correct our interpretation of it. But when Thomas of Canterbury was raised to the rank of a saint, he became, according to the principles of those days, fair game for the fancy of his admirers. Imaginary adventures were ascribed to him—and even as we have seen, a mythical origin, as was the case with ancient demigods. The accounts of his life were studded with a profusion of miracles; his character was idealized at will; and that which is now treated as a slander of his enemies, was in fact the expression of the reverence of his devotees. It was his admirers, even his contemporary admirers, who dwelt on the particulars of his mortifications, without marking the process by which he may have gradually increased them; it was they who insisted on the frequent discipline, on the shirt of hair with its verminous population, hourly inflicting on the saint a torment, in comparison of which the sufferings of his martyrdom were but a trifle. The suddenness of his change was even enshrined as a glorious fact in narratives which became a part of the service of the Church 3. In short, the ostentation is the only part of the prevailing idea which is to be referred to the moderns, and this is rather an inference (surely very colourable) than an invention.

The popular notion, however, is considerably wrong. What Becket's more private habits were in the days of his chancellorship, we cannot very confidently say. He was, we are told, (and we may easily believe it,) munificent in his almsgiving, as in his other expenditure". His purity has been impeached, but, the biographers assure us, unjustly; and various stories are told in his purgation 10. As to this, indeed, it would seem from the statement of one friend, that the most secular period of his life-the chancellorship was more blameless than some earlier portions of it ". And it is said, that in the days of his splendour he was in the habit of subjecting himself to constant discipline; Fitzstephen corpore sic et mente exuit aulam, exuit purpuram, et cilicium induit, novum novi hominis habitum," &c. We have corrected Dr. Giles's exivit.

7 Grim, in S. T. C. i. 82. "Cilicium sic bestiunculis obsitum ut levius isto pristinæ diei fuisse martyrium quivis judicaret, et hostes majores minoribus minus nocuisse." Mr. Froude, who had before him no other authority for the vermin than Fitzstephen, declares that "he sees no adequate proof" of it.-(564.) But even if Grim and Fitzstephen were false witnesses, the fact is not be slurred over, that Becket's contemporaries dwelt on this as a token of sanctity.

8 Thus it is said in a "Passion," which appears to have been read as a lesson, "Consecratus, repente mutatus est in virum alium. Cilicium clam induit," &c. S. T. C. ii. 146.

9 Roger, in S. T. C. i. 103-4.

10 Grim, ibid. 13.

11 Fitzst. in S. T. C. i. 189. The manner in which such things are spoken of gives us a shocking idea of the morals of the clergy in that age of professed celibacy. See e. g. Godwin de Præsulib. p. 677.

furnishing us with the very names of the flagellators at London and at Canterbury.

The archbishop's course of life, however, was to be stricter than the chancellor's. It is, indeed, a mistake to suppose that he cast off all outward pomp; and when M. Thierry1 tells us, that within a few days after his consecration he had "stripped off his rich attire, disfurnished his sumptuous palace, broken with his noble familiars, and allied himself with the poor, the beggars, and the Saxons," the misstatement in favour of the writer's theory is altogether ludicrous. What palace was it that Becket unfurnished? We presume that he removed from that which he had previously occupied; but if the meaning be that the archiepiscopal residence in his time was worse furnished or kept up than in Theobald's, (which is the only meaning that would be relevant,) we are amply assured of the contrary-that his establishment was more splendid than that of any former archbishop. And while it is true that he paid especial attention to the poor, and that some of this class daily fed in his hall, the rest of what is stated in this passage appears to be pure invention. He was, indeed, soon involved in quarrels with various nobles; but this was not from any enmity of Saxon against Norman, or of one class against another; but because these individuals interfered with what he regarded as the rights of his see; and the mention of Saxons is here, as in many other places, a gratuitous insertion of M. Thierry.

Herbert describes the order of the archbishop's hall. Near him sat his clerks; at some distance sat his knights and men-atarms, that their unlettered ears might not be annoyed by the sound of the Latin books which were read aloud for the edification of the clergy. The food was plentiful, and of the best kind; and so far was the archbishop from limiting his company to beggars and Saxons, that his enemies accused him of having about him "not men of religion, but lettered nobles"." "All the gifts of grace in him," says Grim, "were so veiled by outward pride, that even when he was archbishop, one would have supposed him a man who lived for nothing but the pomp of this world 3.

His own habits were now severe. He slept little, and ate

1 iii. 109.

2 "Non religiosos sed literatos nobiles."-(Ep. i. 53. ed. Lup.) Which Mr. Froude somewhat strangely renders "not persons remarkable for their religion, but for their intellectual rank." 66 Religiosos," we suppose to mean monks. 3 S. T. C. i. 13. Dr. Giles reads accitasse, which we have translated as if it were

extitisse.

sparingly. His usual drink was water, in which hay had been boiled to render it unpalatable. He devoted much of his time to religious study. Nor do we see any reason (except the general untruthfulness of the early biographers) to doubt that his use of the hair shirt dates from the beginning of his archiepiscopate. His liberality in almsgiving is much insisted on by his contemporaries. Theobald, it is said, doubled the alms of the former archbishop, and Thomas doubled Theobald's; when, however, it is stated, after much detail, that a tenth of his income sufficed for this quadrupled almsgiving, we cannot help drawing some inferences not quite consistent with the idea of "mediæval" charity which is now generally current to the disparagement of

our own.

Much is said (as we have already intimated) of the pains which Becket took to conceal his sanctity. The dishes served up to him were of the most delicate kind, and his abstinence was exercised in the matter of quantity, by which means it might the better escape notice. Herbert' tells a story of a stranger monk, who was one day observed to smile at the daintiness of the archbishop's food." "If I mistake not, brother," said the archbishop, somewhat nettled, "there is more of greediness in your eating of your beans than in mine of this pheasant." And the biographer goes on to say that the censor, although he did not care for delicacies, was noted, during his stay at Canterbury, as "revera avidus comedo grossiorum."

