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The History of England From the Norman Conquest to the Death of John
King And Archbishop
by Adams, George Burton
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Thomas Becket, who thus became the head of the English Church, was
probably in his forty-fourth year, for he seems to have been born on
December 21, 1118. All his past had been a training in one way or another
for the work which he was now to do. He had had an experience of many
sides of life. During his early boyhood, in his father's house in London,
he had shared the life of the prosperous burgher class; he had been a
student abroad, and though he was never a scholar, he knew something of
the learned world from within; he had been taken into the household of
Archbishop Theobald, and there he had been trained, with a little circle
of young men of promise of his own age, in the strict ideas of the
Church; he had been employed on various diplomatic missions, and had
accomplished what had been intrusted to him, we are told, with skill and
success; last of all, he had been given a high office in the state, and
had learned to know by experience and observation the life of the court,
its methods of doing or preventing business, and all its strength and
weakness.
As Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket became almost the independent
sovereign of a state within the state. Lanfranc had held no such place,
nor had Anselm. No earlier archbishop indeed had found himself at his
consecration so free from control and so strong. The organization apart
from the state, the ideal liberty of the Church, to which Anselm had
looked forward somewhat vaguely, had been in some degree realized since
his time. The death of Henry I had removed the restraining hand which had
held the Church within its old bounds. For a generation afterwards it was
free--free as compared with any earlier period--to put into practice its
theories and aspirations, and the new Archbishop of Canterbury inherited
the results still unquestioned and undiminished. Henry II had come to the
throne young and with much preliminary work to be done. Gradually, it
would seem, the reforms necessary to recover the full royal power, and to
put into most effective form the organization of the state, were taking
shape in his mind. It is possible, it is perhaps more than possible, that
he expected to have from his friend Thomas as archbishop sympathy and
assistance in these plans, or at least that he would be able to carry
them out with no opposition from the Church. This looks to us now like a
bad reading of character. At any rate no hope was ever more completely
disappointed. In character, will, and ideals, at least as these appear
from this time onward, sovereign and primate furnished all the conditions
of a most bitter conflict. But to understand this conflict it is also
necessary to remember the strength of Becket's position, the fact that he
was the ruler of an almost independent state.
What was the true and natural character of Thomas Becket, what were
really the ideals on which he would have chosen to form his life if he
had been entirely free to shape it as he would, is a puzzle which this is
not the place to try to solve. Nor can we discuss here the critical
questions, still unsettled, which the sources of our knowledge present.
Fortunately no question affects seriously the train of events, and, in
regard to the character of the archbishop, we may say with some
confidence that, whatever he might have chosen for himself, he threw
himself with all the ardour of a great nature into whatever work he was
called upon to do. As chancellor, Thomas's household had been a centre of
luxurious court life. As archbishop his household was not less lavishly
supplied, nor less attractive; but its elegance was of a more sober cast,
and for himself Thomas became an ascetic, as he had been a courtier, and
practised in secret, according to his biographers, the austerities and
good works which became the future saint.
Six months after the consecration of the new archbishop, King Henry
crossed from Normandy to England, at the end of January, 1163, but before
he did so word had come to him from Becket which was like a declaration
of principles. Henry had hoped to have him at the same time primate of
the Church and his own chancellor. Not merely would this add a
distinction to his court, but we may believe that the king would regard
it as a part of the co-operation between Church and State in the reforms
he had in mind. To Thomas the retention of his old office would probably
mean a pledge not to oppose the royal will in the plans which he no doubt
foresaw. It would also interfere seriously with the new manner of life
which he proposed for himself, and he firmly declined to continue in the
old office. In other ways, unimportant as yet, the policy of the primate
as it developed was coming into collision with the king's interests, in
his determined pushing of the rights of his Church to every piece of land
to which it could lay any claim, in some cases directly against the king,
and in his refusal to allow clerks in the service of the State to hold
preferments in the Church, of which he had himself been guilty; but all
these things were still rather signs of what might be expected than
important in themselves. There was for several months no breach between
the king and the archbishop.
