries which he had
-brought on his family and his friends. This order was as inhumanly
-executed, as inhumanly enacted.[89] It was intrusted to Randulph de
-Broc, a fierce soldier, the bitterest of Becket's personal enemies. It
-was as impolitic as cruel. The monasteries and convents of Flanders and
-of France were thrown open to the exiles with generous hospitality.
-Throughout both these countries was spread a multitude of persons
-appealing to the pity, to the indignation of all orders of the people,
-and so deepening the universal hatred of Henry. The enemy of the Church
-was self-convicted of equal enmity to all Christianity of heart.
-
-[SN: Becket at Pontigny.]
-
-In his seclusion at Pontigny Becket seemed determined to compensate by
-the sternest monastic discipline for that deficiency which had been
-alleged on his election to the archbishopric. He put on the coarse
-Cistercian dress. He lived on the hard and scanty Cistercian diet.
-Outwardly he still maintained something of his old magnificence and the
-splendor of his station. His establishment of horses and retainers was
-so costly, that his sober friend, John of Salisbury, remonstrated
-against the profuse expenditure. Richer viands were indeed served on a
-table apart, ostensibly for Becket; but while he himself was content
-with the pulse and gruel of the monks, those meats and game were given
-away to the beggars. His devotions were long and secret, broken with
-perpetual groans. At night he rose from the bed strewn with rich
-coverings, as beseeming an archbishop, and summoned his chaplain to the
-work of flagellation. Not satisfied with this, he tore his flesh with
-his nails, and lay on the cold floor, with a stone for his pillow. His
-health suffered; wild dreams, so reports one of his attendants, haunted
-his broken slumbers, of cardinals plucking out his eyes, fierce
-assassins cleaving his tonsured crown.[90] His studies were neither
-suited to calm his mind, nor to abase his hierarchical haughtiness. He
-devoted his time to the canon law, of which the False Decretals now
-formed an integral part; sacerdotal fraud justifying the loftiest
-sacerdotal presumption. John of Salisbury again interposed with friendly
-remonstrance. He urged him to withdraw from these undevotional
-inquiries; he recommended to him the works of a Pope of a different
-character, the Morals of Gregory the Great. He exhorted him to confer
-with holy men on books of spiritual improvement.
-
-[SN: Negotiations with the Emperor.]
-
-King Henry in the meantime took a loftier and more menacing tone towards
-the Pope. "It is an unheard of thing that the court of Rome should
-support traitors against my sovereign authority; I have not deserved
-such treatment.[91] I am still more indignant that the justice is denied
-to me which is granted to the meanest clerk." In his wrath he made
-overtures to Reginald, Archbishop of Cologne, the maker, he might be
-called, of two Antipopes, and the minister of the Emperor, declaring
-that he had long sought an opportunity of falling off from Alexander,
-and his perfidious cardinals, who presumed to support against him the
-traitor Thomas, late Archbishop of Canterbury.
-
-[SN: Diet at Wurtzburg, A. D. 1165, Whitsuntide.]
-
-The Emperor met the advances of Henry with promptitude, which showed the
-importance he attached to the alliance. Reginald of Cologne was sent to
-England to propose a double alliance with the house of Swabia, of
-Frederick's son, and of Henry the Lion, with the two daughters of Henry
-Plantagenet. The Pope trembled at this threatened union between the
-houses of Swabia and England. At the great diet held at Wurtzburg,
-Frederick, asserted the canonical election of Paschal III., the new
-Antipope, and declared in the face of the empire and of all Christendom,
-that the powerful kingdom of England had now embraced his cause, and
-that the King of France stood alone in his support of Alexander.[92] In
-his public edict he declared to all Christendom that the oath of
-fidelity to Paschal, of denial of all future allegiance to Alexander,
-administered to all the great princes and prelates of the empire, had
-been taken by the ambassadors of King Henry, Richard of Ilchester, and
-John of Oxford.[93] Nor was this all. A solemn oath of abjuration of
-Pope Alexander was enacted, and to some extent enforced; it was to be
-taken by every male under twelve years old throughout the realm.[94] The
-King's officers compelled this act of obedience to the King, in
-villages, in castles, in cities.
-
-If the ambassadors of Henry at Wurtzburg had full powers to transfer the
-allegiance of the King to the Antipope; if they took the oath
-unconditionally, and with no reserve in case Alexander should abandon
-the cause of Becket; if this oath of abjuration in England was generally
-administered; it is clear that Henry soon changed, or wavered at least
-in his policy. The alliance between the two houses came to nothing. Yet
-even after this he addressed another letter to Reginald, Archbishop of
-Cologne, declaring again his long cherished determination to abandon the
-cause of Alexander, the supporter of his enemy, the Archbishop of
-Canterbury. He demanded safe-conduct for an embassy to Rome, the
-Archbishop of York, the Bishop of London, John of Oxford, De Luci, the
-Justiciary, peremptorily to require the Pope to annul all the acts of
-Thomas, and to command the observance of the Customs.[95] The success of
-Alexander in Italy, aversion in England to the abjuration of Alexander,
-some unaccounted jealousy with the Emperor, irresolution in Henry, which
-was part of his impetuous character, may have wrought this change.
-
-The monk and severe student of Pontigny found rest neither in his
-austerities nor his studies.[96] The causes of this enforced repose are
-manifest--the negotiations between Henry and the Emperor, the
-uncertainty of the success of the Pope on his return to Italy. It would
-have been perilous policy, either for him to risk, or for the Pope not
-to inhibit any rash measure.
-
-[SN: Becket cites the King.]
-
-In the second year of his seclusion, when he found that the King's heart
-was still hardened, the fire, not, we are assured by his followers, of
-resentment, but of parental love, not zeal for vengeance but for
-justice, burned within his soul. Henry was at this time in France. Three
-times the exile cited his sovereign with the tone of a superior to
-submit to his censure. Becket had communicated his design to his
-followers:--"Let us act as the Lord commanded his steward:[97] 'See, I
-have set thee over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out and
-to pull down, and to destroy, and to hew down, to build and to
-plant.'"[98] All his hearers applauded his righteous resolution. In the
-first message the haughty meaning was veiled in the blandest words,[99]
-and sent by a Cistercian of gentle demeanor, named Urban.[100] The King
-returned a short and bitter answer. The second time Becket wrote in
-severer language, but yet in the spirit, 'tis said, of compassion and
-leniency.[101] The King deigned no reply. His third messenger was a
-tattered, barefoot friar. To him Becket, it might seem, with studied
-insult, not only intrusted his letter to the King, but authorized the
-friar to speak in his name. With such a messenger the message was not
-likely to lose in asperity. The King returned an answer even more
-contemptuous than the address.[102]
-
-[SN: Nov. 11, 1165.]
-
-But this secret arraignment of the King did not content the unquiet
-prelate. He could now dare more, unrestrained, unrebuked. Pope Alexander
-had been received at Rome with open arms: at the commencement of the
-present year all seemed to favor his cause. The Emperor, detained by
-wars in Germany, was not prepared to cross the Alps. In the free cities
-of Italy, the anti-imperialist feeling, and the growing republicanism,
-gladly entered into close confederacy with a Pope at war with the
-Emperor. The Pontiff (secretly it should seem, it might be in defiance
-or in revenge for Henry's threatened revolt and for the acts of his
-ambassadors at Wurtzburg[103]) ventured to grant to Becket a legatine
-power over the King's English dominions, except the province of York.
-Though it was not in the power of Becket to enter those dominions, it
-armed him, as it was thought, with unquestionable authority over Henry
-and his subjects. At all events it annulled whatever restraint the Pope,
-by counsel or by mandate, had placed on the proceedings of Becket.[104]
-The Archbishop took his determination alone.[105] As though to throw an
-awful mystery about his plan, he called his wise friends together, and
-consulted them on the propriety of resigning his see. With one voice
-they rejected the timid counsel. Yet though his most intimate followers
-were in ignorance of his designs, some intelligence of a meditated blow
-was betrayed to Henry. The King summoned an assembly of prelates at
-Chinon. The Bishops of Lisieux and Seez, whom the Archbishop of Rouen,
-Rotran, consented to accompany as a mediator, were dispatched to
-Pontigny, to anticipate by an appeal to the Pope, any sentence which
-might be pronounced by Becket. They did not find him there: he had
-already gone to Soissons, on the pretext of a pilgrimage to the shrine
-of St. Drausus, a saint whose intercession rendered the warrior
-invincible in battle. Did Becket hope thus to secure victory in the
-great spiritual combat? One whole night he passed before the shrine of
-St. Drausus: another before that of Gregory the Great, the founder of
-the English Church, and of the see of Canterbury; and a third before
-that of the Virgin, his especial patroness.
-
-[SN: Becket at Vezelay.]
-
-From thence he proceeded to the ancient and famous monastery of
-Vezelay.[106] The church of Vezelay, if the dismal decorations of the
-architecture are (which is doubtful) of that period, might seem
-designated for that fearful ceremony.[107] There, on the feast of the
-Ascension,[108] when the church was crowded with worshipers from all
-quarters, he ascended the pulpit, and with the utmost solemnity,
-condemned and annulled the Constitutions of Clarendon, declared
-excommunicate all who observed or enforced their observance, all who had
-counseled, and all who had defended them; absolved all the bishops from
-the oaths which they had taken to maintain them. This sweeping anathema
-involved the whole kingdom. But he proceeded to excommunicate by name
-the most active and powerful adversaries: John of Oxford, for his
-dealings with the schismatic partisans of the Emperor and of the
-Antipope, and for his usurpation of the deanery of Salisbury; Richard of
-Ilchester Archdeacon of Poitiers, the colleague of John in his
-negotiations at Wurtzburg (thus the cause of Becket and Pope Alexander
-were indissolubly welded together); the great Justiciary, Richard de
-Luci, and John of Baliol, the authors of the Constitutions of Clarendon;
-Randulph de Broc, Hugo de Clare, and others, for their forcible
-usurpation of the estates of the see of Canterbury. He yet in his mercy
-spared the King (he had received intelligence that Henry was dangerously
-ill), and in a lower tone, his voice, as it seemed, half choked with
-tears, he uttered his Commination. The whole congregation, even his own
-intimate followers, were silent with amazement.
-
-This sentence of excommunication Becket announced to the Pope, and to
-all the clergy of England. To the latter he said, "Who presumes to doubt
-that the priests of God are the fathers and masters of kings, princes,
-and all the faithful?" He commanded Gilbert, Bishop of London, and his
-other suffragans, to publish this edict throughout their dioceses. He
-did not confine himself to the bishops of England; the Norman prelates,
-the Archbishop of Rouen, were expressly warned to withdraw from all
-communion with the excommunicate.[109]
-
-[SN: Anger of the King.]
-
-The wrath of Henry drove him almost to madness. No one dared to name
-Becket in his presence.[110] Soon after, on the occasion of some
-discussion about the King of Scotland, he burst into a fit of passion,
-threw away his cap, ungirt his belt, stripped off his clothes, tore the
-silken coverlid from his bed, and crouched down on the straw, gnawing
-bits of it with his teeth.[111] Proclamation was issued to guard the
-ports of England against the threatened interdict. Any one who should be
-apprehended as the bearer of such an instrument, if a regular, was to
-lose his feet; if a clerk, his eyes, and suffer more shameful
-mutilation; a layman was to be hanged; a leper to be burned. A bishop
-who left the kingdom, for fear of the interdict, was to carry nothing
-with him but his staff. All exiles were to return on pain of losing
-their benefices. Priests who refused to chant the service were to be
-mutilated, and all rebels to forfeit their lands. An oath was to be
-administered by the sheriffs to all adults, that they would respect no
-ecclesiastical censure from the Archbishop.
-
-[SN: Becket driven from Pontigny.]
-
-A second time Henry's ungovernable passion betrayed him into a step
-which, instead of lowering, only placed his antagonist in a more
-formidable position. He determined to drive him from his retreat at
-Pontigny. He sent word to the general of the Cistercian order that it
-was at their peril, if they harbored a traitor to his throne. The
-Cistercians possessed many rich abbeys in England; they dared not defy
-at once the King's resentment and rapacity. It was intimated to the
-Abbot of Pontigny, that he must dismiss his guest. The Abbot
-courteously communicated to Becket the danger incurred by the Order. He
-could not but withdraw; but instead now of lurking in a remote
-monastery, in some degree secluded from the public gaze, he was received
-in the archiepiscopal city of Sens; his honorable residence was prepared
-in a monastery close to the city; he lived in ostentatious communication
-with the Archbishop William, one of his most zealous partisans.[112]
-
-[SN: Controversy with English clergy.]
-
-But the fury of haughtiness in Becket equaled the fury of resentment in
-the King: yet it was not without subtlety. Just before the scene at
-Vezelay, it has been said, the King had sent the Archbishop of Rouen and
-the Bishop of Lisieux to Pontigny, to lodge his appeal to the Pope.
-Becket, duly informed by his emissaries at the court, had taken care to
-be absent. He eluded likewise the personal service of the appeal of the
-English clergy. An active and violent correspondence ensued. The
-remonstrance, purporting to be from the Primate's suffragans and the
-whole clergy of England, was not without dignified calmness. With covert
-irony, indeed, they said that they had derived great consolation from
-the hope that, when abroad, he would cease to rebel against the King and
-the peace of the realm; that he would devote his days to study and
-prayer, and redeem his lost time by fasting, watching, and weeping; they
-reproached him with the former favors of the King, with the design of
-estranging the King from Pope Alexander; they asserted the readiness of
-the King to do full justice, and concluded by lodging an appeal until
-the Ascension-day of the following year.[113] Foliot was no doubt the
-author of this remonstrance, and between the Primate and the Bishop
-of London broke out a fierce warfare of letters. With Foliot Becket
-kept no terms. "You complain that the Bishop of Salisbury has been
-excommunicated, without citation, without hearing, without judgment.
-Remember the fate of Ucalegon. He trembled when his neighbor's house was
-on fire." To Foliot he asserted the pre-eminence, the supremacy, the
-divinity of the spiritual power without reserve. "Let not your liege
-lord be ashamed to defer to those to whom God himself defers, and calls
-them 'Gods.'"[114] Foliot replied with what may be received as the
-manifesto of his party, and as the manifesto of a party to be received
-with some mistrust, yet singularly curious, as showing the tone of
-defence taken by the opponents of the Primate among the English
-clergy.[115]
-
-The address of the English prelates to Pope Alexander was more moderate,
-and drawn with great ability. It asserted the justice, the obedience to
-the Church, the great virtue and (a bold assertion!) the conjugal
-fidelity of the King. The King had at once obeyed the citation of the
-Bishops of London and Salisbury, concerning some encroachments on the
-Church condemned by the Pope. The sole design of Henry had been to
-promote good morals, and to maintain the peace of the realm. That peace
-had been restored. All resentments had died away, when Becket fiercely
-recommenced the strife; in sad and terrible letters had threatened the
-King with excommunication, the realm with interdict. He had suspended
-the Bishop of Salisbury without trial. "This was the whole of the
-cruelty, perversity, malignity of the King against the Church, declaimed
-on and bruited abroad throughout the world."[116]
-
-[SN: John of Oxford at Rome.]
-
-The indefatigable John of Oxford was in Rome, perhaps the bearer of this
-address. Becket wrote to the Pope, insisting on all the cruelties of the
-King; he calls him a malignant tyrant, one full of all malice. He dwelt
-especially on the imprisonment of one of his chaplains, for which
-violation of the sacred person of a clerk, the King was _ipso facto_
-excommunicate. "Christ was crucified anew in Becket."[117] He complained
-of the presumption of Foliot, who had usurped the power of primate;[118]
-warned the Pope against the wiles of John of Oxford; deprecated the
-legatine mission, of which he had already heard a rumor, of William of
-Pavia. And all these letters, so unsparing to the King, or copies of
-them, probably bought out of the Roman chancery, were regularly
-transmitted to the King.
