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Fifty years after the death of Anselm the struggle with absolute monarchy had to be renewed in England, and again the Archbishop of Canterbury was the antagonist of the crown, standing alone for the most part, as Anselm stood, in his resistance to autocracy.

The contrast is great between the upbringing and character of Anselm and of Thomas; but both men gave valiant service in the cause of liberty in England, and both are placed in the calendar of the saints. For Thomas and Anselm alike the choice was between the favour of the King of England, the safe broad road of passive obedience, and the following of the call of conscience on the craggy way of royal displeasure; and to the everlasting honour of these two men, and of the religion they professed, they chose the steep and narrow path with no faltering step, and followed the gleam, heedless of this world’s glory, heedless of life itself.

Thomas was no monk as Anselm was, when the king nominated him for the archbishopric of Canterbury. His early life was not spent in the cloister but in the employment of a wealthy London sheriff, in the office of Archbishop Theobald, at Lambeth, and as Chancellor of England.

The son of gentle parents—his father Gilbert sometime sheriff—“London citizens of the middle class, not usurers nor engaged in business, but living well on their own income,” according to FitzStephen, Thomas was the first Englishman to be made archbishop. His gifts marked him out for high office. Theobald had sent him abroad to study law at the great school at Bologna, and at the age of 36 made him archdeacon of Canterbury, at that time “the dignity in the Church of England next after the bishops and abbots, and which brought him an hundred pounds of silver.” A year later, 1155, the young newly crowned king, Henry II., on the advice of old Archbishop Theobald, made Thomas the Chancellor. Theobald, anxious about the present, and apprehensive for the future—for the king was very young, and those about him were known to be hostile to the freedom of the Church and willing to treat England as a conquered land—sought to prevent the evils which seemed to be at hand by making Thomas a partner of the King’s counsels. He could say, after ten years’ experience, that Thomas was high-principled and prudent, wisely zealous for justice, and whole-hearted for the freedom of the Church, and he held forth to the king on the wisdom, the courage and the faithfulness of his archdeacon, “and the admirable sweetness of his manners.”

The appointment was made, nor could anyone say that it was ill done, or that Theobald in his recommendation, or Henry II. in his acceptance, of Thomas for the chancellorship could have done better for England.

The chancellor was magnificent, and his dignity was accounted second from the king. Nobles sent their children to Thomas to be trained in his service. The king commended to him his son, the heir to the throne. Barons and knights did homage to him. On his embassy to the French king never had been seen such a retinue of followers, and such a lavish display of the wealth and grandeur of England. The proud and mighty he treated with harshness and violence. Yet it was said, by those who knew him intimately, that he was lowly in his own eyes, and gentle and meek to those who were humble in heart. And in the courts of kings, where chastity is never commonly extolled, or purity of life the fashion, Thomas, the chancellor, was known for his cleanness of living and his unblemished honour. Many enemies he had, many who hated him for his power; but never was breath of scandal uttered against the chancellor’s private life, or suggestion made that the carnal lusts and appetites which, unbridled, play havoc with men great and small, could claim Thomas for their subject.

He might be reproached by a monk for that he, being an archdeacon, lived so secular a life, wearing the dress of a courtier, and charging on the field with knights in France, but it could not be alleged that church or realm suffered neglect from the chancellor. “By divine inspiration and the counsel of Thomas, the lord king did not long retain vacant bishoprics and abbacies, so that the patrimony of the Crucified might be brought into the treasury, as was afterwards done, but bestowed them with little delay on honourable persons, and according to God’s law.” (W. FitzStephen.)

The close friendship and warm affection of the king for his chancellor were known to all. When the day’s business was done “they would play together like boys of the same age.” They sat together in church and hall and rode out together. “Never in Christian times were there two men more of one mind or better friends.” It was natural on the death of Archbishop Theobald, in 1161, that people should point to Thomas as his successor, though the chancellor shrank, as Anselm had done, from the post.

“I know three poor priests in England any one of whom I would rather see advanced to the archbishopric than myself,” he declared earnestly, when his friend the prior of Leicester (who also remonstrated with him for his unclerical dress) told him the rumours of the court. “For as for me, if I was appointed, I know the king so through and through that I should be forced either to lose his favour or, which God forbid, to lay aside the service of God.”

Thomas uttered the same warning to Henry when the king proposed the primacy to him. “I know certainly,” he said, “that if God should so dispose that this happen, you would soon turn away your love, and the favour which is now between us would be changed into bitterest hate. I know that you would demand many things in Church matters, for already you have demanded them, which I could never bear quietly, and the envious would take occasion to provoke an endless strife between us.”

But Henry’s mind was made up. Residing largely in France, he would have Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor, to rule England as his vice-regent. Six years had Thomas been the king’s friend and chancellor, but the king did not know at all the real character of his man, or rather it was inconceivable to the royal mind that Thomas, whom the king had raised from a mere nobody, from Archdeacon of Canterbury, an important ecclesiastic at best, to the chief man in the realm, should ever dare set himself at variance with the king’s will. Henry, with his untiring energy, was earnest enough for good government in Church and State under an absolute monarchy, and he counted on greater co-operation with Thomas in carrying out his plans, were the latter archbishop. Hitherto, more than once the chancellor had succeeded in moderating the king’s outbursts of wrath against some hapless offender, but he had never shown himself a partisan of the clergy at the expense of the commonwealth,11 and his lack of pride in his order had even incurred rebuke, so little of the ecclesiastic did this statesman appear.

