A history of England

by Charles Oman

Opposition of Becket.

Becket declared that the Constitutions of Clarendon violated the immunities of the Church, but for a moment he yielded and consented to sign them. Next day, however, to the surprise of all men, he asserted that his consent had been a deadly sin, that he withdrew it, and that nothing should induce him to sign the constitutions. Henry vehemently urged him to do so, and pointed out that the Archbishop of York and the rest of the bishops were ready to accept the arrangement as just and fair. But Thomas took the attitude of a martyr, refused to move, and even sent to the Pope to get absolution for his so-called sin in giving a momentary consent to the king's proposals.

He leaves England.

Seriously angry at the archbishop for binding up his cause with that of the criminous clerks and the usurpation of the Church courts, Henry took the rather unworthy step of endeavouring to bend Thomas to his will by allowing several of his courtiers to bring lawsuits against him, and by threatening to rake up and go through the accounts of all the public monies that had passed through his hands during the eight years that he had been Chancellor. But Becket was not a man to be bullied; he made himself yet more stiff-necked, and assumed the pose of a martyr for the rights of the Church. It was in vain that the other bishops urged him to yield; he attended the Great Council at Northampton in October, 1164, faced the king, refused to submit, and then, pretending that his life was in danger, fled by night and sailed over to Flanders. For the next six years Becket was on the continent, generally under the protection of Henry's suzerain and enemy, the King of France. He was regarded by the continental clergy as the champion of the rights of their order, and treated with the highest respect wherever he went. He did his best to stir up the King of France and his vassals against Henry II., and to induce the Pope Alexander III. to excommunicate him. But Alexander, deep in a quarrel with the great emperor Frederic Barbarossa, did not wish to make an enemy of the strongest king in Western Europe, and refused to do Becket's behest. On his own account, however, the exiled archbishop laid the sentence of excommunication on most of Henry's chief counsellors. As the great body of the bishops sided with the king, Becket's fulminations from over sea had little effect. In England he was treated as non-existent.

An interdict threatened.—Return of Becket.

But in 1170 a new complication brought about a change in affairs. King Henry's eldest son and namesake, Henry the younger, was now a lad of fifteen, and his father wished to crown him and take him as colleague in his kingdom. The right to crown an English king was undoubtedly one of the prerogatives of the Archbishop of Canterbury. But Henry left Becket out of account, and caused the ceremony to be performed by Roger of York. This invasion of his privileges wrought Thomas to such fury that he sought out the Pope, and won him over by his vehemence to threaten to lay all England under interdict—to cut it off from Christendom, and forbid the celebration of the Sacraments within its bounds.

King Henry, who was engaged in a troublesome war with the French king, was afraid of the consequences of the papal interdict; its enforcement, he thought, would make him too unpopular. So he humbled himself to patching up a truce with Becket, though they could not even yet come to any agreement on the question of the Constitutions of Clarendon. In the autumn of 1170 the king allowed him to return to England, on a tacit agreement that bygones were to be bygones.

But Becket had hidden his true purpose from the king. He returned to England bent, not on peace, but on war. Either because his anger carried him away, or because he was deliberately aiming at martyrdom and wished to provoke his enemies to violence, he proceeded to the most unheard-of measures. He first excommunicated the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of London and Lincoln, who had taken part in the crowning of the younger Henry. Then he laid a similar sentence on those of the king's courtiers whom he accused of encroaching on the estates of the see of Canterbury.

Murder of Becket.

The king was still over-sea in Normandy when the news of Becket's declaration of war was brought him. Henry was a man of violent passions, and the tale moved him to a sudden outbreak of fury. "Of all the idle servants that I maintain," he cried, "is there not one that will avenge me on this pestilent priest?" The words were wrung from him by the excitement of the moment, and soon forgotten, but they had a disastrous result. Among those who heard them were four reckless knights, some of whom had personal grudges against Becket, and all of whom were ready to win the king's favour by any means, fair or foul. Their names were Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy, and Richard the Breton. These four took counsel with each other, secretly stole away from the court, and crossed the stormy December seas to England. They rode straight to Canterbury, sought audience with the archbishop, and bade him remove the excommunication of Roger of York and the rest, or face the king's wrath. Thomas met their words with a fierce refusal; thereupon they withdrew after defying him and warning him that his blood was on his own head. While they were girding on their coats of mail in the cathedral close, the monks of Canterbury besought the archbishop to fly. He had plenty of time to do so, but flight was not his purpose. Far from hiding himself, he called for his robes and his attendants, and went to join in the Vesper service at the cathedral. The knights were soon heard thundering at the door; Becket threw it open with his own hands, and asked their purpose. "Absolve the bishops or die," cried Fitzurse. "Never till they have done penance for their sin," was the reply. Tracy cast his arms about the archbishop and tried to drag him outside the cathedral; but Thomas cast him down. Then Fitzurse drew his sword and cut at Becket's head, and the others felled him with repeated strokes, while he kept crying that he died for the cause of God and the Church. So ended the great archbishop, slain by lawless violence on the consecrated stones of his own cathedral. The splendid courage with which he met his death, and the brutality of his assailants, persuaded most men that he must have been in the right. The clergy looked upon him as their knight and champion, and were only too ready to make capital out of his troubles and heroic end. The poor remembered his indiscriminate almsgiving, his austerities, his opposition to the Danegelt. Every class of men felt some respect for one who had suffered exile and death for loyal adhesion to a cause, and few, except the king, thoroughly realized that the cause had really been that of ill government and clerical tyranny. Hence it came that a man whose main characteristics were his ambition and his obstinacy, and whose saintliness was artificial and deliberately assumed, took his place in the English calendar as the favourite hero of the Church. The Pope made him a saint in 1174, a magnificent shrine was erected over his remains, and for 350 years pilgrims thronged in thousands to do homage to his bones. To relate how many hysterical persons or impostors gave out that they had been healed of their diseases by a visit to his sanctuary would be tedious. The thing which would have given Becket most pleasure, could he have lived again to view it, was the sight of Henry II. doing penance at his tomb in 1174, and baring his back to be scourged by the monks of Canterbury, as a slight reparation for the hasty words that had brought about his servants' deed of murder.