The strife between the Crown and the Mitre was not long in breaking out again. The former strife had been on the matter of investiture; the strife of the twelfth century was respecting jurisdiction.
We sometimes hear the expression, “Without benefit of clergy,” and the readers of the “Lay of the Last Minstrel” cannot have forgotten William of Deloraine’s declaration,
“Letter or line know I never a one,
Were’t my neck-verse at Harribee.”
These are witnesses of the combat between Henry II. and Thomas à Becket. The Church, as bearing the message of peace, claimed to be exempt from the sword of the State. Her sacred buildings protected the criminal, the inhabitants of her lands were spared in war, and offences committed either by an ecclesiastic or against one, were not liable to be punished by the temporal power. This protection was extended not only over actually ordained clergymen, but all who held any office in connection with ecclesiastical affairs—all students, nay, all who were clerks enough to read and write. Thus the wild borderers, when made prisoners, escaped the halter by pretending to read a verse of the Miserere, which they had learnt by heart in case of such an emergency, and called their neck-verse; and “without benefit of clergy” was added to new laws, to prevent education from exempting persons from their power.
But this arose long after the battle had been fought and won; and it is not to be supposed, that the Church left offenders unpunished. Imprisonment, loss of rank, and penance, fell heavily on them, and it was only very hardened and desperate men who would die under excommunication rather than endure all that was required before they could be reconciled to the Church.
Henry II. had found the course of justice seriously impeded by these privileges of the clergy, and convoking a council at Westminster, in 1163, called on the bishops to consent that, as soon as a clerk should be proved guilty of a crime, he should be deprived of his orders, and handed over to receive punishment as a layman, at the hands of the King’s officer.
According to our views in the present day, this demand was just, but to the Church of the twelfth century it seemed an attempt to deprive her of powers committed to her trust; and considering the uncertainty of justice, and the lawless tyranny and cruelty often exercised by the sovereigns and nobles, the resistance made to Henry II. cannot be wondered at.
The bishops, however, first took the King’s view, and argued that a crime was worse in a clerk than in another, so that he deserved no immunity. To this Becket answered, that the loss of his orders was one penalty, and it was not right that he should be punished twice for the same offence. They said that the King would be displeased, and it would be better to give up their liberties than to perish themselves. This cowardly plea Becket treated no better than it deserved, and brought them over to his side, so that they all answered the King, that their duty forbade them to comply with his demand; Henry put the question in another form, asking them whether they would in all things observe the royal Constitutions of his ancestors. Becket replied, “We will in all things, saving the privileges of our order;” and so, one by one, said they all, except Hilary of Chichester, who was afraid, and left out the important restriction. But by this cowardice all he gained was the King’s contempt. Henry chose him as the one on whom to vent his passion, abused him violently, and quitted the council, in one of his furious fits of rage.
Thenceforth Henry was at war with Becket. One of his first acts of spite, was exiling the Archbishop’s friend, John of Salisbury, a faithful priest, and an excellent scholar, as his correspondence with his master remains to testify. It is curious to read his account of Paris. “The people here seem to enjoy abundance of everything; the Church ceremonies are performed with great splendor, and I thought, with Jacob, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not;’ also, in the words of the poet,
“‘Blessed is the banish’d man who liveth here.’