For some time after his return to England Henry was occupied, as he had
been of late on the continent, with minor details of government of no
permanent importance. The treaty of alliance with Count Dietrich of
Flanders was renewed. Gilbert Foliot was translated to the important
bishopric of London. A campaign in South Wales brought the prince of that
country to terms, and was followed by homage from him and other Welsh
princes rendered at a great council held at Woodstock during the first
week of July, 1163. It was at this meeting that the king first met with
open and decided opposition from the archbishop, though this was still in
regard to a special point and not to a general line of policy. The
revenue of the state which had been left by the last reign in a
disordered condition was still the subject of much concern and careful
planning. Recently, as our evidence leads us to believe, the king had
given up the Danegeld as a tax which had declined in value until it was
no longer worth collecting. At Woodstock he made a proposition to the
council for an increase in the revenue without an increase in the
taxation. It was that the so-called "sheriffs aid," a tax said to be of
two shillings on the hide paid to the sheriffs by their counties as a
compensation for their services, should be for the future paid into the
royal treasury for the use of the crown. That this demand was in the
direction of advance and reform can hardly be questioned, especially if,
as is at least possible, it was based on the declining importance of the
sheriffs as purely local officers, and their increasing responsibilities
as royal officers on account of the growing importance of the king's
courts and particularly of the itinerant justice courts. So decided a
change, however, in the traditional way of doing business could only be
made with consent asked and obtained. There is no evidence that
opposition came from any one except Becket. He flatly refused to consent
to any such change, as he had a right to do so far as his own lands were
concerned, and declared that this tax should never be paid from them to
the public treasury. The motive of his opposition does not appear and is
not easy to guess. He stood on the historical purpose of the tax and
refused to consider any other use to which it might be put. Henry was
angry, but apparently he had to give up his plan. At any rate
unmistakable notice had been served on him that his plans for reform were
likely to meet with the obstinate opposition of his former chancellor.
This first quarrel was the immediate prelude to another concerning a far
more important matter and of far more lasting consequences.
Administration and jurisdiction, revenue and justice, were so closely
connected in the medieval state that any attempt to increase the revenue,
or to improve and centralize the administrative machinery, raised at once
the question of changes in the judicial system. But Henry II was not
interested in getting a larger income merely, or a closer centralization.
His whole reign goes to show that he had a high conception of the duty of
the king to make justice prevail and to repress disorder and crime. But
this was a duty which he could not begin to carry out without at once
encountering the recognized rights and still wider claims of the Church.
Starting from the words of the apostle against going to law before
unbelievers, growing at first as a process of voluntary arbitration
within the Church, adding a criminal side with the growth of disciplinary
powers over clergy and members, and greatly stimulated and widened by the
legislation of the early Christian emperors, a body of law and a
judicial organization had been developed by the Church which rivalled
that of the State in its own field and surpassed it in scientific form
and content. In the hundred years since William the Conqueror landed in
England this system had been greatly perfected. The revival of the Roman
law in the schools of Italy had furnished both model and material, but
more important still the triumph of the Cluniac reformation, of the ideas
of centralization and empire, had given an immense stimulus to this
growth, and led to clearer conceptions than ever before of what to do and
how to do it. When the state tardily awoke to the same consciousness of
opportunity and method, it found a large part of what should have been
its own work in the hands of a rival power.
In no state in Christendom had the line between these conflicting
jurisdictions been clearly drawn. In England no attempt had as yet been
made to draw it; the only legislation had been in the other direction.
The edict of William I, separating the ecclesiastical courts from the
temporal, and giving them exclusive jurisdiction in spiritual causes,
must be regarded as a beneficial regulation as things then were. The same
thing can hardly be said of the clause in Stephen's charter to the Church
by which he granted it jurisdiction over all the clergy; yet under this
clause the Church had in fifteen years drawn into its hands, as nearly as
we can judge, more business that should naturally belong to the state
than in the three preceding reigns. This rapid attainment of what Anselm
could only have wished for, this enlarged jurisdiction of the Church,
stood directly in the way of the plans of the young king as he took up
the work of restoring the government of his grandfather. He had found out
this fact before the death of Archbishop Theobald and had taken some
steps to bring the question to an issue at that time, but he had been
obliged to cross to France and had not since been able to go on with the
matter. Now the refusal of Archbishop Thomas to grant his request about
the sheriff's aid probably did not make him any less ready to push what
he believed to be the clear rights of the state against the usurpations
of the clergy.
As the state assumed more and more the condition of settled order under
the new king, and the courts were able to enforce the laws everywhere,
the failures of justice which resulted from the separate position of the
clergy attracted more attention. The king was told that there had been
during his reign more than a hundred murders by clerks and great numbers
of other crimes, for none of which had it been possible to inflict the
ordinary penalties. Special cases began to be brought to his attention.
