HENRY II. AND THOMAS BECKET.
The English Church--Schools of Clergy--Rise of Becket--Quarrel with
the King--Exile--Death.
[Sidenote:
The English
Church.
]
The history of the Church of England is during many ages the chief part
of the history of the nation; throughout it is a very large part of the
history of the people. Their ways of thinking, their system of morals,
their intellectual growth, their intercourse with the world outside,
cannot be understood but by an examination of the vicissitudes of their
religious history; and it plays a scarcely less important part in the
development of their political institutions. Christianity in England,
looked at by the eye of history, means not only the knowledge of God
and His salvation by Christ Jesus; it carries with it, besides, all
that is implied in civilization, national growth and national unity.
[Sidenote:
Under the
Heptarchy.
]
When the English, under the seven or eight struggling and quarrelling
dynasties whose battles form for centuries all the recorded life of
the island, were seven or eight distinct nationalities,--some of them
tribally connected, some of them using allied systems of law, but
otherwise having scarcely anything in common beyond dialects of a
common growing language,--altogether without any common organization
or the desire of forming one,--the conversion in the seventh century
taught them to regard themselves as one people. They were formed by St.
Gregory and Archbishop Theodore into an organized Christian Church, the
several dioceses of which represented the several kingdoms or provinces
of their divided state.
[Sidenote:
National
unity first
realized.
]
Thus arranged in one or, later on, in two ecclesiastical provinces, the
wise men of the several tribes learned to act in concert; the tribes
themselves, casting aside their tribal superstitions for a common
worship, found how few real obstacles there were to prevent them from
acting as one people; and from the date of the conversion the tendency
of the kingdoms was to unite rather than to break up. Although this
process was slow--for it went on for four centuries, and was scarcely
completed when the Norman Conquest forced the mass of varied national
elements into cohesion--it was a uniform tendency, contrasted with, and
counteracting numerous and varying tendencies towards separation. The
Church built up the unity of the State, and in so doing it built up the
unity of the nation.
[Sidenote:
Great power
of the
clergy.
]
And one result of this was to make the Church extremely powerful in
the state. There was but one archbishop of Canterbury when there were
seven kings; that archbishop’s word was listened to with respect and
obeyed in all the seven kingdoms, in any one of which the command of
a strange king would have been received with contempt. The archbishop
was exceedingly powerful, both in Kent, his peculiar diocese, and by
his alliances with the states and churches of the Continent; and the
diocesan bishops were each, in his own district, a match for their
kings, because they knew that in any struggle they could depend on
the friendship of all their fellows outside their special kingdom,
much more than the peccant king could depend on the assistance of his
fellow-kings. They could meet in one council, whilst the several kings
could only collect their own Witenagemots; they were, in fact, the
rulers of the Church of England, whilst the kings were only kings of
Kent, Mercia and Wessex. And when the kingdoms became one under the
descendants of Egbert the prelates retained the same power.
[Sidenote:
Alliance of
Church and
State.
]
Never, perhaps, in any country were Church and State more closely
united than they were in Anglo-Saxon times in England; for they were
united, with careful recognition of their distinct functions, not, as
in Spain and some other lands, confounding what should have been kept
distinct, or making the prelates great temporal lords, or the national
deliberations mere ecclesiastical councils. The prelates, the bishops
and abbots, formed, as wise men, qualified by their spiritual office
to be counsellors, a very large proportion of the Witenagemot, the
ruling council of the kingdom; in every county the bishop sat in the
courts with the sheriff, to declare the Divine law, as the sheriff did
the secular law. The clergy were, for all moral offences, under the
same rules as the laity, save that it was the bishop who in the common
court attended to their case and saw substantial justice enforced. So
matters went on until the Conquest, the changes which took place in
the meantime affecting the spiritual discipline and character rather
than the constitutional position of the clergy; making them, that
is, more or less secular in their views and aims, but not lessening
their power. Nay, every change strengthened rather than weakened their
position. Dunstan was the prime minister of the last mighty king; but
under Canute the prelates were even more powerful than under Edgar; and
we can understand from the history of the Conquest that it was not the
fault of the English-born bishops that William the Norman obtained the
victory in the council as well as in the field.
[Sidenote:
Effects of
the Conquest
on the
Church.
]
[Sidenote:
The Hildebrandine
revival.
]
[Sidenote:
Church
policy of the
Conqueror.
]
The Conquest had some very marked effects in this region of life.
