Life of Thomas à Becket

by Henry Hart Milman

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. |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?"

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]

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.