The most important of these was the case of Philip of Broi, a man of some
family and a canon of Bedford, who, accused of the murder of a knight,
had cleared himself by oath in the bishop's court. Afterwards the king's
justice in Bedford summoned him to appear in his court and answer to the
same charge, but he refused with insulting language which the justice at
once repeated to the king as a contempt of the royal authority. Henry was
very angry and swore "by the eyes of God," his favourite oath, that an
insult to his minister was an insult to himself and that the canon must
answer for it in his court. "Not so," said the archbishop, "for laymen
cannot be judges of the clergy. If the king complains of any injury, let
him come or send to Canterbury, and there he shall have full justice by
ecclesiastical authority." This declaration of the archbishop was the
extreme claim of the Church in its simplest form. Even the king could not
obtain justice for a personal injury in his own courts, and the strength
of Becket's position is shown by the fact that, in spite of all his
anger, Henry was obliged to submit. He could not, even then, get the case
of the murder reopened, and in the matter of the insult to his judge the
penalties which he obtained must have seemed to him very inadequate.
It seems altogether probable that this case had much to do with bringing
Henry to a determination to settle the question, what law and what
sovereign should rule in England. So long as such things were possible,
there could be no effective centralization and no supremacy of the
national law. Within three months of the failure of his plan of taxation
in the council at Woodstock the king made a formal demand of the Church
to recognize the right of the State to punish criminous clerks. The
bishops were summoned to a conference at Westminster on October 1. To
them the king proposed an arrangement, essentially the same as that
afterwards included in the Constitutions of Clarendon, by which the
question of guilt or innocence should be determined by the Church court,
but once pronounced guilty the clerk should be degraded by the Church and
handed over to the lay court for punishment. The bishops were not at
first united on the answer which they should make, but Becket had no
doubts, and his opinion carried the day. One of his biographers, Herbert
of Bosham, who was his secretary and is likely to have understood his
views, though he was if possible of an even more extreme spirit than his
patron, records the speech in which the archbishop made known to the king
the answer of the Church. Whether actually delivered or not, the speech
certainly states the principles on which Becket must have stood, and
these are those of the reformers of Cluny in their most logical form. The
Church is not subject to an earthly king nor to the law of the State
alone: Christ also is its king and the divine law its law. This is proved
by the words of our Lord concerning the "two swords." But those who are
by ordination the clergy of the Church, set apart from the nations of men
and peculiarly devoted to the work of God, are under no earthly king.
They are above kings and confer their power upon them, and far from being
subject to any royal jurisdiction they are themselves the judges of
kings. There can be no doubt but that Becket in his struggle with the
king had consciously before him the model of Anselm; but these words,
whether he spoke them to the king's face or not, forming as they did the
principles of his action and accepted by the great body of the clergy,
show how far the English Church had progressed along the road into which
Anselm had first led it.
Henry's only answer to the argument of the archbishop was to adopt
exactly the position of his grandfather in the earlier conflict, and to
inquire whether the bishops were willing to observe the ancient customs
of the realm. To this they made answer together and singly that they
were, "saving their order." This was of course to refuse, and the
conference came to an end with no other result than to define more
clearly the issue between Church and State. In the interval which
followed Becket was gradually made aware that his support in the Church
at large was not so strong as he could wish. The terror of the king's
anger still had its effect in England, and some of the bishops went over
to his side and tried to persuade the archbishop to some compromise. The
pope, Alexander III, who had taken refuge in France from the Emperor and
his antipope, saw more clearly than Becket the danger of driving another
powerful sovereign into the camp of schism and rebellion and counselled
moderation. He even sent a special representative to England, with
letters to Becket to this effect, and with instructions to urge him to
come to terms with the king.
At last Becket was persuaded to concede the form of words desired, though
his biographers asserted that he did this on the express understanding
that the concession should be no more than a form to save the honour of
the king. He had an interview with Henry at Oxford and engaged that he
would faithfully observe the customs of the realm. This promise Henry
received gladly, though not, it was noticed, with a return of his
accustomed kindness to the archbishop; and he declared at once that, as
the refusal of Thomas to obey the customs of the realm had been public,
so the satisfaction made to his honour must be public and the pledge be
given in the presence of the nobles and bishops of the kingdom. To this
Becket apparently offered no objection, nor to the proposal which
followed, according to his secretary at the suggestion of the
archbishop's enemies, but certainly from Henry's point of view the next
natural step, that after the promise had been given, the customs of the
realm should be put into definite statement by a "recognition," or formal
inquiry, that there might be no further danger of either civil or
clerical courts infringing on the jurisdiction of the other.