-
-John of Oxford began his mission at Rome by swearing undauntedly, that
-nothing had been done at Wurtzburg against the power of the Church or
-the interests of Pope Alexander.[119] He surrendered his deanery of
-Salisbury into the hands of the Pope, and received it back again.[120]
-John of Oxford was armed with more powerful weapons than perjury or
-submission, and the times now favored the use of these more irresistible
-arms. The Emperor Frederick was levying, if he had not already set in
-motion, that mighty army which swept, during the next year, through
-Italy, made him master of Rome, and witnessed his coronation and the
-enthronement of the Antipope.[121] Henry had now, notwithstanding his
-suspicious--more than suspicious--dealings with the Emperor, returned to
-his allegiance to Alexander. Vast sums of English money were from this
-time expended in strengthening the cause of the Pope. The Guelfic cities
-of Italy received them with greedy hands. By the gold of the King of
-England, and of the King of Sicily, the Frangipani and the family of
-Peter Leonis were retained in their fidelity to the Pope. Becket, on the
-other hand, had powerful friends in Rome, especially the Cardinal
-Hyacinth, to whom he writes, that Henry had boasted that in Rome
-everything was venal. [SN: Dec. 1166.] It was, however, not till a
-second embassy arrived, consisting of John Cummin and Ralph of Tamworth,
-that Alexander made his great concession, the sign that he was not yet
-extricated from his distress. He appointed William of Pavia, and Otho,
-Cardinal of St. Nicholas, his legates in France, to decide the
-cause.[122] Meantime all Becket's acts were suspended by the papal
-authority. At the same time the Pope wrote to Becket, entreating him at
-this perilous time of the Church to make all possible concessions, and
-to dissemble, if necessary, for the present.[123]
-
-If John of Oxford boasted prematurely of his triumph (on his return
-to England he took ostentatious possession of his deanery of
-Salisbury[124]), and predicted the utter ruin of Becket, his friends,
-especially the King of France,[125] were in utter dismay at this change
-in the papal policy. John, as Becket had heard (and his emissaries were
-everywhere), on his landing in England, had met the Bishop of Hereford
-(one of the wavering bishops), prepared to cross the sea in obedience to
-Becket's citation. To him, after some delay, John had exhibited letters
-of the Pope, which sent him back to his diocese. On the sight of these
-same letters, the Bishop of London had exclaimed in the fullness of his
-joy, "Then our Thomas is no longer archbishop!" "If this be true," adds
-Becket, "the Pope has given a death-blow to the Church."[126] To the
-Archbishop of Mentz, for in the empire he had his ardent admirers, he
-poured forth all the bitterness of his soul.[127] Of the two cardinals
-he writes, "The one is weak and versatile, the other treacherous and
-crafty." He looked to their arrival with indignant apprehension. They
-are open to bribes, and may be perverted to any injustice.[128]
-
-John of Oxford had proclaimed that the cardinals, William of Pavia, and
-Otho, were invested in full powers to pass judgment between the King and
-the Primate.[129] But whether John of Oxford had mistaken or exaggerated
-their powers, or the Pope (no improbable case, considering the change of
-affairs in Italy) had thought fit afterwards to modify or retract them,
-they came rather as mediators than judges, with orders to reconcile the
-contending parties, rather than to decide on their cause. The cardinals
-did not arrive in France till the autumn of the year.[130] Even before
-their arrival, first rumors, then more certain intelligence had been
-propagated throughout Christendom of the terrible disaster which had
-befallen the Emperor. Barbarossa's career of vengeance and conquest had
-been cut short. [SN: A. D. 1167. Flight of Frederick.] The Pope a
-prisoner, a fugitive, was unexpectedly released, restored to power, if
-not to the possession of Rome.[131] The climate of Rome, as usual, but
-in a far more fearful manner, had resented the invasion of the city by
-the German army. A pestilence had broken out, which in less than a month
-made such havoc among the soldiers, that they could scarcely find room
-to bury the dead. The fever seemed to choose its victims among the
-higher clergy, the partisans of the Antipope; of the princes and nobles,
-the chief victims were the younger Duke Guelf, Duke Frederick of Swabia,
-and some others; of the bishops, those of Prague, Ratisbon, Augsburg,
-Spires, Verdun, Liege, Zeitz; and the arch-rebel himself, the
-antipope-maker, Reginald of Cologne.[132] Throughout Europe the clergy
-on the side of Alexander raised a cry of awful exultation; it was God
-manifestly avenging himself on the enemies of the Church; the new
-Sennacherib (so he is called by Becket) had been smitten in his pride;
-and the example of this chastisement of Frederick was a command to the
-Church to resist to the last all rebels against her power, to put forth
-her spiritual arms, which God would as assuredly support by the same or
-more signal wonders. The defeat of Frederick was an admonition to the
-Pope to lay bare the sword of Peter, and smite on all sides.[133]
-
-[SN: Becket against the legates.]
-
-There can be no doubt that Becket so interpreted what he deemed a sign
-from heaven. But even before the disaster was certainly known he had
-determined to show no submission to a judge so partial and so corrupt as
-William of Pavia.[134] That cardinal had urged the Pope at Sens to
-accept Becket's resignation of his see. Becket would not deign to
-disguise his contempt. He wrote a letter so full of violence that John
-of Salisbury,[135] to whom it was submitted, persuaded him to destroy
-it. A second was little milder; at length he was persuaded to take a
-more moderate tone. Yet even then he speaks of the "insolence of princes
-lifting up their horn." To Cardinal Otho, on the other hand, his
-language borders on adulation.
-
-[SN: Meeting near Gisors.]
-
-The cardinal Legates traveled in slow state. They visited first Becket
-at Sens, afterwards King Henry at Rouen. At length a meeting was agreed
-on to be held on the borders of the French and English territory,
-between Gisors and Trie. The proud Becket was disturbed at being hastily
-summoned, when he was unable to muster a sufficient retinue of horsemen
-to meet the Italian cardinals. The two kings were there. Of Henry's
-prelates the Archbishop of Rouen alone was present at the first
-interview. Becket was charged with urging the King of France to war
-against his master. [SN: Octave of St. Martin. Nov. 23.] On the
-following day the King of France said in the presence of the cardinals,
-that this impeachment on Becket's loyalty was false. To all the
-persuasions, menaces, entreaties of the cardinals[136] Becket declared
-that he would submit, "saving the honor of God, and of the Apostolic
-See, the liberty of the Church, the dignity of his person, and the
-property of the churches. As to the Customs he declared that he would
-rather bow his neck to the executioner than swear to observe them. He
-peremptorily demanded his own restoration at once to all the honors and
-possessions of his see." The third question was on the appeal of the
-bishops. Becket inveighed with bitterness on their treachery towards
-him, their servility to the King. "When the shepherds fled all Egypt
-returned to idolatry." Becket interpreted these "shepherds" as the
-clergy.[137] He compares them to the slaves in the old comedy; he
-declared that he would submit to no judgment on that point but that of
-the Pope himself.
-
-[SN: The Cardinals before the King.]
-
-The Cardinals proceeded to the King. They were received but coldly at
-Argences, not far from Caen, at a great meeting with the Norman and
-English prelates. The Bishop of London entered at length into the King's
-grievances and his own; Becket's debt to the King,[138] his usurpations
-on the see of London. At the close Henry, in tears, entreated the
-cardinals to rid him of the troublesome churchman. William of Pavia
-wept, or seemed to weep from sympathy. Otho, writes Becket's emissary,
-could hardly suppress his laughter. The English prelates afterwards at
-Le Mans solemnly renewed their appeal. Their appeal was accompanied
-with a letter, in which they complain that Becket would leave them
-exposed to the wrath of the King, from which wrath he himself had
-fled;[139] of false representations of the Customs, and disregard of all
-justice and of the sacred canons in suspending and anathematizing the
-clergy without hearing and without trial. William of Pavia gave notice
-of the appeal for the next St. Martin's Day (so a year was to elapse),
-with command to abstain from all excommunication and interdict of the
-kingdom till that day.[140] Both cardinals wrote strongly to the Pope in
-favor of the Bishop of London.[141]
-
-[SN: Dec. 29.]
-
-At this suspension Becket wrote to the Pope in a tone of mingled grief
-and indignation.[142] He described himself as the most wretched of men;
-applied the prophetic description of the Saviour's unequaled sorrow to
-himself. He inveighed against William of Pavia:[143] he threw himself on
-the justice and compassion of the Pope. But this inhibition was
-confirmed by the Pope himself, in answer to another embassage of Henry,
-consisting of Clarembold, Prior elect of St. Augustine's, the
-Archdeacon of Salisbury, and others.[144] This important favor was
-obtained through the interest of Cardinal John of Naples, who expresses
-his hope that the insolent Archbishop must at length see that he had no
-resource but in submission.
-
-[SN: May 19. Becket to the Pope.]
-
-Becket wrote again and again to the Pope, bitterly complaining that the
-successive ambassadors of the King, John of Oxford, John Cummin, the
-Prior of St. Augustine's, returned from Rome each with larger
-concessions.[145] The Pope acknowledged that the concessions had been
-extorted from him. The ambassadors of Henry had threatened to leave the
-Papal Court, if their demands were not complied with, in open hostility.
-The Pope was still an exile in Benevento,[146] and did not dare to
-reoccupy Rome. The Emperor, even after his discomfiture, was still
-formidable; he might collect another overwhelming Transalpine force. The
-subsidies of Henry to the Italian cities and to the Roman partisans of
-the Pope could not be spared. The Pontiff therefore wrote soothing
-letters to the King of France and to Becket. He insinuated that these
-concessions were but for a time. "For a time!" replied Becket in an
-answer full of fire and passion: "and in that time the Church of England
-falls utterly to ruin; the property of the Church and the poor is
-wrested from her. In that time prelacies and abbacies are confiscated to
-the King's use: in that time who will guard the flock when the wolf is
-in the fold? This fatal dispensation will be a precedent for all ages.
-But for me and my fellow exiles all authority of Rome had ceased
-forever in England. There had been no one who had maintained the Pope
-against kings and princes." His significant language involves the Pope
-himself in the general and unsparing charge of rapacity and venality
-with which he brands the court of Rome. "I shall have to give an account
-at the last day, where gold and silver are of no avail, nor gifts which
-blind the eyes even of the wise."[147] [SN: To the Cardinals.] The same
-contemptuous allusions to that notorious venality transpire in a
-vehement letter addressed to the College of Cardinals, in which he urges
-that his cause is their own; that they are sanctioning a fatal and
-irretrievable example to temporal princes; that they are abrogating all
-obedience to the Church. "Your gold and silver will not deliver you in
-the day of the wrath of the Lord."[148] On the other hand, the King and
-the Queen of France wrote in a tone of indignant remonstrance that the
-Pope had abandoned the cause of the enemy of their enemy. More than one
-of the French prelates who wrote in the same strain declared that their
-King, in his resentment, had seriously thought of defection to the
-Antipope, and of a close connexion with the Imperial family.[149]
-Alexander determined to make another attempt at reconciliation; at least
-he should gain time, that precious source of hope to the embarrassed and
-irresolute. His mediators were the Prior of Montdieu and Bernard de
-Corilo, a monk of Grammont.[150] It was a fortunate time, for just at
-this juncture, peace and even amity seemed to be established between the
-Kings of France and England. Many of the great Norman and French
-prelates and nobles offered themselves as joint mediators with the
-commissioners of the Pope.
-
-[SN: Meeting at Montmirail.]
-
-A vast assembly was convened on the day of the Epiphany in the plains
-near Montmirail, where in the presence of the two kings and the barons
-of each realm the reconciliation was to take place. Becket held a long
-conference with the mediators. He proposed, instead of the obnoxious
-phrase "saving my order," to substitute "saving the honor of God;"[151]
-the mediators of the treaty insisted on his throwing himself on the
-King's mercy absolutely and without reservation. With great reluctance
-Becket appeared at least to yield: his counselors acquiesced in silence.
-With this distinct understanding the Kings of France and England met at
-Montmirail, and everything seemed prepared for the final settlement of
-this long and obstinate quarrel. [SN: Jan. 6, 1169.] The Kings awaited
-the approach of the Primate. But as he was on his way, De Bosham (who
-always assumes to himself the credit of suggesting Becket's most haughty
-proceedings) whispered in his ear (De Bosham himself asserts this) a
-solemn caution, lest he should act over again the fatal scene of
-weakness at Clarendon. Becket had not time to answer De Bosham: he
-advanced to the King and threw himself at his feet. Henry raised him
-instantly from the ground. Becket, standing upright, began to solicit
-the clemency of the King. He declared his readiness to submit his whole
-cause to the judgment of the two Kings and of the assembled prelates and
-nobles. After a pause he added, "Saving the honor of God."[152]
-
-[SN: Treaty broken off.]
-
-At this unexpected breach of his agreement the mediators, even the most
-ardent admirers of Becket, stood aghast. Henry, thinking himself duped,
-as well he might, broke out into one of his ungovernable fits of anger.
-He reproached the Archbishop with arrogance, obstinacy, and ingratitude.
-He so far forgot himself as to declare that Becket had displayed all his
-magnificence and prodigality as chancellor only to court popularity and
-to supplant his king in the affections of his people. Becket listened
-with patience, and appealed to the King of France as witness to his
-loyalty. Henry fiercely interrupted him. "Mark, Sire (he addressed the
-King of France), the infatuation and pride of the man: he pretends to
-have been banished, though he fled from his see. He would persuade you
-that he is maintaining the cause of the Church, and suffering for the
-sake of justice. I have always been willing, and am still willing, to
-grant that he should rule his Church with the same liberty as his
-predecessors, men not less holy than himself." Even the King of France
-seemed shocked at the conduct of Becket. The prelates and nobles, having
-in vain labored to bend the inflexible spirit of the Primate, retired in
-sullen dissatisfaction. He stood alone. Even John of Poitiers, his most
-ardent admirer, followed him to Etampes, and entreated him to yield.
-"And you, too," returned Becket, "will you strangle us, and give triumph
-to the malignity of our enemies?"[153]
-
-The King of England retired, followed by the Papal Legates, who, though
-they held letters of Commination from the Pope,[154] delayed to serve
-them on the King. Becket followed the King of France to Montmirail. He
-was received by Louis; and Becket put on so cheerful a countenance as to
-surprise all present. On his return to Sens, he explained to his
-followers that his cause was not only that of the Church, but of
-God.[155] He passed among the acclamations of the populace, ignorant of
-his duplicity. "Behold the prelate who stood up even before two kings
-for the honor of God."
-
-[SN: War of France and England.]
-
-Becket may have had foresight, or even secret information of the
-hollowness of the peace between the two kings. Before many days, some
-acts of barbarous cruelty by Henry against his rebellious subjects
-plunged the two nations again in hostility. The King of France and his
-prelates, feeling how nearly they had lost their powerful ally, began
-to admire what they called Becket's magnanimity as loudly as they had
-censured his obstinacy. The King visited him at Sens: one of the Papal
-commissioners, the Monk of Grammont, said privately to Herbert de
-Bosham, that he had rather his foot had been cut off than that Becket
-should have listened to his advice.[156]
-
-[SN: Excommunication.]
-
-Becket now at once drew the sword and cast away the scabbard. "Cursed is
-he that refraineth his sword from blood." This Becket applied to the
-spiritual weapon. On Ascension Day he again solemnly excommunicated
-Gilbert Foliot Bishop of London, Joscelin of Salisbury, the Archdeacon
-of Salisbury, Richard de Luci, Randulph de Broc, and many other of
-Henry's most faithful counselors. He announced this excommunication to
-the Archbishop of Rouen,[157] and reminded him that whosoever presumed
-to communicate with any one of these outlaws of the Church by word, in
-meat or drink, or even by salutation, subjected himself thereby to the
-same excommunication. The appeal to the Pope he treated with sovereign
-contempt. He sternly inhibited Roger of Worcester, who had entreated
-permission to communicate with his brethren.[158] "What fellowship is
-there between Christ and Belial?" He announced this act to the Pope,
-entreating, but with the tone of command, his approbation of the
-proceeding. An emissary of Becket had the boldness to enter St. Paul's
-Cathedral in London, to thrust the sentence into the hands of the
-officiating priest, and then to proclaim with a loud voice, "Know all
-men, that Gilbert Bishop of London is excommunicate by Thomas
-Archbishop of Canterbury and Legate of the Pope." He escaped with some
-difficulty from ill-usage by the people. Foliot immediately summoned
-his clergy; explained the illegality, injustice, nullity of an
-excommunication without citation, hearing, or trial, and renewed his
-appeal to the Pope. The Dean of St. Paul's and all the clergy, excepting
-the priests of certain monasteries, joined in the appeal. The Bishop of
-Exeter declined, nevertheless he gave to Foliot the kiss of peace.[159]
-
-[SN: Henry's intrigues in Italy.]