Thomas understood the king better than the king understood his chancellor. But his protests were in vain. He was as surely marked for the archbishopric as Anselm had been. Bishops of the province approved and the monks of Canterbury duly voted for the king’s chancellor in common consent, Gilbert Foliot, the Bishop of Hereford, and afterwards of London, and the archbishop’s enemy to the end, alone opposing the election.

“Then the archbishop-elect was by the king’s authority declared free of all debts to the crown and given free to the Church of England, and in that freedom he was received by the Church with the customary hymns and words of praise.” (Herbert of Bosham.)

On June 2nd, 1162, the Saturday after Whit Sunday, Thomas was ordained priest and on the following day consecrated bishop. (The new archbishop instituted the festival of Trinity Sunday to commemorate his consecration, and some 200 years later the festival was made of general observance in the Catholic Church.) The king realised the mistake he had made within a year of the consecration. The brilliant chancellor was no sooner archbishop than he turned from all the gaieties of the world, and while no less a statesman, adopted the life of his monks—though never himself a monk—at Canterbury. Henceforth Archbishop Thomas was the unflinching champion of the poor and them that had no helper, the resolute defender of the liberties of the Church against all who would make religion subject to the autocracy of the king of England.

Thomas was forty-four years old, in the full strength of his manhood, when he was made archbishop, and for eight years he did battle with the crown, only laying down his charge at the call of martyrdom.

The first disappointment to Henry was the resignation of the chancellor’s seal.12 It was clear to Thomas that he could no longer serve the crown and do the work of a Christian bishop at the same time, and he had accepted with full sense of responsibility the see of Canterbury. There was no room for the egotism that loves power, the vaulting ambition that o’erleaps itself, or even the self-deception that persuades a man holding to high position at sacrifice of principle that his motive is disinterested, in St. Thomas of Canterbury. More than once England was to see in later years men who strove vainly to serve with equal respect the Christian religion and the royal will—the service always ended in the triumph of the latter. Thomas was far too clearly-sighted to imagine such joint service possible, and for him, elected and consecrated to the primacy of the English Church, there was no longer any choice. As chancellor, keeping his conscience clear, he had done the best he could for law and order as the king’s right hand man. As Archbishop of Canterbury his duty, first and foremost, was to maintain the Christian religion and defend the cause of the poor and needy.

But to Henry the resignation of the chancellorship was an act of desertion, a declared challenge to the royal supremacy. Henry II. was no more the man than his grandfather Henry I. had been to brook anything that threatened resistance to the king’s rule.

Courtiers who hated Thomas were always at hand to poison the ears of the king by defaming the archbishop, and this, says William FitzStephen, was the first cause of the trouble. Another cause was the hatred of the king for the clergy of England, hatred provoked by the notoriously disreputable lives of more than one clerk in holy orders. The battle between Henry and Thomas began on this matter of criminous clerks.

William the Conqueror and Lanfranc recognizing that the Church, strong and well ordered, made for national well-being, had set up ecclesiastical courts wherein all matters affecting church law and discipline were to be dealt with by the clergy, to the end that the clergy should not be mixed up in lawsuits and should be excluded from the lay courts. Henry II. was not satisfied that criminous clerks were adequately dealt with in these ecclesiastical courts, where no penalty involving bloodshed might be inflicted, and where the savage punishments of mutilation had no place. Thomas was as anxious as the king for the Church to be purged of abuses, but he was resolved not to hand over offenders to the secular arm. The archbishop was an ardent reformer. “He plucked up, pulled down, scattered and rooted out whatever he found amiss in the vineyard of the Lord,” wrote a contemporary; but he would shelter his flock as far as he could by the canon law from the hideous cruelties of the King’s Courts.13 It was not for the protection of the clergy alone the archbishop was fighting in the councils summoned by the king at Westminster in 1163, and at Clarendon in 1164.

“Ecclesiastical privileges were not so exclusively priestly privileges as we sometimes fancy. They sheltered not only ordained ministers, but all ecclesiastical officers of every kind; the Church Courts also claimed jurisdiction in the causes of widows and orphans. In short, the privileges for which Thomas contended transferred a large part of the people, and that the most helpless part, from the bloody grasp of the King’s Courts to the milder jurisdiction of the bishop.” (Freeman, Historical Essay, First Series.)

Before the climax of the dispute between Henry and Thomas was reached at Clarendon, the archbishop had resisted the king in a matter of arbitrary taxation—“the earliest recorded instance of resistance to the royal will in a matter of taxation”14—and had fallen still further in the king’s disfavour.

