With Dr. Giles, too, St. Thomas was at first but one of a series; the eight volumes which stand at the head of our list being a portion of a very extensive undertaking—a complete republication of our early ecclesiastical writers, of which about forty volumes have already appeared. In the course of his labours as editor, it appears to have struck Dr. Giles that a work of some interest might be composed of extracts from the Becket correspondence and the narratives of the early biographers, with some slight additions of necessary connecting matter. The outward appearance of the book thus made-its sparse printing, the absence of an index, the scantiness and looseness of the references at once indicate to the eye that the readers of the circulating libraries are the class for which it is intended. These may, we should think, find it readable enough; but we cannot rejoice that a book so little likely to influence them for good should have been manufactured for their special entertainment, or that one so little conducive towards a right estimate of the questions involved, should have been manufactured at all.

Dr. Giles's larger publication has utterly amazed us; for, not having examined the earlier volumes of the "Patres Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ," we had no idea of his style of editing. To do any thing like justice in the matter would require a far greater amount of labour than we are disposed to bestow on it, as our concern is rather with the hero than with the editor. We shall, therefore, content ourselves with saying, that if ever the learned librarian of Lambeth should have exhausted the humours of Fox and his editors, he may find Dr. Giles no unworthy successor to the honours of Messrs. Townsend and Cattley.

The most elaborate of late works on the subject is that which forms the fourth volume of Mr. Froude's 66 Remains." The papers were written at a time when the course of politics and of popular religion had excited the minds of many Churchmen to a state of continual and vehement protestation against whatever the world of latter times appeared to have agreed upon. Mr. Froude took up Becket as a man who had been slandered by lax and unsound writers. He had the twofold purpose of showing, (1) that the facts relating to the Archbishop had in many respects been misrepresented; and (2) that he had been judged on wrong principles. In some points Mr. Froude established his case; in others it is too apparent that he writes as a mere apologist, anxious rather to make out that his hero's conduct may have been right, than to ascertain whether it really was so. And while we acknowledge that Mr. Froude has, on the whole, the better of the adversaries whom he has chosen to encounter, we cannot but think that there were writers before him,—some of

them contemporaries, and others of earlier date,-whose view of the case is more correct than his, as well as than that of Hume and Lyttelton.

No one who regards what is passing around him, and has any sense of the reality of things, would now write exactly as Mr. Froude and others wrote from seven to fifteen years ago. Not that the events of a later time have had any tendency to increase our confidence in statesmen; but they have shown us by most melancholy experience, that dangers from secular politicians are not our only dangers. We think, therefore, that the present time is more favourable, than that in which Mr. Froude wrote, for an impartial appreciation of the Becket controversy; we think that his view, and that of those who agree with him, is not one which ought longer to remain as the last that has been taken by English Churchmen.

While some of our late writers have bent themselves to enlist our religious sympathies on the side of Becket, a distinguished French historian has, as the reader is probably aware, endeavoured to give a wholly different colouring to the question. The Archbishop's troubles were, according to M. Thierry, a struggle, not of the ecclesiastical and the secular power, but of the Saxon and the Norman races. In his pages Becket is the representative of the Saxons-the people-asserting their cause against the oppressive descendants of the conquerors, and therefore upheld by their sympathy in his contest, and consecrated by their veneration after death. The Saxons are M. Thierry's universal solvent-like the Gnostics in Hammond's Commentary, or the Jews in "Coningsby." He finds the influence of race uttering itself every where; or, if he cannot find it, he has little scruple about making it. We shall have frequent occasion to advert to this theory, which we believe to be utterly untrue, except with such qualifications as take away from it all that is peculiar or considerable.