-
-King Henry was not without fear at this last desperate blow. He had not
-a single chaplain who had not been excommunicated, or was not
-virtually under ban for holding intercourse with persons under
-excommunication.[160] He continued his active intrigues, his subsidies
-in Italy. He bought the support of Milan, Pavia, Cremona, Parma,
-Bologna. The Frangipani, the family of Leo, the people of Rome,
-were still kept in allegiance to the Pope chiefly by his lavish
-payments.[161] He made overtures to the King of Sicily, the Pope's ally,
-for a matrimonial alliance with his family: and finally, he urged the
-tempting offer to mediate a peace between the Emperor and the Pope.
-Reginald of Salisbury boasted that, if the Pope should die, Henry had
-the whole College of Cardinals in his pay, and could name his
-Pope.[162]
-
-[SN: New Legatine Commission. Mar. 10, 1169.]
-
-But no longer dependent on Henry's largesses to his partisans,
-Alexander's affairs wore a more prosperous aspect. He began, yet
-cautiously, to show his real bias. He determined to appoint a new
-legatine commission, not now rapacious cardinals and avowed partisans of
-Henry. The Nuncios were Gratian, a hard and severe canon lawyer, not
-likely to swerve from the loftiest claims of the Decretals; and Vivian,
-a man of more pliant character, but as far as he was firm in any
-principle, disposed to high ecclesiastical views. At the same time he
-urged Becket to issue no sentences against the King or the King's
-followers; or if, as he hardly believed, he had already done so, to
-suspend their powers.
-
-[SN: English prelates waver.]
-
-The terrors of the excommunication were not without their effect in
-England. Some of the Bishops began gradually to recede from the King's
-party, and to incline to that of the Primate. Hereford had already
-attempted to cross the sea. Henry of Winchester was in private
-correspondence with Becket: he had throughout secretly supplied him with
-money.[163] Becket skillfully labored to awaken his old spirit of
-opposition to the Crown. He reminded Winchester of his royal descent,
-that he was secure in his powerful connexions; "the impious one would
-not dare to strike him, for fear lest his kindred should avenge his
-cause."[164] Norwich, Worcester, Chester, even Chichester, more than
-wavered. This movement was strengthened by a false step of Foliot, which
-exposed all his former proceedings to the charge of irregular ambition.
-He began to declare publicly not only that he never swore canonical
-obedience to Becket, but to assert the independence of the see of London
-and the right of the see of London to the primacy of England. Becket
-speaks of this as an act of spiritual parricide: Foliot was another
-Absalom.[165] He appealed to the pride and the fears of the Chapter of
-Canterbury: he exposed, and called on them to resist, these machinations
-of Foliot to degrade the archiepiscopal see. At the same time he warned
-all persons to abstain from communion with those who were under his ban;
-"for he had accurate information as to all who were guilty of that
-offence." Even in France this proceeding strengthened the sympathy with
-Becket. The Archbishop of Sens, the Bishops of Troyes, Paris, Noyon,
-Auxerre, Boulogne, wrote to the Pope to denounce this audacious impiety
-of the Bishop of London.
-
-[SN: Interview of the new Legates with the King. Aug. 23.]
-
-The first interview of the new Papal legates, Gratian and Vivian, with
-the King, is described with singular minuteness by a friend of
-Becket.[166] On the eve of St. Bartholomew's Day they arrived at
-Damport. On their approach, Geoffrey Ridel and Nigel Sackville stole out
-of the town. The King, as he came in from hunting, courteously stopped
-at the lodging of the Legates: as they were conversing the Prince rode
-up with a great blowing of horns from the chase, and presented a whole
-stag to the Legates. The next morning the King visited them, accompanied
-by the Bishops of Seez and of Rennes. Presently John of Oxford, Reginald
-of Salisbury, and the Archdeacon of Llandaff were admitted. The
-conference lasted the whole day, sometimes in amity, sometimes in
-strife. Just before sunset the King rushed out in wrath, swearing by the
-eyes of God that he would not submit to their terms. Gratian firmly
-replied, "Think not to threaten us; we come from a court which is
-accustomed to command Emperors and Kings." The King then summoned his
-barons to witness, together with his chaplains, what fair offers he had
-made. He departed somewhat pacified. The eighth day was appointed for
-the convention, at which the King and the Archbishop were again to meet
-in the presence of the Legates.
-
-[SN: Aug. 31.]
-
-It was held at Bayeux. With the King appeared the Archbishops of Rouen
-and Bordeaux, the Bishop of Le Mans, and all the Norman prelates. The
-second day arrived one English bishop--Worcester. John of Poitiers kept
-prudently away. The Legates presented the Pope's preceding letters in
-favor of Becket. The King, after stating his grievances,[167] said, "If
-for this man I do anything, on account of the Pope's entreaties, he
-ought to be very grateful." The next day at a place called Le Bar, the
-King requested the Legates to absolve his chaplains without any oath: on
-their refusal, the King mounted his horse, and swore that he would never
-listen to the Pope or any one else concerning the restoration of Becket.
-The prelates interceded; the Legates partially gave way. The King
-dismounted and renewed the conference. At length he consented to the
-return of Becket and all the exiles. He seemed delighted at this, and
-treated of other affairs. He returned again to the Legates, and demanded
-that they, or one of them, or at least some one commissioned by them,
-should cross over to England to absolve all who had been excommunicated
-by the Primate. Gratian refused this with inflexible obstinacy.
-The King was again furious: "I care not an egg for you and your
-excommunications." He again mounted his horse, but at the earnest
-supplication of the prelates he returned once more. He demanded that
-they should write to the Pope to announce his pacific offers. The
-Bishops explained to the King that the Legates had at last produced a
-positive mandate of the Pope, enjoining their absolute obedience to his
-Legates. The King replied, "I know that they will lay my realm under an
-interdict, but cannot I, who can take the strongest castle in a day,
-seize any ecclesiastic who shall presume to utter such an interdict?"
-Some concessions allayed his wrath, and he returned to his offers of
-reconciliation. Geoffry Ridel and Nigel Sackville were absolved on the
-condition of declaring, with their hands on the Gospels, that they would
-obey the commands of the Legates. The King still pressing the visit of
-one of the Legates to England, Vivian consented to take the journey. The
-bishops were ordered to draw up the treaty; but the King insisted on a
-clause "Saving the honor of his Crown." They adjourned to a future day
-at Caen. The Bishop of Lisieux, adds the writer, flattered the King; the
-Archbishop of Rouen was for God and the Pope.
-
-Two conferences at Caen and at Rouen were equally inconclusive; the King
-insisted on the words, "saving the dignity of my Crown." Becket
-inquired if he might add "saving the liberty of the Church."[168]
-
-The King threw all the blame of the final rupture on the Legates, who
-had agreed, he said, to this clause,[169] but through Becket's influence
-withdrew from their word.[170] He reminded the Pope that he had in his
-possession letters of his Holiness exempting him and his realm from all
-authority of the Primate till he should be received into the royal
-favor.[171] "If," he adds, "the Pope refuses my demands, he must
-henceforth despair of my good will, and look to other quarters to
-protect his realm and his honor." Both parties renewed their appeals,
-their intrigues in Rome; Becket's complaints of Rome's venality became
-louder.[172]
-
-Becket began again to fulminate his excommunications. Before his
-departure Gratian signified to Geoffry Ridel and Nigel Sackville that
-their absolution was conditional; if peace was not ratified by
-Michaelmas, they were still under the ban. Becket menaced some old, some
-new victims, the Dean of Salisbury, John Cummin, the Archdeacon of
-Llandaff, and others.[173] But he now took a more decisive and terrible
-step. [SN: Nov. 2, 1170.] He wrote to the bishops of England,[174]
-commanding them to lay the whole kingdom under interdict; all divine
-offices were to cease except baptism, penance, and the viaticum, unless
-before the Feast of the Purification the King should have given full
-satisfaction for his contumacy to the Church. This was to be done with
-closed doors, the laity expelled from the ceremony, with no bell
-tolling, no dirge wailing; all church music was to cease. The act was
-specially announced to the chapters of Chichester, Lincoln, and Bath. Of
-the Pope he demanded that he would treat the King's ambassadors,
-Reginald of Salisbury and Richard Barre, one as actually excommunicate,
-the other as contaminated by intercourse with the excommunicate.[175]
-
-The menace of the Interdict, with the fear that the Bishops of England,
-all but London and Salisbury, might be overawed into publishing it in
-their dioceses, threw Henry back into his usual irresolution. There
-were other alarming signs. Gratian had returned to Rome, accompanied
-by William, Archbishop of Sens, Becket's most faithful admirer.
-Rumors spread that William was to return invested in full legatine
-powers--William, not only Becket's friend, but the head of the French
-hierarchy. If the Interdict should be extended to his French dominions,
-and the Excommunication launched against his person, could he depend on
-the precarious fidelity of the Norman prelates? Differences had again
-arisen with the King of France.[176] Henry was seized with an access of
-devotion. [SN: Henry at Paris.] He asked permission to offer his prayers
-at the shrines and at the Martyrs' Mount (Montmartre) at Paris. The
-pilgrimage would lead to an interview with the King of France, and offer
-an occasion of renewing the negotiations with Becket. [SN: Nov. 1169.]
-Vivan was hastily summoned to turn back. His vanity was flattered by
-the hope of achieving that reconciliation which had failed with Gratian.
-He wrote to Becket requesting his presence. Becket, though he suspected
-Vivian, yet out of respect to the King of France, consented to approach
-as near as Château Corbeil. After the conference with the King of
-France, two petitions from Becket, in his usual tone of imperious
-humility, were presented to the King of England. The Primate
-condescended to entreat the favor of Henry, and the restoration of the
-Church of Canterbury, in as ample a form as it was held before his
-exile. The second was more brief, but raised a new question of
-compensation for loss and damage during the archbishop's absence from
-his see.[177] [SN: Negotiations renewed.] Both parties mistrusted each
-other; each watched the other's words with captious jealousy. Vivian,
-weary of those verbal chicaneries of the King, declared that he had
-never met with so mendacious a man in his life.[178] Vivian might have
-remembered his own retractations, still more those of Becket on former
-occasions. He withdrew from the negotiation; and this conduct, with the
-refusal of a gift from Henry (a rare act of virtue), won him the
-approbation of Becket. But Becket himself was not yet without mistrust;
-he had doubts whether Vivian's report to the Pope would be in the same
-spirit. "If it be not, he deserves the doom of the traitor Judas."
-
-Henry at length, agreed that on the question of compensation he would
-abide by the sentence of the court of the French King, the judgment of
-the Gallican Church, and of the University of Paris.[179] This made so
-favorable an impression that Becket could only evade it by declaring
-that he had rather come to an amicable agreement with the King than
-involve the affair in litigation.
-
-[SN: Kiss of peace.]
-
-At length all difficulties seemed yielding away, when Becket demanded
-the customary kiss of peace, as the pledge of reconciliation. Henry
-peremptorily refused; he had sworn in his wrath never to grant this
-favor to Becket. He was inexorable; and without this guarantee Becket
-would not trust the faith of the King. He was reminded, he said, by the
-case of the Count of Flanders, that even the kiss of peace did not
-secure a revolted subject, Robert de Silian, who, even after this sign
-of amity, had been seized and cast into a dungeon. Henry's conduct, if
-not the effect of sudden passion or ungovernable aversion, is
-inexplicable. Why did he seek this interview, which, if he was insincere
-in his desire for reconciliation, could afford but short delay? and from
-such oaths he would hardly have refused, for any great purpose of his
-own, to receive absolution.[180] On the other hand, it is quite clear
-that Becket reckoned on the legatine power of William of Sens and the
-terror of the English prelates, who had refused to attend a council in
-London to reject the Interdict. He had now full confidence that he could
-exact his own terms and humble the King under his feet.[181]
-
-[SN: King's proclamation.]
-
-But the King was resolved to wage war to the utmost. Geoffry Ridel,
-Archdeacon of Canterbury, was sent to England with a royal proclamation
-containing the following articles:--I. Whosoever shall bring into the
-realm any letter from the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury is guilty
-of high treason. II. Whosoever, whether bishop, clerk, or layman, shall
-observe the Interdict, shall be ejected from all his chattels, which are
-confiscate to the Crown. III. All clerks absent from England shall
-return before the feast of St. Hilary, on pain of forfeiture of all
-their revenues. IV. No appeal is to be made to the Pope or Archbishop of
-Canterbury under pain of imprisonment and forfeiture of all chattels.
-V. All laymen from beyond seas are to be searched, and if anything be
-found upon them contrary to the King's honor, they are to be imprisoned;
-the same with those who cross to the Continent. VI. If any clerk or monk
-shall land in England without passport from the King, or with anything
-contrary to his honor, he shall be thrown into prison. VII. No clerk or
-monk may cross the seas without the King's passport. The same rule
-applied to the clergy of Wales, who were to be expelled from all schools
-in England. Lastly, VIII. The sheriffs were to administer an oath to all
-freemen throughout England, in open court, that they would obey these
-royal mandates, thus abjuring, it is said, all obedience to Thomas,
-Archbishop of Canterbury.[182] The bishops, however, declined the oath;
-some concealed themselves in their dioceses. Becket addressed a
-triumphant or gratulatory letter to his suffragans on their firmness.
-"We are now one, except that most hapless Judas, that rotten limb
-(Foliot of London), which is severed from us."[183] Another letter is
-addressed to the people of England, remonstrating on their impious
-abjuration of their pastor, and offering absolution to all who had sworn
-through compulsion and repented of their oath.[184] The King and the
-Primate thus contested the realm of England.
-
-[SN: The Pope still dubious.]
-
-But the Pope was not yet to be inflamed by Becket's passions, nor quite
-disposed to depart from his temporizing policy. John of Oxford was at
-the court in Benevento with the Archdeacons of Rouen and Seez. From that
-court returned the Archdeacon of Llandaff and Robert de Barre with a
-commission to the Archbishop of Rouen and the Bishop of Nevers to make
-one more effort for the termination of the difficulties. On the one hand
-they were armed with powers, if the King did not accede to his own terms
-within forty days after his citation (he had offered a thousand marks as
-compensation for all losses), to pronounce an interdict against his
-continental dominions; on the other, Becket was exhorted to humble
-himself before the King; if Henry was inflexible and declined the
-Pope's offered absolution from his oath, to accept the kiss of peace
-from the King's son. The King was urged to abolish in due time the
-impious and obnoxious Customs. And to these prelates was likewise
-intrusted authority to absolve the refractory Bishops of London and
-Salisbury.[185] This, however, was not the only object of Henry's new
-embassy to the Pope. He had long determined on the coronation of his
-eldest son; it had been delayed for various reasons. He seized this
-opportunity of reviving a design which would be as well humiliating to
-Becket as also of great moment in case the person of the King should be
-struck by the thunder of excommunication. The coronation of the King of
-England was the undoubted prerogative of the Archbishops of Canterbury,
-which had never been invaded without sufficient cause, and Becket was
-the last man tamely to surrender so important a right of his see. John
-of Oxford was to exert every means (what those means were may be
-conjectured rather than proved) to obtain the papal permission for the
-Archbishop of York to officiate at that august ceremony.
-
-The absolution of the Bishops of London and Salisbury was an astounding
-blow to Becket. He tried to impede it by calling in question the power
-of the archbishop to pronounce it without the presence of his colleague.
-The archbishop disregarded his remonstrance, and Becket's sentence was
-thus annulled by the authority of the Pope. Rumors at the same time
-began to spread that the Pope had granted to the Archbishop of York
-power to proceed to the coronation. Becket's fury burst all bounds. He
-wrote to the Cardinal Albert and to Gratian: "In the court of Rome, now
-as ever, Christ is crucified and Barabbas released. The miserable and
-blameless exiles are condemned, the sacrilegious, the homicides, the
-impenitent thieves are absolved, those whom Peter himself declares that
-in his own chair (the world protesting against it) he would have no
-power to absolve.[186] Henceforth I commit my cause to God--God alone
-can find a remedy. Let those appeal to Rome who triumph over the
-innocent and the godly, and return glorying in the ruin of the Church.
-For me I am ready to die." Becket's fellow exiles addressed the Cardinal
-Albert, denouncing in vehement language the avarice of the court of
-Rome, by which they were brought to support the robbers of the Church.
-It is no longer King Henry alone who is guilty of this six years'
-persecution, but the Church of Rome.[187]
-
-The coronation of the Prince by the Archbishop of York took place in the
-Abbey of Westminster on the 15th of June.[188] The assent of the clergy
-was given with that of the laity. The Archbishop of York produced a
-papal brief, authorising him to perform the ceremony.[189] An inhibitory
-letter, if it reached England, only came into the King's hand, and was
-suppressed; no one, in fact (as the production of such papal letter, as
-well as Becket's protest to the archbishop and to the bishops
-collectively and severally, was by the royal proclamation high treason
-or at least a misdemeanor) would dare to produce them.