In the first place, it was absolutely necessary for William to have
the clergy on his side; if he had not he would have nothing to
form a counterpoise for the power of the barons, which was already
threatening, nor would he have been able to get hold of the people. He
wanted to be a national king--the protector of the national Church,
the king of the English people. In the hope of securing the support of
the bishops he waited for three years before he took summary measures
against those who were still secretly or overtly hostile. When patience
was seen to be unavailing he deposed Archbishop Stigand, no doubt at
the instigation of the Pope, but in his place he set, not a Norman,
who would have alienated the people, but a wise Italian, under whose
counsels the Norman king and the English people were drawn together
almost as closely as the king and people had been before the Normans
came. Two effects resulted directly from this. The Conquest of England
coincides in point of time with the great period of the Hildebrandine
ideas; the reign of Gregory VII. and of the Popes appointed by his
influence, in which a new interpretation was put on the relations of
Church and State, and a jealous equilibrium established or attempted,
the result of which in France and Germany seemed to be the tying of the
State to the chariot-wheels of the Church. Of such a consummation there
was in England no chance under William and Lanfranc, but nevertheless
the coincidence in time was not without its consequences. England
and her Church were drawn into the vortex of the Church politics of
Europe, and the relations between Church and State in England were
re-modelled upon the new type. The courts of the bishops for the trial
of clerks were separated from the courts of the sheriffs; the election
of prelates was arranged by a sort of compromise between royal power
and canonical form; the bishops became barons and held their lands, or
a portion of them, by the new baronial tenure; and their councils were
marked off by a much broader line than they had been from the councils
of the Witan, or the courts of the king. Then, too, a new concordat
was arranged to regulate the exercise of the papal power, for which,
before the Conquest, the English had had a respectful but very distant
regard. The king insisted that when there were rival popes he should
be the judge to determine which should be accepted in England; no suit
or appeal should be carried to Rome without his leave; none of his
servants should be excommunicated against his sovereign will; no legate
should land without his permission; no ecclesiastical legislation
should be enforced without his approval.
[Sidenote:
The
Norman
Bishops.
]
Within these limits the bishops had a great deal of new power; and, as
they succeeded in a great measure to the implicit faith and obedience
which the nation had given to their own English bishops, they were able
to exert a very strong influence towards keeping the nation together.
They were kept by the king upon his side, as opposed to the barons, and
securing them he secured the nation. This is clear even in the history
of Anselm, who, although opposed to and persecuted by the king, never
forgot his duty to the people so far as to take part with the barons
against him. Besides the bishops, however, there was in the monasteries
a great reserve fund of national feeling; and, up to the reign of Henry
II., what little we can trace of English feeling is to be traced in the
writings of the monks; they kept alive an English sentiment as distinct
from the new national idea that was to blend English and Norman, the
king and the bishops more distinctly representing the latter.
[Sidenote:
In Stephen’s
reign.
]
[Sidenote:
Secular
school.
]
These things being so, we are able to understand what it was that
gave the prelates the great moral weight they possessed in Stephen’s
reign, and to perceive how vast was the importance of maintaining the
alliance between them and the crown. We learn too how the many streams
of influence which they guided reacted upon the clerical body itself,
and produced several distinct schools or classes of ecclesiastical
character. In the first place, the kings had taken prelates to be
their ministers, and had promoted their ministers to be prelates.
Bishop Roger of Salisbury was not only a powerful ecclesiastic but
the royal justiciar, the head of all the courts and the treasurer of
all the money of the king. Under him was a set of clerks who would
set the fashion for one school of the clergy, secular in mind and aim
and manners; often married men, so far as their right to marry can be
accounted valid, canons of cathedrals where they provided for their
children and made estates for themselves; worthy men most of them, the
predecessors of the clerical magistrates of this day, far greater in
quarter sessions and county meetings than in convocation or missionary
work. That was one very strong school--a school that required tender
handling both politically and ecclesiastically, and in the view of
which we can understand how important it was for Bishop Roger to secure
the consent of the Pope and the archbishops to his holding secular
office. For it is said that, worldly man as he was, he refused, as a
matter of conscience as well as policy, to act as the king’s minister,
without the distinct approval of the saintly Anselm and his successors,
the archbishops as well as the popes.
[Sidenote:
Ecclesiastical
school.
