their conclave, with drawn swords and furious gestures, threatening death to all who should persist in opposing the king's will. The bishops of Salisbury and Norwich, who were at this time especially obnoxious to Henry, in terror besought Becket to relent. The earls of Cornwall and Leicester joined their entreaties, saying that they apprehended some unheard-of violence. "It is," he answered," nothing new or unheard of, if it should be our lot to die for the rights of the Church; for this a multitude of saints has taught us, both by word and by example." The Grand Master of the Templars, and another eminent member of the order, fell at his feet, embraced his knees, and promised, on their salvation, that if he would but submit, he should never hear more of the customs. The Archbishop withdrew for a short time, and on returning said to his brethren, "It is God's will that I should perjure myself; for the present I submit and incur perjury, to repent hereafter as I may "."

He promised in the hearing of all, to keep the laws “legitimè et fide bonâ,” and charged the other bishops to do the like. It was then required that he should set his seal to the constitutions; an act by which he would, according to the notions of the time, have bound himself to them more thoroughly than by his verbal promise he required time for consideration. The parchment on which the constitutions were written was divided into three parts; the king took one, the Archbishop of York another, and Becket took the third. This would naturally have been construed as an act of approval; but some of the biographers tell us that he gave it the character of a protest, declaring that he took the deed as a voucher for the cause which he maintained,” and an information as to the measures against which he was bound to contends.

66

The admirers of Becket do not pretend to justify his conduct on this occasion. It is compared by the contemporaries to the falls of David and St. Peter, and he himself was ashamed of it, even at the time. "I know," he is reported to have said, “that what we have been doing must be condemned, unless a good intent were an excuse for a blamable act";" and as he went with his train to Winchester after the council, he for a long time kept

6 Roger, in S. T. C. i. 25.

7 Foliot, i. 172. Dr. Lingard attempts to throw suspicion on this statement, on the ground of the source from which it comes-the letter which we have already noticed. But even if that letter were a forgery, the accounts of the biographers bear it out in all essential points as to what took place at Clarendon, except that Foliot names Jocelin of Salisbury as having stood firm with the other bishops. 8 Roger, in S. T. C. i. 127, Herbert, quoted by Giles, i. 224.

9 Grim, in S. T. C. i. 31.

a melancholy silence, and at length, on being addressed by Herbert of Bosham, burst out into bitter lamentations, weeping profusely as he traced the calamities which had come on the Church to the promotion of a person so unworthy as himself to the office of its chief pastor1.

Those who think unfavourably of Becket, exult over the conduct which his friends do not defend. We cannot but think the reprobation of it in which some writers indulge is somewhat exaggerated. It was marked rather by weakness and vacillation than by deliberate perfidy. He yielded to the urgency of others, against his own judgment, and that for the sake of averting immediate danger from others rather than from himself. Neither can we fully agree in the measure of reprobation which Lord Lyttelton 2 bestows on the next acts of the archbishop, when he suspended himself from saying mass until he should receive the pope's pardon for what he had done, and yet joined with other prelates, by the king's desire, in requesting the papal sanction for the constitutions. To this his own approval was, of course, subject, and without it the constitutions were null in the opinion of High Churchmen (so to speak). That Becket should join in the application to the pope, seems, therefore, a necessary consequence of what he had before done; while his private suit for absolution was the result of his feeling that his assent had been wrong or questionable. His position was a most unhappy one, in which it was impossible to do right. We cannot much wonder that he acted as he did; and we shall do well to lay the chief weight of our blame rather on some earlier things, than on what was almost an unavoidable result of them.

The pope returned an indulgent answer to the request of absolution. He desired the archbishop to resume the offices of the altar, and to confess to some skilful spiritual guide whatever might weigh on his conscience. He refused to confirm the constitutions, but by way of softening his refusal he granted Henry's

1 Mr. Thierry's “fixed idea" comes out amusingly on this occasion. He tells us that, as the archbishop was on his way to Winchester, "a Saxon, named Edward Grim, his cross-bearer," spoke loudly against his compliance, and suggests that "in this reproach national sentiment had perhaps as great a share as religious conviction." (iii. 119). For this he refers to Fleury, who, we find, does not pretend to name the cross-bearer, and says nothing about his race. The mistake of making Grim crossbearer to the archbishop did not originate with Mr. Thierry, but it certainly is a mistake. The cross-bearer who spoke on this occasion was not a Saxon, but a Welshman, Alexander Llewellyn. Grim does not seem to have had any acquaintance with Becket until after his last return from France, when he visited him at Canterbury, and so was present at the murder. Llewellyn was sent abroad a day or two before that event, but we shall see that Grim did not even act as deputycross-bearer. 2 P. 364.

request, that the Archbishop of York should be appointed legate over all England3.

In the meantime, Becket's enemies were not idle. Herbert divides them into three species, which he compares respectively to gnats, bees, and scorpions *; and to these he afterwards adds "fat bulls of Basan "-the hostile bishops-and their "calves," or clerks. The gnats and bees buzzed into the king's ears a tale of slighting words, which the primate was said to have spoken in contempt of his youth, unsteadiness, and violent temper; and in consequence of this Henry refused to see him when he presented himself at the doors of Woodstock palace. Becket then resolved to go to the pope, in defiance of the king, and contempt of the constitutions. He twice attempted to cross the sea, but was obliged to put back; on the second occasion he returned to Canterbury by night, just in time to save his effects from seizure by the king's officers.

He now again sought an interview with Henry, and was received with decorum, although with an evident lack of cordiality. Henry relaxed so far as to ask him with a smile whether one kingdom had not room for both, and desired him to govern his province without further thought of going abroad. proceeded to fulfil this injunction, but not, we should suppose, in manner likely to lessen the king's irritation.