Henry was at Woodstock, on July 1st, 1163, with the archbishop and the great men of the land, and among other matters a question was raised concerning the payment of a two shillings land tax on every hide of land. This was an old tax dating from Saxon times, which William the Conqueror had increased. It was paid to the sheriffs, who in return undertook the defence of the county, and may be compared with the county rates of our own day. The king declared this tax should in future be collected for the crown, and added to the royal revenue; and no one dared to question this decision until Archbishop Thomas arose and told the king to his face that the tax was not to be exacted as revenue, but was a voluntary offering to be paid to the sheriffs only “so long as they shall serve us fitly and maintain and defend our dependants.” It was not a tax that could be enforced by law.

Henry, bursting with anger, swore, “By God’s Eyes” it should be given as revenue, and enscrolled as a king’s tax.

The archbishop replied with quiet determination, “aware lest by his sufferance a custom should come in to the hurt of his successors,” that, “by the reverence of those Eyes,” by which the king had sworn, not one penny should be paid from his lands, or from the rights of the Church. The king was silenced, no answer was forthcoming to the objector, and the tax was paid as before to the sheriffs. But “the indignation of the king was not set at rest,” and in October came the Council of Westminster.

The king at once demanded that criminous clerks should not only be punished in the Church Courts by the sentence of deprivation, but should further be handed over to the King’s Courts for greater penalties, alleging that those who were not restrained from crime by the remembrance of their holy orders would care little for the loss of such orders.

The archbishop replied quietly that this proposed new discipline was contrary to the religious liberty of the land, and that he would never agree to it. The Church was the one sanctuary against the barbarities of the law, and Thomas to the end would maintain the security it offered. More important it seemed to him that clerical offenders should escape the king’s justice, than that all petty felons who could claim the protection of the Church should be given over to mutilation by the king’s officers. The bishops silently supported the primate in this matter, though they told him plainly, “Better the liberties of the Church perish than that we perish ourselves. Much must be yielded to the malice of the times.”

Thomas answered this pitiful plea by admitting the times were bad. “But,” he added, “are we to heap sin upon sin? It is when the Church is in trouble, and not merely when the times are peaceful, that a bishop must cleave to the right. No greater merit was there to the bishops of old who gave their blood for the Church than there is now to those who die in defence of her liberties.”

But the bishops were wavering, fearful of defying the king’s will. And when Henry, defeated for the moment by the archbishop’s stand, angrily called upon them to take an oath to observe in future “the royal customs” of the realm as settled by his grandfather, Henry I., they all agreed to do so, adding the clause “saving the rights of their order.” The king objected, calling for the promise to be made “absolutely and without qualifications,” until Thomas reminded him that the fealty the bishops swore to give the crown “in life and limb and earthly honour” was sworn “salvo ordine suo,” and that the “earthly honour” promise, which included all the royal “customs” of Henry I., was not to be given by bishops in any other way.

It was now late at night, and the king broke up the council in anger, leaving the bishops to retire as they would.

Henry was resolved to abolish the Church Courts and destroy the protection they afforded. He would have all brought under the severity of his law, in spite of the archbishop. He knew the bishops were wavering and were fearful of the royal displeasure. Thomas Becket, and Thomas Becket alone, was the obstruction to the king’s schemes, and firm as Becket might stand, the king would break down his opposition.

The very day after Westminster the king demanded the resignation of all the fortresses and honours Thomas had held under the crown since he had been made chancellor, and these were surrendered at once.

Then Henry tried a personal appeal, and once more the two met together in a field near Northampton. Henry began by reminding Thomas of all he had done for him.

“Have I not raised you from a mean and lowly state to height of honour and dignity? How is it after so many benefits and so many proofs of my affection, which all have seen, you have forgotten these things, and are now not only ungrateful, but my opponent in everything?”

The archbishop answered: “Far be it from me, my lord. I am not forgetful of the favours which God has conferred upon me at your hands. Far be it from me to be so ungrateful as to resist your will in anything so long as it is in accord with God’s will.” St. Thomas, enlarging on the necessity of obedience to God rather than to men, should the will of man clash with the will of God, the king at last interrupted him impatiently with the intimation that he did not want a sermon just then.

“Are you not my man, the son of one of my servants?”

“In truth,” the archbishop answered, “I am not sprung from a race of kings. Neither was blessed Peter, the prince of the apostles, to whom was committed the leadership of the Church.”

“And in truth Peter died for his Lord,” said the king.

“I too will die for my Lord when the time comes,” replied the archbishop.

“You trust too much to the ladder you have mounted by,” said the king.

But the archbishop answered: “I trust in God, for cursed is the man that putteth his trust in man.” Then the archbishop went on to remind Henry of the proofs he had given of his fidelity in the years when he was chancellor, and warned him that he would have done well to have taken counsel with his archbishop concerning spiritual things than with those who had kindled the flame of envy and vengeance against one who had done them no wrong.

The only reply the king gave was to urge that the Archbishop should drop the words “saving their order” in promising to obey the royal customs.

The archbishop refused to yield, and so they parted.15

At the close of the year the archbishop’s difficulties had been increased by appeals on all sides to yield to the king. The bishops were for peace at any price, and the Pope, Alexander III., threatened by an anti-pope, and anxious for the good will of the king of England, sent an abbot to Thomas urging him to give way, on the ground that Henry only wanted a formal assent to the “customs” for the sake of his dignity, and had no intention of doing anything harmful to the Church.

