THE CATHEDRAL: THE MURDER OF BECKET
It is by the south porch that the Cathedral is entered. Let none
suppose this to be the veritable Cathedral that Becket knew; that
was replaced, piece by piece, in the succeeding centuries, all save
the Norman transept where he met his fate. The nave, by whose lofty,
aspiring perspective we advance, was built in 1380 upon the site of
that of the twelfth century. According to the testimony of the time, it
was in a ruinous condition. Conceive, if you can, the likelihood of one
of those particularly massive Norman naves like those of Tewkesbury and
Gloucester, which this resembled, becoming ruinous! The more probable
truth of the matter is that the feeling of the time had grown inimical
to those cavernous interiors of the older architects, and sought
any excuse for tearing them down and building in their stead in the
lightsome character of the Perpendicular period.
This nave, then, much later than Becket's era, leads somewhat
unsympathetically to that most interesting spot in the whole Cathedral,
the north transept. Here is the "Martyrdom," as that massive Norman
cross-limb where Becket fell beneath the swords and axes of his
murderers is still called. You look down into it from the steps leading
into the choir and choir-aisles, as into a pit. Little changed, in the
midst of all else that has been altered, this north transept alone
remains very much as it was when he was slain, more than seven hundred
years ago, and the sight of its stern, massive walls does much to
bring back to those who behold them that fierce scene which, in the
passage of all those years and the heaping of dull verbiage piled up
by industrious Dryasdusts and beaters of the air, has been dulled and
blunted.
Barham--our witty and mirthful Tom Ingoldsby--felt a keen personal
interest in this scene, for was not his ancestor--as he conceived him
to be--Reginald FitzUrse, the chief actor in that bloody scene of
Becket's death? He is flippant, it must be allowed, in the reference he
makes to the occurrence in the _Ingoldsby Legends_:
A fair Cathedral, too, the story goes,
And kings and heroes lie entombed within her;
There pious Saints in marble pomp repose,
Whose shrines are worn by knees of many a sinner;
There, too, full many an aldermanic nose
Roll'd its loud diapason after dinner;
And there stood high the holy sconce of Becket,
--Till four assassins came from France to crack it.
Historians have not yet agreed upon the character of Becket, and
no final conclusion is ever likely to be arrived at upon the vexed
question of who was right and who wrong in the long-drawn contention
between King and Archbishop. It is easy to shirk the point and to
decide that neither was right; but another and a more just resort is
to declare, after due consideration, that in the attempted secular
encroachments of the Crown, and in the resistance of the Archbishop to
any interference with the prerogatives and jurisdiction of the Church
and the clergy, both sides were impelled by the irresistible force
of circumstances. Becket was of English origin, and the first of the
downtrodden Saxon race who had won to such preferment since the Norman
rule began. Thus, besides being bound to defend the Church, of which he
had become the head, he was regarded by the people, who idolised him,
as their champion against those ruling classes whose mailed tyranny
crushed them to earth.
A prime difficulty in judging the character of Becket is the
extraordinary change in his conduct after he had been induced to accept
the Primacy, that goal and crown of the clerical career ardently
desired by all, and attained by Becket in his forty-third year. Long
the favourite of the King, and already, as Chancellor, at the height of
power and magnificence, there was little advantage in this elevation
to the throne of Saint Augustine, and he seemed singularly unfitted to
fill it, for until that juncture he had been among the most worldly of
men. As Chancellor, his magnificence had outshone that of the King,
he himself was gay and debonnair, clothed in purple and fine linen,
feasting royally, and with hundreds of knights in his train. Nothing
that the world could give had he denied himself. He was not only
impressed personally with his unfitness, but the monks of Canterbury
themselves, in conclave, desired to elect one of their own choice. It
was, therefore, against the desire of the Church and against his own
better judgment, foreseeing as he did much of the trouble that was to
come, that he was given the headship.