For this double purpose, to witness the archbishop's declaration and to
make the recognition, a great council met at Clarendon, near Salisbury,
towards the end of January, 1164. Some questions both of what happened at
this council and of the order of events are still unsettled, but the
essential points seem clear. Becket gave the required promise with no
qualifying phrase, and was followed by each of the bishops in the same
form. Then came the recognition, whether provided for beforehand or not,
by members of the council who were supposed to know the ancient practice,
for the purpose of putting into definite form the customs to which the
Church had agreed. The document thus drawn up, which has come down to us
known as the Constitutions of Clarendon, records in its opening paragraph
the fact and form of this agreement and the names of the consenting
bishops. It is probable, however, that this refers to the earlier
engagement, and that after the customs were reduced to definite
statement, no formal promise was made. The archbishop in the discussion
urged his own ignorance of the customs, and it is quite possible that,
receiving his training in the time of Stephen and believing implicitly in
the extreme claims of the Church, he was really ignorant of what could be
proved by a historical study of the ancient practice. The king demanded
that the bishops should put their seals to this document, but this they
evidently avoided. Becket's secretary says that he temporized and
demanded delay. Henry had gained, however, great advantage from the
council, both in what he had actually accomplished and in position for
the next move.
To all who accepted the ideas which now ruled the Church there was
much to complain of, much that was impossible in the Constitutions of
Clarendon. On the question of the trial of criminous clerks, which had
given rise to these difficulties, it was provided, according to the
best interpretation, that the accused clerk should be first brought
before a secular court and there made to answer to the charge. Whatever
he might plead, guilty or not guilty, he was to be transferred to the
Church court for trial and, if found guilty, for degradation from the
priesthood; he was then to be handed over to the king's officer who
had accompanied him to the bishop's court for sentence in the king's
court to the state's punishment of his crime.46 Becket and his party
regarded this as a double trial and a double punishment for a single
offence. But this was not all. The Constitutions went beyond the
original controversy. Suits to determine the right of presentation
to a living even between two clerks must be tried in the king's court,
as also suits to determine whether a given fee was held in free alms or
as a lay fee. None of the higher clergy were to go out of the kingdom
without the king's permission, nor without his consent were appeals
to be taken from ecclesiastical courts to the pope, his barons to be
excommunicated or their lands placed under an interdict. The feudal
character of the clergy who held in chief of the king was strongly
insisted on. They must hold their lands as baronies, and answer for
them to the royal justices, and perform all their feudal obligations
like other barons; and if their fiefs fell vacant, they must pass into
the king's hand and their revenues be treated as domain revenues during
the vacancy. A new election must be made by a delegation summoned by
the king, in his chapel, and with his consent, and the new prelate
must perform liege homage and swear fealty to the king before his
consecration.
In short, the Constitutions are a codification of the ancient customs on
all those points where conflict was likely to arise between the old ideas
of the Anglo-Norman State and the new ideas of the Hildebrandine Church.
For there can be little doubt that Henry's assertion that he was but
stating the customs of his grandfather was correct. There is not so much
proof in regard to one or two points as we should like, but all the
evidence that we have goes to show that the State was claiming nothing
new, and about most of the points there can be no question. Nor was this
true of England only. The rights asserted in the Constitutions had been
exercised in general in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries by every
strong state in Europe. The weakness of Henry's position was not in its
historical support, but in the fact that history had been making since
his grandfather's day. Nor was the most important feature of the history
that had been made in the interval the fact that the State in its
weakness had allowed many things to slip out of its hands. For Henry's
purpose of recovery the rise of the Church to an equality with the State,
its organization as an international monarchy, conscious of the value of
that organization and powerful to defend it, was far more important. The
Anglo-Norman monarchy had been since its beginning the strongest in
Europe. Henry II was in no less absolute control of the State than his
ancestors. But now there stood over against the king, as there never had
before, a power almost as strong in England as his own. Thomas understood
this more clearly than Henry did. He not merely believed in the justice
and necessity of his cause, but he believed in his ability to make it
prevail. Thomas may have looked to Anselm as his model and guide of
conduct, but in position he stood on the results of the work which Anselm
had begun, and he was even more convinced than his predecessor had been
of the righteousness of his cause and of his power to maintain it. This
conflict was likely to be a war of giants, and at its beginning no man
could predict its outcome.
Even if the council of Clarendon closed, as we have supposed it did, with
no definite statement on Thomas's part of his attitude towards the
Constitutions, and not, as some accounts imply, with a flat refusal to
accept them, he probably left the council fully determined not to do so.
He carried away with him an official copy of the Constitutions as
evidence of the demands which had been made and shortly afterwards he
suspended himself from his functions because of the promise which he had
originally given to obey them, and applied to the pope for absolution.
