The king, on his side, wisely chose the strongest and more popular ground of the immunities of the clergy from all temporal jurisdiction. He appeared as guardian of the public morals, as administrator of equal justice to all his subjects, as protector of the peace of the realm. Crimes of great atrocity, it is said, of great frequency, crimes such as robbery and homicide, crimes for which secular persons were hanged by scores and without mercy, were committed almost with impunity, or with punishment altogether inadequate to the offence by the clergy; and the sacred name of clerk, exempted not only bishops, abbots, and priests, but those of the lowest ecclesiastical rank from the civil power. It was the inalienable right of the clerk to be tried only in the court of his bishop; and as that court could not award capital punishment, the utmost penalties were flagellation, imprisonment, and degradation. It was only after degradation, and for a second offence (for the clergy strenuously insisted on the injustice of a second trial for the same act,)43 that the meanest of the clerical body could be brought to the level of the most highborn layman. But to cede one tittle of these immunities, to surrender the sacred person of a clergyman, whatever his guilt, to the secular power, was treason to the sacerdotal order: it was giving up Christ (for the Redeemer was supposed actually to dwell in the clerk, though his hands might be stained with innocent blood) to be crucified by the heathen.44 To mutilate the person of one in holy orders was directly contrary to the Scripture (for with convenient logic, while the clergy rejected the example of the Old Testament as to the equal liability of priest and Levite with the ordinary Jew to the sentence of the law, they alleged it on their own part as unanswerable.) It was inconceivable, that hands which had but now made God should be tied behind the back, like those of a common malefactor, or that his neck should be wrung on a gibbet, before whom kings had but now bowed in reverential homage.45

The enormity of the evil is acknowledged by Becket's most ardent partisans.46 The king had credible information laid before him that some of the clergy were absolute devils in guilt, that their wickedness could not be repressed by the ordinary means of justice, and were daily growing worse.

Becket himself had protected some notorious and heinous offenders. A clerk of the diocese of Worcester had debauched a maiden and murdered her father. Becket ordered the man to be kept in prison, and refused to surrender him to the king's justice.47 Another in London, guilty of stealing a silver goblet, was claimed as only amenable to the ecclesiastical court. Philip de Brois, a canon of Bedford, had been guilty of homicide. The cause was tried in the bishop's court; he was condemned to pay a fine to the kindred of the slain man. Some time after, Fitz-Peter, the king's justiciary, whether from private enmity or offence, or dissatisfied with the ecclesiastical verdict, in the open court at Dunstable, called De Brois a murderer. De Brois broke out into angry and contumelious language against the judge. The insult to the justiciary was held to be insult to the king, who sought justice, where alone he could obtain it, in the bishop's court. Philip de Brois this time incurred a sentence, to our notions almost as disproportionate as that for his former offence. He was condemned to be publicly whipped, and degraded for two years from the honors and emoluments of his canonry. But to the king the verdict appeared far too lenient; the spiritual jurisdiction was accused as shielding the criminal from his due penalty.

Such were the questions on which Becket was prepared to confront and to wage war to the death with the king; and all this with a deliberate knowledge both of the power and the character of Henry, his power as undisputed sovereign of England and of continental territories more extensive and flourishing than those of the king of France. These dominions included those of the Conqueror and his descendants, of the Counts of Anjou, and the great inheritance of his wife, Queen Eleanor, the old kingdom of Aquitaine; they reached from the borders of Flanders round to the foot of the Pyrenees. This almost unrivaled power could not but have worked with the strong natural passions of Henry to form the character drawn by a churchman of great ability, who would warn Becket as to the formidable adversary whom he had undertaken to oppose,—"You have to deal with one on whose policy the most distant sovereigns of Europe, on whose power his neighbors, on whose severity his subjects look with awe; whom constant successes and prosperous fortune have rendered so sensitive, that every act of disobedience is a personal outrage; whom it is as easy to provoke as difficult to appease; who encourages no rash offence by impunity, but whose vengeance is instant and summary. He will sometimes be softened by humility and patience, but will never submit to compulsion; everything must seem to be conceded by his own free will, nothing wrested from his weakness. He is more covetous of glory than of gain, a commendable quality in a prince, if virtue and truth, not the vanity and soft flattery of courtiers, awarded that glory. He is a great, indeed the greatest of kings, for he has no superior of whom he may stand in dread, no subject who dares to resist him. His natural ferocity has been subdued by no calamity from without; all who have been involved in any contest with him, have preferred the most precarious treaty to a trial of strength with one so pre-eminent in wealth, in the number of his forces, and the greatness of his puissance."48

