Life of Thomas à Becket

by Henry Hart Milman

April, 1161.

Six years after the accession of Henry II. died Theobald Archbishop of Canterbury. On the character of his successor depended the peace of the realm, especially if Henry, as no doubt he did, already entertained designs of limiting the exorbitant power of the Church. Becket, ever at his right hand, could not but occur to the mind of the king. Nothing in his habits of life or conduct could impair the hope that in him the loyal, the devoted, it might seem unscrupulous subject, would predominate over the rigid churchman. With such a prime minister, attached by former benefits, it might seem by the warmest personal love, still more by this last proof of boundless confidence, to his person, and as holding the united offices of Chancellor and Primate, ruling supreme both in Church and State, the king could dread no resistance, or if there were resistance, could subdue it without difficulty.

Rumor had already designated Becket as the future primate. A churchman, the Prior of Leicester, on a visit to Becket, who was ill at Rouen, pointing to his apparel, said, "Is this a dress for an Archbishop of Canterbury?" Becket himself had not disguised his hopes and fears. "There are three poor priests in England, any one of whose elevation to the see of Canterbury I should wish rather than my own. I know the very heart of the king; if I should be promoted, I must forfeit his favor or that of God."[29]

The king did not suddenly declare his intentions. The see was vacant for above a year,[30] and the administration of the revenues must have been in the department of the Chancellor. At length as Becket, who had received a commission to return to England on other affairs of moment, took leave of his sovereign at Falaise, Henry hastily informed him that those affairs were not the main object of his mission to England—it was for his election to the vacant archbishopric. Becket remonstrated, but in vain; he openly warned, it is said, his royal master that as Primate he must choose between the favor of God and that of the king—he must prefer that of God.[31] In those days the interests of the clergy and of God were held inseparable. Henry no doubt thought this but the decent resistance of an ambitious prelate. The advice of Henry of Pisa, the Papal Legate, overcame the faint and lingering scruples of Becket: he passed to England with the king's recommendation, mandate it might be called, for his election.

All which to the king would designate Becket as the future Primate could not but excite the apprehensions of the more rigorous churchmen. The monks of Canterbury, with whom rested the formal election, alleged as an insuperable difficulty that Becket had never worn the monastic habit, as almost all his predecessors had done.[32] The suffragan bishops would no doubt secretly resist the advancement, over all their heads, of a man who, latterly at least, had been more of a soldier, a courtier, and a lay statesman. Nor could the prophetic sagacity of any but the wisest discern the latent churchmanship in the ambitious and inflexible heart of Becket. It is recorded on authority, which I do not believe doubtful as to its authenticity, but which is the impassioned statement of a declared enemy, that nothing but the arrival of the great justiciary, Richard de Luci, with the king's peremptory commands, and with personal menaces of proscription and exile against the more forward opponents, awed the refractory monks and prelates to submission.

Gilbert Foliot.

At Whitsuntide Thomas Becket received priest's orders, and was then consecrated Primate of England with great magnificence in the Abbey of Westminster. The see of London being vacant, the ceremony was performed by the once turbulent, now aged and peaceful, Henry of Winchester, the brother of King Stephen. One voice alone, that of Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford,[33] broke the apparent harmony by a bitter sarcasm—"The king has wrought a miracle; he has turned a soldier and a layman into an archbishop." Gilbert Foliot, from first to last the firm and unawed antagonist of Becket, is too important a personage to be passed lightly by.[34] This sally was attributed no doubt by some at the time, as it was the subject afterwards of many fierce taunts from Becket himself, and of lofty vindication by Foliot, to disappointed ambition, as though he himself aspired to the primacy. Nor was there an ecclesiastic in England who might entertain more just hopes of advancement. He was admitted to be a man of unimpeachable life, of austere habits, and great learning. He had been Abbot of Gloucester and then Bishop of Hereford. He was in correspondence with four successive Popes, Cœlestine II., Lucius II., Eugenius III., Alexander, and with a familiarity which implies a high estimation for ability and experience. He is interfering in matters remote from his diocese, and commending other bishops, Lincoln and Salisbury, to the favorable consideration of the Pontiff. All his letters reveal as imperious and conscientious a churchman as Becket himself, and in Becket's position Foliot might have resisted the king as inflexibly.[35] He was, in short, a bold and stirring ecclesiastic, who did not scruple to wield, as he had done in several instances, that last terrible weapon of the clergy which burst on his own head, excommunication.[36] It may be added that, notwithstanding his sarcasm, there was no open breach between him and Becket. The primate acquiesced in, if he did not promote, the advancement of Foliot to the see of London;[37] and during that period letters of courtesy which borders on adulation were interchanged at least with apparent sincerity.[38]

The king had indeed wrought a greater miracle than himself intended, or than Foliot thought possible. Becket became at once not merely a decent prelate, but an austere and mortified monk: he seemed determined to make up for his want of ascetic qualifications; to crowd a whole life of monkhood into a few years.[39] Under his canonical dress he wore a monk's frock, haircloth next his skin; his studies, his devotions, were long, regular, rigid. At the mass he was frequently melted into passionate tears. In his outward demeanor, indeed, though he submitted to private flagellation, and the most severe macerations, Becket was still the stately prelate: his food, though scanty to abstemiousness, was, as his constitution required, more delicate; his charities were boundless. Archbishop Theobald had doubled the usual amount of the primate's alms, Becket again doubled that; and every night in privacy, no doubt more ostentatious than the most public exhibition, with his own hands he washed the feet of thirteen beggars. His table was still hospitable and sumptuous, but instead of knights and nobles, he admitted only learned clerks, and especially the regulars, whom he courted with the most obsequious deference. For the sprightly conversation of former times were read grave books in the Latin of the Church.

But the change was not alone in his habits and mode of life. The King could not have reproved, he might have admired, the most punctilious regard for the decency and the dignity of the highest ecclesiastic in the realm. But the inflexible churchman began to betray himself in more unexpected acts. While still in France Henry was startled at receiving a peremptory resignation of the chancellorship, as inconsistent with the religious functions of the primate. This act was as it were a bill of divorce from all personal intimacy with the king, a dissolution of their old familiar and friendly intercourse. It was not merely that the holy and austere prelate withdrew from the unbecoming pleasures of the court, the chase, the banquet, the tournament, even the war; they were no more to meet at the council board, and the seat of judicature. It had been said that Becket was co-sovereign with the king, he now appeared (and there were not wanting secret and invidious enemies to suggest, and to inflame the suspicion) a rival sovereign.[40] The king, when Becket met him on his landing at Southampton, did not attempt to conceal his dissatisfaction; his reception of his old friend was cold.

It were unjust to human nature, to suppose that it did not cost Becket a violent struggle, a painful sacrifice, thus as it were to rend himself from the familiarity and friendship of his munificent benefactor. It was no doubt a severe sense of duty which crushed his natural affections, especially as vulgar ambition must have pointed out a more sure and safe way to power and fame. Such ambition would hardly have hesitated between the ruling all orders through the king, and the solitary and dangerous position of opposing so powerful a monarch to maintain the interests and secure the favor of one order alone.