Under these circumstances Thomas decided to yield. He went to the king at Woodstock and declared that the obnoxious phrase, “saving our order,” should be omitted from the promise to observe the “customs.”

Without delay the king ordered his justiciar, Richard of Lucy, and his clerk, Jocelin of Balliol, to draw up a list of the old “customs” and liberties of his grandfather Henry I., and on the 29th of January, 1164, a great council was held at Clarendon to ratify the agreement between the bishops and the king.

Sixteen constitutions or articles were drawn up, and Thomas, over-persuaded by the prayers of the bishops and the desire for peace, gave his promise unconditionally to observe them. But no sooner had he done so, and the articles were placed before him in black and white, than he repented.

The very first article declared that all disputes about Church patronage were to be tried in the King’s Court, and was intolerable, because while the State held it was a question of the rights of property, the Church view was that the main point was the care of souls, a spiritual matter for churchmen, not lawyers, to decide.

The other articles which Thomas objected to, and which the pope subsequently refused to ratify, decreed: (1) That clerks were to be tried in the King’s Courts for offences of common law. (2) That neither archbishops, bishops, nor beneficed clerks were to leave the kingdom without the king’s license. (This, said St. Thomas, would stop all pilgrimages and attendance at councils at Rome, and turn England into a vast prison. “It was right enough to apply for the king’s leave before the departure, but to bind one’s-self by an oath not to go without it was against religion and was evil.”) (3) That no member of the king’s household was to be excommunicated without the king’s permission. (4) That no appeals should be taken beyond the archbishop’s court, except to be brought before the king. (This was a definite attempt to prohibit appeals to Rome, and Thomas pointed out that the archbishop on receiving the pallium swore expressly not to hinder such appeals. The acceptance of this article left the king absolute master.)

The last article, declaring that serfs or sons of villeins were not to be ordained without the consent of the lord on whose land they were born, was not opposed by the pope, and the only contemporary objection seems to have been raised by Garnier, a French monk and a biographer of Thomas Becket.16

Thomas had promised obedience to these constitutions, but he would not put his seal to them. It seemed to him that it was not only the old “customs” that had been drawn up, but rather a new interpretation of these customs. The great Council of Clarendon was over. Thomas received a copy of the constitutions and rode off, and the king had to be content for the time with the promises delivered.

In abject remorse Thomas wrote to the pope confessing his assent to the Constitutions of Clarendon, and for forty days he abstained from celebrating the mass. The pope, still anxious to prevent any open rupture between the king and the archbishop, wrote in reply that “Almighty God watches not the deed, but considers rather the intention and judges the will,” and that Thomas was absolved by apostolic authority. All the same, Pope Alexander III., without in any way censuring Thomas, throughout the long struggle with Henry never stands up roundly for the archbishop.

Neither Henry nor Thomas could rest satisfied with Clarendon. The archbishop had compromised for the sake of peace, but his quick revulsion had provoked a keener hostility in the king. To Henry it seemed the time had come to drive Thomas out of public life by compelling him to resign the see of Canterbury. With Thomas out of the way Henry could carry out his plans for a strong central government, for bringing all under the pitiless arm of the law. Thomas was the one man in the kingdom who dared offer resistance, and if Thomas was no longer archbishop and some supple creature of the king was in his place, the royal power would be absolute, for there seemed no fear of any interference from Pope Alexander III.

There were plenty of the archbishop’s enemies among the nobles at the court ready to fan the king’s anger against Thomas, and by October, 1164, Henry was ready to crush the primate.

Another council was summoned to meet at Northampton, and now Archbishop Thomas was to learn the full significance of the Constitutions of Clarendon.

The first charge against Thomas was that he had refused justice to John, the Treasurer-Marshal, who had taken up some land under the see of Canterbury. John had taken his suit to the King’s Court, and Thomas was further charged with contempt of the majesty of the crown for not putting in a personal appearance at this court. The king now pressed for judgment against the archbishop for this contempt, and the council ordered that he should be condemned to the loss of all his moveable property, and 500 pounds of silver was accepted as an equivalent fine.

“It seemed to all that, considering the reverence due to the king and by the obligation of the oath of homage, which the archbishop had taken, and by the fealty to the king’s earthly honour which he had sworn, he was in no way to be excused, because when summoned by the king he had neither come himself, nor pleaded infirmity, or the necessary work of his ecclesiastical office.” (W. FitzStephen).

It was not easy to get the sentence pronounced against Thomas. Barons and bishops were willing enough to stand well with the king, and they agreed without contradiction to the fine. But the barons declined to act as judge on a spiritual peer, and insisted that one of the bishops must do this business. Henry, Bishop of Winchester, at last, on the king’s order, pronounced the sentence.

Thomas protested. “If I were silent at such a sentence posterity would not be. This is a new form of sentence, no doubt in accordance with the new laws of Clarendon. Never has it been heard before in England that an Archbishop of Canterbury has been tried in the King’s Court for such a cause. The dignity of the Church, the authority of his person, the fact that he is the spiritual father of the king and of all his subjects, require that he should be reverenced by all.” For an archbishop to be judged by his suffragans was, he declared, for a father to be judged by his sons.