A king of this character would eagerly listen to suggestions of interested or flattering courtiers, that unless the Primate's power were limited, the authority of the king would be reduced to nothing. The succession to the throne would depend entirely on the clergy, and he himself would reign only so long as might seem good to the Archbishop. Nor were they the baser courtiers alone who feared and hated Becket. The nobles might tremble from the example of De Clare, with whose powerful house almost all the Norman baronage was allied, lest every royal grant should be called in question.49 Even among the clergy Becket had bitter enemies; and though at first they appeared almost as jealous as the Primate for the privileges of their order, the most able soon espoused the cause of the King; those who secretly favored him were obliged to submit in silence.

The King, determined to bring these great questions to issue summoned a Parliament at Westminster. He commenced the proceedings by enlarging on the abuses of the archidiaconal courts. The archdeacons kept the most watchful and inquisitorial superintendence over the laity, but every offence was easily commuted for a pecuniary fine, which fell to them. The King complained that they levied a revenue from the sins of the people equal to his own, yet that the public morals were only more deeply and irretrievably depraved. He then demanded that all clerks accused of heinous crimes should be immediately degraded and handed over to the officers of his justice, to be dealt with according to law; for their guilt, instead of deserving a lighter punishment, was doubly guilty: he demanded this in the name of equal justice and the peace of the realm. Becket insisted on delay till the next morning, in order that he might consult his suffragan bishops. This the King refused: the bishops withdrew to confer upon their answer. The bishops were disposed to yield, some doubtless impressed with the justice of the demand, some from fear of the King, some from a prudent conviction of the danger of provoking so powerful a monarch, and of involving the Church in a quarrel with Henry at the perilous time of a contest for the Papacy which distracted Europe. Becket inflexibly maintained the inviolability of the holy persons of the clergy.50 The King then demanded whether they would observe the "customs of the realm." "Saving my order," replied the Archbishop. That order was still to be exempt from all jurisdiction but its own. So answered all the bishops except Hilary of Chichester, who made the declaration without reserve.51 The King hastily broke up the assembly, and left London in a state of consternation, the people and the clergy agitated by conflicting anxieties. He immediately deprived Becket of the custody of the Royal Castles, which he still retained, and of the momentous charge, the education of his son. The bishops entreated Becket either to withdraw or to change the offensive word. At first he declared that if an angel from Heaven should counsel such weakness, he would hold him accursed. At length, however, he yielded, as Herbert de Bosham asserts out of love for the King,52 by another account at the persuasion of the Pope's Almoner, said to have been bribed by English gold.53 He went to Oxford and made the concession.

The King, in order to ratify with the utmost solemnity the concession extorted from the bishops, and even from Becket himself, summoned a great council of the realm to Clarendon, a royal palace between three and four miles from Salisbury. |Council of Clarendon.| The two archbishops and eleven bishops, between thirty and forty of the highest nobles, with numbers of inferior barons, were present. It was the King's object to settle beyond dispute the main points in contest between the Crown and the Church; to establish thus, with the consent of the whole nation, an English Constitution in Church and State. Becket, it is said, had been assured by some about the King that a mere assent would be demanded to vague and ambiguous, and therefore on occasion disputable customs. But when these customs, which had been collected and put in writing by the King's order, appeared in the form of precise and binding laws, drawn up with legal technicality by the Chief Justiciary, he saw his error, wavered, and endeavored to recede.54 The King broke out into one of his ungovernable fits of passion. One or two of the bishops who were out of favor with the King and two knights Templars on their knees implored Becket to abandon his dangerous, fruitless, and ill-timed resistance. The Archbishop took the oath, which had been already sworn to by all the lay barons. He was followed by the rest of the bishops, reluctantly according to one account, and compelled on one side by their dread of the lay barons, on the other by the example and authority of the Primate, according to Becket's biographers, eagerly and of their own accord.55