Dr. Giles has added largely to the accessible materials for the history of Becket. The addition is not, indeed, of a value proportioned to its bulk; for the new letters of Foliot' are for the most part of no great interest; the portions of Herbert of Bosham's life which were not already known through the Quadrilogus, consist mainly of tedious moralizing and rhetorical flourishes; his "Liber Melorum" is (as Dr. Giles appears painfully to feel) unreadable for any one but an editor; and much of the other new matter is merely a repetition of the old. Dr. Giles,

2 Hist. de la Conquête de l'Angleterre, t. i. pp. xviii-xx; iii. 158. We refer to the Brussels edition of 1835.

3 Printed from a MS. in the Bodleian.

however, has done well in publishing all this, and we only wish that he had edited it better. The life by Edward Grim, before known by the abridgement in Surius' "Acta Sanctorum," is now published at full length; one by Roger, the monk who waited on the Archbishop while resident at Pontigny, one by an unknown writer, from a MS. at Lambeth, and others of less importance, are said to be entirely new.

The chief original sources of information then are,

1 and 2. The lives by Grim and Roger-animated and interesting narratives, but very incomplete accounts of Becket.

3. The life by William Fitzstephen, who describes himself as the archbishop's "fellow-citizen, chaplain, and messmate, remembrancer in his chancery, and reader of papers in his court, a witness of his trial at Northampton, and of his passion *. This is of greater pretension than the others, with some affectation of literature.

4. The life by Herbert of Bosham.

5. The "Quadrilogus," compiled from Herbert, William of Canterbury, John of Salisbury, and Alan of Tewkesbury, with a few passages from a fifth writer, Benedict, Abbot of Peterborough.

6. The letters of Becket, Foliot, and their contemporaries".

The popular story of Becket's birth is as follows. His father, Gilbert, became the captive of a Saracen in the Holy Land. The Saracen's daughter fell in love with him, aided him to escape, and some time after followed him to England-knowing but two words whereby she might help herself in her quest of him-the names of London and Gilbert. As she was wandering about Cheapside, quasi bestia erratica," says Brompton' (like a cow in a fremd loaning, as Scott might have translated it), vociferating her lover's name, and attended by a train of idle boys, she was recognised by Richard, the servant of Gilbert, and companion

66

S. T. C. i. 171. A learned friend of ours, who, in Lord Campbell's words, (Pref. p. ix) "has amassed a noble collection respecting all English lawyers in all ages," is inclined to identify the biographer with a person of the same name who was sheriff of Gloucestershire and a justice itinerant in the latter part of Henry II's reign.

There are two Quadrilogues; the earlier was published at Paris, 1485. That which we have used is the second, published with the Becket Letters by Christian Lupus, [Wolf], Brux. 1682.

6 Dr. Giles's arrangement of these is most inconvenient. We do not advise our friends to have recourse to his volumes, except for such of Foliot's letters as are not to be found in Lupus. The rest may be better read in Lupus, with the guidance of Mr. Froude's chronological list. Moreover, the letters of John of Salisbury and Arnulph which are in the old collection, are transferred to other volumes of the Patres Eccl. Anglic., which contain the works of the writers. 7 X Scriptores, Lond. 1652, col. 1053.

of his adventures. And the tale ends as it ought to end-in her baptism by the name of Matilda, which took place in St. Paul's, no less than six bishops sharing in the administration, her union with Gilbert, and the birth of a son, who was in due time to be developed into St. Thomas of Canterbury.

Dr. Giles sees "no reason to doubt " this story, and it is told without any show of misgiving by Thierry, by Froude, and by Michelet. Mr. Turner also adopts it, although not without some doubts'; and the assumption of its truth has been made to account for various things, such as the character of Matilda's devotion, her son's social position, his vehement "oriental" temperament, nay, the delicacy and whiteness of his hands2.

