And there was a higher type—a type we will call it rather than a school, because the graces that compose it are not learned in men’s schools, but under the discipline of a Divine master; the pure religious type, which we find, with some alloy, in such men as Anselm; the meek and quiet spirit that has a zeal for righteousness and a love of souls; that will bear all things for itself, but rise up to avenge the cause of the helpless. It is the noblest type; to which belong the true hero, the true martyr, the saint indeed; but it is a type which to man’s eye is the most easily counterfeited by the popular hero, the self-advertising saint, the professed candidate for mock martyrdom.
Such, then, are the three types of character which perhaps mark all ages of the Church, but which come out most markedly and distinctly in the present period; and the career of Thomas Becket, the hero of this part of our national history, cannot be understood without a clear idea of them.
Rise of
Thomas
Becket.
Becket as
Chancellor.
For Becket was a very extraordinary man. In whatever he did he acted on Solomon’s maxim and did it with his might; and, as he passed through each of the phases of character that mark these three schools, his career may be divided accordingly. In the first phase he was a secular Churchman. He had been trained in the house of his father, a London merchant of Norman blood; he had been schooled in accounts by Master Octonummi; he had learned accomplishments in the hall of Richer de l’Aigle; and then had entered Archbishop Theobald’s family as secretary. There, no doubt, he got his knowledge of civil and canon law, and learned the business of a diplomatist. Although Theobald was an ecclesiastical politician of the second stamp, he did not as yet impress that character on Becket. John of Salisbury, who also was Theobald’s secretary, took some such impression from him, and shows it in a constant criticism of Becket from the point of view natural to the Churchman pure and simple. Still Becket learned that side of life during these experiences. With this training he was qualified not only to conduct the negotiations that secured the crown to Henry II., but, when he was made Chancellor, as he was at the king’s accession, he was able to manage and extend the duties of his office, magnifying it as no other Chancellor had done before. The Chancellor was a sort of secretary of state for all departments; he was not so powerful in himself, or in his constitutional position, as the Justiciar, but he had nearly as much real power through his hold on the king, whose letters he wrote, whose accounts he kept, all whose formal business he recorded, and all whose irksome duties he took off his hands. We find Becket, then, in this relation to Henry, who had no great love of public pomp, and was willing enough that the Chancellor should share the expense. Becket at this time appears to us as a very splendid officer, with a great retinue of knights and a great revenue from his churches; an indefatigable letter-writer, an efficient judge, a cunning financier; as yet not a great Churchman in politics, for the plan of taxing the bishops by scutage was set on foot by him, in opposition to the archbishop, his old patron.
Henry’s confidence
in him.
Becket becomes
archbishop.
Henry might well think himself fortunate in securing such a minister; he threw himself with entire confidence upon him, and there can be little doubt that Becket is to a great degree answerable for the grievous change in Henry’s character that followed their quarrel. To anticipate, however: when Henry made his Chancellor Archbishop of Canterbury he contemplated securing, at the head of the Church, a friend who would sympathize with his statesmanlike designs, who was sure to be able to sway the clergy, and who would repay his unbounded confidence with grateful and straightforward service. But he was sadly disappointed. Becket was not the man to exchange his splendid position as Chancellor for the life of an ordinary commonplace archbishop. If he undertook the office he would act up to the highest idea of its requirements. Never was there a more sudden transformation. One day he is, like Roger of Salisbury, hearing causes and framing his budget, counting out his money, or reviewing his knights; the next he is Lanfranc in miniature, or not so much Lanfranc as Anselm, or Henry of Winchester rather than Anselm;—the high ecclesiastic pure and simple, coveting the Papal legation, hand-and-glove with the Pope, full of ideas based on the canon law, which his friend Gratian had just codified in the Decretum; an unflinching and unreasoning supporter of all clerical claims, right or wrong, wholesome or unwholesome, consistent or inconsistent with his previous life and opinions.
Becket in
his later
phase.
A third phase awaits him. In his new character he is pretty sure to quarrel with the king; he does so, and, however just his cause, he does it in a way that does not prejudice us in his favor; his object is studiously to put Henry in the wrong; his conduct in the last degree exasperating. The second form of clerical life has served its time. Now he comes out as a candidate for martyrdom. In this also he will do what he has to do with all his might. Unmindful of the early friendship of the king, from whom certainly he had never met with anything but kindness and the most familiar courtesy, he declares that he is in danger of his life; he insists on celebrating mass at the altar of the protomartyr and on appearing at court carrying his own cross, partly as a safeguard against violence which he has no reason to apprehend, partly in an awful miserable parody of the great day of Calvary. All the rest of his career is the same—a morbid craving after the honors of martyrdom, or confessorship at the least, a crafty policy for embroiling Henry with his many enemies, combined with a plausible allegation that it is all for his good and that of the Church. There is in him some greatness of character still, some sincerity, we will hope, but no self-renunciation, no self-restraint, no earnest striving for peace; little, very little, care of the flock over which he was overseer, and which was left shepherdless.