-
-The estrangement seemed now complete, the reconciliation more remote
-than ever. The Archbishop of Rouen and the Bishop of Nevers, though
-urged to immediate action by Becket and even by the Pope, admitted delay
-after delay, first for the voyage of the King to England, and secondly
-for his return to Normandy. Becket seemed more and more desperate, the
-King more and more resolute. Even after the coronation, it should seem,
-Becket wrote to Roger of York,[190] to Henry of Worcester, and even to
-Foliot of London, to publish the Interdict in their dioceses. The latter
-was a virtual acknowledgment of the legality of his absolution, which in
-a long letter to the Bishop of Nevers he had contested:[191] but the
-Interdict still hung over the King and the realm; the fidelity of the
-clergy was precarious.
-
-[SN: Treaty of Fretteville.]
-
-The reconciliation at last was so sudden as to take the world by
-surprise. The clue to this is found in Fitz-Stephen. Some one had
-suggested by word or by writing to the King that the Primate would be
-less dangerous within than without the realm.[192] The hint flashed
-conviction on the King's mind. The two Kings had appointed an interview
-at Fretteville, between Chartres and Tours. The Archbishop of Sens
-prevailed on Becket to be, unsummoned, in the neighborhood. Some days
-after the King seemed persuaded by the Archbishops of Sens and Rouen
-and the Bishop of Nevers to hold a conference with Becket.[193] As soon
-as they drew near the King rode up, uncovered his head, and saluted the
-Prelate with frank courtesy, and after a short conversation between the
-two and the Archbishop of Sens, the King withdrew apart with Becket.
-Their conference was so long as to try the patience of the spectators,
-so familiar that it might seem there had never been discord between
-them. Becket took a moderate tone; by his own account he laid the faults
-of the King entirely on his evil counselors. After a gentle admonition
-to the King on his sins, he urged him to make restitution to the see of
-Canterbury. He dwelt strongly on the late usurpation on the rights of
-the primacy, on the coronation of the King's son. Henry alleged the
-state of the kingdom and the necessity of the measure; he promised that
-as his son's queen, the daughter of the King of France, was also to be
-crowned, that ceremony should be performed by Becket, and that his son
-should again receive his crown from the hands of the Primate.
-
-At the close of the interview Becket sprung from his horse and threw
-himself at the King's feet. The King leaped down, and holding his
-stirrup compelled the Primate to mount his horse again. In the most
-friendly terms he expressed his full reconciliation not only to Becket
-himself, but to the wondering and delighted multitude. There seemed an
-understanding on both sides to suppress all points which might lead to
-disagreement. The King did not dare (so Becket writes triumphantly to
-the Pope) to mutter one word about the Customs.[194] Becket was equally
-prudent, though he took care that his submission should be so vaguely
-worded as to be drawn into no dangerous concession on his part. [SN:
-July.] He abstained, too, from all other perilous topics; he left
-undecided the amount of satisfaction to the church of Canterbury; and on
-these general terms he and the partners of his exile were formally
-received into the King's grace. If the King was humiliated by this quiet
-and sudden reconcilement with the imperious prelate, to outward
-appearance at least he concealed his humiliation by his noble and kingly
-manner. If he submitted to the spiritual reproof of the prelate, he
-condescended to receive into his favor his refractory subject. Each
-maintained prudent silence on all points in dispute. Henry received, but
-he also granted pardon. If his concession was really extorted by fear,
-not from policy, compassion for Becket's six years' exile might seem not
-without influence. If Henry did not allude to the Customs, he did not
-annul them; they were still the law of the land. The kiss of peace was
-eluded by a vague promise. Becket made a merit of not driving the King
-to perjury, but he skillfully avoided this trying test of the King's
-sincerity.
-
-[SN: Becket's schemes of vengeance.]
-
-But Becket's revenge must be satisfied with other victims. If the
-worldly King could forget the rancor of this long animosity, it was not
-so easily appeased in the breast of the Christian Prelate. No doubt
-vengeance disguised itself to Becket's mind as the lofty and rightful
-assertion of spiritual authority. The opposing prelates must be at his
-feet, even under his feet. The first thought of his partisans was not
-his return to England with a generous amnesty of all wrongs, or a gentle
-reconciliation of the whole clergy, but the condign punishment of those
-who had so long been the counselors of the King, and had so recently
-officiated in the coronation of his son.
-
-The court of Rome did not refuse to enter into these views, to visit the
-offence of those disloyal bishops who had betrayed the interests and
-compromised the high principles of churchmen.[195] It was presumed that
-the King would not risk a peace so hardly gained for his obsequious
-prelates. [SN: Dated Sept. 10.] The lay adherents of the King, even the
-plunderers of Church property were spared, some ecclesiastics about his
-person, John of Oxford himself escaped censure: but Pope Alexander sent
-the decree of suspension against the Archbishop of York, and renewed the
-excommunication of London and Salisbury, with whom were joined the
-Archdeacon of Canterbury and the Bishop of Rochester, as guilty of
-special violation of their allegiance to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
-the Bishop of St. Asaph, and some others. Becket himself saw the policy
-of altogether separating the cause of the bishops from that of the King.
-He requested that some expressions relating to the King's excesses, and
-condemnatory of the bishops for swearing to the Customs, should be
-suppressed; and the excommunication grounded entirely on their
-usurpation of the right of crowning the King.[196]
-
-[SN: Interview at Tours.]
-
-About four months elapsed between the treaty of Fretteville and the
-return of Becket to England. They were occupied by these negotiations at
-Rome, Veroli, and Ferentino; by discussions with the King, who was
-attacked during this period with a dangerous illness; and by the mission
-of some of Becket's officers to resume the estates of the see. Becket
-had two personal interviews with the King: the first was at Tours,
-where, as he was now in the King's dominions, he endeavored to obtain
-the kiss of peace. The Archbishop hoped to betray Henry into this favor
-during the celebration of the mass, in which it might seem only a part
-of the service.[197] Henry was on his guard, and ordered the mass for
-the dead, in which the benediction is not pronounced. The King had
-received Becket fairly; they parted not without ill-concealed
-estrangement. At the second meeting the King seemed more friendly; he
-went so far as to say, "Why resist my wishes? I would place everything
-in your hands." Becket, in his own words, bethought him of the tempter,
-"All these things will I give unto thee, if thou wilt fall down and
-worship me."
-
-The King had written to his son in England that the see of Canterbury
-should be restored to Becket, as it was three months before his exile.
-But there were two strong parties hostile to Becket: the King's officers
-who held in sequestration the estates of the see, and seem to have
-especially coveted the receipt of the Michaelmas rents; and with these
-some of the fierce warrior nobles, who held lands or castles which were
-claimed as possessions of the Church of Canterbury. Randulph De Broc,
-his old inveterate enemy, was determined not to surrender his castle of
-Saltwood. It was reported to Becket, by Becket represented to the King,
-that De Broc had sworn that he would have Becket's life before he had
-eaten a loaf of bread in England. The castle of Rochester was held on
-the same doubtful title by one of his enemies. The second party was that
-of the bishops, which was powerful, with a considerable body of the
-clergy and laity. They had sufficient influence to urge the King's
-officers to take the strongest measures, lest the Papal letters of
-excommunication should be introduced into the kingdom.
-
-It is perhaps vain to conjecture, how far, if Becket had returned to
-England in the spirit of meekness, forgiveness, and forbearance, not
-wielding the thunders of excommunication, nor determined to trample on
-his adversaries, and to exact the utmost even of his doubtful rights,
-he might have resumed his see, and gradually won back the favor of the
-King, the respect and love of the whole hierarchy, and all the
-legitimate possessions of his church. But he came not in peace, nor was
-he received in peace.[198] [SN: Becket prepares for his return.] It was
-not the Archbishop of Rouen, as he had hoped, but his old enemy John of
-Oxford, who was commanded by the King to accompany him, and reinstate
-him in his see. The King might allege that one so much in the royal
-confidence was the best protector of the Archbishop. The money which had
-been promised for his voyage was not paid; he was forced to borrow £300
-of the Archbishop of Rouen. He went, as he felt, or affected to feel,
-with death before his eyes, yet nothing should now separate him from his
-long-divided flock. Before his embarkation at Whitsand in Flanders,
-he received intelligence that the shores were watched by his enemies,
-it was said with designs on his life,[199] but assuredly with
-the determination of making a rigid search for the letters of
-excommunication.[200] [SN: Letters of excommunication sent before him.]
-To secure the safe carriage of one of these perilous documents, the
-suspension of the Archbishop of York, it was intrusted to a nun named
-Idonea, whom he exhorts, like another Judith, to this holy act, and
-promises her as her reward the remission of her sins.[201] Other
-contraband letters were conveyed across the Channel by unknown hands,
-and were delivered to the bishops before Becket's landing.
-
-The prelates of York and London were at Canterbury when they received
-these Papal letters. When the fulminating instruments were read before
-them, in which was this passage, "we will fill your faces with
-ignominy," their countenances fell. They sent messengers to complain to
-Becket, that he came not in peace, but in fire and flame, trampling his
-brother bishops under his feet, and making their necks his footstool;
-that he had condemned them uncited, unheard, unjudged. "There is no
-peace," Becket sternly replied, "but to men of good will."[202] It was
-said that London was disposed to humble himself before Becket; but
-York,[203] trusting in his wealth, boasted that he had in his power the
-Pope, the King, and all their courts.
-
-[SN: Lands at Sandwich. Dec. 1.]
-
-Instead of the port of Dover, where he was expected, Becket's vessel,
-with the archiepiscopal banner displayed, cast anchor at Sandwich. Soon
-after his landing, appeared in arms the Sheriff of Kent, Randulph de
-Broc, and others of his enemies. They searched his baggage, fiercely
-demanded that he should absolve the bishops, and endeavored to force the
-Archdeacon of Sens, a foreign ecclesiastic, to take an oath to keep the
-peace of the realm. John of Oxford was shocked, and repressed their
-violence. On his way to Canterbury the country clergy came forth with
-their flocks to meet him; they strewed their garments in his way,
-chanting, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." [SN: At
-Canterbury.] Arrived at Canterbury, he rode at once to the church with a
-vast procession of clergy, amid the ringing of the bells, and the
-chanting of music. He took his archiepiscopal throne, and afterwards
-preached on the text, "Here we have no abiding city." The next morning
-came again the Sheriff of Kent, with Randulph de Broc, and the
-messengers of the bishops, demanding their absolution.[204] Becket
-evaded the question by asserting that the Excommunication was not
-pronounced by him, but by his superior the Pope; that he had no power to
-abrogate the sentence. This declaration was directly at issue with the
-bull of excommunication: if the bishops gave satisfaction to the
-Archbishop, he had power to act on behalf of the Pope.[205] But to the
-satisfaction which, according to one account, he did demand, that they
-should stand a public trial, in other words place themselves at his
-mercy, they would not, and hardly could submit. They set out immediately
-to the King in Normandy.
-
-The restless Primate was determined to keep alive the popular fervor,
-enthusiastically, almost fanatically, on his side. [SN: Goes to
-London.] On a pretext of a visit to the young King at Woodstock, to
-offer him the present of three beautiful horses, he set forth on a
-stately progress. Wherever he went he was received with acclamations and
-prayers for his blessings by the clergy and the people. In Rochester
-he was entertained by the Bishop with great ceremony. In London
-there was the same excitement: he was received in the palace by
-the Bishop of Winchester in Southwark. Even there he scattered some
-excommunications.[206] The Court took alarm, and sent orders to the
-prelate to return to his diocese. Becket obeyed, but alleged as the
-cause of his obedience, not the royal command, but his own desire to
-celebrate the festival of Christmas in his metropolitan church. The
-week passed in holding sittings in his court, where he acted with his
-usual promptitude, vigor, and resolution against the intruders into
-livings, and upon the encroachments on his estates; and in devotions
-most fervent, mortifications most austere.[207]
-
-His rude enemies committed in the mean time all kinds of petty
-annoyances, which he had not the loftiness to disdain. Randulph de Broc
-seized a vessel laden with rich wine for his use, and imprisoned the
-sailors in Pevensey Castle. An order from the court compelled him to
-release ship and crew. They robbed the people who carried his
-provisions, broke into his park, hunted his deer, beat his retainers;
-and, at the instigation of Randulph's brother, Robert de Broc, a
-ruffian, a renegade monk, cut off the tail of one of his state horses.
-
-On Christmas day Becket preached on the appropriate text, "Peace on
-earth, good will towards men." The sermon agreed ill with the text. He
-spoke of one of his predecessors, St. Alphege, who had suffered
-martyrdom. "There may soon be a second." He then burst out into a
-fierce, impetuous, terrible tone, arraigned the courtiers, and closed
-with a fulminating excommunication against Nigel de Sackville, who had
-refused to give up a benefice into which, in Becket's judgment, he had
-intruded, and against Randulph and Robert de Broc. The maimed horse was
-not forgotten. He renewed in the most vehement language the censure on
-the bishops, dashed the candle on the pavement in token of their utter
-extinction, and then proceeded to the mass at the altar.[208]
-
-[SN: The bishops with the King.]
-
-In the mean time the excommunicated prelates had sought the King in the
-neighborhood of Bayeux; they implored his protection for themselves and
-the clergy of the realm. "If all are to be visited by spiritual
-censures," said the King, "who officiated at the coronation of my son,
-by the eyes of God, I am equally guilty." The whole conduct of Becket
-since his return was detailed, and no doubt deeply darkened by the
-hostility of his adversaries. All had been done with an insolent and
-seditious design of alienating the affections of the people from the
-King. Henry demanded counsel of the prelates; they declared themselves
-unable to give it. But one incautiously said, "So long as Thomas lives,
-you will never be at peace." The King broke out into one of his terrible
-constitutional fits of passion; and at length let fall the fatal words,
-"Have I none of my thankless and cowardly courtiers who will relieve me
-from the insults of one low-born and turbulent priest?"
-
-[SN: The King's fatal words.]
-
-These words were not likely to fall unheard on the ears of fierce, and
-warlike men, reckless of bloodshed, possessed with a strong sense of
-their feudal allegiance, and eager to secure to themselves the reward of
-desperate service. Four knights, chamberlains of the King, Reginald
-Fitz-Urse, William de Tracy, Hugh de Moreville, and Reginald Brito,
-disappeared from the court.[209] On the morrow, when a grave council was
-held, some barons are said, even there, to have advised the death of
-Becket. Milder measures were adopted: the Earl of Mandeville was sent
-off with orders to arrest the Primate; and as the disappearance of these
-four knights could not be unmarked, to stop them in the course of any
-unauthorized enterprise.
-
-But murder travels faster than justice or mercy. They were almost
-already on the shores of England. It is said that they met in Saltwood
-Castle. On the 28th of December, having, by the aid of Randulph de Broc,
-collected some troops in the streets of Canterbury, they took up their
-quarters with Clarembold, Abbot of St. Augustine's.
-
-The assassination of Becket has something appalling, with all its
-terrible circumstances seen in the remote past. What was it in its own
-age? The most distinguished churchman in Christendom, the champion of
-the great sacerdotal order, almost in the hour of his triumph over the
-most powerful king in Europe; a man, besides the awful sanctity inherent
-in the person of every ecclesiastic, of most saintly holiness; soon
-after the most solemn festival of the Church, in his own cathedral, not
-only sacrilegiously, but cruelly murdered, with every mark of hatred and
-insult. Becket had all the dauntlessness, none of the meekness of the
-martyr; but while his dauntlessness would command boundless admiration,
-few, if any, would seek the more genuine sign of Christian martyrdom.
-
-[SN: The knights before Becket.]
-
-The four knights do not seem to have deliberately determined on their
-proceedings, or to have resolved, except in extremity, on the murder.