But once enthroned, his conduct changed. He dismissed his magnificent
household, feasted no more, expended his substance in charity and
himself in good works; became, indeed, and in very truth, that
Right Reverend Father in God which the simulacra, the windbags, the
ravening wolves, the emptinesses that for hundreds of years have
occupied his place, are styled. The sinner saved must be prepared for
misunderstandings--it is part of the cross and burden he has taken up.
The scarlet sins of the unregenerate are remembered against the saint,
and his saintliness becomes to his old boon companions a hypocritical
farce. That is why Becket's contemporaries did not understand him;
that, too, is why so many, dimly fumbling by the rush-light glimmer of
their little sputtering intelligences, presently choked and dowsed in
the dusty, cobwebby garrets of incredible accretions of lies, mistakes,
perversions and general rag-bag of pitiful futilities, have been left
wandering in infinite darkness, and content so to wander in estimating
him.
It was the sinners whose poisonous tongues did, by dint of much
persistence, estrange the King's affections from Becket within a year,
and their innuendoes were remembered when a growing struggle over
disputed privileges found the Archbishop immovably set upon what he
regarded as his duty, and not at all prepared to favour the King. If
Henry had supposed the Archbishop whom he had created would be in every
sense his creature, he must have been furious at his gross mistake.
The fury of the Norman kings was like the unrestrained paroxysms of a
raving maniac, and opposition threw them into transports of rage, felt
severely by animate and inanimate objects alike. This second Henry,
whose eyes were said to have in repose been gentle and dove-like, is
no exception. Ill fares the messenger who brings him bad news--as
ill sometimes as though he had brought about the untoward things of
which he tells. Slight displeasure means a thump, a resounding smack
on the face from the Royal hands, or a right Royal kick on that part
where honour is so easily hurt. May not enquiring minds, diligently
bent on running to earth the origin of the still existing etiquette of
retreating backwards from the presence of the sovereign, find it in a
natural desire of courtiers at all hazards to protect that honour?
Conceive, then, the really Royal rage of this King, bearded by someone
not to be dissuaded, persuaded, admonished, or let or hindered in any
particular. He became like a wild beast, tearing whatever came in
his way, flinging off his clothes, throwing himself on the floor and
gnawing the straw and rushes, and not merely kicking the posteriors of
messengers, but flying at them with intent to tear out their eyes.
What was that which wrought such enmity between such old-time friends?
Not merely one, but many things, but first and last among them the
determination of the King that the clergy, instead of being amenable
for offences only to the ecclesiastical courts, should be answerable
to the civil tribunals. This, the earliest of the at last happily
successful series of blows at clerical privilege, seemed to Becket
almost sacrilegious, and he determined to protect the Church against
what was, he honestly thought, according to his lights and his
sacerdotal sympathies, an unwarranted attack.
By all accounts this saint was not, in his new character, the most
tactful of men. With the old courtier days gone by, he had discarded
the courtier-like speech, and austerely held his own. Jealous of him,
several great dignitaries of the Church supported the King: among
them the Archbishop of York, and the Bishops of London and Salisbury.
Becket, as their spiritual chief, hurled excommunication at them, and
it was even feared that he would do the same by the King. Then, in fear
of his life, he went into six years' exile, ended by a pretence of
reconciliation that was patently a pretence, even before he sailed for
England. He was weary of exile, and ready to lay down his life for the
Church.
It was early in December 1170 that he returned to Canterbury, "to die,"
as he prophetically had said, before embarking. Quarrels, insults, and
petty persecutions met him, and thus sped December to its close. On
Christmas Day he preached in the Cathedral on the text, as he read it
(an all-important reservation), "On earth, peace to men of good will."
"There is no peace," he declared, "but to men of good will," and with
solemn meaning, readily understood by the great congregation that
heard him, spoke of the martyrs who had fallen in olden days. It was
possible, he added, that they would soon have another.