For some months matters drifted with no decisive events. Both sides made
application to the pope. The archbishop attempted to leave England
without the knowledge of the king, but failed to make a crossing. The
courts were still unable to carry out the provisions of the
Constitutions. Finally a case arose involving the archbishop's own court,
and on his disregard of the king's processes he was summoned to answer
before the curia regis at Northampton on October 6.
It is to be regretted that we have no account of the interesting and
dramatic events of this assembly from a hand friendly to the king and
giving us his point of view. In the biographies of the archbishop,
written by clerks who were not likely to know much feudal law, it is not
easy to trace out the exact legal procedure nor always to discover the
technical right which we may be sure the king believed was on his side in
every step he took. At the outset it was recorded that as a mark of his
displeasure Henry omitted to send to the archbishop the customary
personal summons to attend the meeting of the court and summoned him only
through the sheriff, but, though the omission of a personal summons to
one of so high rank would naturally be resented by his friends, as he was
to go, not as a member of the court, but as an accused person to answer
before it, the omission was probably quite regular. Immediately after the
organization of the court, Becket was put on his trial for neglect to
obey the processes of the king's court in the earlier case. Summoned
originally on an appeal for default of judgment, he had neither gone to
the court himself nor sent a personal excuse, but he had instructed his
representatives to plead against the legality of the appeal. This he
might have done himself if personally before the court, but, as he had
not come, there was technically a refusal to obey the king's commands
which gave Henry his opportunity. Before the great curia regis the case
was very simple. The archbishop seems to have tried to get before the
court the same plea as to the illegality of the appeal, but it was ruled
out at once, as "it had no place there." In other words, the case was now
a different one. It was tried strictly on the ground of the archbishop's
feudal obligations, and there he had no defence. Judgment was given
against him, and all his movables were declared in the king's mercy.
William Fitz Stephen, one of Becket's biographers who shows a more
accurate knowledge of the law than the others, and who was present at the
trial, records an interesting incident of the judgment. A dispute arose
between the barons and the bishops as to who should pronounce it, each
party trying to put the unpleasant duty on the other. To the barons'
argument that a bishop should declare the decision of the court because
Becket was a bishop, the bishops answered that they were not sitting
there as bishops but as barons of the realm and peers of the lay barons.
The king interposed, and the sentence was pronounced by the aged Henry,
Bishop of Winchester. Becket seems to have submitted without opposition,
and the bishops who were present, except Gilbert Foliot of London, united
in giving security for the payment of the fine.
A question that inevitably arises at this point and cannot be answered
is, why Henry did not rest satisfied with the apparently great advantage
he had gained. He had put into operation more than one of the articles of
the Constitutions of Clarendon, and against the archbishop in person.
Becket had been obliged to recognize the jurisdiction of the curia
regis over himself and to submit to its sentence, and the whole body of
bishops had recognized their feudal position in the state and had acted
upon it. Perhaps the king wished to get an equally clear precedent in a
case which was a civil one rather than a misdemeanour. Perhaps he was so
exasperated against the archbishop that he was resolved to pursue him to
his ruin, but, though more than one thing points to this, it does not
seem a reasonable explanation. Whatever may have been his motive, the
king immediately,--the accounts say on the same day with the first
trial;--demanded that his former chancellor should account for £300
derived from the revenues of the castles of Eye and Berkhampsted held by
him while chancellor. Thomas answered that the money had been spent in
the service of the state, but the king refused to admit that this had
been done by his authority. Again Becket submitted, though not
recognizing the right of the court to try him in a case in which he had
not been summoned, and gave security for the payment.
Still this was not sufficient. On the next day the king demanded the
return of 500 marks which he had lent Becket for the Toulouse campaign,
and of a second 500 which had been borrowed of a Jew on the king's
security. This was followed at once by a further demand for an account of
the revenues of the archbishopric and of all other ecclesiastical fiefs
which had been vacant while Thomas was chancellor. To pay the sum which
this demand would call for would be impossible without a surrender of all
the archbishop's sources of income for several years, and it almost seems
as if Henry intended this result. The barons apparently thought as much,
for from this day they ceased to call at Becket's quarters. The next day
the clergy consulted together on the course to be taken and there was
much difference of opinion. Some advised the immediate resignation of the
archbishopric, others a firm stand accepting the consequence of the
king's anger; and there were many opinions between these two extremes.
During the day an offer of 2000 marks in settlement of the claim was sent
to the king on the advice of Henry of Winchester, but it was refused, and
the day closed without any agreement among the clergy on a common course
of action.