These famous constitutions were of course feudal in their form and spirit. But they aimed at the subjection of all the great prelates of the realm to the Crown to the same extent as the great barons. The new constitution of England made the bishops' fiefs to be granted according to the royal will, and subjected the whole of the clergy equally with the laity to the common laws of the land.56 I. On the vacancy of every archbishopric, bishopric, abbey, or priory, the revenues came into the King's hands. He was to summon those who had the right of election, which was to take place in the King's Chapel, with his consent, and the counsel of nobles chosen by the King for this office. The prelate elect was immediately to do homage to the King as his liege lord, for life, limb, and worldly honors, excepting his order. The archbishops, bishops, and all beneficiaries, held their estates on the tenure of baronies, amenable to the King's justice, and bound to sit with the other barons in all pleas of the Crown, except in capital cases. No archbishop, bishop, or any other person could quit the realm without royal permission, or without taking an oath at the King's requisition, not to do any damage either going, staying, or returning, to the King or the kingdom.

II. All clerks accused of any crime were to be summoned before the King's Courts. The King's justiciaries were to decide whether it was a case for civil or ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Those which belonged to the latter were to be removed to the Bishops' Court. If the clerk was found guilty or confessed his guilt, the Church could protect him no longer.57

III. All disputes concerning advowsons and presentations to benefices were to be decided in the King's Courts; and the King's consent was necessary for the appointment to any benefice within the King's domain.58

IV. No tenant in chief of the King, none of the officers of the King's household, could be excommunicated, nor his lands placed under interdict, until due information had been laid before the King; or, in his absence from the realm, before the great Justiciary, in order that he might determine in each case the respective rights of the civil and ecclesiastical courts.59

V. Appeals lay from the archdeacon to the bishop, from the bishop to the Archbishop. On failure of justice by the Archbishop, in the last resort to the King, who was to take care that justice was done in the Archbishop's Court; and no further appeal was to be made without the King's consent. This was manifestly and avowedly intended to limit appeals to Rome.

All these statutes, in number sixteen, were restrictions on the distinctive immunities of the clergy; one, and that unnoticed, was really an invasion of popular freedom; no son of a villein could be ordained without the consent of his lord.

Some of these customs were of doubtful authenticity. On the main question, the exorbitant powers of the ecclesiastical courts and the immunity of the clergy from all other jurisdiction, there was an unrepealed statute of William the Conqueror. Before the Conquest the bishop sate with the alderman in the same court. The statute of William created a separate jurisdiction of great extent in the spiritual court. This was not done to aggrandize the Church, of which in some respects the Conqueror was jealous, but to elevate the importance of the great Norman prelates whom he had thrust into the English sees. It raised another class of powerful feudatories to support the foreign throne, bound to it by common interest as well as by the attachment of race. But at this time neither party took any notice of the ancient statute. The King's advisers of course avoided the dangerous question; Becket and the Churchmen (Becket himself declared that he was unlearned in the customs), standing on the divine and indefeasible right of the clergy, could hardly rest on a recent statute granted by the royal will, and therefore liable to be annulled by the same authority. The Customs, they averred, were of themselves illegal, as clashing with higher irrepealable laws.

To these Customs Becket had now sworn without reserve. Three copies were ordered to be made—one for the Archbishop of Canterbury, one for York, one to be laid up in the royal archives. To these the King demanded the further guarantee of the seal of the different parties. The Primate, whether already repenting of his assent, or under the vague impression that this was committing himself still further (for oaths might be absolved, seals could not be torn from public documents), now obstinately refused to make any further concession. The refusal threw suspicion on the sincerity of his former act. The King, the other prelates, the nobles, all but Becket,60 subscribed and sealed the Constitutions of Clarendon as the laws of England.

As the Primate rode from Winchester in profound silence, meditating on the acts of the council and on his own conduct, one of his attendants, who has himself related the conversation, endeavored to raise his spirits. "It is a fit punishment," said Becket, "for one who, not trained in the school of the Saviour, but in the King's court, a man of pride and vanity, from a follower of hawks and hounds, a patron of players, has dared to assume the care of so many souls."61 De Bosham significantly reminded his master of St. Peter, his denial of the Lord, his subsequent repentance. On his return to Canterbury Becket imposed upon himself the severest mortification, and suspended himself from his function of offering the sacrifice on the altar. He wrote almost immediately to the Pope to seek counsel and absolution from his oath. He received both. The absolution restored all his vivacity.

