Armed by no public grievance, moved by no loyal zeal, but simply private enemies who saw their way to revenge and impunity, Reginald Fitz Urse, Hugh de Morville, Richard Brito, and William de Tracy, came to Canterbury, sought out the archbishop, and slew him. The cruelty on the one side, the heroism on the other—the savage barbarity of the desperate man, the strange passionate violence of the would-be martyr, finding at the last that he could not place a curb on his words or temper, even when he was, as he may be truly believed to have been, offering up his life for his Church—forms a sad but a thrice-told tale.

Becket died on the 29th of December, 1170, and for 350 years and more that day was kept in the Church of England as one of the chief festivals after Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas. It is no small proof of the strength of character which certainly marks Becket throughout his versatile career, that he should have made so deep an impression not only on England but on Christendom. Although some allowance must be made for the influence of superstition, and doubtless of imposture also, in the spread of the honor paid to him so widely, even such superstitions could not have gathered round one whose reputation was a mere figment of monks and legend-writers. He was undoubtedly recognized as the champion of a great cause which was then believed to need championship, and which through the greatness of the need served to excuse even such championship as it found in him. But whatever were the cause which he was maintaining, he had some part of the glory that belongs to all who vindicate liberty, to all who uphold weakness against overwhelming strength.

And in this view of him, in which Englishmen may have regarded him as the one man able and daring to beard the mighty king whom the memory of his forefathers had clothed with enhanced terrors, and whose designs for their good they were too ignorant to appreciate, Continental Christendom saw him the champion of the papacy as against the secular power. Later generations under the recoil of the Reformation viewed him merely as a traitor, and his cultus as an organized imposture. More calmly regarded—as now perhaps we may afford to regard him—he appears, as we have described him, a strong, impulsive man, the strength of whose will is out of all proportion to the depth of his character, with little self-restraint, little self-knowledge, no statesmanlike insight, and yet too much love of intrigue and craft. He is not a constructive reformer in the Church; in the state he is obstructive and exasperating. Even on the estimate of his friends he does not come within the first rank of great men. The cause for which he fought was not the cause for which he fell, and the cause of liberty, which to some extent benefited by his struggle, was not the actual cause for which he was consciously fighting. He appears small indeed by the side of Anselm, who knew well how to distinguish between the real and factitious importance of the claims which he made or resisted; small indeed by the side of his successor, St. Edmund, who, brave as Thomas himself was to declare the right, chose the part of the peacemaker rather than that of the combatant and recognized the glory of suffering patiently. Yet the world’s gratitude has often been abundantly shown to men who deserved it less.