Becket was canonized in 1172. Within a short time his shrine at Canterbury became the resort of innumerable pilgrims. Plenary indulgences were given for a visit to the shrine, and an official register was kept to record the miracles wrought by the relics of the saint. The shrine was magnificently adorned with the gold and silver and jewels offered by the pious. It was plundered by Henry VIII., to whom the memory of Becket was specially obnoxious; but the reformers were powerless to expunge the name of the saint from the Roman calendar, on which it still remains. Even to those who are in sympathy with the principles for which he fought, the posthumous reputation of Becket must appear strangely exaggerated. It is evident that in the course of his long struggle with the state he fell more and more under the dominion of personal motives. At the last he fought not so much for an idea as for the humiliation of an opponent by whom he had been ungenerously treated. William of Newburgh appears to express the verdict of the most impartial contemporaries when he says that the bishop was zelo justitiae fervidus, utrum autem plene secundum scientiam novit Deus: “burning with zeal for justice, but whether altogether according to wisdom God knows.”
Authorities.—Original:—The correspondence of Becket and most of the contemporary biographies are collected by J.C. Robertson in Materials for the History of Thomas Becket (7 vols., Rolls Series, 1875-1885). See also the Vie de Saint Thomas, by Garníer de Pont Sainte Maxence (ed. Hippeau, Paris, 1859). For the chronology of the controversy see Eyton’s Itinerary of Henry II.
Modern:—Morris, Life and Martyrdom of St Thomas Becket (London, 1885); Lhuillier, Saint Thomas de Cantorbéry (2 vols., Paris, 1891-1892); J.C. Robertson, Becket (London, 1859); F.W. Maitland, Roman Canon Law in the Church of England, c. iv.; J.A. Froude in his Short Studies, vol. iv., and Freeman in his Historical Essays (1871), give noteworthy but conflicting appreciations.
(H. W. C. D.)
BECKFORD, WILLIAM (1760-1844), English author, son of Alderman William Beckford (1709-1770), was born on the 1st of October 1760. His father was lord mayor of London in 1762 and again in 1769; he was a famous supporter of John Wilkes, and on his monument in the Guildhall were afterwards inscribed the words of his manly and outspoken reproof to George III. on the occasion of the City of London address to the king in 1770. At the age of eleven young Beckford inherited a princely fortune from his father. He married Lady Margaret Gordon in 1783, and spent his brief married life in Switzerland. After his wife’s death (1786) he travelled in Spain and Portugal, and wrote his Portuguese Letters (published 1834, 1835), which rank with his best work. He afterwards returned to England, and after selling his old house, Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire, began to build a magnificent residence there, on which he expended in about eighteen years the sum of £273,000. His eccentricities, together with the strict seclusion in which he lived, gave rise to scandal, probably unjustified. In 1822 he sold his house, together with its splendid library and pictures, to John Farquhar, and soon after one of the towers, 260 ft. high, fell, destroying part of the villa in the ruins. Beckford erected another lofty structure on Lansdowne Hill, near Bath, where he continued to reside till his death in 1844. His first work, Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters (1780) was a slight, sarcastic jeu d’esprit. In 1782 he wrote in French his oriental romance, The History of the Caliph Vathek, which appeared in English, translated by the Rev. Samuel Henley, in 1786 and has taken its place as one of the finest productions of luxuriant imagination.
Beckford’s wealth and large expenditure, his position as a collector and patron of letters (he bought Gibbon’s library at Lausanne), his literary industry, and his reputation as author of Vathek, make him an interesting figure in literary history. He had a seat in parliament from 1784 to 1793, and again from 1806 to 1820. He left two daughters, the eldest of whom was married to the 10th duke of Hamilton.
Cyrus Redding’s Memoir (1859) is the only full biography, but prolix; see Dr R. Garnett’s introduction to his edition of Vathek (1893).
BECKINGTON (or Bekynton), THOMAS (c. 1390-1465), English statesman and prelate, was born at Beckington in Somerset, and was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford. Having entered the church he held many ecclesiastical appointments, and became dean of the Arches in 1423; then devoting his time to secular affairs he was sent on an embassy to Calais in 1439, and to John IV., count of Armagnac, in 1442. At this time Beckington was acting as secretary to Henry VI., and soon after his return in 1443 he was appointed lord privy seal and bishop of Bath and Wells. The bishop erected many buildings in Wells, and died there on the 14th of January 1465. The most important results of Beckington’s missions to France were one Latin journal, written by himself, referring to the embassy to Calais; and another, written by one of his attendants, relating to the journey to Armagnac.