-They entered, but unarmed, the outer chamber.[210] The Archbishop had
-just dined, and withdrawn from the hall. They were offered food, as was
-the usage; they declined, thirsting, says one of the biographers, for
-blood. The Archbishop obeyed the summons to hear a message from the
-King; they were admitted to his presence. As they entered, there was no
-salutation on either side, till the Primate having surveyed, perhaps
-recognized them, moved to them with cold courtesy. Fitz-Urse was the
-spokesman in the fierce altercation which ensued. Becket replied with
-haughty firmness. Fitz-Urse began by reproaching him with his
-ingratitude and seditious disloyalty in opposing the coronation of the
-King's son, and commanded him, in instant obedience to the King, to
-absolve the prelates. Becket protested that so far from wishing to
-diminish the power of the King's son, he would have given him three
-crowns and the most splendid realm. For the excommunicated bishops he
-persisted in his usual evasion that they had been suspended by the Pope,
-by the Pope alone could they be absolved; nor had they yet offered
-proper satisfaction. "It is the King's command," spake Fitz-Urse, "that
-you and the rest of your disloyal followers leave the kingdom."[211] "It
-becomes not the King to utter such command: henceforth no power on earth
-shall separate me from my flock." "You have presumed to excommunicate,
-without consulting the King, the King's servant's and officers." "Nor
-will I ever spare the man who violates the canons of Rome, or the rights
-of the Church." "From whom do you hold your archbishopric?" "My
-spirituals from God and the Pope, my temporals from the King." "Do you
-not hold all from the King?" "Render unto Cæsar the things that are
-Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's." "You speak in peril of
-your life!" "Come ye to murder me? I defy you, and will meet you front
-to front in the battle of the Lord." He added, that some among them had
-sworn fealty to him. At this, it is said, they grew furious, and gnashed
-with their teeth. The prudent John of Salisbury heard with regret this
-intemperate language: "Would it may end well!" Fitz-Urse shouted aloud,
-"In the King's name I enjoin you all, clerks and monks, to arrest this
-man, till the King shall have done justice on his body." They rushed
-out, calling for their arms.
-
-His friends had more fear for Becket than Becket for himself. The gates
-were closed and barred, but presently sounds were heard of those
-without, striving to break in. The lawless Randulph de Broc was hewing
-at the door with an axe. All around Becket was the confusion of terror:
-he only was calm. Again spoke John of Salisbury with his cold
-prudence--"Thou wilt never take counsel: they seek thy life." "I am
-prepared to die." "We who are sinners are not so weary of life." "God's
-will be done." The sounds without grew wilder. All around him entreated
-Becket to seek sanctuary in the church. He refused, whether from
-religious reluctance that the holy place should be stained with his
-blood, or from the nobler motive of sparing his assassins this deep
-aggravation of their crime. They urged that the bell was already tolling
-for vespers. He seemed to give a reluctant consent; but he would not
-move without the dignity of his crosier carried before him. [SN: Becket
-in the Church.] With gentle compulsion they half drew, half carried him
-through a private chamber, they in all the hasty agony of terror, he
-striving to maintain his solemn state, into the church. The din of the
-armed men was ringing in the cloister. The affrighted monks broke off
-the service; some hastened to close the doors; Becket commanded them to
-desist--"No one should be debarred from entering the house of God." John
-of Salisbury and the rest fled and hid themselves behind the altars and
-in other dark places. The Archbishop might have escaped into the dark
-and intricate crypt, or into a chapel in the roof. There remained only
-the Canon Robert (of Merton), Fitz-Stephen, and the faithful Edward
-Grim. Becket stood between the altar of St. Benedict and that of the
-Virgin.[212] It was thought that Becket contemplated taking his seat on
-his archiepiscopal throne near the high altar.
-
-[SN: The murder.]
-
-Through the open door of the cloister came rushing in the four, fully
-armed, some with axes in their hands, with two or three wild followers,
-through the dim and bewildering twilight. The knights shouted aloud,
-"Where is the traitor?"--No answer came back.--"Where is the
-Archbishop?" "Behold me, no traitor, but a priest of God!" Another
-fierce and rapid altercation followed: they demanded the absolution of
-the bishops, his own surrender to the King's justice. They strove to
-seize him and to drag him forth from the church (even they had awe of
-the holy place), either to kill him without, or to carry him in bonds to
-the King. He clung to the pillar. In the struggle he grappled with De
-Tracy, and with desperate strength dashed him on the pavement. His
-passion rose; he called Fitz-Urse by a foul name, a pander. These were
-almost his last words (how unlike those of Stephen and the greater than
-Stephen!) He taunted Fitz-Urse with his fealty sworn to himself. "I owe
-no fealty but to my King!" returned the maddened soldier, and struck the
-first blow. Edward Grim interposed his arm, which was almost severed
-off. The sword struck Becket, but slightly, on the head. Becket received
-it in an attitude of prayer--"Lord, receive my spirit," with an
-ejaculation to the Saints of the Church. Blow followed blow (Tracy seems
-to have dealt the first mortal wound), till all, unless perhaps De
-Moreville, had wreaked their vengeance. The last, that of Richard de
-Brito, smote off a piece of his skull. Hugh of Horsea, their follower, a
-renegade priest surnamed Mauclerk, set his heel upon his neck, and
-crushed out the blood and brains. "Away!" said the brutal ruffian,
-"it is time that we were gone." They rushed out to plunder the
-archiepiscopal palace.
-
-[SN: The Body.]
-
-The mangled body was left on the pavement; and when his affrighted
-followers ventured to approach to perform their last offices, an
-incident occurred which, however incongruous, is too characteristic to
-be suppressed. Amid their adoring awe at his courage and constancy,
-their profound sorrow for his loss, they broke out into a rapture of
-wonder and delight on discovering not merely that his whole body was
-swathed in the coarsest sackcloth, but that his lower garments were
-swarming with vermin. From that moment miracles began. Even the populace
-had before been divided; voices had been heard among the crowd denying
-him to be a martyr; he was but the victim of his own obstinacy.[213] The
-Archbishop of York even after this dared to preach that it was a
-judgment of God against Becket--that "he perished, like Pharaoh, in his
-pride."[214] But the torrent swept away at once all this resistance. The
-Government inhibited the miracles, but faith in miracles scorns
-obedience to human laws. The Passion of the Martyr Thomas was saddened
-and glorified every day with new incidents of its atrocity, of his holy
-firmness, of wonders wrought by his remains.
-
-[SN: Effects of the murder.]
-
-The horror of Becket's murder ran throughout Christendom. At first, of
-course, it was attributed to Henry's direct orders. Universal hatred
-branded the King of England with a kind of outlawry, a spontaneous
-excommunication. William of Sens, though the attached friend of Becket,
-probably does not exaggerate the public sentiment when he describes
-this deed as surpassing the cruelty of Herod, the perfidy of Julian,
-the sacrilege of the traitor Judas.[215]
-
-It were injustice to King Henry not to suppose that with the dread as to
-the consequences of this act must have mingled some reminiscences of the
-gallant friend and companion of his youth and of the faithful minister,
-as well as religious horror at a cruel murder, so savagely and impiously
-executed.[216] He shut himself for three days in his chamber,
-obstinately refused all food and comfort, till his attendants began to
-fear for his life. He issued orders for the apprehension of the
-murderers,[217] and dispatched envoys to the Pope to exculpate himself
-from all participation or cognizance of the crime. His ambassadors found
-the Pope at Tusculum: they were at first sternly refused an audience.
-The afflicted and indignant Pope was hardly prevailed on to permit the
-execrated name of the King of England to be uttered before him. The
-cardinals still friendly to the King with difficulty obtained knowledge
-of Alexander's determination. It was, on a fixed day, to pronounce with
-the utmost solemnity, excommunication against the King by name, and an
-interdict on all his dominions, on the Continent as well as in England.
-The ambassadors hardly obtained the abandonment of this fearful purpose,
-by swearing that the King would submit in all things to the judgment of
-his Holiness. With difficulty the terms of reconciliation were arranged.
-
-[SN: Reconciliation at Avranches.]
-
-In the Cathedral of Avranches in Normandy, in the presence of the
-Cardinals Theodin of Porto, and Albert the Chancellor, Legates for that
-especial purpose, Henry swore on the Gospels that he had neither
-commanded nor desired the death of Becket; that it had caused him
-sorrow, not joy; he had not grieved so deeply for the death of his
-father or his mother.[218] He stipulated--I. To maintain two hundred
-knights at his own cost in the Holy Land. II. To abrogate the Statutes
-of Clarendon, and all bad customs introduced during his reign.[219] III.
-That he would reinvest the Church of Canterbury in all its rights and
-possessions, and pardon and restore to their estates all who had
-incurred his wrath in the cause of the Primate. IV. If the Pope should
-require it, he would himself make a crusade against the Saracens in
-Spain. [SN: Ascension Day, May 22, 1172.] In the porch of the church he
-was reconciled, but with no ignominous ceremony.
-
-Throughout the later and the darker part of Henry's reign the clergy
-took care to inculcate, and the people were prone enough to believe,
-that all his disasters and calamities, the rebellion of his wife and of
-his sons, were judgments of God for the persecution if not the murder
-of the Martyr Thomas. The strong mind of Henry himself, depressed by
-misfortune and by the estrangement of his children, acknowledged with
-superstitious awe the justice of their conclusions. Heaven, the Martyr
-in Heaven, must be appeased by a public humiliating penance. The deeper
-the degradation the more valuable the atonement. In less than three
-years after his death the King visited the tomb of Becket, by this time
-a canonized saint, renowned not only throughout England for his
-wonder-working powers, but to the limits of Christendom. [SN: Penance at
-Canterbury. Friday, July 12, 1174.] As soon as he came near enough to
-see the towers of Canterbury, the King dismounted from his horse, and
-for three miles walked with bare and bleeding feet along the flinty
-road. The tomb of the Saint was then in the crypt beneath the church.
-The King threw himself prostrate before it. The Bishop of London
-(Foliot) preached; he declared to the wondering multitude that on his
-solemn oath the King was entirely guiltless of the murder of the Saint:
-but as his hasty words had been the innocent cause of the crime, he
-submitted in lowly obedience to the penance of the Church. The haughty
-monarch then prayed to be scourged by the willing monks. From the one
-end of the church to the other each ecclesiastic present gratified his
-pride, and thought that he performed his duty, by giving a few
-stripes.[220] The King passed calmly through this rude discipline, and
-then spent a night and a day in prayers and tears, imploring the
-intercession in Heaven of him whom, he thought not now on how just
-grounds, he had pursued with relentless animosity on earth.[221]
-
-Thus Becket obtained by his death that triumph for which he would
-perhaps have struggled in vain through a long life. He was now a Saint,
-and for some centuries the most popular Saint in England: among the
-people, from a generous indignation at his barbarous murder, from the
-fame of his austerities and his charities, no doubt from admiration of
-his bold resistance to the kingly power; among the clergy as the
-champion, the martyr of their order. Even if the clergy had had no
-interest in the miracles at the tomb of Becket, the high-strung faith of
-the people would have wrought them almost without suggestion or
-assistance. Cures would have been made or imagined; the latent powers of
-diseased or paralyzed bodies would have been quickened into action.
-Belief, and the fear of disbelieving, would have multiplied one
-extraordinary event into a hundred; fraud would be outbid by zeal; the
-invention of the crafty, even if what may seem invention was not more
-often ignorance and credulity, would be outrun by the demands of
-superstition. There is no calculating the extent and effects of these
-epidemic outbursts of passionate religion.[222]
-
-[SN: Becket martyr of the clergy.]
-
-Becket was indeed the martyr of the clergy, not of the Church; of
-sacerdotal power, not of Christianity; of a caste, not of mankind.[223]
-From beginning to end it was a strife for the authority, the immunities,
-the possessions of the clergy.[224] The liberty of the Church was the
-exemption of the clergy from law; the vindication of their separate,
-exclusive, distinctive existence from the rest of mankind. It was a
-sacrifice to the deified self; not the individual self, but self as the
-centre and representative of a great corporation. Here and there in the
-long full correspondence there is some slight allusion to the miseries
-of the people in being deprived of the services of the exiled bishops
-and clergy:[225] "there is no one to ordain clergy, to consecrate
-virgins:" the confiscated property is said to be a robbery of the poor:
-yet in general the sole object in dispute was the absolute immunity of
-the clergy from civil jurisdiction,[226] the right of appeal from the
-temporal sovereign to Rome, and the asserted superiority of the
-spiritual rulers in every respect over the temporal power. There might,
-indeed, be latent advantages to mankind, social, moral, and religious,
-in this secluded sanctity of one class of men; it might be well that
-there should be a barrier against the fierce and ruffian violence of
-kings and barons; that somewhere freedom should find a voice, and some
-protest be made against the despotism of arms, especially in a
-newly-conquered country like England, where the kingly and aristocratic
-power was still foreign: above all, that there should be a caste, not an
-hereditary one, into which ability might force its way up, from the most
-low-born, even from the servile rank; but the liberties of the Church,
-as they were called, were but the establishment of one tyranny--a
-milder, perhaps, but not less rapacious tyranny--instead of another; a
-tyranny which aspired to uncontrolled, irresponsible rule, nor was above
-the inevitable evil produced on rulers as well as on subjects, from the
-consciousness of arbitrary and autocratic power.
-
-[SN: Verdict of posterity.]
-
-Reflective posterity may perhaps consider as not the least remarkable
-point in this lofty and tragic strife that it was but a strife for
-power. Henry II. was a sovereign who, with many noble and kingly
-qualities, lived, more than even most monarchs of his age, in direct
-violation of every Christian precept of justice, humanity, conjugal
-fidelity. He was lustful, cruel, treacherous, arbitrary. But throughout
-this contest there is no remonstrance whatever from Primate or Pope
-against his disobedience to the laws of God, only to those of the
-Church. Becket _might_, indeed, if he had retained his full and
-acknowledged religious power, have rebuked the vices, protected the
-subjects, interceded for the victims of the King's unbridled passions.
-It must be acknowledged by all that he did not take the wisest course to
-secure this which might have been beneficent influence. But as to what
-appears, if the King would have consented to allow the churchmen to
-despise all law--if he had not insisted on hanging priests guilty of
-homicide as freely as laymen--he might have gone on unreproved in his
-career of ambition; he might unrebuked have seduced or ravished the
-wives and daughters of his nobles; extorted, without remonstrance of the
-Clergy any revenue from his subjects, if he had kept his hands from the
-treasures of the Church. Henry's real tyranny was not (would it in any
-case have been?) the object of the churchman's censure, oppugnancy, or
-resistance. The cruel and ambitious and rapacious King would doubtless
-have lived unexcommunicated and died with plenary absolution.
-
-
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-
-[1] The "History of Latin Christianity," is now completed in six
-volumes.--ED.
-
-[2] There are no less than seven full contemporary, or nearly
-contemporary, Lives of Becket, besides fragments, legends, and
-"Passions." Dr. Giles has reprinted, and in some respects enlarged,
-those works from the authority of MSS. I give them in the order of his
-volumes. I. Vita Sancti Thomæ. Auctore Edward Grim. II. Auctore Roger de
-Pontiniaco. III. Auctore Willelmo Filio Stephani. IV. Auctoribus Joanne
-Decano Salisburiensi, et Alano Abbate Teuksburiensi. V. Auctore Willelmo
-Canterburiensi. VI. Auctore Anonymo Lambethiensi. VII. Auctore Herberto
-de Bosham. Of these, Grim, Fitz-Stephen, and Herbert de Bosham were
-throughout his life in more or less close attendance on Becket. The
-learned John of Salisbury was his bosom friend and counsellor. Roger of
-Pontigny was his intimate associate and friend in that monastery.
-William was probably prior of Canterbury at the time of Becket's death.
-The sixth professes also to have been witness to the death of Becket.
-(He is called Lambethiensis by Dr. Giles, merely because the MS. is in
-the Lambeth Library.) Add to these the curious French poem, written five
-years after the murder of Becket, by Garnier of Pont S. Maxence, partly
-published in the Berlin Transactions, by the learned Immanuel Bekker.
-All these, it must be remembered, write of the man; the later monkish
-writers (though near the time, Hoveden, Gervase, Diceto, Brompton) of
-the Saint.
-
-[3] Brompton is not the earliest writer who recorded this tale; he took
-it from the Quadrilogus I., but of this the date is quite uncertain. The
-exact date of Brompton is unknown. See preface in Twysden. He goes down
-to the end of Richard II.
-
-[4] Mons. Thierry, Hist. des Normands. Lord Lyttelton (Life of Henry
-II.) had before asserted the Saxon descent of Becket: perhaps he misled
-M. Thierry.
-
-[5] The anonymous Lambethiensis, after stating that many Norman
-merchants were allured to London by the greater mercantile prosperity,
-proceeds: "Ex horum numero fuit Gilbertus quidam cognomento Becket,
-patriâ Rotomagensis .... habuit autem uxorem, nomine Roseam natione
-Cadomensem, genere burgensium quoque non disparem."--Apud Giles, ii. p.
