The king’s own attitude towards the religious revival was as yet not very clearly defined. Henry was not without religious impulse; but it had taken a special direction which indeed might naturally be expected in a grandson of Fulk of Jerusalem:—a restless desire to go upon crusade. He had no sooner mounted his throne than he began to urge upon the English Pope, newly crowned like himself, the importance of giving special attention to the necessities of the Holy Land.[1627] Four years later he proposed to join Louis of France in a crusade against the Moors in Spain. Louis wrote to the Pope announcing this project and begging for his advice and support; Adrian in reply assured the two kings of his sympathy and goodwill, but though praising their zeal he expressed some doubt of its discretion, advised them to ascertain whether the Spaniards desired their help before thrusting it upon them unasked, and reminded Louis in plain terms of the disastrous issue of his former rash crusade.[1628] The warning was needless, for it was hardly written before the intending brothers-in-arms were preparing to fight against each other; and before the war of Toulouse was over the English Pope was dead.[1629]
His death was a heavy blow to the Church of his native land; and it was followed by a schism which threatened disastrous consequences to all western Christendom. Two Popes were elected—Roland of Siena, cardinal of S. Mark and treasurer of the Holy See, and Octavian, cardinal of S. Cecilia, a Roman of noble birth. This latter, who assumed the name of Victor IV., was favoured by the Emperor, Frederic Barbarossa. After a violent struggle he was expelled from Rome and fled to the protection of his imperial patron, who thereupon summoned a general council to meet at Pavia early in the next year and decide between the rival pontiffs.[1630] Only the bishops of Frederic’s own dominions obeyed the summons, and only one of the claimants; for Alexander III. (as Roland was called by his adherents) disdained to submit to a trial whose issue he believed to have been predetermined against him. He was accordingly condemned as a rebel and schismatic, and Victor was acknowledged as the lawful successor of S. Peter.[1631] This decision, however, bound only the bishops of the Imperial dominions; and its general acceptance throughout the rest of Christendom, doubtful from the first, became impossible when Alexander and his partizans published their account of the mode by which it had been arrived at. Victor—so their story went—had actually placed his pontifical ring in the Emperor’s hands and received it back from him as the symbol of investiture.[1632] The Church at large could have no hesitation in deciding that a man who thus climbed into the sheepfold by surrendering, voluntarily and deliberately, the whole principle of spiritual independence whose triumph Gregory and Anselm had devoted their lives to secure, was no true shepherd but a thief and robber. Frederic however lost no time in endeavouring to obtain for him the adhesion of France and England; and in the last-named quarter he had great hopes of success. Henry had for several years past shewn a disposition to knit up again the old political ties which connected England with Germany; friendly embassies had been exchanged between the two countries;[1633] now that he had begun to quarrel with France, too, he was likely to be more inclined towards an imperial alliance. Moreover it might naturally be expected that Frederic’s bold and apparently successful attempt to revive the claims of his predecessor Henry IV. on the subject of ecclesiastical investitures would meet with sympathy from the grandson and representative of Henry I. Indeed, the official report of the council of Pavia declares that Henry had actually, by letters and envoys, given his assent to its proceedings.[1634] But nothing of the kind was known in Henry’s own dominions;[1635] and it seems that the Emperor was forestalled by a Norman bishop.
Arnulf of Lisieux came of a family which had for more than half a century been constantly mixed up in the diplomatic concerns of Normandy and Anjou. Arnulf himself had begun his career about 1130 by writing a treatise in defence of an orthodox Pope against an usurper;[1636] he had been chosen to succeed his uncle Bishop John of Lisieux[1637] shortly before Geoffrey Plantagenet’s final conquest of Normandy, and had bought at a heavy price his peace with the new ruler;[1638] and for the next forty years there was hardly a diplomatic transaction of any kind, ecclesiastical or secular, in England or in Gaul, in which he was not at some moment and in some way or other concerned. He had little official influence; he had indeed a certain amount of territorial importance in Normandy, for Lisieux was the capital of a little county of which the temporal as well as the spiritual government was vested in the bishop; but a Norman bishop, merely as such, had none of the political weight of an English prelate; and Arnulf never held any secular office. He was not exactly a busybody; he was a consummate diplomatist, of wide experience and far-reaching intelligence, with whose services no party could afford to dispense; and his extraordinary caution and sagacity enabled him to act as counsellor and guide of all parties at once without sacrificing his own reputation as a sound Churchman and a loyal subject. In his youth he had come in contact with most of the rising scholars and statesmen of the day in the schools of Paris; and as he was an indefatigable and accomplished letter-writer, he kept up through life a busy correspondence with men of all ranks and all schools of thought on both sides of the sea.[1639] During the quarrel between Louis VII. and Geoffrey Plantagenet concerning the affair of Montreuil-Bellay, Arnulf was intrusted by Suger with a chief part in the negotiations for the restoration of peace;[1640] the final settlement in 1151, whereby the investiture of Normandy was secured to Henry, was chiefly owing to his diplomacy;[1641] he accompanied Henry to England and was present at his crowning;[1642] and on all questions of continental policy he continued to be Henry’s chief adviser till he was superseded by Thomas Becket.