]
A second class was composed of the ecclesiastical politicians, men,
that is, who were before all things Churchmen, of whom Henry of
Winchester is one of the best specimens. These did not like the first,
sink the clergyman in the statesman or the magistrate, and accept
preferment as the mere reward of political service; they were not the
Sadducees but the Pharisees of the time; they would not marry, nor sell
livings, nor act against the Pope; whatever secular power they could
get they would use for the benefit of the Church. To say this is not to
condemn them; they saw in the service of the Church the clearest and
readiest way of serving both God and man. These men were in tone and
morals a higher set of men than the first. They were in close alliance
with the see of Rome; they knew far more than the others about the
state of Christendom generally; they were scholars, the founders of
universities, the protectors of culture; they prevented the Church from
becoming thoroughly secular; and, if there was a higher type, it was a
type also much more liable to be assumed by counterfeits. It is a great
mistake to undervalue this school. It would seem probable that both
Archbishop Theobald as well as his rival, Henry of Winchester, should
be referred to it; it was the party of the Legate, the party that tried
to introduce the Civil law as a subject of study at Oxford; that went
abroad to attend councils, that bearded royal tyranny in Church and
State.
[Sidenote:
The Spiritual
school.
]
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.
[Sidenote:
Rise of
Thomas
Becket.
]
[Sidenote:
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.
[Sidenote:
Henry’s confidence
in him.
]
[Sidenote:
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.
[Sidenote:
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.
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.
[Sidenote:
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.
[Sidenote:
Henry
returns from
France
1163.
]
[Sidenote:
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.
[Sidenote:
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.
[Sidenote:
Second
Welsh war,
1163.
]
[Sidenote:
Council at
Woodstock.
]
Immediately after the king went on his second Welsh war, a sort of
military demonstration marked by no great victory or defeat, and on
the 1st of July called a great court at Woodstock to witness the
homage of the princes. The King of Scots made his appearance at this
council, and took the oath of fealty to the little heir to the crown,
Henry, who was now eight years old. This was the first opportunity
that the archbishop had of declaring his new attitude. He had been to
visit the Pope, Alexander III., at Tours. The Pope was in exile from
his see; the Emperor Frederick had refused to acknowledge him, and
had set up an anti-Pope. Henry and Lewis, the former probably acting
by Becket’s advice, had in 1161 recognized Alexander as the Catholic
Pope, and Tours, where he was holding the council at which Becket
attended, was within the dominions of Henry. We can only suppose that
the sight of the Pope kindled Becket’s zeal, not so much against his
own lord who was the Pope’s friend, as against the secular power in
general, of which he had been hitherto a devoted servant. Anyhow he
came back from Tours prepared, on the first question, ecclesiastical or
civil, which might arise, to take the lead of what might be called the
constitutional opposition; an idea which is, for the first time since
the Norman Conquest, realized in the course he now adopted.
[Sidenote:
Becket
opposes the
king on a
financial
point.
]
As we should expect from our knowledge of later crises of the kind, the
bone of contention was found in the financial budget of the year. Henry
was, as usual, busy with his reforms; and although he was an honest
reformer and had a true genius for organization, he liked best those
methods of reform that helped to fill the treasury. The administration
of the sheriffs was during the later part of the reign a frequent
subject of legislative ordinance, and the question which now arose was
connected with it. The sheriffs had been used to collect from every
hide of land in their counties two shillings annually. It was probable
that out of this a fixed sum was paid to the king under the name of
Danegeld; certainly the Danegeld was collected at that rate; and as the
sums paid into the Exchequer under that name were very small compared
with the extent of land that paid the tax, it is probable that the
sheriffs paid a fixed composition, and retained the surplus as wages
for their services in the execution of judicial work and police. Our
authorities merely tell us that the king proposed to take away this
money from the sheriffs and bring it into the general account of his
revenue. Thomas opposed this; declared that the tax should not go
into the king’s coffers, that the sheriffs should not lose, that the
lands of his Church should pay the tax no more; and he seems to have
prevailed, although we have no positive record to that effect.
[Sidenote:
Constitutional
importance
of this act.
]
[Sidenote:
Abolition of
Danegeld.
]
Two most important points stand out here. This is the first case of
any express opposition being made to the king’s financial dealings
since the Conquest. Until now, whenever money was wanted, the royal
necessities were laid before the national council, the assembly of
bishops, earls, and great vassals, and others, and the method was
explained by which they were to be satisfied. If he wanted to marry
his daughter, or to knight his son, or to tax his towns, he said how
much he wanted, and it was paid. Here, however, we find the archbishop
objecting to the royal dealings with the Danegeld, and thus asserting
the right of the national council to refuse as well as to bestow money.
