Life of Thomas à Becket

by Henry Hart Milman

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.

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. |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.

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]

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.

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] |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.