-73.
-
-[6] See below.
-
-[7] "Quod si ad generis mei radicem et progenitores meos intenderis,
-cives quidem fuerunt Londonienses, in medio concivium suorum habitantes
-sine querelâ, nec omnino infimi."--Epist. 130.
-
-[8] Grim, p. 9. Pontiniac, p. 96.
-
-[9] Grim, p. 8.
-
-[10] "Eo familiarius, quod præfatus Gilbertus cum domino archipræsule de
-propinquitate et genere loquebatur: ut ille _ortu Normannus_ et circa
-Thierici villam de equestri ordine natu vicinus."--Fitz-Stephen, p. 184.
-Thiersy or Thierchville.
-
-[11] Roger de Pontigny, p. 100.
-
-[12] Fitz-Stephen, p. 185.
-
-[13] According to Fitz-Stephen, Thomas was less learned (minus
-literatus) than his rival, but of loftier character and morals.--P. 184.
-
-[14] "Plurimæ ecclesiæ, præbendæ nonnullæ." Among the livings were one
-in Kent, and St. Mary le Strand; among the prebends, two at London and
-Lincoln. The archdeaconry of Canterbury was worth 100 pounds of silver
-a-year.
-
-[15] Epist. 130.
-
-[16] Lord Lyttelton gives a full account of this transaction.--Book i.
-p. 213.
-
-[17] This remarkable fact in Becket's history rests on the authority of
-his friend, John of Salisbury: "Erat enim in suspectu adolescentia regis
-et juvenum et pravorum hominum, quorum conciliis agi videbatur ...
-insipientiam et malitiam formidabat ... cancellarium procurabat in curiâ
-ordinari, cujus ope et operâ novi regis ne sæviret in ecclesiam, impetum
-cohiberet et consilii sui temperaret malitiam."--Apud Giles, p. 321.
-This is repeated in almost the same words by William of Canterbury, vol.
-ii. p. 2. Compare what may be read almost as the dying admonitions of
-Theobald to the king: "Suggerunt vobis filii sæculi hujus, ut ecclesiæ
-minuatis auctoritatem, ut vobis regni dignitas augeatur." He had
-before said, "Cui deest gratia Ecclesiæ, tota creatrix Trinitas
-adversatur."--Apud Boquet, xvi. p. 504. Also Roger de Pontigny, p. 101.
-
-[18] Fitz-Stephen, p. 186. Compare on the office of chancellor Lord
-Campbell's Life of Becket.
-
-[19] De Bosham, p. 17.
-
-[20] See a curious passage on the singular sensitiveness of his hearing,
-and even of his smell.--Roger de Pontigny, p. 96.
-
-[21] Roger de Pontigny, p. 104. His character by John of Salisbury is
-remarkable: "Erat supra modum captator auræ popularis ... etsi superbus
-esset et vanus et interdum faciem prætendebat insipienter amantium et
-verba proferret, admirandus tamen et imitandus erat in corporis
-castitate."--P. 320. See an adventure related by William of Canterbury,
-p. 3.
-
-[22] Grim, p. 12. Roger de Pontigny, p. 102. Fitz-Stephen, p. 192.
-
-[23] Fitz-Stephen, p. 191. Fitz-Stephen is most full and particular on
-the chancellorship of Becket.
-
-[24] It is not quite clear how soon after the accession of Henry the
-appointment of the chancellor took place. I should incline to the
-earlier date, A. D. 1155.
-
-[25] Fitz-Stephen, p. 187.
-
-[26] P. 196.
-
-[27] Edward Grim, p. 12.
-
-[28] John of Salisbury denies that he sanctioned the rapacity of the
-king, and urges that he only yielded to necessity. Yet his exile was the
-just punishment of his guilt. "Tamen quia eum ministrum fuisse
-iniquitatis non ambigo, jure optimo taliter arbitror puniendum ut eo
-potissimum puniatur auctore, quem in talibus Deo bonorum omnium auctori
-præferebat.... Sed esto; nunc poenitentiam agit, agnoscit et confitetur
-culpam pro ea, et si cum Saulo quandoque ecclesiam impugnavit, nunc, cum
-Paulo ponere paratus est animam suam."--Bouquet, p. 518.
-
-[29] Fitz-Stephen, p. 193.
-
-[30] Theobald died April 18, 1161. Becket was ordained priest and
-consecrated on Whitsunday, 1162.
-
-[31] Yet Theobald, according to John of Salisbury, designed Becket for
-his successor,--
-
-  "hunc (_i. e._ Becket Cancellarium) successurum sibi sperat et orat,
-    Hic est carnificum qui jus cancellat iniquum,
-      Quos habuit reges Anglia capta diu,
-    Esse putans reges, quos est perpessa, tyrannos
-      Plus veneratur eos, qui nocuere magis."
-
-          _Entheticus_, l. 1295.
-
-Did Becket decide against the Norman laws by the Anglo-Saxon? Has any
-one guessed the meaning of the rest of John's verses on the Chancellor
-and his Court? I confess myself baffled.
-
-[32] Roger de Pontigny, p. 100.
-
-[33] In the memorable letter of Gilbert Foliot, Dr. Lingard observes
-that Mr. Berington has proved this letter to be spurious. I cannot see
-any force in Mr. Berington's arguments, and should certainly have paid
-more deference to Dr. Lingard himself if he had examined the question.
-It seems, moreover (if I rightly understand Dr. Giles, and I am not
-certain that I do), that it exists in more than one MS. of Foliot's
-letters. He has printed it as unquestioned; no very satisfactory
-proceeding in an editor. The conclusive argument for its authenticity
-with me is this: Who, after Becket's death and canonization, would have
-ventured or thought it worth while to forge such a letter? To whom was
-Foliot's memory so dear, or Becket's so hateful, as to reopen the whole
-strife about his election and his conduct? Besides, it seems clear that
-it is either a rejoinder to the long letter addressed by Becket to the
-clergy of England (Giles, iii. 170), or that letter is a rejoinder to
-Foliot's. Each is a violent party pamphlet against the other, and of
-great ability and labor.
-
-[34] Foliot's nearest relatives, if not himself, were Scotch; one
-of them had forfeited his estate for fidelity to the King of
-Scotland.--Epis. ii. cclxxviii.
-
-[35] Read his letters before his elevation to the see of London.
-
-[36] See, _e.g._, Epis. cxxxi., in which he informs Archbishop Theobald
-that the Earl of Hereford held intercourse with William Beauchamp,
-excommunicated by the Primate. "Vilescit anathematis authoritas, nisi et
-communicantes excommunicatis corripiat digna severitas." The Earl of
-Hereford must be placed under anathema.
-
-[37] Lambeth, p. 91. The election of the Bishop of Hereford to London is
-confirmed by the Pope's permission to elect him (March 19) rogatu H.
-regis et Archep. Cantuarensis. A letter from Pope Alexander on his
-promotion rebukes him for _fasting too severely_.--Epist. ccclix.
-
-[38] Foliot, in a letter to Pope Alexander, maintains the superiority of
-Canterbury over York.--cxlix.
-
-[39] See on the change in his habits, Lambeth, p. 48; also the strange
-story, in Grim, of a monk who declared himself commissioned by a
-preterhuman person of terrible countenance to warn the Chancellor not to
-dare to appear in the choir, as he had done, in a secular dress.--p. 16.
-
-[40] Compare the letter of the politic Arnulf, Bishop of Lisieux: "Si
-enim favori divino favorem præferritis humanum, poteratis non solum cum
-summâ tranquillitate degere, sed ipso etiam magis quam olim, Principe
-conregnare."--Apud Bouquet, xvi. p. 229.
-
-[41] This strange scene is recorded by Roger de Pontigny, who received
-his information on all those circumstances from Becket himself, or from
-his followers. See also Grim, p. 22.
-
-[42] Becket had been compelled to give up the rich archdeaconry of
-Canterbury, which he seemed disposed to hold with the archbishopric.
-Geoffrey Ridel, who became archdeacon, was afterwards one of his most
-active enemies.
-
-[43] The king was willing that the clerk guilty of murder or robbery
-should be degraded before he was hanged, but hanged he should be. The
-archbishop insisted that he should be safe "a læsione membrorum."
-Degradation was in itself so dreadful a punishment, that to hang also
-for the same crime was a double penalty. "If he returned to his vomit,"
-after degradation, "he might be hanged."--Compare Grim, p. 30.
-
-[44] "De novo judicatur Christus ante Pilatum præsidem."--De Bosham, p.
-117.
-
-[45] De Bosham, p. 100.
-
-[46] The fairness with which the question is stated by Herbert de
-Bosham, the follower, almost the worshiper of Becket, is remarkable.
-"Arctabatur itaque rex, arctabatur et pontifex. Rex etenim populi sui
-pacem, sicut archipræsul cleri sui zelans libertatem, audiens
-sic et videns et ad multorum relationes et querimonias accipiens,
-per hujuscemodi castigationes, talium clericorum immo verius
-caracterizatorum, dæmonum flagitia non reprimi vel potius indies per
-regnum deterius fieri." He proceeds to state at length the argument on
-both sides. Another biographer of Becket makes strong admissions of the
-crimes of the clergy: "Sed et ordinatorum inordinati mores, inter regem
-et archepiscopum auxere malitiam, qui _solito abundantius_ per idem
-tempus apparebant publicis irretiti criminibus."--Edw. Grim. It was said
-that no less than 100 of the clergy were charged with homicide.
-
-[47] This, according to Fitz-Stephen, was the first cause of quarrel
-with the king. p. 215.
-
-[48] See throughout this epistle of Arnulf of Lisieux, Bouquet, p. 230.
-This same Arnulf was a crafty and double-dealing prelate. Grim and Roger
-de Pontigny say that he suggested to Henry the policy of making a party
-against Becket among the English bishops, while to Becket he plays the
-part of confidential counsellor.--Grim, p. 29. R. P., p. 119. Will.
-Canterb., p. 6. Compare on Arnulf, Epist. 346, v. 11, p. 189.
-
-[49] These are the words which Fitz-Stephen places in the mouths of the
-king's courtiers.
-
-[50] Herbert de Bosham, p. 109. Fitz-Stephen, p. 209, _et seq._
-
-[51] "Dicens se observaturos regias consuetudines bonâ fide."
-
-[52] Compare W. Canterb., p. 6.
-
-[53] Grim, p. 29.
-
-[54] Dr. Lingard supposes that Becket demanded that the customs should
-be reduced to writing. This seems quite contrary to his policy; and
-Edward Grim writes thus: "Nam domestici regis, dato consentiente
-consilio, securem fecerant archepiscopum, quod _nunquam scriberentur_
-leges, nunquam illarum fieret recordatio, si eum verbo tantum in
-audientiâ procerum honorâsset," &c.--P. 31.
-
-[55] See the letter of Gilbert Foliot, of which I do not doubt the
-authenticity.
-
-[56] According to the Cottonian copy, published by Lord Lyttelton,
-Constitutions xii. xv. iv.
-
-[57] Constitution iii.
-
-[58] Constitutions i. and ii.
-
-[59] Constitution vii., somewhat limited and explained by x.
-
-[60] Herbert de Bosham. "Caute quidam non de plano negat, sed
-differendum dicebat adhuc."
-
-[61] "Superbus et vanus, de pastore avium factus sum pastor ovium; dudum
-fautor histrionum et eorum sectator tot animarum pastor."--De Bosham, p.
-126.
-
-[62] Read the Epistles, apud Giles, v. iv. 1, 3, Bouquet, xvi. 210, to
-judge of the skillful steering and difficulties of the Pope. There is a
-very curious letter of an emissary of Becket, describing the death of
-the Antipope (he died at Lucca, April 21). The canons of San Frediano,
-in Lucca, refused to bury him, because he was already "buried in hell."
-The writer announces that the Emperor also was ill, that the Empress had
-miscarried, and that therefore all France adhered with greater devotion
-to Alexander; _and the Legatine commission to the Archbishop of York had
-expired without hope of recovery_. The writer ventures, however, to
-suggest to Becket to conduct himself with modesty; to seek rather than
-avoid intercourse with the king.--Apud Giles, iv. 240; Bouquet, p. 210.
-See also the letter of John, Bishop of Poitiers, who says of the Pope,
-"Gravi redimit poenitentiâ, illam qualem qualem quam Eboracensi
-(fecerit), concessionem."--Bouquet, p. 214.
-
-[63] I follow De Bosham. Fitz-Stephen says that he was repelled from the
-gates of the king's palace at Woodstock; and that he _afterwards_ went
-to Romney to attempt to cross the sea.
-
-[64] "Quievisset ille, si non acquievissent illi."--Becket, Epist. ii.
-p. 5. Compare the whole letter.
-
-[65] He had been sworn not on the Gospels, but on a troplogium, a book
-of church music.
-
-[66] Goods and chattels at the king's mercy were redeemable at a
-customary fine: this fine, according to the customs of Kent, would have
-been larger than according to those of London.--Fitz-Stephen.
-
-[67] "Minus fore malum verenda patris detecta deridere, quam patris
-ipsius personam judicare."--De Bosham, p. 135.
-
-[68] Fitz-Stephen states this demand at 500 marks, and a second 500 for
-which a bond had been given to a Jew.
-
-[69] Neither party denied this acquittance given in the King's name by
-the justiciary Richard de Luci. This, it should seem, unusual
-precaution, or at least this precaution taken with such unusual care,
-seems to imply some suspicion that without it, the archbishop was liable
-to be called to account; an account which probably, from the splendid
-prodigality with which Becket had lavished the King's money and his own,
-it might be difficult or inconvenient to produce.
-
-[70] In an account of this affair, written later, Becket accuses Foliot
-of aspiring to the primacy--"et qui adspirabant ad fastigium ecclesiæ
-Cantuarensis, ut vulgo dicitur et creditur, in nostram perniciem, utinam
-minus ambitiosè, quam avidè." This could be none but Foliot.--Epist.
-lxxv. p. 154.
-
-[71] "Tanquam in proelio Domini, signifer Domini, vexillum Domini
-erigens; illud etiam Domini non solum spiritualiter, sed et figuraliter
-implens. 'Si quis,' inquit, 'vult meus esse discipulus, abneget semet
-ipsum, tollat crucem suam et sequatur me.'"--De Bosham, p. 143. Compare
-the letter of the Bishops to the Pope.--Giles, iv. 256; Bouquet, 224.
-
-[72] "Quasi pila minantia pilis," quotes Fitz-Stephen; "Memento,"
-said De Bosham, "quondam te extitisse regis Anglorum signiferum
-inexpugnabilem, nunc vero si signifer regis Angelorum expugnaris,
-turpissimum."--p. 146.
-
-[73] "Dicebant enim episcopi, quod adhuc, ipsâ die, intra decem dies
-datæ sententiæ, eos ad dominum Papam appellaverat, et ne de cetero eum
-judicarent pro seculari querelâ, quæ de tempore ante archipræsulatum ei
-moveretur, auctoritate domini Papæ prohibuit."--Fitz-Stephen, p. 230.
-
-[74] Herbert de Bosham, p. 146.
-
-[75] De Bosham's account is, that notwithstanding the first
-interruption, Leicester reluctantly proceeded till he came to the word
-"perjured," on which Becket rose and spoke.
-
-[76] De Bosham, p. 150.
-
-[77] Foliot and the King's envoys crossed the same day. It is rather
-amusing that, though Becket crossed the same day in an open boat, and,
-as is incautiously betrayed by his friends, suffered much from the rough
-sea, the weather is described as in his case almost miraculously
-favorable, in the other as miraculously tempestuous. So that while
-Becket calmly glided over, Foliot in despair of his life threw off his
-cowl and cope.
-
-[78] Compare, however, Roger of Pontigny. By his account, the Count of
-Flanders, a relative and partisan of Henry ("consanguineus et qui partes
-ejus fovebat") would have arrested him. He escaped over the border by a
-trick.--Roger de Pontigny, p. 148.
-
-[79] Giles, iv. 253; Bouquet, p. 217.
-
-[80] Epist. Nuntii; Giles, iv. 254; Bouquet, p. 217.
