Page:Comic History of England.djvu/112

108 Duke of Brittany, soon scooped in that valuable property also.

He broke up the custom of issuing pickpocket and felony licenses to his nobles, seized the royal stone-piles and other nests for common sneak thieves, and resolved to give the people a chance to pay taxes and die natural deaths. The disorderly nobles were reduced to the ranks or sent away to institutions for inebriates, and people began to permit their daughters to go about the place unarmed.

Foreign mercenaries who had so long infested the country were ordered to leave it under penalty of having their personal possessions confiscated, and their own carcasses dissected and fed to the wild boars.

Henry next gave his attention to the ecclesiastic power. He chose Thomas à Becket to the vacant portfolio as Archbishop of Canterbury, hoping thus to secure him as an ally; but a Becket, though accustomed to ride after a four-in-hand and assume a style equal to the king himself, suddenly became extremely devout, and austerity characterized this child of fortune, insomuch that each day on bended knees he bathed the chapped and soiled feet of thirteen beggars. Why thirteen beggars should come around every morning to the archbishop's study to have their feet manicured, or how that could possibly mollify an