A second point is, that although ever since the reign of Ethelred,
with the exception of a few years of Edward the Confessor--who had,
as the legend ran, seen the devil sitting on the money-bags, and had,
therefore, abolished the tax--and certainly ever since the days of the
Conqueror, this odious impost had been levied, from this time it ceases
to appear by this name in the rolls of the revenue. Henry II. devised
other ways of getting money, but the Danegeld appears no more; and thus
the first-fruit of the first constitutional opposition is the abolition
of the most ancient property-tax, imposed as a bribe for the Danes. We
may well imagine how angry Henry would be at this interference, coming
from the man who had hitherto been his right hand in all his reforms.
[Sidenote:
Becket’s
new
enemies.
]
[Sidenote:
Council at
Westminster,
1163.
]
The courtiers saw it, and they began to raise little suits against
Becket on little matters by which they might harass him, and,
like true courtiers, accelerate the fall of a falling man. Such in
particular were John the Marshal, who raised a claim touching one
of the archiepiscopal manors, and William of Eynesford, who claimed
the patronage of one of the archbishop’s livings, and was rashly
excommunicated by Becket, contrary to the custom which forbade the
excommunication of a tenant-in-chief of the king without the king’s
license. Three months, however, passed away; and on the 1st of October
the king called a great council at Westminster.
[Sidenote:
Becket
defends the
clerical
immunities.
]
[Sidenote:
Henry appeals to
the ancient
customs.
]
In the process of his reforms he was startled by the absolute immunity
accorded to the crimes of the clergy, or persons pretending to be
clergymen, through the double jurisdiction of the lay and Church courts
which was introduced by William the Conqueror. Any clerk who committed
a crime could be demanded by his bishop from the officers of secular
justice, and sentenced by him to ecclesiastical punishment, which,
according to the law of William, was to be enforced by the secular
arm. But, in fact, so much afraid were the bishops of any clerk being
tried by the lay courts, and so jealous were the lay officers of being
called on to enforce the ecclesiastical punishments, that the whole
system broke down. Thieves and murderers who called themselves clerks
were demanded by the bishops and sentenced to penances and deprivation
of orders, two punishments at which they could afford to laugh. Henry
proposed that, when such prisoners were taken and found guilty, they
should be delivered to the bishops to be spiritually punished, and then
to the secular officers, to have sufficient punishment, to be hanged,
or blinded, or imprisoned as the mild laws of the period ordered.
Thomas would not hear of this--one punishment was enough for one
fault; if the clergyman was a thief, and proved so to be, let him be
degraded--that was enough; if he broke the law again, the law might
have him, for he was after degradation entitled to the privileges of a
clergyman no more. Henry grew very angry at this foolish and imprudent
proposal. Such, he said, had not been the law in the time of his
grandfather, the great king Henry the Elder, the lion of righteousness.
He would not submit, but would enforce the ancient rights and customs
of the realm as his grandfather had done. But what, it was asked, were
those customs? The reign of Stephen had witnessed a total abeyance
of secular law, and had listened to very extraordinary assertions of
ecclesiastical right and liberty. Let the ancient customs be first
ascertained, and then it would be time to say whether or no the clergy
and laity could act together. Becket allowed the bishops to promise
to observe these customs ‘saving their order.’ Henry declared that
that meant nothing. The assembly was broken up in wrath. The king
ordered the manors of Eye and Berkhampstead to be surrendered, and
the archbishop in two or three later interviews sought in vain for a
reconciliation.
[Sidenote:
Henry’s
motives.
]
Whether in this Henry acted from passionate indignation, or because he
saw that Becket had taken on himself the maintenance of the extreme
views propounded by the canonists as to the immunity of spiritual
men, we cannot now venture to determine. The breach between the two
was never healed; both probably saw that it never could even be
compromised. The dispute had its real basis in the difficulty of
adjusting legal and spiritual relations, which even at the present day
seems no nearer receiving a permanent settlement.
[Sidenote:
Council of
Clarendon,
1164.
]
[Sidenote:
Constitutions
of
Clarendon.
]
[Sidenote:
Becket’s
conduct.