The bishops implored him to bow to the decree of the council, and Thomas yielded, “not being willing that a mere matter of money should cause strife between the king and himself.”

The next day, Friday, October 9th, the king pressed Thomas more fiercely, calling upon him to give account for large sums spent during his chancellorship, and for various revenues of vacant churches during that period. The total amount was 30,000 marks.

In vain the archbishop urged that this demand was totally unexpected; that he had not been summoned to Northampton to render such an account; and that the justiciar, Richard, had declared that he was free of all claims when he laid down the chancellorship. The king demanded sureties, “and from that day barons and knights kept away from the archbishop’s house—for they understood the mind of the king.”

All Saturday Thomas was in consultation with the bishops, most of whom expressed themselves strongly on the king’s side. Henry of Winchester suggested the present of 2,000 marks to the king as a peace-offering, and this was done. But the king would not have it. Hilary, of Chichester, said, addressing the archbishop, “You ought to know the king better than we do, for you lived with him in close companionship and friendship when you were chancellor. Who is there who could be your surety for all this money? The king has declared, so it is said, that he and you cannot both remain in England as king and archbishop. It would be much safer to resign everything and submit to his mercy. God forbid lest he arrest you over these moneys of the chancellorship, or lay hands on you.” One or two less craven urged the archbishop to stand firm, as his predecessors had done, in the face of persecution.

“Oh, that you were no longer archbishop and were only Thomas,” said Hilary, putting the matter briefly.

All Sunday was spent in consultations. On Monday the archbishop was too ill to attend the council, but on Tuesday his mind was made up, and when he entered the council it was with the full dignity of an archbishop, carrying the cross of the archbishop in his hand.

The bishops were in despair. There were all sorts of rumours in the air. It was known the king was full of anger, and it was said that the archbishop’s life was in danger. The bishops implored him to resign, or else to promise complete submission to the councils of Clarendon. They said he would certainly be tried and condemned for high treason for disobedience to the king, and asked him what was the use of being archbishop when he had the king’s hatred.

Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, declared contemptuously of Thomas, when someone asked him why he did not carry the archbishop’s cross for him, “He always was a fool, and always will be.”

Thomas had now only one answer to the bishops. He forbad them to take any part in the proceedings against him, announced that he had appealed to “our Mother, the Church of Rome, refuge of all the oppressed,” to prevent any of them taking part, and ordered them to excommunicate any who should dare lay secular hands upon the primate.

Then, holding his cross, the archbishop took his usual place in the council-chamber, while the king sat in an inner room.

In the face of personal danger all the strength and courage of Thomas Becket were aroused. He had yielded at Clarendon for the sake of peace, and no good had come of it. He had submitted to be fined rather than be involved in a miserable dispute about money, and now he was threatened with demands for money which were beyond his resources. There was nothing to prevent the king piling up greater and greater sums against him, till hopeless ruin had been reached. He was powerless to withstand such an onslaught. To Rome, “the refuge of all the oppressed,” would Thomas appeal, and then, if it seemed well to the pope, he would retire from Canterbury. But he would not surrender his post, however great the wrath of the king, unless it were for the welfare of the Christian Church.

In the council-chamber Thomas sat alone, with one or two clergy attending him, including Herbert of Bosham and William FitzStephen, while the bishops went in to the king’s chamber. Among the nobles the cry was going up that the archbishop was a perjurer and a traitor, because, after signing at Clarendon, he now, in violation of those constitutions, forbad bishops to give judgment in a case that did not involve bloodshed, and had further made appeal to Rome.

Then the king sent to know whether the archbishop refused to be bound by the Constitutions of Clarendon, and whether he would find sureties to abide by the sentence of the court regarding the accounts of his chancellorship.

Thomas again pointed out that he had not been called there to give an account of his chancellorship, that on his appointment to the archbishopric he had been declared by the king free of all secular claims, and that he had forbidden the bishops to take part in any judgment against him, and had appealed to Rome, “placing his person and the church of Canterbury under the protection of God and the pope.”

At the end of this speech the barons returned in silence to the king, pondering the archbishop’s words.

But hostile murmuring soon broke the silence, and Thomas could overhear the barons grumbling that, “King William, who conquered England, knew how to tame his clerks. He had put his own brother Odo in prison, and thrown Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, into a dungeon.”

The bishops renewed their pitiful chorus. Thomas had placed them between the hammer and the anvil by his prohibition: of disobedience to Canterbury on the one hand, and of the king’s anger on the other. They had given their word at Clarendon, and now they were being forced to go against the promises they had made. They, too, would appeal to Rome against his prohibition, “lest you injure us still more.”

All that Thomas could say was that the Constitutions of Clarendon had been sent to the pope for confirmation, and had been returned, rather condemned than approved. “This example has been given for our learning, that we should do likewise, and be ready to receive what he receives at Rome, and reject what he rejects. If we fell at Clarendon, through weakness of the flesh, the more ought we to take courage now, and in the might of the Holy Ghost contend against the old enemy of man.”17

So bishops and nobles came and went between the king and the archbishop, and the day drew on. Henry allowed the bishops to stand apart from the judgment, and demanded sentence from the barons, and Earl Robert of Leicester advanced as the spokesman of the council to where the archbishop was sitting. The earl began to speak of the judgment of the court, when Thomas rose and refused to hear him.