-
-[81] Becket writes from England to the Pope: "Quod petimus, summo
-silentio petimus occultari. Nihil enim nobis tutum est, quum omnia ferè
-referuntur ad regem, quæ nobis in conclavi vel in aurem dicuntur." There
-is a significant clause at the end of this letter, which implies that
-the emissaries of the Church did not confine themselves to Church
-affairs: "De Wallensibus et Oweno, qui se principem nominat,
-_provideatis_, quia Dominus Rex super hoc maximè motus est et
-indignatus." The Welsh were in arms against the King: this borders on
-high treason.--Apud Giles, iii. 1. Bouquet, 221.
-
-[82] The word "oportuebat" was too bad for monkish, or rather for Roman,
-ears.
-
-[83] According to Roger of Pontigny, there were some of them "qui
-acceptâ a rege pecuniâ partes ejus fovebant," particularly William of
-Pavia.--p. 153.
-
-[84] Herbert de Bosham.
-
-[85] Alani Vita (p. 362); and Alan's Life rests mainly on the authority
-of John of Salisbury. Herbert de Bosham suppresses this.
-
-[86] The Abbot of Pontigny was an ardent admirer of Becket. See letter
-of the Bishop of Poitiers, Bouquet, p. 214. Prayers were offered up
-throughout the struggle with Henry for Becket's success at Pontigny,
-Citeaux, and Clairvaux.--Giles, iv. 255.
-
-[87] Compare Lingard. Becket on this news exclaimed, as is said, "His
-wise men are become fools; the Lord hath sent among them a spirit of
-giddiness; they have made England to reel to and fro like a drunken
-man."--Vol. iii. p. 227. No doubt, he would have it supposed God's
-vengeance for his own wrongs.
-
-[88] There are in Foliot's letters many curious circumstances about the
-collection and transmission of Peter's Pence. In Alexander's present
-state, notwithstanding the amity of the King of France, this source of
-revenue was no doubt important.--Epist. 149, 172, &c. Alexander wrote
-from Clermont to Foliot (June 8, 1165) to collect the tax, to do all in
-his power for the recall of Becket: to Henry, reprobating the
-Constitutions; to Becket, urging prudence and circumspection. This was
-later. The Pope was then on his way to Italy, where he might need
-Henry's gold.
-
-[89] Becket, Epist. 4, p. 7.
-
-[90] Edw. Grim.
-
-[91] Bouquet, xvi. 256.
-
-[92] The letters of John of Salisbury are full of allusions to the
-proceedings at Wurtzburg.--Bouquet, p. 524. John of Oxford is said to
-have denied the oath (p. 533); also Giles, iv. 264. He is from that time
-branded by John of Salisbury as an arch liar.
-
-[93] John of Oxford was rewarded for this service by the deanery of
-Salisbury, vacant by the promotion of the dean to the bishopric of
-Bayeux. Joscelin, Bishop of Salisbury, notwithstanding the papal
-prohibition that no election should take place in the absence of some of
-the canons, chose the safer course of obedience to the King's mandate.
-This act of Joscelin was deeply resented by Becket. John of Oxford's
-usurpation of the deanery was one of the causes assigned for his
-excommunication at Vezelay. See also, on the loyal but somewhat
-unscrupulous proceedings of John of Oxford, the letter (hereafter
-referred to) of Nicholas de Monte Rotomagensi. It describes the attempt
-of John of Oxford to prepossess the Empress Matilda against Becket. It
-likewise betrays again the double-dealing of the Bishop of Lisieux,
-outwardly for the King, secretly a partisan and adviser of Becket. On
-the whole, it shows the moderation and good sense of the empress, who
-disapproved of some of the Constitutions, and especially of their being
-written, but speaks strongly of the abuses in the Church. Nicholas
-admires her skillfulness in defending her son.--Giles, iv. 187. Bouquet,
-226.
-
-[94] "Præcepit enim publicè et _compulit_ per vicos, per castella, per
-civitates ab homine sene usque ab puerum duodenum beati Petri
-successorem Alexandrum abjurare." William of Canterbury alone of
-Becket's biographers (Giles, ii. p. 19) asserts this, but it is
-unanswerably confirmed by Becket's Letter 78, iii. p. 192.
-
-[95] The letter in Giles (vi. 279) is rather perplexing. It is placed by
-Bouquet, agreeing with Baronius, in 1166; by Von Raumer (Geschichte der
-Hohenstauffen, ii. p. 192) in 1165, before the Diet of Wurtzburg. This
-cannot be right, as the letter implies that Alexander was in Rome, where
-he arrived not before Nov. 1165. The embassy, though it seems that the
-Emperor granted the safe-conduct, did not take place, at least as
-regards some of the ambassadors.
-
-[96] "Itaque per biennium ferme stetit." So writes Roger of Pontigny. It
-is difficult to make out so long a time.--p. 154.
-
-[97] Herbert de Bosham.--p. 226.
-
-[98] Jer. i. 10.
-
-[99] "Suavissimas literas, supplicationem solam, correptionem vero
-nullam vel _modicam_ continentes."--De Bosham.
-
-[100] Urbane by disposition as by name.--Ibid.
-
-[101] Giles, iii. 365. Bouquet, p. 243.
-
-[102] "Quin potius dura propinantes, dura pro duris, immo multo plus
-duriora prioribus, reportaverunt."--De Bosham.
-
-[103] The Pope had written (Jan. 28) to the bishops of England not to
-presume to act without the consent of Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury.
-April 5, he forbade Roger of York and the other prelates to crown the
-King's son. May 3, he writes to Foliot and the bishops who had received
-benefices of the King to surrender them under pain of anathema; to
-Becket in favor of Joscelin, Bishop of Salisbury: he had annulled the
-grant of the deanery of Salisbury to John of Oxford. May 10, to the
-Archbishop of Rouen, denouncing the dealings of Henry with the Emperor
-and the Antipope.--Giles, iv. 10 _a_ 80. Bouquet, 246.
-
-[104] The inhibition given at Sens to proceed against the King, before
-the Easter of the following year (A. D. 1166), had now expired. Moreover
-he had a direct commission to proceed by Commination against those who
-forcibly withheld the property of the see of Canterbury.--Apud Giles,
-iv. 8. Bouquet, xvi. 844. At the same time the Pope urged great
-discretion as to the King's person. Giles, iv. 12. Bouquet, 244.
-
-[105] At the same time Becket wrote to Foliot of London, commanding him
-under penalty of excommunication to transmit to him the sequestered
-revenues of Canterbury in his hands.--Foliot appealed to the
-Pope.--Foliot's Letter. Giles, vi. 5. Bouquet, 215.
-
-[106] The curious History of the Monastery of Vezelay, by Hugh of
-Poitiers (translated in Guizot, Collection des Mémoires), though it
-twice mentions Becket, stops just short of this excommunication, 1166.
-Vezelay boasted to be subject only to the See of Rome, to have been made
-by its founder part of the patrimony of St. Peter. This was one great
-distinction: the other was the unquestioned possession of the body of
-St. Mary Magdalene, "l'amie de Dieu." Vezelay had been in constant
-strife with the Bishop of Autun for its ecclesiastical, with the Count
-of Nevers for its territorial, independence; with the monastery of
-Clugny, as its rival. This is a document very instructive as to the life
-of the age.
-
-[107] A modern traveller thus writes of the church of Vezelay: "On voit
-par le choix des sujets qui ont un sens, quel était l'esprit du temps et
-la manière d'interpréter la religion. Ce n'était pas par la douceur ou
-la persuasion qu'on voulait convertir, mais bien par la terreur. Les
-discours des prêtres pourraient se résumer en ce peu de mots: 'Croyez,
-ou sinon vous périssez misérablement, et vous serez éternellement
-tourmentés dans l'autre monde!' De leur côté les artistes, gens
-religieux, ecclésiastiques même pour la plupart, donnaient une forme
-réelle aux sombres images que leur inspirait un zèle farouche. Je ne
-trouve à Vezelay aucun de ces sujets que les ames tendres aimeraient à
-retracer, tels que le pardon accordé au repentir, la récompense du
-juste, &c.; mais au contraire, je vois Samuel égorgeant Agag; des
-diables écartelant des damnés, ou les entraînant dans l'abîme; puis des
-animaux horribles, des monstres hideux, des têtes grimaçantes exprimant
-ou les souffrances des reprouvés, ou la joie des habitans de l'enfer.
-Qu'on se représente la dévotion des hommes élevés au milieu de ces
-images, et l'on s'étonnera moins des massacres des Albigeois."--Notes
-d'un Voyage dans le Midi de la France, par Prosper Merimée, p. 43.
-
-[108] Diceto gives the date Ascension Day, Herbert de Bosham St. Mary
-Magdalene's Day (July 22d). It should seem that De Bosham's memory
-failed him. See the letter of Nicolas de M. Rotomagensi, who speaks of
-the excommunication as past, and that Becket was expected to
-excommunicate _the King_ on St. Mary Magdalene's Day. This, if done at
-Vezelay (as it were, over the body of the Saint, on her sacred day), had
-been tenfold more awful.
-
-[109] See the curious letter of Nicolas de Monte Rotomagensi, Giles iv.,
-Bouquet, 250. This measure of Becket was imputed by the Archbishop of
-Rheims to pride or anger ("extollentiæ aut iræ"): it made an unfavorable
-impression on the Empress Matilda.--Ibid.
-
-[110] Epist. Giles, iv. 185; Bouquet, 258.
-
-[111] Epist. Giles, iv. 260; Bouquet, 256.
-
-[112] Herbert de Bosham, p. 232.
-
-[113] Epist. Giles, vi. 158; Bouquet, 259.
-
-[114] "Non indignetur itaque Dominus noster deferre illis, quibus summus
-omnium deferre non dedignatur, Deos appellans eos sæpius in sacris
-literis. Sic enim dixit, 'Ego dixit, Dii estis,' et 'Constituti te Deum
-Pharaonis,' et 'Deis non detrahere.'"--Epist. Giles, iii. p. 287;
-Bouquet, 261.
-
-[115] Foliot took the precaution of paying into the exchequer all
-that he had received from the sequestered property of the see of
-Canterbury.--Giles, v. p. 265. Lyttelton in Appendice.
-
-[116] "Hæc est Domini regis toto orbe declamata crudelitas, hæc ab eo
-persecutio, hæc operum ejus perversorum rumusculis undique divulgata
-malignitas."--Giles, vi. 190; Bouquet, 265.
-
-[117] Giles, iii. 6; Bouquet, 266. Compare letter of Bishop Elect of
-Chartres.--Giles, vi. 211; Bouquet, 269.
-
-[118] Foliot obtained letters either at this time or somewhat later from
-his own Chapter of St. Paul, from many of the greatest dignitaries of
-the English Church, the abbots of Westminster and Reading, and from some
-distinguished foreign ecclesiastics, in favor of himself, his piety,
-churchmanship, and impartiality.
-
-[119] The German accounts are unanimous about the proceedings at
-Wurtzburg and the oath of the English ambassadors. See the account in
-Von Raumer (_loc. cit._), especially of the conduct of Reginald of
-Cologne, and the authorities. John of Oxford is henceforth called, in
-John of Salisbury's letters, jurator. Becket repeatedly charges him with
-perjury.--Giles, iii. p. 129 and 351; Bouquet, 280. Becket there says
-that John of Oxford had given up part of the "customs." He begs John of
-Poitiers to let the King know this. See the very curious answer of John
-of Poitiers.--Giles, vi. 251; Bouquet, 280. It appears that as all
-Becket's letters to the Pope were copied and transmitted from Rome to
-Henry, so John of Poitiers, outwardly the King's loyal subject, is the
-secret spy of Becket. He speaks of those in England who thirst after
-Becket's blood.
-
-[120] The Pope acknowledges that this was extorted from him by fear of
-Henry, and makes an awkward apology to Becket.--Giles, iv. 18; Bouquet,
-309.
-
-[121] He was crowned in Rome August 1. Compare next chapter--Sismondi,
-Républiques Italiennes, ii. ch. x.; Von Raumer, ii. p. 209, &c.
-
-[122] Giles, iii. 128; Bouquet, 272. Compare Letters to Cardinals Boso
-and Henry.--Giles, iii. 103, 113; Bouquet, 174. Letter to Henry
-announcing the appointment, December 20.
-
-[123] "Si non omnia secundum beneplacitum succedant, ad præsens
-dissimulet."--Giles, vi. 15; Bouquet, 277.
-
-[124] See the curious letter of Master Lombard, Becket's instructor in
-the canon law, who boldly remonstrates with the Pope. He asserts that
-Henry was so frightened at the menace of excommunication, his subjects,
-even the bishops, at that of his interdict, that they were in despair.
-Their only hope was in the death or some great disaster of the
-Pope.--Giles, iv. 208; Bouquet, 282.
-
-[125] See Letters of Louis; Giles, iv. 308; Bouquet, 287.
-
-[126] "Strangulavit," a favorite word.--Giles, iii. 214; Bouquet, 284.
-
-[127] Giles, iii. 235; Bouquet, 285.
-
-[128] Compare John of Salisbury, p. 539. "Scripsit autem rex Domino
-_Coloniensis_, Henricum Pisanum et Willelmum Papiensem in Franciam
-venturos ad novas exactiones faciendas, ut undique conradant et
-contrahant, unde Papa Alexander in urbe sustentetur; alter, ut nostis,
-levis est et mutabilis, alter dolosus et fraudulentus, uterque cupidus
-et avarus: et ideo de facili munera coenabunt eos et ad omnem
-injustitiam incurvabunt. Audito eorum detestando adventu formidare cæpi
-præsentiam eorum causæ vestræ multum nocituram; et ne vestro et
-vestrorum sanguine gratiam Regis Angliæ redimere non erubescant." He
-refers with great joy to the insurrection of the Saxons against the
-Emperor. He says elsewhere of Henry of Pisa, "Vir bonæ opinionis est,
-sed Romanus et Cardinalis."--Epist. cc. ii.
-
-[129] The English bishops declare to the Pope himself that they had
-received this concession, _scripto formatum_, from the Pope, and that
-the King was furious at what he thought a deception.--Giles, vi. 194;
-Bouquet, 304.
-
-[130] The Pope wrote to the legates to soothe Becket and the King of
-France; he accuses John of Oxford of spreading false reports about the
-extent of their commission; John Cummin of betraying his letters to the
-Antipope.--Giles, vi. 54.
-
-[131] So completely does Becket's fortune follow that of the Pope, that
-on June 17 Alexander writes to permit Roger of York to crown the King's
-son; no sooner is he safe in Benevento, August 22 (perhaps the fever had
-begun), than he writes to his legates to confirm the excommunications of
-Becket, which he had suspended.
-
-[132] Muratori, sub ann. 1167; Von Raumer, ii. 210. On the 1st of August
-Frederick was crowned; September 4, he is at the Pass of Pontremoli, in
-full retreat, or rather flight.
-
-[133] In a curious passage in a letter written by Herbert de Bosham in
-the name of Becket, Frederick's defeat is compared to Henry's
-disgraceful campaign in Wales. "My enemy," says Becket, "in the
-abundance of his valor, could not prevail against a breechless and
-ragged people ('exbraccatum et pannosum')."--Giles, viii. p. 268.
-
-[134] "Credimus non esse juri consentaneum, nos ejus subire judicium vel
-examen qui quærit sibi facere commercium de sanguine nostro, de pretio
-utinam non iniquitatis, quærit sibi nomen et gloriam."--D. Thom. Epist.
-Giles, iii. p. 15. The two legates are described as "plus avaritiæ quam
-justitiæ studiosi."--W. Cant. p. 21.
-
-[135] Giles, iii. 157, and John of Salisbury's remarkable expostulatory
-letter upon Becket's violence.--Bouquet, p. 566.
-
-[136] Herbert de Bosham, p. 248; Epist. Giles, iii. 16; Bouquet, 296.
-
-[137] Giles, iii. p. 21. Compare the whole letter.
-
-[138] Foliot rather profanely said, the primate seems to think that as
-sin is washed away in baptism, so debts are cancelled by promotion.
-
-[139] "Ad mortem nos invitat et sanguinis effusionem, cum ipse mortem,
-quam nemo sibi dignabatur aut minabatur inferre, summo studio
-declinaverit et suum sanguinem illibatum conservando, ejus nec guttam
-effundi voluerit."--Giles vi. 196. Bouquet, 304.
-
-[140] Giles, vi. 148. Bouquet, 304.
-
-[141] Giles, vi. 135, 141. Bouquet, 306. William of Pavia recommended
-the translation of Becket to some other see.
-
-[142] Giles, iii. 28. Bouquet, 306.