]
Soon after Christmas another court was held, at Clarendon, one of
those forest palaces at which, as at Woodstock, Henry and his sons
used to call the counsellors together, and diversify business with
sport. It was called for the purpose of finishing the business began
at Westminster. The archbishop was asked whether he would accept the
ancient customs; he declined to do it without making conditions. The
king then ordered that the ‘recognition of the customs’ should be read.
This was the report of the great committee appointed to ascertain and
commit them to writing, a committee which nominally contained nearly
all the bishops and barons, but which Becket declared to consist only
of Richard de Lucy, the justiciar, and Jocelin de Bailleul, a French
lawyer. This report was the celebrated Constitutions of Clarendon, a
sort of code or concordat, in sixteen chapters, which included not
merely a system of definite rules to regulate the disposal of the
criminal clergy, but a method of proceeding by which all quarrels
that arose between the clergy and laity might be satisfactorily heard
and determined. Questions of advowsons, of disputed estates, of
excommunication, the rights of the spiritual courts over laymen, and
of lay courts over spiritual men, the rights of the crown in vacant
churches and in the nomination to benefices, and the right of appeal
in ecclesiastical causes, were all defined. No one was to carry a suit
farther than the archiepiscopal court; that is, no one was to appeal
to the Pope without the king’s leave. Prelates and parsons were not
to quit the kingdom without license. The sons of rustics or villeins
were not to be ordained without leave of the lords on whose lands they
were born. Many similar customs were recorded which show that Henry
had determined to set the jurisprudence of the kingdom, as touching
laymen and clergy alike, on a just and equal basis; no unfairness
towards the spiritual estate was intended, but simply the extinction
or restriction of the immunities, the existence of which threw the
whole system into disorder. An appeal to Rome must not be allowed
to paralyze the whole ecclesiastical jurisdiction, any more than an
assertion that the murderer or the murdered man--for the immunity told
both ways--was a clerk, should be allowed to insure the escape and
impunity of the murderer. Becket was perhaps, at the first sight of
these Constitutions, inclined or, as he would have said, tempted to
yield. He accepted the Constitutions. Almost as soon as he had done so
he drew back; either he recalled his concession or refused to set his
seal to the acceptance, or in some way recanted. We have no entirely
trustworthy evidence; but it would seem he declared that he had sinned,
that he would go to Rome, that he would resign his see, that he would
not act as archbishop without first receiving special absolution.
[Sidenote:
Council of
Northampton,
1164.
]
[Sidenote:
Summons
of Becket.
]
All this had no other effect than to exasperate Henry the more,
and to encourage the rapidly increasing crowd of Becket’s enemies.
Unfortunately we have no details the next six months, save that the
archbishop once or twice saw the king in vain. In October, 1164, at
Northampton, the cloud finally broke. Becket’s enemies saw their way
to crush him altogether, and Henry yielded to them. The council was
formally summoned; all the persons who held of the king directly--that
is, who were subject to no lord coming between them and the king--were
duly invited; the greater barons probably, as had been usual under
Henry I., and as the Great Charter afterwards enjoined, by special
letters; the minor ones by a general summons made known through the
sheriff in each shire. It was to the archbishop that the first letter
of summons ought by ancient rule to have been directed. Instead of that
he received a writ through the Sheriff of Kent ordering him to present
himself at Northampton to answer the complaint of John the Marshal.
[Sidenote: His trial.]
However informal this was, Becket complied, rather than by absenting
himself from the court to leave his cause in hands he could not trust.
He attended, and was overwhelmed. First he was sentenced to pay 500
marks to John the Marshal, who was declared to have proved his claim
against him. Then he was called on to present the accounts of the
Chancery, of which he had been acquitted by a general discharge when he
became archbishop. He now put on the aspect of a martyr, and declared
himself ready to die for the rights of his Church. Henry and his agents
declared that it was the person, not the prelate, who was aimed at;
that they were not assailing the rights of the Church but vindicating
the laws of the land. The bishops advised unconditional submission,
which would, no doubt have been the wisest course, for it would have
disarmed the king without conceding any matter of principle; for Henry
was not the man to make an extreme use of victory, and might still
perhaps have been induced to act with moderation. Instead of this,
as Henry grew more peremptory Thomas grew more provoking; at last he
declared himself really in danger, turned and fled.
[Sidenote: His flight.]
He went off in disguise from Northampton, and, after several trying
adventures, landed in Flanders, whence he made his way to join the
pope at Sens, and thence to Pontigny.
[Sidenote: His exile.]
[Sidenote:
Henry’s
cruel
measures.