“What is this you would do?” he cried. “Would you pass sentence on me? Neither law nor reason permit children to pass sentence on their father. You are nobles of the palace, and I am your spiritual father. I will not hear this sentence of the king, or any judgment of yours. For, under God, I will be judged by the pope alone, to whom before you all here I appeal, placing the church of Canterbury with all thereto belonging under God’s protection and the protection of the pope.” Then he turned to the bishops. “And you, my brethren, who have served man rather than God, I summon to the presence of the pope; and now, guarded by the authority of the Catholic Church and the Holy See, I go hence.”

So he passed out of the hall, no one gainsaying his passage, though some plucked rushes from the floor and threw at him. There were shouts of anger, and again the cries of “traitor” and “perjurer” were raised. The archbishop turned on Earl Hamelin, the king’s brother, and Randulf of Brok, who were calling “traitor,” and said sternly: “If I were not a priest, my own arms should quickly prove your lie. And you, Randulf, look at home (his cousin had lately been hanged for felony) before you accuse the guiltless!”

His horses were at the gate, and a great crowd that were afraid lest the archbishop had been killed. St. Thomas mounted, and accompanied by Herbert of Bosham, rode back to the monastery of St. Andrew, where he had been lodging. The crowd thronged him and prayed for his blessing all the way until the monastery was reached, and then he would have the multitude come in to the refectory and dine with him. Of his own retinue of forty who had come with him to Northampton, scarce six remained; and so the places of those who had thought it safer to desert their lord were filled by the hungry multitude. It was the archbishop’s farewell banquet, and he, the constant champion of the poor, had those whom he loved for his guests that day.

At nightfall, after compline had been sung and the monks dispersed to their cells, the archbishop, with three other men in the dress of lay brothers, rode out from Northampton by the north gate, and at dawn were at Grantham. Three weeks later Thomas had reached Flanders, and the exile had begun which was only to end six years later when death was at hand.

It was useless to remain in England, hopeless as Thomas was of any support from the bishops. He could but appeal, as Anselm had appealed, to the one court that alone was recognised as owning a higher authority than that of the kings of this world, the court of Rome.

But Pope Alexander, still harassed by an anti-pope set up by the Emperor Frederick, could do as little for Thomas as his predecessor had done for Anselm, though he refused to allow him to resign the archbishopric. Unlike Anselm, Thomas vigorously carried on his contest with the king from the friendly shelter of King Louis of France, and Henry retaliated without hesitation, driving out of England all the friends and kinsmen of Thomas, to the number of four hundred, and threatening a like banishment to the Cistercian monks, because Thomas had taken refuge in their monastery at Pontigny.

The fear that the pope would allow the archbishop to pronounce an interdict against England, and a sentence of personal excommunication against its king, drove Henry in 1166 to appeal himself to the pope. “Thus by a strange fate it happened that the king, while striving for those ‘ancient customs,’ by which he endeavoured to prevent any right of appeal (to the pope), was doomed to confirm the right of appeal for his own safety.” (John of Salisbury.)

Months and years passed in correspondence. More than once Henry and Thomas met at the court of Louis, but neither would yield. The pope, without blaming the archbishop, and without sanctioning any extreme step against Henry, did what he could to make peace between them.

At last, in the summer of 1170, the king really was disturbed by the fear of an interdict, for his last act against Archbishop Thomas had been to have his son crowned by the Archbishop of York, in defiance of all the rights and privileges of the see of Canterbury. Besides this, Louis was threatening war because his daughter, who was married to the young King Henry, had not been crowned with her husband. Henry hastened over to France and made friends with Thomas, and the reconciliation took place at Freteral. The king solemnly promised that the archbishop should enjoy all the possessions and rights of which he had been deprived in his exile, and that his friends and kinsmen should all be allowed to return home. He even apologised for the coronation of his son. It seemed as if the old friendship had been revived. “We conversed together until the evening as familiarly as in the days of our ancient friendship. And it was agreed I should arrange my affairs and then make some stay with the king before embarking for England; that the world might know how thoroughly we are restored to his favour and intimacy. We are not afraid that the king will not fulfil his promises, unless he is misled by evil counsellors.” So Thomas wrote to the pope in July, 1170. Yet there were many—including King Louis—who doubted the sincerity of the reconciliation, for Henry was not willing to give the kiss of peace to his archbishop.

On December 1st Thomas landed at Sandwich, and went at once to Canterbury. The townspeople and the poor of the land welcomed him with enthusiastic devotion. “Small and great, old and young, ran together, some throwing themselves in his way, others crying and exclaiming, ‘Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.’ In the same manner the clergy and their parishioners met him in procession, saluting their father and begging his blessing.... And when all things in the cathedral was solemnly ended, the archbishop went to his palace, and so ended that joyful and solemn day.” (Herbert of Bosham.)