"Father," wailed that assembled multitude, "why do you desert us so
soon? To whom will you leave us?" But, heedless of the interruption, he
passed from a plaintive strain to one of fiery indignation, ending, in
a voice of thunder, by a full and particular excommunication of many of
his enemies and persecutors. "May they be cursed," his voice resounded
through the building, "by Jesus Christ, and may their memory be blotted
out of the assembly of the saints, whoever shall sow discord between me
and my lord the King." So saying, he, with mediæval symbolism, dashed
down a lighted candle upon the stones, to typify the extinction of
those accurst, and, with religious exaltation on his face, left the
pulpit, saying to his crossbearer, "One martyr, St. Alphege, you have
already; another, if God will, you will have soon."
Already, while he spoke, his furrow was drawing to its end. Over in
Normandy, where the King was keeping Christmas, the Archbishop of York
and the Bishops of London and Salisbury were suggesting that it would
be a good thing if there were no Becket. "So long as Thomas lives,"
said one, "you will have neither good days, nor peaceful kingdom, nor
quiet life."
The thought thus instilled into the King's mind threw him into a
frenzy. "A fellow," he shouted--"a fellow that has eaten my bread has
lifted up his heel against me; a fellow that I loaded with benefits has
dared to insult the King and the whole Royal family, and tramples on
the whole kingdom; a fellow that came to Court on a lame sumpter-mule
sits without hindrance on the throne itself. What sluggard wretches,
what cowards, have I brought up in my Court, who care nothing for their
allegiance to their master! Not one will deliver me from this low-born,
turbulent priest!" So saying, he rushed from the room, doubtless to
roll in one of those ungovernable Plantagenet rages upon the floor of
some secluded chamber.
The four knights who from among that Court sprang forth to prove
themselves, even to the awful extremities of sacrilege and murder,
true King's men, were Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Moreville, William de
Tracy, and Richard le Bret. In the light of later events, the monkish
chroniclers, eager to discover the marvellous in every circumstance of
the tragedy, found a dark significance in their very names. FitzUrse,
they said, was of truly bear-like character; De Moreville's name
proclaimed him to be of "the city of death"; Le Bret was "the brute."
With so much ingenuity available, it is quite surprising they could
not twist Tracy's name into something allusive to murder; but they
had to be content with the weak suggestion that he was of "parricidal
wickedness." All save Le Bret had been knights owning fealty to Becket
while he was Chancellor.
It is detailed in these pages, in the description of Saltwood Castle,
how they landed in England and made for Canterbury. A dreadful
circumstance is that they knew perfectly well on whom to call when
they reached the city, and waited upon a sympathiser with the King,
Clarembald, the Abbot of St. Augustine's, who is thus sufficiently
implicated.
From the Abbot's lodging they sent a command, ordering the Mayor to
issue a proclamation in the King's name forbidding any help being
given to the Archbishop. Then they took horse again and rode to the
Palace, accompanied by their men-at-arms, whom they posted in a house
hard by the gateway. The short day of December 29th was nearly at
its close when they drew rein in the courtyard beneath the great hall
of the Palace, where the Archbishop and his household had but just
retired from supper. They had left their swords outside, and came as
travellers, their mailed armour concealed under long cloaks. Entering
the hall they met the seneschal, who ushered them into the private room
where the Archbishop sat, among his intimates. "My lord," he said,
"here are four knights from King Henry wishing to speak with you"; and
they were bidden enter.
FitzUrse began the furious discussion. The knights had seated
themselves on the floor at the Archbishop's feet, and waited until he
should finish the conversation he was holding with a monk. When Becket
turned and looked calmly at each in turn, ending with saluting Tracy by
name, FitzUrse it was who broke in with a contemptuous "God help you!"
The Archbishop's face flushed crimson. He was a man of vehement nature,
and it is wonderful that he restrained himself from striking that
insolent intruder. "We have a message from the King over the water,"
continued FitzUrse; "tell us whether you will hear it in private, or in
the hearing of all."
Within the hearing of all that message, such as it was, was given.
It was but a reiteration of old demands and old grievances, made to
goad the Archbishop into fury, and to afford an excuse for an attack
upon him. The discussion aroused both sides to anger, and the knights,
calling upon all to prevent the Archbishop from escaping, dashed off,
with the cry of "To arms!" for their swords.