Becket

6

"He aroused himself," says Herbert, "and with a prophet's mattock © plucked up, pulled down, scattered, and rooted out whatsoever he found planted amiss in the garden of the Lord. His hand rested not, his eye spared not; whatsoever was naughty, whatsoever rough, whatsoever wicked, he not only assailed with a prophet's mattock, but with the axe of the gospel he cut it down. Of the royal and ecclesiastical customs, he observed such as were good; but those which had been brought in for the dishonour of the clergy he pruned away as bastard shoots, that they should not strike their roots deep"."

In such proceedings the time passed on until the month of October, (1164), when the primate was summoned to answer before a council or parliament at Northampton for his behaviour in the case of John the Marshal, one of the king's retainers.

3 There was some misunderstanding as to this-Becket remonstrated against the grant, as trenching on the privileges of Canterbury. The pope assured him that he had no intention of slighting him; that the legation was granted on conditions, &c. It came to nothing in the end.

4 S. T. C. vii. 132.

5 If the reader can turn to the "Life" &c. vol. i. p. 230, he may be amused by Dr. Giles's defence of this step.

He arrived on Tuesday, the 7th of the month, and lodged in the monastery of St. Andrew. Next morning he had an interview with the king, who redressed the wrong done by some of his people in occupying a house intended for the archbishop's train, but did not offer the usual kiss, although Becket made demonstration of his willingness to receive it.

The case of John the Marshal was then entered on. The king had made a constitution, that if any one having a suit in his lord's court should find, after the first or second day of the trial, that things were going against him, he might, on swearing that injustice was done him, remove the cause into the king's court. By virtue of this, John appealed from the archbishop's court in a suit relating to the manor of Pagaham (probably Peckham, near Tunbridge). On the day appointed for Becket to answer to the charge of injustice, he did not attend in person, but sent four knights, with letters from himself and the sheriff of Kent, in which it was stated that John had failed in his evidence, and that his oath on removing the case had been made, not (as was usual) on reliques of saints or on the gospels, but on a tropary which he produced from under his cloak. The archbishop had not assigned any sufficent reason for his non-appearance, and therefore was now called on to answer for treason. His defence was not admitted, and on the second day of the council it was adjudged that he was "at the king's mercy;" a phrase implying forfeiture of all his effects, unless the king should be pleased (as was usual in such cases) to accept a fine instead. He was fined 500%. The prelates and the barons each endeavoured to shift on the other the duty of pronouncing the sentence, until the king in anger charged the Bishop of Winchester to perform the task.

8

Henry, however, had not yet done with Becket. His own wish would have been to attack him on subjects connected with the ecclesiastical privileges; but he was dissuaded from this, on the ground that the bishops might probably be unwilling to take a part against what was considered to be the cause of the Church. He therefore attempted to crush the archbishop by charges of a personal kind. First, there was a demand of 300%. which had been received by him as warden of Eye and Berkhampstead. He replied that he had spent that sum and more in the repairs of

8 Troparium, so called from containing tropes, which were properly certain versicles sung before the introit in the service of the mass (Dufresne). Mr. Turner makes this a "book of songs," and is followed by Mr. Froude. Dr. Giles still further improves it into "a jest-book!"

Becket's biographers delight in tales of judgments on his opponents, much after the same fashion as Mr. Huntington, S. S. in his autobiography. Thus here we are told by Grim that John lost two sons for whom he had intended to provide out of the Church's patrimony, and himself died within the year.-S. T. C. i. 40.

these and other castles, but that money should not be a bar to his agreement with the king, and therefore he would give sureties for the payment. Then came a charge about two sums of 5007. each-the one lent by Henry, the other borrowed by the chancellor on the king's security, in the war of Toulouse. Becket affirmed that the first 5007. was a gift; but it was decided that as he could not prove this he must refund the money. For this also he gave securities.

These demands were followed by one of more alarming magnitude, that he should account for the revenues of vacant sees and abbeys, including those of the archbishopric during its vacancy, which had come into his hands during his chancellorship. The amount is variously stated. The "Quadrilogus" (which is very inaccurately printed) makes Herbert rate it at two hundred and thirty thousand marks; in Dr. Giles's edition, his words are "about thirty thousand;" while others speak of it as forty-four thousand. The archbishop replied that he had not received notice to answer to any charge except that in the matter of John the Marshal, and requested leave to confer with his brethren.

On the morning of the fourth day (Saturday, October 10), a consultation was held accordingly. The Bishop of Winchester advised that the king's avarice should be gratified, and himself proceeded to the court with an offer of 2000 marks; but this was refused. The bishops resumed their deliberations. Some advised Becket to plead, that at the time of his election an express declaration of his discharge from all secular obligations had been required by the Bishop of Winchester, on the part of the been Church, and had been granted, in the king's name, by Prince Henry and the justiciary, De Luci. Others, among whom Foliot and Hilary of Chichester were conspicuous, advised him to place his see in the king's hands, and submit himself to his mercy. At length the Bishops of London and Rochester were sent to the king, with a request that he would allow the archbishop to defer his answer for a day. Foliot is accused of having falsified the message, leading the king to suppose that an answer of submission might be reckoned on.

The archbishop did not quit his monastery on the Sunday. During the following night, anxiety brought on an attack of an illness to which he was subject. The king, suspecting that the illness was feigned, sent to ask whether he would appear and would give bail to stand a trial as to the revenues. He answered that, whether well or sick, he would appear on the following day. In the meantime, he was told that Henry was swearing, with even more than usual vehemence, that some of the courtiers had conspired to kill him, and that the king had declared an intention of