The next day was Sunday, and the archbishop did not leave his lodgings.
On Monday he was too ill to attend the meeting of the court, much to
Henry's anger. The discussions of Saturday and the reflections of the
following days had apparently led Becket to a definite decision as to his
own conduct. The king was in a mood, as it would surely seem to him, to
accept nothing short of his ruin. No support was to be expected from the
barons. The clergy, even the bishops, were divided in opinion and it
would be impossible to gain strength enough from them to escape anything
which the king might choose to demand. We must, I think, explain Becket's
conduct from this time on by supposing that he now saw clearly that all
concessions had been and would be in vain, and that he was resolved to
exert to the utmost the strength of passive opposition which lay in the
Church, to put his case on the highest possible grounds, and to gain for
the Church the benefits of persecution and for himself the merits, if
needs be, of the martyr.
Early the next morning the bishops, terrified by the anger of the king,
came to Becket and tried to persuade him to yield completely, even to
giving up the archbishopric. This he refused. He rebuked them for their
action against him already in the court, forbade them to sit in judgment
on him again, himself appealing to the pope, and ordered them, if any
secular person should lay hands on him in punishment, to excommunicate
him at once. Against this order Gilbert Foliot immediately appealed. The
bishops then departed, and Becket entered the monastery church and
celebrated the mass of St. Stephen's day, opening with the words of the
Psalm, "Princes did sit and speak against me." This was a most audacious
act, pointed directly at the king, and a public declaration that he
expected and was prepared for the fate of the first martyr. Naturally the
anger of the court was greatly increased. From the celebration of the
mass, Becket went to the meeting of the court, his cross borne before him
in the usual manner, but on reaching the door of the meeting-place, he
took it from his cross-bearer and carrying it in his own hands entered
the hall. Such an unusual proceeding as this could have but one meaning.
It was a public declaration that he was in fear of personal violence, and
that any one who laid hands on him must understand his act to be an
attack on the cross and all that it signified. Some of the bishops tried
to persuade him to abandon this attitude, but in vain. So far as we can
judge the mood of Henry, Becket had much to justify his feeling, and if
he were resolved not to accept the only other alternative of complete
submission, but determined to resist to the utmost, the act was not
unwise.
When the bishops reported to the king the primate's order forbidding them
to sit in trial of him again, it was seen at once to be a violation of
the Constitutions of Clarendon; and certain barons were sent to him to
inquire if he stood to this, to remind him of his oath as the king's
liege-man, and of the promise, equivalent to an oath, which he had made
at Clarendon to keep the Constitutions "in good faith, without guile, and
according to law," and to ask if he would furnish security for the
payment of the claims against him as chancellor. In reply Becket stood
firmly to his position, and renewed the prohibition and the appeal to the
pope. The breach of the Constitutions being thus placed beyond question,
the king demanded the judgment of the court, bishops and barons together.
The bishops urged the ecclesiastical dangers in which they would be
placed if they disregarded the archbishop's prohibition, and suggested
that instead they should themselves appeal to Rome against him as a
perjurer. To this the king at last agreed, and the appeal was declared by
Hilary, Bishop of Chichester, who had throughout inclined to the king's
side, and who urged upon the archbishop with much vigour the oath which
they had all taken at Clarendon under his leadership and which he was now
forcing them to violate. Becket's answer to this speech is the weakest
and least honest thing that he did during all these days of trial. "We
promised nothing at Clarendon," he said, "without excepting the rights of
the Church. The very clauses to which you refer, 'in good faith, without
guile, and according to law,' are saving clauses, because it is
impossible to observe anything in good faith and according to law if it
is contrary to the laws of God and to the fealty due the Church. Nor is
there any such thing as the dignity of a Christian king where the liberty
of the Church which he has sworn to observe has perished."
The court then, without the bishops, found the archbishop guilty of
perjury and probably of treason. The formal pronunciation of the sentence
in the presence of Becket was assigned to the justiciar, the Earl of
Leicester, but he was not allowed to finish. With violent words Thomas
interrupted him and bitterly denounced him for presuming as a layman to
sit in judgment on his spiritual father. In the pause that followed,
Becket left the hall still carrying his cross. As he passed out, the
spirit of the chancellor overcame for a moment that of the bishop, and he
turned fiercely on those who were saying "perjured traitor" and cried
that, if it were not for his priestly robes and the wickedness of the
act, he would know how to answer in arms such an accusation. During the
night that followed, Becket secretly left Northampton, and by a
roundabout way after two weeks succeeded in escaping to the continent in
disguise. The next day the court held its last session. After some
discussion it was resolved to allow the case to stand as it was, and not
even to take the archbishop's fief into the king's hands until the pope
should decide the appeal, a resolution which shows how powerful was the
Church and how strong was the influence of the bishops who were acting
with the king. At the same time an embassy of great weight and dignity
was appointed to represent the king before the pope, consisting of the
Archbishop of York, the Bishops of London, Chichester, Exeter, and
Worcester, two earls and two barons, and three clerks from the king's
household. They were given letters to the King of France and to the Count
of Flanders which said that Thomas, "formerly Archbishop of Canterbury,"
had fled the kingdom as a traitor and should not be received in their
lands.
