On a calm review of his life it seems that Becket was most at home in his first position; that in the second he was ill at ease and awkward, divided between two aims and failing in conduct as well as in cause. The third phase becomes him least of all; and it is only by considering the horrible sufferings of his death that we pardon him for the conduct that brought the pains of death upon him.

He becomes
archbishop.

Briefly to recapitulate the stages of the career of this man, to whom even his enemies allow the title of greatness: Becket was Chancellor from the accession of Henry, in 1154, to his consecration as Archbishop of Canterbury, in June, 1162. The king was still in France when Theobald died. It was regarded as a somewhat unprecedented measure to make so secular a person as Thomas archbishop, but Henry’s influence and his own were supreme; he had accepted the dignity with misgiving, but having accepted he did not hesitate about the measures to be taken for securing it; the consent of the bishops and monks was readily yielded, and one who was, so far as his place of birth could make him, an Englishman, sat once more on the throne of Augustine. All difficulties were smoothed for him; he had not to go to Rome for his pall; it arrived a few weeks after his consecration; and he had six months’ quiet and peace in his new dignity before the king came home.

Henry
returns from
France
1163.

Becket
resigns the
Chancery.

This was on the 25th of January, 1163. Henry found, as was to be expected, that considerable arrears of business had accrued during his long absence. He was meditating a new expedition to Wales in order to enforce the homage due to him and his heir-apparent from the Welsh princes. The trial of Henry of Essex, who had been accused of treason and cowardice by Robert de Montfort, for letting fall the standard at the battle of Consilt, and who was to defend himself by battle, was also imminent; and already some apprehensions were felt as to the conduct of the archbishop. He had resigned, much in opposition to Henry’s wishes, his office of Chancellor on his appointment as Archbishop, and had procured from the justiciar a full acquittance for all sums which he had received for the king during his tenure of office, especially the sums arising from the revenue of vacant churches, a source of royal income which was specially administered by the Chancellor. But he had not resigned the great manors of Eye and Berkhampstead, which were usually held as part of the endowment of the Chancellor; these it is possible he intended to hold only until his successor was appointed, but no successor was appointed, and the strange spectacle was seen of the Archbishop of Canterbury holding two of the finest pieces of the secular patronage of the crown without any official claim to them.

He enforces
the feudal
rights of his
see.

In another point he also showed himself somewhat grasping, or at all events made enemies at a moment when his experience should have taught him to be more politic. Many of the old possessions of his see had come into the hands of laymen, who were negligent in performing their services, and probably wished to throw off the yoke of the archbishop altogether. In order to enforce his rights he acted in a way which, justifiable as it was, was nevertheless imprudent; the result was a royal inquest as to the archiepiscopal fiefs; and, as the archbishop was already becoming unpopular, the verdict of the jury robbed him of some rights that might otherwise have been successfully maintained. In all this, however, he had no coolness with the king. Henry felt the resignation of the Chancellorship as a personal wrong; for although in the empire, where the king looked for precedents, the office of Arch-chancellor was held by the three great metropolitans of Germany, Becket had followed the usage almost unbroken in England in resigning; but there was nothing like an open quarrel. The spring of the year passed without one. In March the fate of Henry of Essex was decided; he was defeated in the battle trial, and the king, greatly against his will it was said—for he believed that the fall of the standard at Consilt was accidental—was obliged by the Norman law to declare his estates forfeited. Henry of Essex retired into a monastery, and so Henry lost one of his best friends.

Second
Welsh war,
1163.

Council at
Woodstock.