A similar concealment was practised in the matter of dress. "He wished," says Grim", "to avoid men's eyes until the new plant which Divine grace had set in his breast should be more deeply rooted, so that it need not fear the blasts of the world; and therefore he did not at first change his attire." It was not

66

And

until one of his attendants had been told in a dream to warn him against retaining a secular dress, and until he found that the monks murmured at his wearing it in the choir, that he assumed another habit. "His outward appearance," says Fitzstephen', was like the multitude; but within all was different." Herbert tells us that his dress was gay during the first year, and afterwards respectable and grave, ita ut nec exquisitæ essent sordes, nec affectatæ delicia." Over the cilice, he wore a monk's habit, as Abbot of the Monastery of Canterbury, and above this the dress of a canon, so that he might be in conformity with the clerks 9.

4 Fonum. This is probably the fennel of some modern statements.
5 S. T. C. vii. 68.

7 S. T. C. i. 203.

9 Giles, i. 121, from Fitzst.

6 S. T. C. i. 16.

8 Ib. vii. 41.

In almsgiving, too, he is said to have studied secrecy. Besides those deeds which might be done before men without any especial profession of sanctity, he had, we are told, thirteen poor men privately introduced into his apartments every evening. He washed and kissed their feet, regaled them with a plentiful meal, during which he himself waited on them, and sent them away with a present to each of four pieces of silver.

This last part of the story, we must think, throws suspicion on all the rest. The daily taking in of beggars, foot-washing, feeding, and giving of silver, could not be carried on without becoming known. The fame of them," says Lord Lyttelton', "was increased by the affectation of secrecy ;" and such must have been the consequence, whether intended or otherwise. And in all likelihood some part of the other observances also got abroad. It might be, indeed, that no one but the Saint's confessor or his chamberlain saw his hair shirt while he lived; but might not whispers of it be spread, whether through the one or two who were in the secret, or from mere surmise? Other saints had been discovered to have practised secret austerities; what more probable than that the like should be assumed by a religious party with respect to one whom it was disposed to look up to?

But was the Archbishop in all this acting the part of a hypocrite? We believe nothing of the kind.

The motive of the prelates who introduced him to the king was, as we have seen, a hope that, by the influence which he was likely to gain, he might secure the interest of the Church; and some of the biographers tell us that he always kept this object in view. They represent him as continually averting measures which were intended against the Church, and as becoming an unwilling instrument of such as he could not prevent, in order that by taking the execution into his own hands he might make it press less heavily on his brethren than it would otherwise have done.

However this be, it is certain that he showed no outward sign of unwillingness to join in the king's measures; nay, that he was generally regarded as the instigator of them. In the war of Toulouse, especially, he was supposed to have advised the imposition of a peculiarly heavy tax on the clergy; and so secret was the fact of his having been really adverse to it, that Theobald threatened to excommunicate him at the time, that Foliot long after charged him with having "plunged a sword into the bosom of his mother the Church," by the exaction, and the Bishop of

1 ii. 342.

Exeter was not aware of the real state of the case until informed by John of Salisbury, in 11662.

In procuring the chancellor's election to the primacy, Henry supposed, of course, that he should continue to find him a ready agent of his will, especially in matters relating to the Church. Becket is said, indeed, as we have seen, to have declared that, if the promotion should take place, his friendship with the king would be changed into enmity; but it is certain that, whether from the manner in which the words were spoken, or from whatever other reason, Henry did not believe them, and went on without any apprehension.

His surprise, therefore, was great at receiving, as the first communication from the new archbishop, a request that he would provide himself with another chancellor. What was the motive of this? The office of chancellor was not considered incompatible with that of a bishop, either on account of its nature or on account of the labour attached to it. Bishops and archbishops had held it before, and were to hold it in later times. The chancellorship must, indeed, have been less splendid and stirring in the hands of the archbishop than it had been in those of the archdeacon, but there was nothing in its proper duties which might not very well be reconciled with his new function. At least, if the offices were incompatible, the time for declaring them so was ill chosen. On the one hand, Becket might have stated his conviction to Henry, before the irrevocable step of raising him to the primacy had been taken; or, on the other, he might have waited until he should be able to say from experience that one man could not suffice for the two duties. The resignation was, in truth, nothing less than a declaration of what Michelet calls "the duality of religion and the state." The archbishop could no longer serve the king as his officer; he must be independent 3.

2 See Froude, 578. There is another particular charge of acting against the Church, which Lord Lyttelton has brought forward, and Mr. Froude, (followed, of course, by Dr. Giles,) has undertaken to refute,-that in a dispute between the Bishop of Chichester and the abbot of Battle, the chancellor put himself forward to assert the king's power as divine against that of the pope as "ab hominibus concessa." We are not concerned to answer Mr. Froude's argument (575-7); but we must except against his inference that Becket must have been clear, because he afterwards referred to the case as an instance of Henry's oppression. Never, perhaps, was a man less capable than Becket of viewing his own conduct and position dispassionately. It would have been quite according to his character to reprobate, as if he were altogether guiltless, an act in which he had been a chief instrument. 3 Grim, in S. T. C. i. 13.

4 Hist. de France, iii. 167. Brux. 1840.

5 Dr. Lingard's remark here is hardly in keeping with his usual care to abstain from the more vulgar kind of fallacies. "A more certain path would certainly have offered itself to ambition. By continuing to flatter the king's wishes, and by uniting in himself the offices of chancellor and archbishop, he might in all probability have ruled without control in church and state." But ambition is a perverse thing!