In the somewhat uncertain light in which we are compelled to view these
events, this quarrel seems unnecessary, and the guilt of forcing it on
Church and State in England, at least at this time and in these
circumstances, appears to rest with Henry. The long patience of his
grandfather, which was willing to wait the slow process of events and
carefully shunned the drawing of sharp issues when possible, he certainly
does not show in this case. It is more than likely, however, that the
final result would have been the same in any case. No reconciliation was
possible between the ideas or the characters of the two chief
antagonists, and the necessary constitutional growth of the state made
the collision certain. It was a case in which either the Church or the
State must give way, but greater moderation of action and demand would
have given us a higher opinion of Henry's practical wisdom; and the
essential justice of his cause hardly excuses such rapid and violent
pushing of his advantage. On the other hand Thomas's conduct, which must
have been exceedingly exasperating to the hot blood which Henry had
inherited, must be severely condemned in many details. We cannot avoid
the feeling that much about it was insincere and theatrical, and even an
intentional challenging of the fate he seemed to dread. But yet it does
not appear what choice was left him between abjectly giving up all that
he had been trained to believe of the place of the Church in the world
and entering on open war with the king.
The war now declared dragged slowly on for six years with few events that
seemed to bring a decision nearer till towards the end of that period.
Henry's embassy returned from the pope at Christmas time and reported
that no formal judgment had been rendered on the appeal. The king then
put in force the ordinary penalty for failure of service and confiscated
the archbishop's revenues. He went even further than this in some acts
that were justifiable and some that were spiteful. He ordered the
confiscation of the revenues of the archbishop's clerks who had
accompanied him, prohibited all appeals to the pope, and ordered Becket's
relatives to join him in exile. As to the archbishop, whatever one may
think of his earlier attitude we can have but little sympathy with his
conduct from this time on. He went himself to the pope after the
departure of Henry's messengers, but though Alexander plainly inclined to
his side, he did not obtain a formal decision. Then he retired to the
abbey of Pontigny in Burgundy, where he resided for some time.
Political events did not wait the settlement of the conflict with the
Church, though nothing of great interest occurred before its close. Henry
crossed to Normandy in the spring of 1165, where an embassy came to him
from the Emperor which resulted in the marriage of his daughter Matilda
with Henry the Lion, of the house of Guelf. Two clerks who returned with
this embassy to Germany seem to have involved the king in some
embarrassment by promises of some kind to support the emperor against the
pope. It does not appear, however, that Henry ever intended to recognize
the antipope; and, whatever the promises were, he promptly disavowed
them. Later in the year two campaigns in Wales are less interesting from
a military point of view than as leading to further experiments in
taxation. The year 1166 is noteworthy for the beginning of extensive
judicial and administrative reforms which must be considered hereafter
with the series to which they belong. In that year also Becket began a
direct attack upon his enemies in England.
He began by sending to the king three successive warnings, all based on
the assumption that in such a dispute the final decision must remain with
the Church and that the State must always give way. His next step was the
solemn excommunication of seven supporters of the king, mostly clerks,
but including Richard of Lucy, the justiciar. The king was warned to
expect the same fate himself, and all obedience to the Constitutions of
Clarendon was forbidden. The effect of this act was not what Becket
anticipated. It led rather to a reaction of feeling against him from its
unnecessary severity, and a synod of the clergy of the archbishopric
entered an appeal against it. A new embassy was sent to the pope who was
then at Rome to get the appeal decided, and was much more favourably
received by Alexander who seems to have been displeased with Becket's
action. He promised to send legates to Henry to settle the whole question
with him. The occupation of Britanny by which it was brought under
Henry's direct control and a short and inconclusive war with the king of
France took up the interval until the legates reached Normandy in
October, 1167. Their mission proved a failure. Becket, who came in person
to the inquiry which they held, refused to accept any compromise or to
modify in any way his extreme position. On the other side Henry was very
angry because they refused to deprive the archbishop.