But the King had likewise his emissaries with the Pope at Sens. He endeavored to obtain a legatine commission over the whole realm of England for Becket's enemy, Roger Archbishop of York, and a recommendation from the Pope to Becket to observe the "customs" of the realm. Two embassies were sent by the King for this end: first the Bishops of Lisieux and Poitiers; then Geoffrey Ridel, Archdeacon of Canterbury (who afterwards appears so hostile to the Primate as to be called by him that archdevil, not archdeacon), and the subtle John of Oxford. The embarrassed Pope (throughout it must be remembered that there was a formidable Antipope), afraid at once of estranging Henry, and unwilling to abandon Becket, granted the legation to the Archbishop of York. To the Primate's great indignation, Roger had his cross borne before him in the province of Canterbury. On Becket's angry remonstrance, the Pope, while on the one hand he enjoined on Becket the greatest caution and forbearance in the inevitable contest, assured him that he would never permit the see of Canterbury to be subject to any authority but his own.62

Becket secretly went down to his estate at Romney, near the sea-coast, in the hope of crossing the straits, and so finding refuge and maintaining his cause by his personal presence with the Pope. Stormy weather forced him to abandon his design. He then betook himself to the King at Woodstock. He was coldly received. The King at first dissembled his knowledge of the Primate's attempt to cross the sea, a direct violation of one of the constitutions; but on his departure he asked with bitter jocularity whether Becket had sought to leave the realm because England could not contain himself and the King.63

The tergiversation of Becket, and his attempt thus to violate one of the Constitutions of Clarendon, to which he had sworn, showed that he was not to be bound by oaths. No treaty could be made where one party claimed the power of retracting, and might at any time be released from his covenant. In the mind of Henry, whose will had never yet met resistance, the determination was confirmed, if he could not subdue the Prelate, to crush the refractory subject. Becket's enemies possessed the King's ear. Some of those enemies no doubt hated him for his former favor with the King, some dreaded lest the severity of so inflexible a prelate should curb their license, some held property belonging to or claimed by the Church, some to flatter the King, some in honest indignation at the duplicity of Becket and in love of peace, but all concurred to inflame the resentment of Henry, and to attribute to Becket words and designs insulting to the King and disparaging to the royal authority. Becket, holding such notions as he did of Church power, would not be cautious in asserting it; and whatever he might utter in his pride would be embittered rather than softened when repeated to the King.

Since the Council of Clarendon Becket stood alone. All the higher clergy, the great prelates of the kingdom, were now either his open adversaries or were compelled to dissemble their favor towards him. Whether alienated, as some declared, by his pusillanimity at Clarendon, bribed by the gifts or overawed by the power of the King, whether conscientiously convinced that in such times of schism and division it might be fatal to the interests of the Church to advance her loftiest pretensions, all, especially the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of London, Salisbury and Chichester, were arrayed on the King's side. Becket himself attributed the chief guilt of his persecution to the bishops. "The King would have been quiet if they had not been so tamely subservient to his wishes."64

Before the close of the year Becket was cited to appear before a great council of the realm at Northampton. All England crowded to witness this final strife, it might be between the royal and the ecclesiastical power. The Primate entered Northampton with only his own retinue; the King had passed the afternoon amusing himself with hawking in the pleasant meadows around. The Archbishop, on the following morning after mass, appeared in the King's chamber with a cheerful countenance. The King gave not, according to English custom, the kiss of peace.