To Arnulf there was nothing new or startling in a schism at Rome; his experiences of thirty years before enabled him to penetrate the present case at once, and as then with his pen, so now with his tongue, he proved the readiest and most powerful advocate of the orthodox pontiff. Fortunately, Henry was in Normandy; before any one else had time to gain his ear and bias his mind, before he himself had time to think of forming an independent judgement on the subject, Arnulf hurried to his side,[1643] and set forth the claims of Alexander with such convincing eloquence that the king at once promised to acknowledge him as Pope. He refrained however from issuing an immediate order for Alexander’s acceptance throughout his dominions, partly in deference to the Emperor,[1644] and partly to make sure of the intentions of the king of France. Louis, like Henry, had sent a representative to the council of Pavia, but he had taken care not to commit himself to any decision upon its proceedings.[1645] He was not naturally inclined to favour the Emperor’s views. The question of the investitures had never been as important in France as in Germany or in England, and had been settled by a kind of tacit concordat which the Most Christian King had no mind to forfeit his title by disturbing; France was always the staunchest upholder of the independence of the Apostolic see;[1646] and neither king nor clergy desired to change their attitude. They met in council at Beauvais some time in the summer of 1160; a similar gathering of the Norman bishops, in Henry’s presence, took place in July at Neufmarché; both assemblies resulted in the acknowledgement of Alexander.[1647] The formal assent of the Churches of England and Aquitaine had still to be obtained before either king would fully proclaim his decision.[1648] Archbishop Theobald’s anxious request for information and instructions concerning the schism[1649] was answered by an exhaustive and eloquent statement of the case from the pen of the indefatigable bishop of Lisieux;[1650] and in accordance with his directions the English bishops in council assembled unanimously declared their acceptance of Alexander III. as the lawful successor of S. Peter.[1651]
Alexander’s legates were already in Normandy;[1652] unluckily, however, the use which Henry made of their presence led as we have seen to a fresh rupture between him and Louis; and by this the Emperor and the anti-pope immediately sought to profit. Tempting as their overtures were to Henry, it does not appear that he ever seriously entertained them; but the leaders of the English Church, having now learned the circumstances of the case and grasped the full importance of the triumph insured to the reforming party by his acceptance of Alexander, were naturally alarmed lest he should be induced to change his mind. Their anxiety was increased by the enfeebled state of their own ranks. The struggles of Bishop Richard of London to clear off the debts incurred in raising a fine required by Stephen at his election seemed to have only aggravated the confusion of his affairs, which his friends the bishops of Hereford and Lincoln were engaged in a desperate effort to disentangle,[1653] while Richard himself, to complete his misfortunes, was stricken helpless by paralysis.[1654] Henry of Winchester had returned to his diocese, after nearly four years’ absence, in 1159;[1655] but by the spring of 1161 he again left the Church of England to her fate and went back to his beloved Cluny.[1656] The bishoprics of Chester (or Lichfield), Exeter and Worcester were vacant;[1657] and, worst of all, Archbishop Theobald was dying.
