Canterbury

by Gordon Home

Vespers had just begun when the murderers entered, but the singing of that service was never completed. The fear of sacrilege induced the knights to try to drag the defenceless Archbishop out of the Cathedral, but he struggled with such vigour, flinging one of the men down on the stone floor, that they gave up the attempt and killed him with three or four sword strokes, the last of which, as he lay prone, was delivered by Richard le Bret, or the Breton, and so tremendous was the force with which it was delivered that the crown of the head was severed from the skull and the sword broke in two on the pavement.

Canterbury being much divided in its attachment to Becket, the murderers found escape easy, and the general regrets most expressed seem to have been at the sacrilege rather than at the murder.

It is almost incredible how rapidly Becket became St. Thomas of Canterbury. Within a few hours of the tragic scene, when, night having fallen and the great church being closed and deserted, Osbert, the Archbishop's chamberlain, entering with a light in his hand,found his master's body lying on its face, with the frightful wound exposed, the monks had kissed the hands and feet of the corpse and called him by the name of Saint Thomas. What appears to have raised the fraternity to this enthusiastic anticipation of the canonization, officially announced at Westminster in 1173, was the discovery that Becket had on beneath his outer robes, and the many other garments he wore, the black cowled cloak of the Benedictines, and next to his skin a hair-cloth shirt of unusual roughness. When the body was being prepared for the tomb this shirt was found to be easily removable for the daily scourging Becket had been in the habit of enduring, the marks of the stripes administered on the previous day being plainly visible. Dean Stanley adds another fact not easy to be believed by those who have never become intimate with the practices of medieval monasticism:

Such austerity had hitherto been unknown to English saints, and the marvel was increased by the sight—to our notions so revolting—of the innumerable vermin with which the hair-cloth abounded—boiling over with them, as one account describes it, like water in a simmering cauldron. At the dreadful sight all the enthusiasm of the previous night revived with double ardour. They looked at one another in silent wonder, then exclaimed, "See, see what a true monk he was, and we knew it not!" and burst into alternate fits of weeping and laughter, between the sorrow at having lost such a head and the joy of having found such a saint.

THE CHAPEL OF ST. MICHAEL OR THE WARRIORS' CHAPEL.
It is one of the most interesting Chapels in the Cathedral, containing the tomb of Stephen Langton and in the centre of the drawing that of Lady Margaret Holland and her two husbands.

Almost immediately the superstitious belief in the efficacy of a martyr's blood made everyone who was permitted to approach Becket's body anxious to obtain a scrap of a blood-stained garment to soak in water with which to anoint the eyes! In a short time many parts of the clothes had been given away to the poor folk of Canterbury; but as soon as the miracle-working properties came to be properly understood these precious shreds of the Archbishop's voluminous garments ran up in value until the possession of such a fragment meant wealth to the owner. Any relic of the body itself had still greater value, its efficacy in curing the multifarious ailments of the pilgrims who began to flock to Canterbury being immeasurable. And when the neighbouring monastery of St. Augustine burned with desire to possess a relic of St. Thomas they offered Roger, the keeper of the "Altars of the Martyrdom," the position of Abbot of their own abbey if he would contrive to bring with him a portion of Becket's skull. Roger had been specially chosen to guard this relic, but he succumbed to the temptation offered by the rival establishment outside the city walls, and having purloined the coveted fragment of the martyr, was duly installed in the highest office of St. Augustine's. Whether the whole affair was public property at the time does not fully appear, but those who recorded events at St. Augustine's did not hesitate to glory in the success of their scheme!

So great was the popular execration of the murder that the autocratic Archbishop who had not inspired universal admiration in his lifetime was soon to become the most frequently invoked of all the calendar of saints, and the King himself, finding that his submission to the Papal legate at Avranches, two years after the crime, was not sufficient to avert the wrath of Heaven, which seemed to be visiting him in the form of rebellions and disasters in every part of his dominions, came to Canterbury in 1174 and went through a penance of extreme severity. Landing at Southampton, he came by the Pilgrims' Way to Harbledown, and so entered the ancient city. At the church of St. Dunstan, outside the walls, he took off his ordinary dress and walked barefoot through the streets to the monastery of Christ Church. It was a wet day, but being in the month of July the wearing of a shirt only with a cloak to keep off the rain could not have been the cause of very great physical discomfort apart from the cutting of his feet by stones on the road. At the Cathedral they took Henry to the tomb of the man whose death he had caused, and there he knelt and shed bitter tears, groaning and lamenting. After again regretting his rash words in an address read by Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, and promising to restore the rights and property of the Church, the King, kneeling at the tomb, wearing a hair-shirt with a woollen one above it, placed his head and shoulders in one of the openings in the tomb and there received five strokes with a monastic rod from each of the bishops and abbots present, and afterwards the eighty monks each administered three strokes. Henry was now quite absolved, but he remained for the whole night with his bare feet still muddy and in the same penitential garb.