The citation of the Primate before the King in council at Northampton was to answer a charge of withholding justice from John the Marshall employed in the king's exchequer, who claimed the estate of Pagaham from the see of Canterbury. Twice had Becket been summoned to appear in the king's court to answer for this denial of justice: once he had refused to appear, the second time he did not appear in person. Becket in vain alleged an informality in the original proceedings of John the Marshall.65 The court, the bishops, as well as the barons, declared him guilty of contumacy; all his goods and chattels became, according to the legal phrase, at the king's mercy.66 The fine was assessed at 500 pounds. Becket submitted, not without bitter irony: "This, then, is one of the new customs of Clarendon." But he protested against the unheard-of audacity that the bishops should presume to sit in judgment on their spiritual parent; it was a greater crime than to uncover their father's nakedness.67 Sarcasms and protests passed alike without notice. But the bishops, all except Foliot, consented to become sureties for this exorbitant fine. |Demands on Becket.| Demands rising one above another seemed framed for the purpose of reducing the Archbishop to the humiliating condition of a debtor to the King, entirely at his disposal. First 300 pounds were demanded as due from the castles of Eye and Berkhampstead. Becket pleaded that he had expended a much larger sum on the repairs of the castles: he found sureties likewise for this payment, the Earl of Gloucester, William of Eynsford, and another of "his men." The next day the demand was for 500 pounds lent by the King during the siege of Toulouse, Becket declared that this was a gift, not a loan;68 but the King denying the plea, judgment was again entered against Becket. At last came the overwhelming charge, an account of all the monies received during his chancellorship from the vacant archbishopric and from other bishoprics and abbeys. The debt was calculated at the enormous sum of 44,000 marks. Becket was astounded at this unexpected claim. As chancellor, in all likelihood, he had kept no very strict account of what was expended in his own and in the royal service; and the King seemed blind to this abuse of the royal right, by which so large a sum had accumulated by keeping open those benefices which ought to have been instantly filled. Becket, recovered from his first amazement, replied that he had not been cited to answer on such charge; at another time he should be prepared to answer all just demands of the Crown. He now requested delay, in order to advise with his suffragans and the clergy. He withdrew; but from that time no single baron visited the object of the royal disfavor. Becket assembled all the poor, even the beggars, who could be found, to fill his vacant board.

In his extreme exigency the Primate consulted separately first the bishops, then the abbots. Their advice was different according to their characters and their sentiments towards him. He had what might seem an unanswerable plea, a formal acquittance from the Chief Justiciary De Luci, the King's representative, for all obligations incurred in his civil capacity before his consecration as archbishop.69 The King, however, it was known, declared that he had given no such authority. Becket had the further excuse that all which he now possessed was the property of the Church, and could not be made liable for responsibilities incurred in a secular capacity. The bishops, however, were either convinced of the insufficiency or the inadmissibility of that plea. Henry of Winchester recommended an endeavor to purchase the King's pardon; he offered 2000 marks as his contribution. Others urged Becket to stand on his dignity, to defy the worst, under the shelter of his priesthood; no one would venture to lay hands on a holy prelate. Foliot and his party betrayed their object.70 They exhorted him as the only way of averting the implacable wrath of the King at once to resign his see. "Would," said Hilary of Chichester, "you were no longer archbishop, but plain Thomas. Thou knowest the King better than we do; he has declared that thou and he cannot remain together in England, he as King, thou as Primate. Who will be bound for such an amount? Throw thyself on the King's mercy, or to the eternal disgrace of the Church thou wilt be arrested and imprisoned as a debtor to the Crown." The next day was Sunday; the Archbishop did not leave his lodgings. On Monday the agitation of his spirits had brought on an attack of a disorder to which he was subject: he was permitted to repose. On the morrow he had determined on his conduct. At one time he had seriously meditated on a more humiliating course: he proposed to seek the royal presence barefooted with the cross in his hands, to throw himself at the King's feet, appealing to his old affection, and imploring him to restore peace to the Church. What had been the effect of such a step on the violent but not ungenerous heart of Henry? But Becket yielded to the haughtier counsels more congenial to his own intrepid character. He began by the significant act of celebrating, out of its due order, the service of St. Stephen, the first martyr. It contained passages of holy writ (as no doubt Henry was instantly informed) concerning "kings taking counsel against the godly." The mass concluded; in all the majesty of his holy character, in his full pontifical habits, himself bearing the archiepiscopal cross, the Primate rode to the King's residence, and dismounting entered the royal hall. |Becket in the King's hall.| The cross seemed, as it were, an uplifting of the banner of the Church, in defiance of that of the King, in the royal presence;71 or it might be in that awful imitation of the Saviour, at which no scruple was ever made by the bolder churchmen—it was the servant of Christ who himself bore his own cross. "What means this new fashion of the Archbishop bearing his own cross?" said the Archdeacon Lisieux. "A fool," said Foliot, "he always was and always will be." They made room for him; he took his accustomed seat in the centre of the bishops. Foliot endeavored to persuade him to lay down the cross. "If the sword of the King and the cross of the Archbishop were to come in conflict, which were the more fearful weapon?" Becket held the cross firmly, which Foliot and the Bishop of Hereford strove, but in vain, to wrest from his grasp.

