Note A.
THE COUNCIL OF WOODSTOCK.
The usual view of the council of Woodstock—a view founded on contemporary accounts and endorsed by Bishop Stubbs ( Constit. Hist., vol. i. p. 462)—has been disputed on the authority of the Icelandic Thomas Saga. This Saga represents the subject of the quarrel as being, not a general levy of so much per hide throughout the country, but a special tax upon the Church lands—nothing else, in fact, than the “ungeld” which William Rufus had imposed on them to raise the money paid to Duke Robert for his temporary cession of Normandy, and which had been continued ever since. “We have read afore how King William levied a due on all churches in the land, in order to repay him all the costs at which his brother Robert did depart from the land. This money the king said he had disbursed for the freedom of Jewry, and therefore it behoved well the learned folk to repay it to their king. But because the king’s court hath a mouth that holdeth fast, this due continued from year to year. At first it was called Jerusalem tax, but afterwards Warfare-due, for the king to keep up an army for the common peace of the country. But at this time matters have gone so far, that this due was exacted, as a king’s tax, from every house” [“monastery,” editor’s note], “small and great, throughout England, under no other name than an ancient tax payable into the royal treasury without any reason being shown for it.” Thomas Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 139. Mr. Magnusson (ib. p. 138, note 7) thinks that this account “must be taken as representing the true history of” the tax in question. In his Preface (ib. vol. ii. pp. cvii–cviii) he argues that if the tax had been one upon the tax-payers in general, “evidently the primate had no right to interfere in such a matter, except so far as church lands were concerned;” and he concludes that the version in the Saga “gives a natural clue to the archbishop’s protest, which thus becomes a protest only on behalf of the Church.” This argument hardly takes sufficient account of the English primate’s constitutional position, which furnishes a perfectly “natural clue” to his protest, supposing that protest to have been made on behalf of the whole nation and not only of the Church:—or rather, to speak more accurately, in behalf of the Church in the true sense of that word—the sense which Theobald’s disciples were always striving to give to it—as representing the whole nation viewed in a spiritual aspect, and not only the clerical order. Mr. Magnusson adds: “We have no doubt that the source of the Icelandic Saga here is Robert of Cricklade, or ... Benedict of Peterborough, who has had a better information on the subject than the other authorities, which, it would seem, all have Garnier for a primary source; but he, a foreigner, might very well be supposed to have formed an erroneous view on a subject the history of which he did not know, except by hearsay evidence” (ib. pp. cviii, cix). It might be answered that the “hearsay evidence” on which Garnier founded his view must have been evidence which he heard in England, where he is known to have carefully collected the materials for his work (Garnier, ed. Hippeau, pp. 6, 205, 206), and that his view is entitled to just as much consideration as that of the Icelander, founded upon the evidence of Robert or Benedict;—that of the three writers who follow Garnier, two, William of Canterbury and Edward Grim, were English (William of Canterbury may have been Irish by birth, but he was English by education and domicile) and might therefore have been able to check any errors caused by the different nationality of their guide:—and that even if the case resolved itself into a question between the authority of Garnier and that of Benedict or Robert (which can hardly be admitted), they would be of at least equal weight, and the balance of intrinsic probability would be on Garnier’s side. For his story points directly to the Danegeld; and we have the indisputable witness of the Pipe Rolls that the Danegeld, in some shape or other, was levied at intervals throughout the Norman reigns and until the year 1163, when it vanished for ever. On the other hand, the Red King’s “ungeld” upon the Church lands, like all his other “ungelds,” certainly died with him; and nothing can well be more unlikely than that Henry II. in the very midst of his early reforms should have reintroduced, entirely without excuse and without necessity, one of the most obnoxious and unjust of the measures which had been expressly abolished in “the time of his grandfather King Henry.”
Note B.
THE COUNCIL OF CLARENDON.