]
It would be a tedious task to trace the minute circumstances of
Becket’s life during the next six years; they are somewhat obscure,
and the large number of undated letters of the period makes even the
sequence of the main events puzzling. The upshot of the story is
briefly this:--At Pontigny Becket remained until Henry threatened the
whole Cistercian body if they did not expel him; in consequence of that
he threw himself on the friendship of Lewis VII., who appointed as his
resting-place the abbey of St. Colombe, at Sens. There he remained,
making occasional journeys on his own business, until he returned to
Canterbury in 1170. Whilst at Pontigny and Sens he acted up to his
new character--wore a hair shirt, practised great mortifications, and
behaved as if he believed himself to be undergoing a sort of modified
martyrdom. All the time he was bringing all the influence which he
had to bear upon Lewis VII., the Counts of Champagne and Flanders,
and other potentates, to induce them to take up his cause, and either
by urging the Pope to extreme measures, or by direct negotiation
with Henry, to procure his honorable recall. The Pope would have
given anything for peace and quietness, but he could not afford to
alienate Henry so long as he was on bad terms with the Emperor. He sent
commissions with legations to Normandy, of which Henry disposed either
by promises or by plausible professions of his own good-will, or by
substantial presents of the strongest of all the powers of silence, a
handsome sum of gold. Had he rested here he might have been forgiven.
But unfortunately for his own credit he determined to persecute the
archbishop in the person of his relations, and by a cruel edict sent
many inoffensive families, who were connected with Thomas, into exile.
Then Becket answered with excommunication, including in his ban all the
king’s closest counsellors, some of whom had very little to do with the
proceedings against him. From time to time Becket saw the king, under
the wing of Lewis VII.; once at Montmirail, in January, 1169, once at
Montmartre, in November of the same year. In each case either Henry was
hypocritical or Becket offensive: we cannot decide. At length a new
point of quarrel brought about a reconciliation, and the reconciliation
immediately resulted in Becket’s death.
[Sidenote:
Henry’s
proceedings
during the
quarrel.
]
[Sidenote:
Alliance
with
Germany.
]
Before ending the story we may briefly recapitulate the chief events
of these years, outside the Becket struggle. In the year 1165, that
succeeding the archbishop’s flight from Northampton, Henry paid a short
visit to Normandy, and received a proposal from Frederick I. for a
couple of marriages, a close league of alliance, and a joint action
against the Pope, who was supposed to be abetting Becket. The only
result of this was the marriage of Henry’s eldest daughter, Matilda,
with Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, at this moment
Frederick’s most intimate friend and kinsman, later on his enemy and
victim. Neither Henry nor England could be persuaded to accept the
anti-Pope, but the temporizing action of the king’s agents in Germany
gave Becket an opportunity of involving all alike in a charge of heresy
and apostacy.
[Sidenote:
Third
Welsh war,
1165.
]
[Sidenote:
Assize of
Clarendon,
1166.
]
After his return to England, later in the year, Henry made his third
Welsh expedition, which had no more permanent effect than the former
ones, as an attempt either to subdue the country or to secure the
peace of the borders. It was carried out with an amount of cruelty
which shows Henry’s character to have already deteriorated. After his
return he held, early in 1166, another council at Clarendon, also
marked by an important act of legislation, the Assize of Clarendon,
by which the criminal law was reformed, and the grand jury system
established or reformed in every shire.
[Sidenote:
Long visit to
France.
]
[Sidenote:
Coronation of
the young
Henry, 1170.
]
As soon as this was done he went to Normandy, in March, 1166, and
stayed away until March, 1170. During this time little or nothing but
the ordinary business of justice and taxation is recorded in English
authorities. The Becket quarrel was the all-engrossing subject, the
sole question of public interest. Abroad the view is only diversified
by negotiation and border warfare with Lewis VII., and by the carrying
out of Henry’s plan for securing possession of Brittany by the marriage
of his third son, Geoffrey, with the heiress of the count. Having
spent nearly four years in this way he returned, in order to look
after business at home, and in particular to see his eldest son, who
was fifteen, crowned as his associate and successor in the kingdom.
