between the king and archbishop, was the utterance of the champion of his cause. The 'vile customs' seem to be forgotten; the question is, will the king receive back the archbishop, and restore him his property; the highest aspiration of the letter is the wish for justice to the Church of Canterbury. But there is another side to this question, and it is one of no slight importance to the subject of my biography. First, then, whether the archbishop's name should be spelt with a 'c' or without it,' whether, as M. Thierry2 asserts, he was of pure English blood, or, as Dr. Pauli believes, of Norman descent; this, at least, is clear, that his birth and early training connected him with that part of the nation in which old English feelings were strongest, and that his later struggles forced him to identify his cause with that section of the Church which, both from its origin and its tradi 1 Bromton seems to support Thierry in the spelling which the latter prefers, and in the story of Becket's birth, pp. 1052–1055. 2 History of the Norman Conquest, Hazlitt's translation, vol. ii. Book IX. p. 53. Heeren, vol. iii. p. 13. 4 Steph. Vit. S. Thomæ, pp. 10, II. tions, was least in sympathy with Norman invaders or any other aristocracy. He was the son of a London citizen who afterwards was chosen sheriff,2 and he either was or fancied himself despised by some of the other bishops for his birth.3 This, no doubt, if it embittered his prejudices, also strengthened his popular sympathies, and may have given zest to his opposition to the Sixteenth Constitution of Clarendon. This clause ran thus: The sons of rustics may not be ordained without the assent of the lord on whose land they are proved to be born.' The evils both of slavery and feudalism were, as we saw, attacked by the laws which Glanville compiled, but these were not yet brought out, and Becket may be well pardoned for thinking that the Church should do her part to simplify the road to freedom. The saintly Wulstan had struck a successful blow at the slave trade when the Conqueror had in vain endeavoured to check it; might not Becket do something to alleviate 1 See the account of the resistance of the monks to the Norman Conquest given above. 2 Steph. Vit. S. Thomæ, p. 10. See his letter to Gilbert Folliot, Bouquet, vol. xvi. p. 261. 4 Guill. Malmesb. Vit. S. Wulstani, chap. xx. p. 228. i the evils, or even undermine the existence of home slavery? The idea was one that would have well suited Becket's nobler moods, and we may fairly credit him with it. Nor, I think, was it an ignoble feeling that led him to throw in his cause with that of the monks. He was wont,' says a monk who probably knew him personally,' 'to preside over the chapters of the monks, to confer with the prior and the senior monks about the good of the Church, as a good shepherd and a pious father.' In this, at any rate, he was carrying out the traditions of Anselm, and appealing to that part of the Church in which that great man had found consolation for the servility and apathy of the secular clergy. Nor can it be denied that there was something in the tone of the arguments with which the bishops sometimes opposed his plans, which may have greatly provoked his indignation. In a letter to Alexander 2 in which the English bishops urge upon the Pope the true grounds of their opposition to Becket, they argue that he ought 'to 1 Gervasius, Imaginationes inter monachos Cantuarienses et Archiepiscopum Baldwinum, p. 1313, Hist. Ang. Script., vol. ii. ed. Twysden. 2 Bouquet, vol. xvi. p. 224. 1 flatter power' (blandire potestate), and to dissemble for a time that peace may be restored to the Church. One of the bishops, at least, who signed this letter, showed afterwards that he was not given to 'flattering power' or 'dissembling' for the sake of his own interests, but one can easily imagine how such expressions must have grated on a man of Becket's fiery sincerity. Nor must we forget that there was much in the conduct of Henry himself to strengthen Becket's feeling that he was the champion of liberty against tyranny. Superior as Henry Plantagenet was to his grandfather in nobility of purpose 2 and breadth of statesmanship, in one point he was inferior, and it was a point of the greatest political importance; he could not keep his temper. Henry I. could write in the most humble and courteous spirit to Anselm in the midst of their controversy, and could see when the time had come for yielding to the requirements of his antagonist. Henry Plantagenet, conscious of greater real zeal for the Church, and of the justice of his cause, and in 1 See below, p. 60. 3 2 See Bromton's comparison of the two Henrys (p. 1080). 1 2 dignant at being misunderstood, broke out first into petty insults, then into wild acts of tyranny. Thus it came to pass that while the first Henry was complimented by Popes and abbots, and died in the odour, if not quite of sanctity, at least of orthodoxy and respectability, his grandson was denounced by monkish chroniclers as a tyrant and a murderer. This feeling, however little justified in men who had profited by, and in some cases had owned the excellence of, Henry's reforms, must have forced itself strongly on Becket as he sat in his French monastery, surrounded by the helpless and starving exiles who had suffered in many cases merely for being related to those who had struggled for his cause. In an indignant burst of eloquence, he cries to Gilbert Folliot, 'Do you see proscribed those of whom God calls himself the father and judge-orphans, and wards, and widows, innocent ones who are utterly ignorant of the controversy which exiles us, and yet are you silent? Do you see the clergy exterminated, and yet do you not remonstrate? Do 3 1 See Innocent II.'s letter to Stephen on his coronation, Bouquet, vol. xv. p. 391. 2 See Letter of Bernard of Clairvaux to Henry, ibid. p. 558. 3 See Becket's Letter to Alexander, Bouquet, vol. xvi. p. 427. |