There is some difficulty as to both the date and the duration of this council. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 176) gives the date of meeting as January 13; R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 312) as January 25; while the official copy of the Constitutions (Summa Causæ, Robertson, Becket, vol. iv. p. 208; Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 140) gives the closing day as January 30 (“quartâ die ante Purificationem S. Mariæ”). As to the duration of the council, we learn from Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii. p. 279) and Gerv. Cant. (as above, p. 178) that there was an adjournment of at least one night; while Gilbert Foliot (Robertson, Becket, vol. v. Ep. ccxxv. pp. 527–529) says “Clarendonæ ... continuato triduo id solum actum est ut observandarum regni consuetudinum et dignitatum a nobis fieret absoluta promissio;” and that “die vero tertio,” after a most extraordinary scene, Thomas “antiquas regni consuetudines antiquorum memoriâ in commune propositas et scripto commendatas, de cætero domino nostro regi se fideliter observaturum in verbo veritatis absolute promittens, in vi nobis injunxit obedientiæ sponsione simili nos obligare.” This looks at first glance as if meant to describe the closing scene of the council, in which case its whole duration would be limited to three days. But it seems possible to find another interpretation which would enable us to reconcile all the discordant dates, by understanding Gilbert’s words as referring to the verbal discussion at the opening of the council, before the written Constitutions were produced at all. Gilbert does indeed expressly mention “customs committed to writing”; but this may very easily be a piece of confusion either accidental or intentional. On this supposition the chronology may be arranged as follows:—The council meets on January 13 (Gerv. Cant.). That day and the two following are spent in talking over the primate; towards evening of the third—which will be January 15—he yields, and the bishops with him (Gilb. Foliot). Then they begin to discuss what they have promised; the debate warms and lengthens; Thomas, worn out with his three days’ struggle and seeing the rocks ahead, begs for a respite till the morrow (Herb. Bosh.). On that morrow—i.e. January 16—Henry issues his commission to the “elders,” and the council remains in abeyance till they are ready with their report. None of our authorities tell us how long an interval elapsed between the issue of the royal commission and its report. Herbert, indeed, seems to imply that the discussion on the constitutions began one night and the written report was brought up next day. But this is only possible on the supposition that it had been prepared secretly beforehand, of which none of the other writers shew any suspicion. If the thing was not prepared beforehand, it must have taken some time to do; and even if it was, the king and the commissioners would surely, for the sake of appearances, make a few days’ delay to give a shew of reality to their investigations. Nine days is not too much to allow for preparation of the report. On January 25, then, it is brought up, and the real business of the council begins in earnest on the day named by R. Diceto. And if Thomas fought over every one of the sixteen constitutions in the way of which Herbert gives us a specimen, six days more may very well have been spent in the discussion, which would thus end, as the Summa Causæ says, on January 30.
CHAPTER II.
HENRY AND ROME.
1164–1172.
With the archbishop’s flight into France the struggle between him and the king entered upon a new phase. Its intrinsic importance was almost entirely lost, and it became simply an element in the wider questions of general European politics. In England Thomas’s departure left Henry sole master of the field; the Constitutions of Clarendon were put in force without delay and without difficulty; a year later they were followed up by an Assize, significantly issued from the same place, which laid the foundations of the whole later English system of procedure in criminal causes; and thenceforth the work of legal and judicial reform went on almost without a break, totally unaffected by the strife which continued to rage between king and primate for the next five years. The social condition of the country was only indirectly affected by it. The causes which had ostensibly given rise to it—the principle involved in the acceptance or rejection of the Constitutions—did not appeal strongly to the national mind, and had already become obscured and subordinated to the personal aspect which the quarrel had assumed at Northampton. As in the case of Anselm, it was on this personal aspect alone that popular feeling really fastened; and in this point of view the advantage was strongly on the archbishop’s side. Thomas, whose natural gifts had already made him a sort of popular idol, was set by the high-handed proceedings of the council in the light of a victim of regal tyranny; and the sweeping and cruel proscriptions inflicted upon all who were in the remotest way connected with him tended still further to excite popular sympathy for his wrongs and turn it away from his persecutor. But the sympathy was for the individual, not for the cause. The principle of the clerical immunities had no hold upon the minds of the people or even of the clergy at large. Even among the archbishop’s own personal friends, almost the only men who clave to it with anything like the same ardour as himself were his two old comrades of the Curia Theobaldi, Bishop John of Poitiers and John of Salisbury; and even the devotion of John of Salisbury, which is one of the brightest jewels in Becket’s crown, was really the devotion of friend to friend, of Churchman to primate, of a generous, chivalrous soul to what seemed the oppressed and down-trodden side, rather than the devotion of a partizan to party principle. Herbert of Bosham, the primate’s shadow and second self, who clave to his side through good report and evil report and looked upon him as a hero and a martyr from first to last, was nevertheless the author of the famous verdict which all the searching criticism of later times has never yet been able to amend: “Both parties had a zeal for God; which zeal was according to knowledge, His judgement alone can determine.”[210]