But against the affection and goodwill of his own people at Canterbury, and a similar demonstration of rejoicing by multitudes of clergy and people in London, Thomas had to face the fact that the bishops generally hated his return, that the young Prince Henry, recently crowned, who had been his pupil, refused to see him and ordered his return to Canterbury, and that the nobles openly spoke of him as a traitor to the king. “This is a peace for us which is no peace, but rather war,” said the archbishop bitterly.

The end was not far off. Thomas, as zealous for good discipline in the Church as Henry was for strong authority in the State, was no sooner returned than he was asked to withdraw the sentence of excommunication against the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of London and Salisbury. He promised to do this if the bishops on their part would promise to submit to the decision of the pope on the matter. London and Salisbury were moved to receive absolution on these terms, but Roger, of York, who had always been against Becket, dissuaded them, urging them to throw themselves on the protection of the king, and threatening Thomas “with marvellous and terrible things at the hands of the king” unless he relented. Naturally, these threats left the archbishop undisturbed, and Roger of York, with Gilbert Foliot of London and Jocelin of Salisbury, at once hastened over to France to lay their case before the king.

These bishops were not the only men who troubled Thomas in these last days. Randulf de Broc, with others of his family, and certain knights, all known as strong “king’s men,” “sought every means to entangle him in a quarrel,” and did not stop from robbing a ship belonging to the archbishop and from seizing a number of horses, and mutilating one of them. Thomas replied by excommunicating Randulf and Robert de Broc, the boldest of these offenders.

At Christmas more than one of the archbishop’s followers warned him that his life was in danger, and Thomas seems to have realised that his position was hazardous. But he would not fly.

Already his murderers were at hand.

The excommunicated bishops had reached the king at Bur, near Bayeux, had told their story, and had coloured it with a fanciful description of Thomas making a circuit of England at the head of a large body of men.18 Someone had said, “My lord, as long as Thomas lives, you will have neither peace nor quiet in your kingdom, nor will you ever see good days;” and at this Henry had burst out into a terrible rage of bitterness and passion, for such fits at times took possession of him, “Here is a man,” he cried out, “who came to my court a sorry clerk, who owes all he has to me, and insults my kingdom and lifts his heel against me. And not one of the cowardly sluggish knaves, whom I feed and pay so well, but suffers this, nor has the heart to avenge me!”

The words were spoken, and four of the king’s knights—Reginald FitzUrse, William of Tracy, Hugh of Morville, and Richard the Breton—hearing what was said, and that Roger of York had declared “as soon as Thomas is dead all this trouble will be ended, and not before,” at once departed. They sailed from different ports and met together at Saltwood, the castle of the Brocs, on December 28th. The following day they rode on to Canterbury, taking with them twelve of Randulf’s men and Hugh of Horsea, who was called the Evil Deacon.

The king, on finding the four knights had left the court, gave orders to have them stopped, but it was too late. They were then at Canterbury, and entering the hospitable doors of the palace had made direct for the archbishop’s private chamber.

It was four o’clock. Dinner had been at three, and Thomas was sitting on his bed talking to John of Salisbury, Edward Grim, and a few other friends. When the knights entered, Thomas recognized Reginald, William, and Hugh, for they had served under him years before, and waited for them to speak.

Reginald FitzUrse was the spokesman. He declared they had come from the king, that Thomas must take an oath of fealty to the newly-crowned prince, and must absolve the excommunicated bishops. Thomas answered that the bishops might have been absolved on their willingness to obey the judgments of the Church, and that the king had sanctioned what had been done at their reconciliation.

Reginald denied there had been any reconciliation, and swore that Thomas was imputing treachery to the king in saying such a thing.

The archbishop pointed out that the reconciliation had taken place in public, and that Reginald himself had been present.

Reginald swore he had never been there, and had not heard of it. And at this the other knights broke in, swearing again and again, by God’s wounds, that they had borne with him far too long already.

Then Thomas reminded them of the insults and losses he had endured, especially at the hands of the De Brocs, since his return.

Hugh of Morville answered him that he had his remedy in the King’s Courts, and ought not to excommunicate men on his own authority.

“I shall wait for no man’s leave to do justice on any that wrong the Church and will not give satisfaction,” Thomas replied.

“What do you threaten us! Threats are too much!” cried Reginald FitzUrse.

Then the knights bit their gloves and angrily defied the archbishop.

Thomas told them that they could not intimidate him. “Once I went away like a timid priest; now I have returned, and I will never leave again. If I may do my office in peace, it is well: if I may not, God’s will be done.” Then he turned to remind them they had once sworn fealty to him when he was chancellor.

“We are the king’s men,” they shouted out, “and owe fealty to no one against the king!”

Bidding his servants keep the archbishop within the precincts on peril of their lives, the knights withdrew.

“It is easy to keep me,” said Thomas, “for I shall not go away. I will not fly for the king or for any living man.”

“Why did you not take counsel with us and give milder answer to your enemies?” said John of Salisbury. “You are ready to die, but we are not. Think of our peril!”

“We must all die,” the archbishop answered, “and the fear of death must not turn us from doing justice.”

Word was quickly brought in that the knights were putting on their armour in the courtyard, and the monks, frightened at the sight of these men with drawn swords entering the orchard to the west of the cathedral, rushed to the archbishop and implored him to fly to the cathedral. Thomas smiled at their terror, saying, “All you monks are too cowardly, it seems to me.” And not till vespers had begun would he leave for the minster. The knights broke into the cloisters after him, and reaching St. Benet’s chapel began to hammer at the door, which for safety the monks had barred behind them.