The importance of the former acts comes into prominence in the later
history of the reign. The coronation was the first of a series of
events which sealed Becket’s fate. It was solemnized the 14th of June,
at Westminster. The Archbishop of York, Roger of Pont l’Eveque, an
old rival of Thomas Becket, placed the crown on the boy’s head, in
contravention of the right of Canterbury, and in the absence of the
little Queen Margaret. Lewis was exasperated by this act of neglect or
disrespect shown to his daughter; Becket was maddened by the contempt
shown for his authority. The storm began to rage; Lewis went to war;
Thomas, and the counts whom he made his friends, besieged the Pope with
prayers, and at last he sent or promised to send a definitive legation
to place Henry’s dominions under interdict, and compel him to recall
the archbishop.
[Sidenote:
Reconciliation
of Henry and
Becket.
]
[Sidenote:
Becket’s
return.
]
[Sidenote:
Henry’s rash
words.
]
Then Henry gave way. Crossing to Normandy a few days after the
coronation, he met Becket at Freteval in July, and there consented to
the return of his great enemy. Three months, however, intervened before
Becket started for home, and during that time he had several meetings
with the king, in which he behaved, or his behaviour was interpreted,
in a way very prejudicial to his reputation for sincerity. At last he
reached England, early in December, and as soon as he landed began to
excommunicate the bishops who had crowned the boy Henry. At London and
at Canterbury he was received with delight. Henry had become unpopular:
the archbishop’s popularity had been increased by his absence, and
the multitude does occasionally sympathize with a man who has been
oppressed. The news of his rash, intemperate conduct reached Henry at
court, at Bur, near Bayeux, where he had established himself after a
very severe illness in the autumn. In high passion the king spoke words
which he would have recalled at once, but which laid on him a life-long
burden: “Would all his servants stand by and see him thus defied by one
whom he had himself raised from poverty to wealth and power? Would no
one rid him of the troublesome clerk?”
[Sidenote:
Murder of
Becket, Dec.
29, 1170.
]
Armed by no public grievance, moved by no loyal zeal, but simply
private enemies who saw their way to revenge and impunity, Reginald
Fitz Urse, Hugh de Morville, Richard Brito, and William de Tracy, came
to Canterbury, sought out the archbishop, and slew him. The cruelty on
the one side, the heroism on the other--the savage barbarity of the
desperate man, the strange passionate violence of the would-be martyr,
finding at the last that he could not place a curb on his words or
temper, even when he was, as he may be truly believed to have been,
offering up his life for his Church--forms a sad but a thrice-told tale.
[Sidenote:
The true
glory of
Becket.
]
Becket died on the 29th of December, 1170, and for 350 years and
more that day was kept in the Church of England as one of the chief
festivals after Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas. It is no small
proof of the strength of character which certainly marks Becket
throughout his versatile career, that he should have made so deep
an impression not only on England but on Christendom. Although some
allowance must be made for the influence of superstition, and doubtless
of imposture also, in the spread of the honor paid to him so widely,
even such superstitions could not have gathered round one whose
reputation was a mere figment of monks and legend-writers. He was
undoubtedly recognized as the champion of a great cause which was then
believed to need championship, and which through the greatness of the
need served to excuse even such championship as it found in him. But
whatever were the cause which he was maintaining, he had some part of
the glory that belongs to all who vindicate liberty, to all who uphold
weakness against overwhelming strength.
And in this view of him, in which Englishmen may have regarded him as
the one man able and daring to beard the mighty king whom the memory
of his forefathers had clothed with enhanced terrors, and whose designs
for their good they were too ignorant to appreciate, Continental
Christendom saw him the champion of the papacy as against the secular
power. Later generations under the recoil of the Reformation viewed
him merely as a traitor, and his cultus as an organized imposture.
More calmly regarded--as now perhaps we may afford to regard him--he
appears, as we have described him, a strong, impulsive man, the
strength of whose will is out of all proportion to the depth of his
character, with little self-restraint, little self-knowledge, no
statesmanlike insight, and yet too much love of intrigue and craft.
He is not a constructive reformer in the Church; in the state he is
obstructive and exasperating. Even on the estimate of his friends
he does not come within the first rank of great men. The cause for
which he fought was not the cause for which he fell, and the cause of
liberty, which to some extent benefited by his struggle, was not the
actual cause for which he was consciously fighting. He appears small
indeed by the side of Anselm, who knew well how to distinguish between
the real and factitious importance of the claims which he made or
resisted; small indeed by the side of his successor, St. Edmund, who,
brave as Thomas himself was to declare the right, chose the part of
the peacemaker rather than that of the combatant and recognized the
glory of suffering patiently. Yet the world’s gratitude has often been
abundantly shown to men who deserved it less.