But Becket harboured no thoughts of escape. Although he perceived
that death was near, he made no retreat, being indeed, by this time,
fanatically bent upon the martyr's crown. Outside, the signal had been
already given to the men-at-arms, who now came pouring in, with shouts
of "Réaux!" or "King's men." The knights now returned, their swords
girt about them. Already, however, the Archbishop's attendants had
closed and barred the doors, and were endeavouring to save him from
that death he seemed to welcome. With kindly violence they pushed and
pulled him by obscure passages from the Palace and along the cloisters,
while the blows of axes and the splintering of wood told how in
their rear the murderers were hewing their way onward. Thus at last,
strenuously resisting, he was impelled towards the door that opened
from the cloisters into the north transept.
Once within the Cathedral the monks bolted the door behind them, and in
their haste excluded some of their brethren, thus left, unprotected,
to face the onrush of armed men. Hearing these unfortunate ones vainly
knocking for admittance, Becket, exerting all his authority, commanded
the door to be opened; and when he found his words disregarded, broke
away from those who held him and drew back the bolts with his own hands.
Seeing the way thus made clear for those pursuing men of wrath, the
crowd of anxious monks surrounding the Archbishop immediately turned
and fled to those hiding-places they knew of. Only three remained,
dauntless, by their chief. These were Robert of Merton, William
FitzStephen, and Edward Grim, who stood by him, vainly imploring him to
flee. Only one concession he made to their entreaties. He would go to
the choir, and there, before the high altar, the holiest place in the
Cathedral, with all dignity make an end.
It was as he was thus ascending the steps from the transept that the
knights burst into the sacred building. Bewildered at first by the
almost complete darkness, they could only shout at random, "Where is
Thomas Becket, traitor to the King?" No answer. Then, falling over a
monk, came an oath, from FitzUrse, and the question, "Where is the
Archbishop?" Becket himself answered, and descending again into the
transept, confronted them. He stood in front of what was then the the
Chapel of St. Benedict, and calmly asked, "Reginald, why do you come
into my church armed?" For answer FitzUrse thrust a carpenter's axe he
had found against his breast, and with a savage oath declared, "You
shall die: I will tear out your heart!" "Fly!" exclaimed another, not
so eager to commit the sin of sacrilege, before which the mediæval
world recoiled; "Fly! or you are a dead man!" striking him with the
flat of his sword, to emphasise the warning.
[Illustration: THE "MARTYRDOM," CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL.]
Then the four united their efforts to drag him from the Cathedral,
but without success. Himself a powerful man, he seized Tracy and
flung him heavily upon the pavement. FitzUrse, advancing upon him
with a drawn sword, he called by a vile name, adding, "You profligate
wretch, you are my man; you have done me fealty; you ought not to touch
me." No fear, it will be seen, in all this, but a not unreasonable
fury, somewhat obscuring the martyr spirit. Fury on both sides, for
FitzUrse, losing the last atom of restraint, and yelling "Strike!"
aimed a blow with his great, two-handed sword that, had it been better
directed, must have smote off the Archbishop's head. As it was, it
merely skimmed off his cap. Becket, who must have been momentarily
surprised to find himself still alive, then covered his eyes with his
hands, and bending his head, was heard to commend his cause and the
cause of the Church to God, to St. Denis of France, to St. Alphege
and all the saints of the Church. Tracy then dealt a blow, partly
intercepted by Grim, whose arm, protecting the Archbishop, was broken
by it. By this time blood was trickling down the Archbishop's face.
He wiped it away and murmured, "Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my
spirit;" and then, falling at a further blow from Tracy, "For the name
of Jesus, and for the defence of the Church, I am willing to die."
There he lay, and so lying, received a tremendous stroke from Richard
le Bret, who accompanied it with the exclamation, "Take this, for love
of my lord William, brother of the King!" That stroke not only clove
away the upper part of the skull, but the sword itself was broken in
two. Vengeance was accomplished.
When the assassins fled from that scene of blood, it was quite dark.