The bishops were summoned into the King's presence: Becket sat alone in the outer hall. The Archbishop of York, who, as Becket's partisans asserted, designedly came later that he might appear to be of the King's intimate council, swept through the hall with his cross borne before him. Like hostile spears cross confronted cross.72

During this interval De Bosham, the archbishop's reader, who had reminded his master that he had been standard-bearer of the King of England, and was now the standard-bearer of the King of the Angels, put this question, "If they should lay their impious hands upon thee, art thou prepared to fulminate excommunication against them?" Fitz-Stephen, who sat at his feet, said in a loud clear voice, "That be far from thee; so did not the Apostles and Martyrs of God: they prayed for their persecutors and forgave them." Some of his more attached followers burst into tears. "A little later," says the faithful Fitz-Stephen of himself, "when one of the King's ushers would not allow me to speak to the Archbishop, I made a sign to him and drew his attention to the Saviour on the cross."

The bishops admitted to the King's presence announced the appeal of the Archbishop to the Pope, and his inhibition to his suffragans to sit in judgment in a secular council on their metropolitan.73 These were again direct infringements on two of the constitutions of Clarendon, sworn to by Becket in an oath still held valid by the King and his barons. The King appealed to the council. Some seized the occasion of boldly declaring to the King that he had brought this difficulty on himself by advancing a low-born man to such favor and dignity. All agreed that Becket was guilty of perjury and treason.74 A kind of low acclamation followed which was heard in the outer room and made Becket's followers tremble. The King sent certain counts and barons to demand of Becket whether he, a liegeman of the King, and sworn to observe the constitutions of Clarendon, had lodged this appeal and pronounced this inhibition? The Archbishop replied with quiet intrepidity. In his long speech he did not hesitate for a word; he pleaded that he had not been cited to answer these charges; he alleged again the Justiciary's acquittance; he ended by solemnly renewing his inhibition and his appeal: "My person and my Church I place under the protection of the sovereign Pontiff."

The barons of Normandy and England heard with wonder this defiance of the King. Some seemed awe-struck and were mute; the more fierce and lawless could not restrain their indignation. "The Conqueror knew best how to deal with these turbulent churchmen. He seized his own brother, Odo Bishop of Bayeux, and chastised him for his rebellion; he threw Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, into a fetid dungeon. The Count of Anjou, the King's father, treated still worse the bishop elect of Seez and many of his clergy: he ordered them to be shamefully mutilated and derided their sufferings."

The King summoned the bishops, on their allegiance as barons, to join in sentence against Becket. But the inhibition of their metropolitan had thrown them into embarrassment, and perhaps they felt that the offence of Becket, if not capital treason, bordered upon it. It might be a sentence of blood, in which no churchman might concur by his suffrage—they dreaded the breach of canonical obedience. They entered the hall where Becket sat alone. The gentler prelates, Robert of Lincoln and others, were moved to tears; even Henry of Winchester advised the archbishop to make an unconditional surrender of his see. The more vehement Hilary of Chichester addressed him thus: "Lord Primate, we have just cause of complaint against you. Your inhibition has placed us between the hammer and the anvil: if we disobey it, we violate our canonical obedience; if we obey, we infringe the constitutions of the realm and offend the King's majesty. Yourself were the first to subscribe the customs at Clarendon, you now compel us to break them. We appeal, by the King's grace, to our lord the Pope." Becket answered "I hear."

They returned to the King, and with difficulty obtained an exemption from concurrence in the sentence; they promised to join in a supplication to the Pope to depose Becket. The King permitted their appeal. Robert Earl of Leicester, a grave and aged nobleman, was commissioned to pronounce the sentence. Leicester had hardly begun when Becket sternly interrupted him. "Thy sentence! son and Earl, hear me first! The King was pleased to promote me against my will to the archbishopric of Canterbury. I was then declared free from all secular obligations. Ye are my children; presume ye against law and reason to sit in judgment on your spiritual father? I am to be judged only, under God, by the Pope. To him I appeal, before him I cite you, barons and my suffragans, to appear. Under the protection of the Catholic Church and the Apostolic See I depart!"75 He rose and walked slowly down the hall. A deep murmur ran through the crowd. Some took up straws and threw them at him. One uttered the word "Traitor!" The old chivalrous spirit woke in the soul of Becket. "Were it not for my order, you should rue that word." But by other accounts he restrained not his language to this pardonable impropriety—he met scorn with scorn. One officer of the King's household he upbraided for having had a kinsman hanged. Anselm, the King's brother, he called "bastard and catamite." The door was locked, but fortunately the key was found. He passed out into the street, where he was received by the populace, to whom he had endeared himself by his charities, his austerities, perhaps by his courageous opposition to the king and the nobles, amid loud acclamations. They pressed so closely around him for his blessing that he could scarcely guide his horse. He returned to the church of St. Andrew, placed his cross by the altar of the Virgin. "This was a fearful day," said Fitz-Stephen. "The day of judgment," he replied, "will be more fearful." After supper he sent the Bishops of Hereford, Worcester, and Rochester to the King to request permission to leave the kingdom: the King coldly deferred his answer till the morrow.