Thomas at once ordered the door to be unbolted, saying, “God’s house shall not be made a fortress on my account.” He slipped back the iron bar himself, and the angry knights rushed in with cries of “Where is the traitor? Where is the archbishop?”

It was five o’clock and a dark winter’s night. Had Thomas chosen, he could easily have escaped death by concealing himself in the crypt or in one of the many hiding places in the cathedral. But he felt his hour had come and met it without faltering. John of Salisbury and the rest of the monks and clerks vanished away and hid themselves, leaving only Edward Grim, Robert of Merton and William FitzStephen with the archbishop. Soon only Grim was left, when the archbishop came out boldly, and standing by a great pillar near the altar of St. Benedict, answered his accusers. “Here I am: no traitor, Reginald, but your archbishop.”

They tried to drag him from the church, but he clung to the great pillar, with Edward Grim by his side. For the last time Reginald called on him to come out of the church. “I am ready to die, but let my people go, and do not hurt them,” was the archbishop’s answer. William Tracy seized hold of him, but Thomas hurled him back. Upon that FitzUrse shouted, “Strike! strike!” And Tracy cut savagely at the head of the archbishop. Grim sprang forward and the blow fell on his arm, and he fell back badly wounded.

Then Thomas commended his cause and that of the Church to St. Denis and the patron saints of the cathedral, and his soul to God, and without flinching bowed his head to his murderers. FitzUrse, Tracy and Richard the Breton struck the archbishop down, and Hugh the Evil Deacon mangled in brutal fashion the head of St. Thomas before calling out to the others: “Let us go now; he will never rise again!”

Then they all rushed from the church, and shouting, “King’s knights! King’s knights!” proceeded to plunder the palace. They fled north that night to the castle of Hugh of Morville at Knaresborough, where for a time they lived in close retirement. Tracy subsequently went on a pilgrimage to Rome and Palestine, but all four “within two years of the murder were living at court on familiar terms with the king.”19

Henry and all his court were horrified when the news was brought of the archbishop’s martyrdom, for all the people proclaimed the murdered prelate a saint and a martyr, and “a martyr he clearly was, not merely to the privileges of the Church or to the rights of the see of Canterbury, but to the general cause of law and order as opposed to violence.”20 Had St. Thomas yielded in the matter of the excommunicated bishops, and sought favour with the king at the expense of the liberties and discipline of the Church, and had he given way to the savage, lawless turbulence of the king’s knights, he would not only have escaped a violent death, but might have lived long in the sunshine of the royal pleasure. He chose the rougher, steeper road, daring all to save the Church and the mass of the English people from being brought under the iron heel of a king’s absolute rule, and he paid the penalty, pouring out his blood on the stones of the minster at Canterbury to seal the vows he had taken when he first entered the city as archbishop.

In his dying St. Thomas was even stronger than in his life. Henry hastened to beg the forgiveness of Rome for his rash words that had provoked the murder, and in the presence of the pope’s legates in Normandy promised to give up the Constitutions of Clarendon and to stand by the papacy against the emperor. Nor did he make any further attempt in his reign to bring the Church under the subjection of the crown, but built up a great system of legal administration, which in substance exists to-day.

St. Thomas was canonised four years after his death. “There was no shadow of doubt in men’s minds that here was one who was a martyr as fully as any martyr of the catacombs and the Roman persecutions.” (R.H. Benson, St. Thomas of Canterbury.) Countless miracles were alleged to prove the sanctity of the dead hero, and pilgrims from all parts made their way to the shrine of the “blessful martyr” at Canterbury. Not only in England, but in France and Flanders, and particularly in Ireland was there an outburst of devotion to St. Thomas.

The shrine at Canterbury was destroyed by Henry VIII., who after a mock trial of the archbishop slain more than 300 years earlier, declared that “Thomas, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, had been guilty of contumacy, treason and rebellion,” and “was no saint, but rather a rebel and traitor to his prince.”

But though Thomas, canonised by the pope on the prayers of the people of England, could be struck out of the calendar of the Church of England by the arbitrary will of King Henry VIII., as an enemy of princes, and his shrine destroyed, it is beyond the power of a king to reverse the sentence of history or to blast for ever the fame of a great and courageous champion of the poor of this land. Time makes little of the insults of Henry VIII. Thomas of Canterbury died for the religion that in his day protected the people against the despotism of the crown. “He was always a hater of liars and slanderers and a kind friend to dumb beasts (hence his rage with De Broc for mutilating a horse) and all poor and helpless folk.” (F. York Powell.)

That Henry II. strove to make law predominant in the spirit of a great statesman is as true as that Thomas strove to mitigate the harshness of the law. As a writer of the twelfth century put it: “Nothing is more certain than that both strove earnestly to do the will of God, one for the sake of his realm, the other on behalf of his Church. But whether of the two was zealous in wisdom is not plain to man, who is so easily mistaken, but to the Lord, who will judge between them at the last day.”