They went as they had come, by the cloisters, shouting that they were
"King's men," and cursing and stumbling over unfamiliar steps. A
servant of the Archdeacon of Sens was sufficiently unfortunate to be
wailing for the cruel death of the Archbishop when they passed, and
foolish enough to be in their way. They fell over him, and, still heady
with that struggle and the lust of blood, gave him in passing a mailed
kick, and so tremendous a sword-thrust that for long afterwards he had
sufficient occasion to lament for himself.
It was something of an anti-climax to their murderous passions that
they should, as they now did, repair to the Archbishop's Palace and
make a burglarious raid upon the gold and silver vessels of the church,
and loot from Becket's stables the magnificent horses he kept. With
this personal plunder, and with a mass of the Archbishop's documents
and papers seized on behalf of the King, they were preparing to
depart when the very unusual circumstance in December of a violent
thunderstorm set a final scene of horror upon that closing day.
The news fell heavily upon the people of Canterbury, who reverenced
Becket far more than did those within the Church who had immediately
surrounded him; and the citizens came rushing like an irresistible
torrent into the Cathedral as soon as they heard of the sacrilegious
deed.
Like the greater number of our cathedrals, this of Canterbury has been
greatly altered since that time. It was into a Norman nave that the
excited populace thronged--a building that must have closely resembled
the still-existing nave of that period at Gloucester, gloomy and dark
at the best of times, but on this December evening a well of infinite
blackness, faintly illuminated by the distant lights twinkling in
the choir and on the high altar. This horror-stricken crowd was only
with great difficulty forced back and at last shut out, and it was
long before the monks returned to the transept where the Archbishop
had fallen before the blows of the four. There his body lay in the
dark, as it had been left, his blood still wet on those cold stones,
as Osbert, the chamberlain, entering with a single light, held out at
arm's length in that cavern of blackness and unimaginable gloom, steps
in it, and, if he be not quite different from other men, shudders and
almost drops his glimmering candle when he finds what awful moisture
that is in which he has been walking. Osbert alone has ventured to seek
his master. Where, then, are the others of his household? In hiding,
like those monks who, now that all is still, venture, like rats, to
come from their hiding-holes in chapel and triforium, or from secret
places contrived for such emergencies in the roof.
The Archbishop lay upon his face, the upper part of his scalp sliced
off by that whirling blow of Tracy's, and the contents of his head
spilled over the pavement, just as a bowl of liquid might be overset.
Osbert, with rare fortitude, replaces that scalp as one might replace a
lid, and binding the head, he and the monks between them place the body
upon a bier and carry it to the high altar in the choir.
There were those among the monks who felt small sympathy for Becket. To
them he was but a proud worldling whose remarkable preferment to the
Primacy had been scandalous, and whose quarrels with the King had been,
they thought, dictated more for the advancement of his own personal
authority than for sake of a purely impersonal desire to preserve and
cherish the rights of the Church. He had been elected Archbishop by
desire of the King and against the feeling of the Priory, and they
thought he should, in consequence, have been more complaisant to Royal
demands. They were not a little jealous of the man set to rule over
them, and moreover, could not at once perceive the martyr and the saint
in the dignitary thus at last struck down in that long struggle. They
were horror-stricken at the sacrilege of it, but did not burst into
grief and lamentations for the individual until that happened which
put a very different complexion upon the dead Archbishop's character.
Far into the night, as the monks sat in the choir around that silent
figure, his aged friend and instructor, Robert of Merton, told them of
the secret austerities of his later life, and made a revelation that
wholly changed their mental attitude. To prove his words, he exposed
the many layers of the clothing to those who gathered round, and showed
how, beneath all, and next the skin, the "luxurious" Archbishop had
worn the habit of a monk, and had endured the disciplinary discomfort
of a hair-shirt. There, too, on the skin, were visible the weals of the
daily scourgings by which the Archbishop mortified the flesh. Nor was
this the sum of his virtues, for when, a little later, his garments
were removed, previous to interment, they were found to be swarming
with vermin; that hair-cloth, itself so penitential, densely populated
with a crawling mass whose presence must have made it more penitential
still. According to the accounts of those who beheld these transcendent
proofs of sanctity, the hair-cloth was bubbling over with these
inhabitants, like water in a simmering cauldron.