The primate’s letters during the last few months of his life shew him calmly awaiting his call to rest, yet anxiously longing to be assured of the future of those whom he was leaving behind, and to set in order a few things that were wanting before he could depart altogether in peace. Very touching are the expressions of his longing to “see the face of the Lord’s anointed once again”—to welcome the king back to his country and his home, safely removed from political temptations to break away from the unity of the Church.[1658] And there was another for whose return Theobald yearned more deeply still: his own long absent archdeacon—“the first of my counsellors, nay, my only one,” as he calls him, pleading earnestly with the king to let him come home.[1659] For a moment, indeed, Theobald was on the point of being left almost alone. Some rather obscure mischief-making in high places had caused John of Salisbury to be visited with the king’s severe displeasure; treated as a suspected criminal in England, forbidden to go and clear himself in Normandy, John found his position so unbearable that he contemplated taking refuge in France under the protection of his old friend Abbot Peter of Celle.[1660] He seems, however, to have ended by remaining in England under Theobald’s protection; before the winter of 1160, at any rate, he was again at Canterbury, watching over and tending the primate’s gradual decline;—almost overwhelmed with “the care of all the churches,” which Theobald had transferred to him;[1661]—characteristically finding relief from his anxieties in correspondence with old friends, and in the composition of another little philosophical treatise, called Metalogicus, whose chief interest lies in the sketch which it contains of its author’s early life.[1662] John’s disinterested affection and devoted services were fully appreciated by Theobald;[1663] but they could not make up for the absence of Thomas. Not only did the old man long to see his early favourite once more; not only were there grave matters of diocesan administration dependent on the archdeacon’s office and urgently requiring his personal co-operation:[1664]—it was on far weightier things than these that the archbishop desired to hold counsel with Thomas. In the hands of Thomas, as chief adviser and minister of the king, rested in no small degree the future of the English Church; Theobald’s darling wish was that it should rest in his hands as primate of all England.[1665]
Later writers dilate upon the startling contrast between Becket’s character and policy as chancellor and as archbishop. That contrast vanishes when we look at the chancellor through the eyes of the two men who knew him best; and we find that the real contrast lies between their view of him and that of the outside world which only saw the surface of his life and could not fathom its inner depths. Those who beheld him foremost in every military exercise and every courtly pastime, far outdoing the king himself in lavish splendour and fastidious refinement, devoting every faculty of mind and body to the service and the pleasure of his royal friend:—those who saw all this, and could only judge by what they saw, might well have thought that for such a man to become the champion of the Church was a dream to be realized only by miracle or by imposture. But Archbishop Theobald and John of Salisbury had known his inmost soul, better perhaps than he knew it himself, before ever he went to court; and they knew that however startling his conduct there might look, he was merely fulfilling in his own way the mission on which he had been sent thither:—making himself all things to all men, if thereby he might by any means influence the court and the king for good.[1666] Even his suggestion of the scutage for the war of Toulouse did not seriously shake their faith in him; they blamed him, but they believed that he had erred in weakness, not in wilfulness.[1667] In the middle of the war John dedicated the Polycraticus to him as the one man about the court to whom its follies and its faults could be criticized without fear, because he had no part in them.[1668] Thomas himself does not seem to have contemplated the possibility of removal from his present sphere. It was not in his nature at any time to look far ahead; and Henry seemed to find his attendance more indispensable than ever, declaring in answer to Theobald’s intreaties and remonstrances that he could not possibly spare him till peace was thoroughly restored.[1669]
Thomas was in a strait. His first duty was to his dying spiritual father; but he could not go against the king’s will without running such a risk as Theobald would have been the first to disapprove. Thomas himself therefore at last suggested that the archbishop should try to move the king by summoning his truant archdeacon to return home at once on pain of deprivation.[1670] Theobald, unable to reconcile the contradictory letters of king and chancellor with the general reports of their wonderful unanimity, steered a middle course between severity and gentleness, from fear of bringing down the royal displeasure upon his favourite, whom he yet half suspected of being in collusion with the king. His secretary, John, had no such doubts; but he too was urgent that by some means or other Thomas should come over before the primate’s death.[1671] If he did go, it can only have been for a flying visit; and there is no sign that he went at all. One thing he did obtain for Theobald’s satisfaction: the appointment of Bartholomew archdeacon of Exeter to the bishopric of that diocese.[1672] In April Richard Peche, on whom the see of Chester had been conferred, was consecrated at Canterbury by Walter of Rochester, the archbishop being carried into the chapel to sanction by his presence the rite in which he was too feeble to assist.[1673] By the hand of the faithful secretary John he transmitted to King Henry his last solemn benediction and farewell, and commended to the royal care the future of his church and the choice of his successor.[1674] A few days later, on April 18, 1161, the good primate passed away.[1675]