The year 1168 was a troubled one for Henry, with revolts in Poitou and
Britanny, supported by the king of France, and with useless negotiations
with Louis. Early in 1169 the pope sent new envoys to try to reconcile
king and primate with instructions to bring pressure to bear on both
parties. The king of France also came to the meeting and exerted his
influence, but the result was a second failure. Becket had invented a new
saving clause which he thought the king might be induced to accept. He
would submit "saving the honour of God," but Henry understood the point
and could see no difference between this and the old reservation. Becket
finally stood firmly against the pressure of the envoys and the influence
of Louis, and Henry was not moved by the threats which the pope had
directed to be made if necessary. A third embassy later in the year
seemed for a moment about to find a possible compromise, but ended in
another failure, both parties refusing to make any real concession. The
interval between these two attempts at reconciliation Becket had used to
excommunicate about thirty of his opponents in England, mostly churchmen,
including the Bishops of London and Salisbury.
For more than a year longer the quarrel went on, the whole Church
suffering from the results, and new points arising to complicate the
issue. The danger that England would be placed under an interdict
Henry met by most stringent regulations against the admission of any
communications from the pope, or any intercourse with pope or
archbishop. On the question which arose in the constant negotiations
as to the compensation which should be made to Becket for his loss of
revenue since he had left England, he showed himself as unyielding as
on every other point, and demanded the uttermost farthing. For some
time the king had wished to have his son Henry crowned, and on June
14, 1170, that ceremony was actually performed at Westminster by the
Archbishop of York, who had, as Henry believed or asserted, a special
permission from the pope for the purpose. Of course Becket resented
this as a new invasion of his rights and determined to exact for it
the proper penalties. Finally, towards the end of July, an agreement
was reached which was no compromise; it simply ignored the points in
dispute and omitted all the qualifying phrases. The king agreed to
receive the archbishop to his favour and to restore him his
possessions, and Becket accepted this. The agreement can hardly have
been regarded by either side as anything more than a truce. Neither
intended to abandon any right for which he had been contending, but
both were exhausted by the conflict and desired an interval for
recovery, perhaps with a hope of renewing the strife from a better
position.
It was December 1 before Thomas actually landed in England. He then
came bringing war, not peace. He had sent over, in advance of his own
crossing, letters which he had solicited and obtained from the pope,
suspending from their functions all the bishops who had taken part in
the coronation of the young king, and reviving the excommunications of
the Bishops of London and Salisbury. Then, landing at Sandwich, he went
on to Canterbury, where he was received with joy. But there was little
real joy for Becket or his friends in the short remainder of his life,
unless it may have been the joy of conflict and of anticipated
martyrdom. To messengers who asked the removal of the sentence against
the bishops, he refused any concession except on their unconditional
promise to abide by the pope's decision; and the three prelates most
affected--York, London, and Salisbury--went over to Normandy to the
king. A plan to visit the court of the young king at London was stopped
by orders to return to Canterbury. On Christmas day, at the close of a
sermon from the text "Peace on earth to men of good-will," he issued new
excommunications against some minor offenders, and bitterly denounced,
in words that seemed to have the same effect, those who endangered the
peace between himself and the king.
It was on the news of this Christmas proclamation, or perhaps on the
report of the bishops who had come from England, that Henry gave way to
his violent temper, and in an outburst of passion denounced those whom he
had cherished and covered with favours, because they could not avenge him
of this one priest. On these words four knights of his household resolved
to punish the archbishop, and, leaving the court secretly, they went over
to England. They were Reginald Fitz Urse, William of Tracy, Hugh of
Morville, and Richard le Breton. An attempt to stop them when their
departure was observed did not succeed, and, collecting supporters from
the local enemies of the archbishop, they forced their way into his
presence on the afternoon of December 29. Their reproaches, demands, and
threats Becket met with firmness and dignity, refusing to be influenced
by fear. Finding that they could gain nothing by words, they withdrew to
get their arms, and Becket was hurried into the cathedral by his friends.
As they were going up the steps from the north-west transept to the
choir, their enemies met them, calling loudly for "the traitor, Thomas
Becket." The archbishop turned about and stepped down to the floor of the
transept, repelling their accusations with bitter words and accusations
of his own, and was there struck down by their swords and murdered; not
before the altar, as is sometimes said, though within the doors of his
own church.
Footnotes
[46] See Maitland, Henry II and the Criminous Clerks, in his
Canon Law in the Church of England (1898). (Engl. Hist.,
Rev. vii, 224.)
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