At sight of such unmistakable evidences of holiness the brethren went
into hysterics. "See, see," they said to one another, "what a true
monk he was, and we knew it not!"--an oblique and unpleasing reflection
upon the personal habits of the monastic orders. They kissed him, as
he lay dead there, and called him "St. Thomas," and at last, unwilling
that any tittle of his sanctity should be impugned, buried him in his
verminous condition.
Meanwhile, newly alive to the saintly character of him whom they now
clearly perceived to be a martyr, orders were given to rail off the
spot where he had fallen, and for every trace of his blood to be
jealously preserved. But unhappily for the Church, the common people,
who had from the moment of his death regarded their Archbishop as a
martyred saint, had already soaked up the greater part of that precious
blood in strips hastily torn from their clothes, and had been given
his stained and splashed outer garments. These were losses that could
never be made good, but they did not greatly matter to those who could
so dilute the little remaining blood that it sufficed to supply the
uncounted thousands of pilgrims who made pilgrimage to the shrine of
St. Thomas for the space of three hundred and fifty years, and took
away with them little phials containing, as they fondly believed, so
intimate a relic of England's most powerful saint.
In spite of the dark legends that tell how vengeance overtook the
assassins, it does not seem to be the fact that they were adequately
punished for their fearful crime, and certainly no Royal displeasure
lighted upon them. "The wicked," we are told, "flee when no man
pursueth," and the knights, fearful of the revenge that might be taken
upon them by the people of Canterbury, rode off, unhindered, with their
small escort of men-at-arms, to Saltwood. Within that stronghold they
felt safe. That they would have been equally safe at Canterbury we may
suppose, for Robert de Broc, shut up within the strong walls of the
Archbishop's Palace, felt strong enough to threaten the monks with what
he would do if they dared so honour the dead Prelate as to bury him
among the tombs of the Archbishops. He would, he declared, tear out the
body, hang it from a gibbet, hew it in pieces, and throw the fragments
by the highway, to be devoured by swine or birds of prey. It is quite
evident that Robert de Broc was a good hater and a very thorough
partisan of the King. The monks did well to be afraid of him, and
meekly forbearing from giving offence, laid their martyr in the crypt.
The four lay only one night at Saltwood. The next day they rode to
the old manor-house of South Malling, near Lewes, itself a property
belonging to the Archbishops, and throwing down their arms and
accoutrements upon a dining-table in the hall, gathered comfortably
round the cheerful hearth, when--says the legend--the table, unwilling
to bear that sacrilegious burden, started back and threw the repugnant
load on the ground. The arms were replaced by the startled servants,
who came rushing in with torches; but again they were flung away, this
time with even greater force. It was one of the knights who, with
blanched face, declared the supernatural nature of this happening.
The following morning they were off again, bound for Hugh de
Moreville's far distant Yorkshire castle of Knaresborough, where they
remained for one year. It would have been too scandalous a thing for
the King to receive his bravos at once, for he had a part of his own
to play that would have been quite spoiled by such indecent haste--a
dramatic part, but one that fails to carry any conviction of its
sincerity. It was at Argenton that he heard of the successful issue
of his commission, and on receipt of the news isolated himself for
three days, refused all food but milk of almonds, rolled himself in
penitential sackcloth and ashes, and grievously called upon God to
witness that he was not responsible for the Archbishop's death. "Alas!"
exclaimed that trembling hypocrite, "alas! that it ever happened."