-
-[143] One of his letters to William of Pavia begins with this fierce
-denunciation: "Non credebam me tibi venalem proponendum emptoribus, ut
-de sanguine meo compareres tibi compendium de pretio iniquitatis,
-faciens tibi nomen et gloriam."--Giles, iii. 153. Becket always
-represents his enemies as thirsting after his blood.
-
-[144] Giles, iv. 128; vi. 133. Bouquet, 312, 313.
-
-[145] Epist. Giles, ii. 24.
-
-[146] He was at Benevento, though with different degrees of power, from
-August 22, 1167, to Feb. 24, 1170.
-
-[147] Giles, iii. p. 55. Bouquet, 317. Read the whole letter beginning
-"Anima mea."
-
-[148] Bouquet, 324.
-
-[149] Epist. Giles, iv. Bouquet, 320.
-
-[150] Their instructions are dated May 25, 1168. See also the wavering
-letters to Becket and the King of France.--Giles, iv. p. 25, p. 111.
-
-[151] "Sed quid? Nobis ita consilium suspendentibus et hæsitantibus quid
-agendum a pacis mediatoribus, multis et magnis viris, et præsertim qui
-inter ipsos a viris religiosis et aliis archipræsuli amicissimis et
-familiarissimis, adeo sicut et supra diximus, suasus, tractus et
-impulsus est, ut haberetur persuasus."--De Bosham, p. 268.
-
-[152] "Sed mox adjecit, quod nec rex nec pacis mediatores, vel alii, vel
-etiam sui propriè æstimaverunt, ut adjiceret videlicet 'Salvo honore
-Dei.'"--De Bosham, p. 262. In his account to the Pope of this meeting,
-Becket suppresses his own tergiversation on this point.--Epist. Giles,
-iii. p. 43. Compare John of Salisbury (who was not present). Bouquet,
-395.
-
-[153] "Ut quid nos et vos strangulatis?"--Epist. Giles, iii. 312.
-
-[154] Throughout the Pope kept up his false game. He privately assured
-the King of France that he need not be alarmed if himself (Alexander)
-seemed to take part against the archbishop. The cause was safe in his
-bosom. See the curious letter of Matthew of Sens.--Epist. Giles, iv. p.
-166.
-
-[155] "Nunc præter ecclesiæ causam, expressam ipsius etiam Dei causam
-agebamus."--De Bosham, 272.
-
-[156] De Bosham, 278.
-
-[157] Giles, iii. 290; vi. 293. Bouquet, 346.
-
-[158] Giles, iii. 322. Bouquet, 348.
-
-[159] Epist. Giles, iv. 225.
-
-[160] Fragm. Vit. Giles, i. p. 371.
-
-[161] "Et quod omnes Romanos datâ pecuniâ inducant ut faciant
-fidelitatem domino Papæ, dummodo in nostrâ dejectione regis Angliæ
-satisfaciat voluntati."--Epist. ad Humbold. Card. Giles, iii. 123.
-Bouquet, 350. Compare Lambeth, on the effect of Italian affairs on the
-conduct of the Pope.--p. 106.
-
-[162] Epist. 188, p. 266.
-
-[163] Fitz-Stephen, p. 271.
-
-[164] "Domo vestra flagellum suspendit impius, ne quod promereret,
-propinquorum vestrorum ministerio veniat super eum."--Giles, iii. 338.
-Bouquet, 358.
-
-[165] Giles, iii. 201. Bouquet, 361.
-
-[166] "Amici ad Thomam."--Giles, iv. 277. Bouquet, 370.
-
-[167] Henry, it should be observed, waived all the demands which he had
-hitherto urged against Becket, for debts incurred during his
-chancellorship.
-
-[168] Epist. Giles, iv. 216. Bouquet, 373.
-
-[169] "Revocato consensu," writes the Bishop of Nevers, a moderate
-prelate, who regrets the obstinacy of the nuncios. Giles, vi. 266.
-Bouquet, 377. Compare the letter of the clergy of Normandy to the
-Pope.--Giles, vi. 177. Bouquet, 377.
-
-[170] Becket thought, or pretended to think, that under the
-"dignitatibus" lurked the "consuetudinibus."--Giles, iii. 299. Bouquet,
-379.
-
-[171] "Ceteras vestras recepimus, et ipsas adhuc penes nos habemus, in
-quibus terram nostram et personas regni a præfata Cantuarensis potestate
-eximebatis, donec ipse in gratiam nostram rediisset."--Epist. Giles, vi.
-291. Bouquet, 374.
-
-[172] "Nam quod mundus sentit, dolet, ingemiscit, nullus adeo iniquam
-causam ad ecclesiam Romanam defert, quin ibi spe lucri concepta ne
-dixerim odore sordium, adjutorem inveniat et patronum."--Epist. iii.
-133; Bouquet, 382.
-
-[173] Giles, iii. 250; Bouquet, 387.
-
-[174] Giles, iii. 334; Bouquet, 388.
-
-[175] Giles, iii. 42; Bouquet, 390. Reginald of Salisbury was an
-especial object of Becket's hate. He calls him one born in fornication
-("fornicarium"), son of a priest. Reginald hated Becket with equal
-cordiality. Becket had betrayed him by a false promise of not injuring
-his father. "Quod utique ipsi non plus quam cani faceremus."--This
-letter contains Reginald's speech about Henry having the College of
-Cardinals in his pay.--Giles, iii. 225; Bouquet, 391.
-
-[176] Becket writes to the Pope, January 1170. "Nec vos oportet de
-cætero vereri, ne transeat ad schismaticos, quod sic eum Christus in
-manu famuli sui, regis Francorum subegit, ut ab obsequio ejus non possit
-amplius separari."--p. 48.
-
-[177] Many difficult points arose. Did Becket demand not merely the
-actual possessions of the see, but all to which he laid claim? There
-were three estates held by William de Ros, Henry of Essex, and John the
-Marshall (the original object of dispute at Northampton?), which Becket
-specifically required and declared that he would not give up if exiled
-for ever.--Epist. Giles, iii. 220; Bouquet, 400.
-
-[178] Epist. Giles, iii. 262; Bouquet, 199.
-
-[179] Epist. ibid.; Radulph de Diceto.
-
-[180] According to Pope Alexander, Henry offered that his son should
-give the kiss of peace in his stead.--Giles, iv. 55.
-
-[181] See his letter to his emissaries at Rome.--Giles, iii. 219;
-Bouquet, 401.
-
-[182] Ricardus Dorubernensis apud Twysden. Lord Lyttelton has another
-copy, in his appendix; in that a ninth article forbade the payment of
-Peter's Pence to Rome; it was to be collected and brought into the
-exchequer.
-
-[183] Epist. Giles, iii. 195; Bouquet, 404.
-
-[184] Giles, iii. 192; Bouquet, 405.
-
-[185] Dated February 12, 1170.
-
-[186] Epist. Giles, iii. 96; Bouquet, 416; Giles, iii. 108; Bouquet,
-419. "Sed pro eâ mori parati sumus." He adds: "Insurgant qui voluerint
-cardinales, arment non modo regem Angliæ, sed totum, si possent orbem in
-perniciem nostram.... Utinam via Romana non gratis peremisset tot
-miseros innocentes. Quis de cetero audebit illi regi registere quem
-ecclesia Romana tot triumphis animavit, et armavit exemplo pernitioso
-manante ad posteros."
-
-[187] "Nec persuadebitur mundo, quod suasores isti Deum saperent;
-sed potius pecuniam, quam immoderato avaritiæ ardore sitiunt,
-olfecerunt."--Giles, iv. 291; Bouquet, 417.
-
-[188] Becket's depression at this event is dwelt upon in a letter of
-Peter of Blois to John of Salisbury. Peter traveled from Rome to Bologna
-with the Papal legates. From them he gathered that either Becket
-would soon be reconciled to the King or be removed to another
-patriarchate.--Epist. xxii. apud Giles, i. p. 84.
-
-[189] Dr. Lingard holds this letter, printed by Lord Lyttelton, and
-which he admits was produced, to have been a forgery. If it was, it was
-a most audacious one; and a most flagrant insult to the Pope, whom Henry
-was even now endeavoring to propitiate through the Lombard Republics and
-the Emperor of the East (see Giles, iv. 10). It is remarkable, too, that
-though the Pope declares that this coronation, contrary to his
-prohibition (Giles, iv. 30), is not to be taken as a precedent, he has
-no word of the forgery. Nor do I find any contemporary assertion of its
-spuriousness. Becket, indeed, in his account of the last interview with
-the King, only mentions the general permission granted by the Pope at an
-early period of the reign; and argues as if this were the only
-permission. Is it possible that a special permission to York to act was
-craftily interpolated into the general permission? But the trick may
-have been on the side of the Pope, now granting, now nullifying his own
-grants by inhibition. Bouquet is strong against Baronius (as on other
-points) upon Alexander's duplicity.--p. 434.
-
-[190] Giles, iii. 229.
-
-[191] Giles, iii. 302.
-
-[192] "Dictum fuit aliquem dixisse vel scripsisse regi Anglorum de
-Archepiscopo ut quid tenetur exclusus? melius tenebitur inclusus quam
-exclusus. Satisque dictum fuit intelligenti."--p. 272.
-
-[193] Giles, iv. 30; Bouquet, 436.
-
-[194] "Nam de consuetudinibus quas tanta pervicaciâ vindicare
-consueverat nec mutire præsumpsit." Becket was as mute. The issue of the
-quarrel seems entirely changed. The Constitutions of Clarendon recede,
-the right of coronation occupies the chief place.--See the long letter,
-Giles, 65.
-
-[195] Humbold Bishop of Ostia advised the confining the triumph to the
-depression of the Archbishop of York and the excommunication of the
-Bishops.--Giles, vi. 129; Bouquet, 443.
-
-[196] "Licet ei (regi sc.) peperceritis, dissimulare non audetis
-excessus et crimina sacerdotum." This letter is a curious revelation of
-the arrogance and subtlety of Becket.--Giles, iii. 77.
-
-[197] It is called the Pax.
-
-[198] Becket disclaims vengeance: "Neque hoc dicimus, Deo teste,
-vindictam expetentes, quum scriptum esse noverimus, non quæres ultionem
-... sed ut ecclesia correctionis exemplo possit per Dei gratiam in
-posterum roborare, et poena paucorum multos ædificare."--Giles, iii. 76.
-
-[199] See Becket's account.--Giles, iii. p. 81.
-
-[200] Lambeth says: "Visum est autem nonnullis, quod incircumspectè
-literarum vindictâ post pacem usus est, que _tantum pacis desperatione
-fuerint datæ_"--p. 116. Compare pp. 119 and 152.
-
-[201] Lord Lyttelton has drawn an inference from these words unfavorable
-to the purity of Idonea's former life; and certainly the examples of the
-Magdalene and the woman of Egypt, if this be not the case, were
-unhappily chosen.
-
-[202] Fitz-Stephen, pp. 281, 284.
-
-[203] Becket calls York his ancient enemy: "Lucifer ponens sedem suum in
-aquilone."
-
-[204] Becket accuses the bishops of thirsting for his blood! "Let them
-drink it." But this was a phrase which he uses on all occasions, even to
-William of Pavia.
-
-[205] "Si vero ita eidem Archiepiscopo et Cantuarensi Ecclesiæ
-satisfacere inveniretis, ut poenam istam ipse videat relaxandam, vice
-nostrâ per illum volumus adimpleri."--Apud Bouquet, p. 461.
-
-[206] "Ipse tamen Londonias adiens, et ibi missarum solenniis
-celebratis, quosdam excommunicavit."--Passio, iii. p. 154.
-
-[207] Since this passage was written an excellent and elaborate paper
-has appeared in the Quarterly Review, full of local knowledge. I
-recognize the hand of a friend from whom great things may be expected. I
-find, I think, nothing in which we disagree, though that account, having
-more ample space, is more particular than mine. (Reprinted in Memorials
-of Canterbury, by Rev. A. P. Stanley.)
-
-[208] Fitz-Stephen, De Bosham, Grim, _in loc._
-
-[209] See, on the former history of these knights, Quarterly Review,
-vol. xciii. p. 355. The writer has industriously traced out all that can
-be known, much which was rumored about these men.
-
-[210] Tuesday, Dec. 29. See, on the fatality of Tuesday in Becket's
-life, Q. R. p. 357.
-
-[211] Grim, p. 71. Fitz-Stephen.
-
-[212] For the accurate local description, see Quarterly Review, p. 367.
-
-[213] Grim, 70.
-
-[214] John of Salisbury. Bouquet, 619, 620.
-
-[215] Giles, iv. 162; Bouquet, 467. It was fitting that the day after
-that of the Holy Innocents should be that on which should rise up this
-new Herod.
-
-[216] See the letter of Arnulf of Lisieux.--Bouquet, 469.
-
-[217] The Quarterly reviewer has the merit of tracing out the
-extraordinary fate of the murderers. "By a singular reciprocity, the
-principle for which Becket had contended, that priests should not be
-subjected to the secular courts, prevented the trial of a layman for the
-murder of a priest by any other than a clerical tribunal." Legend
-imposes upon them dark and romantic acts of penance; history finds them
-in high places of trust and honor.--pp. 377, _et seqq._ I may add that
-John of Oxford five years after was Bishop of Norwich. Ridel too became
-of Ely.
-
-[218] Diceto, p. 557.
-
-[219] This stipulation, in Henry's view, canceled hardly any; as few,
-and these but trifling customs, had been admitted during his reign.
-
-[220] The scene is related by all the monkish chroniclers.--Gervaise,
-Diceto, Brompton, Hoveden.
-
-[221] Peter of Blois was assured by the two cardinal legates of Henry's
-innocence of Becket's death. See this letter, which contains a most
-high-flown eulogy on the transcendent virtues of Henry.--Epist. 66.
-
-[222] On the effect of the death, and the immediate concourse of the
-people to Canterbury, Lambeth, p. 133.
-
-[223] Herbert de Bosham, writing fourteen years after Becket's death,
-declares him among the most undisputed martyrs. "Quod alicujus martyrum
-causa justior fuit aut apertior ego nec audivi, nec legi." So completely
-were clerical immunities part and parcel of Christianity.
-
-[224] The enemies of Becket assigned base reasons for his opposition to
-the King. "Ecclesiasticam etiam libertatem, quam defensatis, non ad
-animarum lucrum sed ad augmentum pecuniarum, episcopos vestros
-intorquere." See the charges urged by John of Oxford.--Giles, iv. p.
-188.
-
-[225] Especially in Epist. 19. "Interim."
-
-[226] It is not just to judge the clergy by the crimes of individual
-men, but there is one case, mentioned by no less an authority than John
-of Salisbury, too flagrant to pass over: it was in Becket's own
-cathedral city. Immediately after Becket's death the Bishops of Exeter
-and Worcester were commissioned by Pope Alexander to visit St.
-Augustine's, Canterbury. They report the total dilapidation of the
-buildings and estates. The prior elect "Jugi, quod hereticus damnat,
-fluit libidine, et hinnit in foeminas, adeo impudens ut libidinem, nisi
-quam publicaverit, voluptuosam esse non reputat." He debauched mothers
-and daughters: "Fornicationis abusum comparat necessitati." In one
-village he had seventeen bastards.--Epist. 310.
-
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-
-Transcriber's Notes:
-
-The original book is an excerpt of the author's "History of Latin
-Christianity, Vol. IV.," chapter VIII, pages 309-424. A copy of that
-volume at http://archive.org/details/historylatinchri04milm was used to
-help correct typographical errors in this eBook.
-
-Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
-preference was found in this book or its source; otherwise they were not
-changed.
-
-Sidenotes are identified as: [SN: text of sidenote]
-
-Sidenotes originally appearing near the start of a paragraph are
-positioned at the beginning of the paragraph; sidenotes in the middle
-of long paragraphs usually are positioned just before the nearest
-sentence.
-
-Footnotes have been renumbered in a single sequence for the entire book.
-
-Table of Contents added by Transcriber; the original book did not have a
-Table of Contents, an Index, or any illustrations.
-
-Page vi: "18vo." changed from "18mo."
-
-Footnote 107: changed "écartelent" to "écartelant," as spelled in
-"History of Latin Christianity" and in the cited book, "Notes d'un
-Voyage dans le Midi de la France." The name of the author of
-"Notes" appears as "Merimée" in this book and in "History of Latin
-Christianity," but is spelled "Mérimée" in that author's own book,
-"Notes."
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of Project Gutenberg's Life of Thomas à Becket, by Henry Hart Milman
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