The bishops seated themselves along the opposite side of the hall, and a solemn silence ensued. At length the door opened and the Earl of Leicester at the head of the barons bade him hear his sentence. "My sentence," interrupted the Archbishop; "son and earl, hear me first. You know with what fidelity I served the King, how reluctantly, to please him, I accepted my present office, and in what manner I was declared by him free from all secular claims. For what happened before my consecration I ought not to answer, nor will I. Know, moreover, that you are my children in God. Neither law nor reason allows you to judge your father. I therefore decline your tribunal, and refer my quarrel to the decision of the Pope. To him I appeal and shall now, under the protection of the Catholic Church and the apostolic see, depart." As he walked along the hall, some of the courtiers threw at him knots of straw, which they took from the floor. A voice called him a traitor. At the word he stopped, and, hastily turning round, rejoined, "Were it not that my order forbids me, that coward should repent of his insolence." At the gate he was received with acclamations of joy by the clergy and people, and was conducted in triumph to his lodgings.
It was generally believed that if the Archbishop had remained at Northampton, that night would have proved his last. Alarmed by frequent hints from his friends, he petitioned to retire beyond the sea, and was told that he might expect an answer the following morning. This unnecessary delay increased his apprehensions. To deceive the vigilance of the spies that beset him, he ordered a bed to be prepared in the church, and in the dusk of the evening, accompanied by two clerks and a servant on foot, escaped by the north gate. After fifteen days of perils and adventures, Brother Christian (that was the name he assumed) landed at Gravelines in Flanders.
His first visit was paid, November 3d, to the King of France, who received him with marks of veneration; his second to Alexander, who kept his court in the city of Sens.
He had been preceded by a magnificent embassy of English prelates and barons, who had endeavored in vain to prejudice the Pontiff against him, though by the distribution of presents they had purchased advocates in the college of cardinals. The very lecture of the constitutions closed the mouths of his adversaries. Alexander, having condemned in express terms ten of the articles, recommended the Archbishop to the care of the Abbot of Pontigny, and exhorted him to bear with resignation the hardships of exile. When Thomas surrendered his bishopric into the hands of the Pope, his resignation was hailed by a part of the consistory as the readiest means of terminating a vexatious and dangerous controversy, but Alexander preferred honor to convenience, and refusing to abandon a prelate who had sacrificed the friendship of a king for the interests of the Church, reinvested him with the archiepiscopal dignity.
The eyes of the King were still fixed on the exile at Pontigny, and by his order the punishment of treason was denounced against any person who should presume to bring into England letters of excommunication or interdict from either the Pontiff or the Archbishop. He confiscated the estates of that prelate, commanded his name to be erased from the liturgy, and seized the revenues of every clergyman who had followed him into France or had sent him pecuniary assistance.
By a refinement of vengeance, he involved all who were connected with him either by blood or friendship, and with them their families, without distinction of rank or age or sex, in one promiscuous sentence of banishment. Neither men, bowing under the weight of years, nor infants still hanging at the breast, were excepted. The list of proscription was swelled with four hundred names; and the misfortune of the sufferers was aggravated by the obligation of an oath to visit the Archbishop, and importune him with the history of their wrongs. Day after day crowds of exiles besieged the door of his cell at Pontigny. His heart was wrung with anguish; he implored the compassion of his friends, and enjoyed at last the satisfaction of knowing that the wants of these blameless victims had been amply relieved by the benefactions of the King of France, the Queen of Sicily, and the Pope. Still Henry's resentment was insatiable. Pontigny belonged to the Cistercians; and he informed them that if they continued to afford an asylum to the traitor, not one of their order should be permitted to remain within his dominions. The Archbishop was compelled to quit his retreat; but Louis immediately offered him the city of Sens for his residence.
Here, as he had done at Pontigny, Becket led the solitary and mortified life of a recluse. Withdrawing himself from company and amusements, he divided the whole of his time between prayer and reading. His choice of books was determined by a reference to the circumstances in which he was placed; and in the canon law, the histories of the martyrs, and the Holy Scriptures he sought for advice and consolation. On a mind naturally firm and unbending, such studies were likely to make a powerful impression; and his friends, dreading the consequences, endeavored to divert his attention to other objects. But their remonstrances were fruitless.
Gradually his opinions became tinged with enthusiasm: he identified his cause with that of God and the Church; concession appeared to him like apostasy, and his resolution was fixed to bear every privation, and to sacrifice, if it was necessary, even his own life in so sacred a contest. The violence of Henry nourished and strengthened these sentiments; and at last, urged by the cries of the sufferers, the Archbishop assumed a bolder tone, which terrified his enemies, and compelled the court of Rome to come forward to his support. By a sentence, promulgated with more than the usual solemnity, he cut off from the society of the faithful such of the royal ministers as had communicated with the antipope, those who had framed the Constitutions of Clarendon, and all who had invaded the property of the Church. At the same time he confirmed by frequent letters the wavering mind of the Pontiff, checked by his remonstrances the opposition of the cardinals who had been gained by his adversaries; and intimated to Henry, in strong but affectionate language, the punishment which awaited his impenitence.
This mighty monarch, the lord of so many nations, while he affected to despise, secretly dreaded, the spiritual arms of his victim. The strictest orders were issued that every passenger from beyond the sea should be searched; that all letters from the Pope or the Archbishop should be seized; that the bearers should suffer the most severe and shameful punishments; and that all freemen, in the courts to which they owed service, should promise upon oath not to obey any censure published by ecclesiastical authority against the King or the kingdom. But it was for his Continental dominions that he felt chiefly alarmed. There the great barons, who hated his government, would gladly embrace the opportunity to revolt; and the King of France, his natural opponent, would instantly lend them his aid against the enemy of the Church. Hence for some years the principal object of his policy was to avert or at least to delay the blow which he so much dreaded.
As long as the Pope was a fugitive in France, dependent on the bounty of his adherents, the King had hoped that his necessities would compel him to abandon the Primate. But the antipope was now dead; and though the Emperor had raised up a second in the person of Guido of Crema, Alexander had returned to Italy, and recovered possession of Rome. Henry therefore resolved to try the influence of terror, by threatening to espouse the cause of Guido. He even opened a correspondence with the Emperor; and in a general diet at Wuerzburg his ambassadors made oath in the name of their master, that he would reject Alexander, and obey the authority of his rival. Of this fact there cannot be a doubt. It was announced to the German nations by an imperial edict, and is attested by an eye-witness, who from the council wrote to the Pope a full account of the transaction.