But it is not in empty lamentations, real or feigned, that penitence
is found. The assassins went unpunished, and, together with others
of Becket's bitterest enemies within and without the Church, were
even promoted. Before two years had passed the four knights were
found constantly at the King's Court, on familiar terms with him
and his companions in hunting. It is a cynical commentary upon the
kingly penitence that one of the murderers, William de Tracy, became
Justiciary of Normandy. But something had to be done to expiate a
deed whose echoes rumbled horrifically throughout Europe. The Pope,
Alexander III., indicated a course of fighting against the infidel
in the Holy Land, and it seems probable that they did so work off
their sins; all except Tracy, who, having made over his Devonshire
manor of Daccombe to the Church, for the maintenance of a monk for
ever, to celebrate masses for the repose of the souls of the living
and the dead, set out for Palestine, but was for so long driven back
by contrary winds that he almost despaired of setting foot abroad.
This especial retribution meted out to him was for the particular
heinousness of having dealt the first effective blow at the martyr.
When at last he was carried to the coast of Calabria, he was seized
with a mysterious disease at Cosenza, a disease whose agonies made him
tear the flesh from his bones with his own hands. Thus entreating,
"Mercy, St. Thomas!" he perished miserably.
The mysticism of the time told many dreadful legends. Dogs refused to
eat from the tables of the murderers; grass would not grow where their
feet went; those they loved were doomed to misery and death.
From the King a certain humiliation was demanded, but it amounted to
little beyond an oath, taken on the gospels before the Papal legates,
that he had not ordered or desired the murder, and an expressed
readiness to restore property belonging to the See of Canterbury. This
easy satisfaction was given at Avranches, in May 1172, but if it was
sufficient for the Pope it did by no means calm the English people,
who saw in the cumulative domestic troubles and foreign disasters
of the time the wrath of Heaven. The greater penance of 1174 was
accordingly decided upon. Arriving from Normandy on July 8th, he
journeyed to Canterbury, to the shrine of the already sainted martyr,
by the Pilgrims' Road, living the while upon bread and water. Coming to
Harbledown, he resigned horseback for a barefooted walk into the city.
Thus, with a mere woollen shirt and a cloak, he came to the Cathedral,
kneeling in the porch, and then proceeding directly to the scene of
the martyrdom, where he again knelt and kissed the stone where the
Archbishop had died. From that spot, he was conducted to the crypt,
where the tomb still remained, and, placing his head and shoulders in
the tomb itself, received on his shoulders five strokes of a rod from
each bishop and abbot present, and three each from the by-standing
eighty monks. This discipline must have killed him had those monks laid
on with the hearty goodwill customary with prison warders; but their
stripes were mere formalities, and the King departed the next morning,
after passing a solitary fasting vigil in the crypt, where, during the
solemn hours of the night, he had had ample opportunity of repentance.
From Canterbury he rode to London, absolved and with a whole skin.
The nation saw much virtue in this public reparation. How could they
fail so to do when the affairs of the realm took an immediate and
decided turn for the better, when the King of Scots, long a terror
in the north, was captured at Alnwick, and when the invading fleet
of Henry's own rebellious son was repulsed? The forgiveness and the
miraculous intercession of the beatified Thomas were prompt and
efficacious.
The cult of this peculiarly sainted person was extraordinary, and
far transcended that of any other martyr. To his shrine, erected in
a place of especial honour, and encrusted with gold and gems, the
pilgrims of many nations and many centuries flocked, greatly to the
enrichment of the Church. The miraculous cures wrought at his tomb,
and the marvellous legends that clustered around the story of his life
and death, were the theme of ages. But the gross superstitions, and
the grosser scandals, tricks, and miscellaneous knaveries that were
encouraged by that martyr-worship had discredited him by the time of
Henry VIII., that less superstitious age when it was possible for the
King and his advisers to declare "Thomas Becket" a traitor, to submit
his relics to every indignity, to destroy them and his shrine, and to
seize all the endowments and valuables connected with his worship.
The great destruction wrought at the Reformation accounts for the
scantiness of Becket's memorials. Here, in the "Martyrdom," only the
Norman walls that looked down upon the scene, and some portions of the
pavement, are left. A square piece of stone, inserted in the middle of
a large slab, marks the exact spot where he fell, and tells how the
original stone, regarded as of a peculiar sanctity, had been at some
time or another removed.