Becket and his friends no doubt thought his life in danger: he is said to have received some alarming warnings.76 It is reported, on the other hand, that the King, apprehensive of the fierce zeal of his followers, issued a proclamation that no one should do harm to the archbishop or his people. It is more likely that the King, who must have known the peril of attempting the life of an archbishop, would have apprehended and committed him to prison. Becket expressed his intention to pass the night in the church: his bed was strewn before the altar. At midnight he rose, and with only two monks and a servant stole out of the northern gate, the only one which was not guarded. He carried with him only his archiepiscopal pall and his seal. The weather was wet and stormy, but the next morning they reached Lincoln, and lodged with a pious citizen—piety and admiration of Becket were the same thing. At Lincoln he took the disguise of a monk, dropped down the Witham to a hermitage in the fens belonging to the Cistercians of Sempringham; thence by crossroads, and chiefly by night, he found his way to Estrey, about five miles from Deal, a manor belonging to Christ Church in Canterbury. He remained there a week. On All Souls Day he went on board a boat, just before morning, and by the evening reached the coast of Flanders. To avoid observation he landed on the open shore near Gravelines. His large, loose shoes made it difficult to wade through the sand without falling. He sat down in despair. After some delay was obtained for a prelate, accustomed to the prancing war-horse or stately cavalcade, a sorry nag without a saddle, and with a wisp of hay for a bridle. But he soon got weary and was fain to walk. He had many adventures by the way. He was once nearly betrayed by gazing with delight on a falcon upon a young squire's wrist: his fright punished him for his relapse into his secular vanities. The host of a small inn recognized him by his lofty look and the whiteness of his hands. At length he arrived at the monastery of Clair Marais, near St. Omer: he was there joined by Herbert de Bosham, who had been left behind to collect what money he could at Canterbury; he brought but 100 marks and some plate. While he was in this part of Flanders the Justiciary, Richard de Luci, passed through the town on his way to England. He tried in vain to persuade the archbishop to return with him: Becket suspected his friendly overtures, or had resolutely determined not to put himself again in the King's power.

In the first access of indignation at Becket's flight the King had sent orders for strict watch to be kept in the ports of the kingdom, especially Dover. The next measure was to pre-occupy the minds of the Count of Flanders, the King of France, and the Pope against his fugitive subject. Henry could not but foresee how formidable an ally the exile might become to his rivals and enemies, how dangerous to his extensive but ill-consolidated foreign dominions. He might know that Becket would act and be received as an independent potentate. The rank of his ambassadors implied the importance of their mission to France. They were the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of London, Exeter, Chichester, and Worcester, the Earl of Arundel, and three other distinguished nobles. The same day that Becket passed to Gravelines, they crossed from Dover to Calais.77

The Earl of Flanders, though with some cause of hostility to Becket, had offered him a refuge; yet perhaps was not distinctly informed or would not know that the exile was in his dominions.78 He received the King's envoys with civility. The King of France was at Compiègne. The strongest passions in the feeble mind of Louis VII. were jealousy of Henry of England, and a servile bigotry to the Church, to which he seemed determined to compensate for the hostility and disobedience of his youth. Against Henry, personally, there were old causes of hatred rankling in his heart, not the less deep because they could not be avowed. |From 1152 to 1164.| Henry of England was now the husband of Eleanor, who, after some years of marriage, had contemptuously divorced the King of France as a monk rather than as a husband, had thrown herself into the arms of Henry and carried with her a dowry as large as half the kingdom of France. There had since been years either of fierce war, treacherous negotiations, or jealous and armed peace, between the rival sovereigns.