As to some of the details, authors are not quite agreed. One represents Gilbert as a gentleman travelling for the improvement of his mind-like Lord Lindsay or Mr. Eliot Warburton; others make him a crusading knight. crusading knight. Sir James Mackintosh (who, however, only argues for the possibility of the story, not for its truth,) supposes him a trader, journeying in the way of business. M. Thierry boldly turns him into an exemplification of the Saxon theory. Gilbert, he says, was one of those Saxons who, “yielding to the necessity of a subsistence," took service under Norman masters, and thus, in some inferior capacity, he attended an anonymous knight to the Holy Land. If we desire proof of this, the historian refers us to Brompton, who represents Gilbert as a penitential pilgrim, attended by a servant of his own,-and to the Scotch ballad of "Young Bekie" (once familiar to London streets through the travestie entitled "Lord Bateman "), in which he figures as a lord of castles and broad lands, impelled to rove by an enlightened curiosity!

5

The marriage, we learn from M. Thierry, made a great noise 3, as well it might. It is, however, remarkable that no sound or echo of this noise reached the contemporaries who lived in intimacy with the offspring of the union, and wrote his life, such as Grim and Roger, Herbert and Fitzstephen. These, and other early writers, while they mention the parents of the Saint, while they describe their station and characters, say nothing whatever that could imply any peculiarity in their history-that Gilbert had ever been in the East, whether as master or as servant, as inquiring traveller, crusader, palmer, or merchant; or that Matilda was other than the home-born child of Christian parents. In short, the story is a fiction, unsupported by any authorities

8 Life, &c. i. 14.

9 Hist. de France, iii. 1 England during the Middle Ages, 3rd edit. i. 221. 3 Hist. Eng. i. 153. 4 iii. 95.

2 Froude, 91. 5 iii. 97.

older than Brompton, who wrote in the reign of Edward III., and the compiler of the earlier Quadrilogue.

There is, however, another question as to Gilbert, which is important for its bearing on M. Thierry's theory-Was he a Saxon at all?

We do not think, with Mr. Froude and Dr. Giles, that the appearance of his name, if spelt Bequet, is of any great moment towards settling the point. It might have been, as M. Thierry says, the Saxon Beck, with a diminutive of Norman form added by those among he lived. There is, however, the testimony of Fitzstephen', who states that a Norman origin was a bond of connexion between Gilbert and Archbishop Theobald; and the author of a memoir now first published from a MS. at Lambeth, states that Gilbert was a native of Rouen-one of many who settled in England after the Conquest for purposes of commerce, -and that his wife was named Rose, a native of Caen'. This writer is certainly mistaken as to the mother's name, but the account of the father's emigration is probable enough.

We

We do not profess to see our way clearly in this question. On the one hand, there are notices which connect the family of Becket with Normandy; on the other, its establishment in London is spoken of in terms which do not well agree with the idea of Gilbert's having been the first who crossed the channel'. might, indeed, conjecture that the grandfather was the original settler; he, like his son, may have borne the name of Gilbert, and his wife may have been named Rose; but this is merely a conjecture, attempted by way of harmonizing statements which are in truth contradictory.

Whether Norman or Saxon, there is no doubt that the parents of Becket belonged to the most respectable class of citizens, and that Gilbert at one time was Sheriff of London.

The birth of Thomas, which is dated in the year 1118, could not, of course, take place, without some omens of his future greatness. When the case of the emir's daughter was propounded by Gilbert for the opinion of the bishops, the Bishop of

6 It does not occur in that of Lupus.

7 S. T. C. i. 184.

8 S. T. C. i. 184. "Gilbertus cum domino archipræsule de propinquitate et genere loquebatur, ut ille natu Normannus, et circa Tierrici villam, de equestri ordine, natu vicinus."

9 S. T. C. ii. 73.

1 Thus Becket himself writes, "Quod si ad generis mei radicem et progenitores meos intenderis, cives quidem fuerunt Londonienses, in medio concivium suorum habitantes sine querelâ, nec omnino infimi.”—Ep. i. 108. p. 167. ed. Lup. As his object in the passage is to assert the respectability of his origin, it is strange that he says nothing of his descent from a Norman knightly family, if he had such descent to boast of.