R. A. R.’s letter, submitted to me through the kindness of Mr. Hone, certainly conveys much interesting miscellaneous information, although it proves nothing, and leaves the question, of who is actually the tenant of this tomb, pretty much where he finds it. In my humble opinion, the circumstance of technical heraldic bearings, and those moreover quartered, being found upon it, completely negatives the idea of its being the tomb of Becket’s assassin. It is well known that the first English subject who ever bore arms quarterly is Hastings, earl of Pembroke, who died in the reign of Edward III. and is buried in Westminster abbey.
Family arms seem not to have been continuedly adopted, till towards the time of Edward I.
W. P.
The death of Becket appears to have been sincerely deplored by Henry II., inasmuch as the pope and his adherents visited the sin of the four knights upon the king, and upbraided him with his subjects by ecclesiastical fulminations. He endeavoured to make peace with the church by submitting to a public whipping. A late biographer records his meanness in the following sentences:
In 1174 king Henry went on a pilgrimage to the tomb of the late archbishop Becket, with the fame of whose miracles the whole realm was now filled, and whom the pope, by a bull dated in March the year before, had declared a saint and a martyr, appointing an anniversary festival to be kept on the day of his death, in order (says the bull) that, being continually applied to by the prayers of the faithful, he should intercede with God for the clergy and people of England.
Henry, therefore, desiring to obtain for himself this intercession, or to make others believe that the wrath of an enemy, to whom it was supposed that such power was given, might be thus averted from him, thought it necessary to visit the shrine of this new-created saint; and, as soon as he came within sight of the tower of Canterbury cathedral, (July 10,) at the distance of three miles, descended from his horse, and walked thither barefoot, over a road that was full of rough and sharp stones, which so wounded his feet that in many places they were stained with his blood.
When he got to the tomb, which was then in the crypt (or under-croft) of the church, he threw himself prostrate before it, and remained, for some time, in fervent prayer; during which, by his orders, the bishop of London, in his name, declared to the people, that “he had neither commanded, nor advised, nor by any artifice contrived the death of Becket, for the truth of which, he appealed, in the most solemn manner, to the testimony of God; but, as the murderers of that prelate had taken occasion from his words, too inconsiderately spoken, to commit this offence, he voluntarily thus submitted himself to the discipline of the church.”
After this he was scourged, at his own request and command, by all the monks of the convent, assembled for that purpose, from every one of whom, and from several bishops and abbots there present, he received three or four stripes.