Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/176

 armed men approaching the door which led from the cloister into the north transept, and which Thomas forbade them to fasten. ‘God's house must be closed against no man,’ he said. He was going up the steps into the choir when the four knights, with a clerk named Hugh of Horsea, burst into the transept. To the cry ‘Where is the traitor, Thomas Becket?’ he returned no answer; but at the question, ‘Where is the archbishop?’ he stepped down again into the transept, saying, ‘Here I am, not traitor, but archbishop and priest of God; what seek ye?’ ‘Your death—hence, traitor!’ ‘I am no traitor, and I will not stir hence. Wretch!’ (this to Fitzurse, who had struck off the archbishop's cap with his sword) ‘Slay me here if you will, but if you touch any of my people you are accursed.’ They again bade him absolve the bishops; he returned the same answer as before. They tried to drag him out of the church; but he and Edward Grim [q. v.], now his sole remaining companion, were more than a match for the five, hampered though Grim was by the fact that he ‘bore the cross’ (Thomas Saga, i. 541). In the struggle fierce words broke from the archbishop; but when his assailants drew their swords to slay him where he stood, he covered his eyes with his hands, saying, ‘To God and the blessed Mary, to the patron saints of this church, and to St. Denys, I commend myself and the church's cause,’ and with bowed head awaited their blows. The first blow made a gash in the crown of his head, and then fell sideways on his left shoulder, being intercepted by the uplifted arm of Grim. Probably this wound compelled Grim to relinquish the archbishop's cross, for it is expressly stated in a contemporary letter that Thomas himself had the cross in his hands when he was smitten to death (Materials, vii. 431). He received another blow on the head, with the words, ‘Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit;’ at a third he fell on his knees, and then, turning towards the altar of St. Benedict on his right hand, and murmuring ‘For the name of Jesus and for the defence of the church I am ready to embrace death,’ dropped face downwards at full length on the floor. One more sword-stroke completed the severance of the tonsured crown from the skull. ‘Let us begone,’ cried Hugh of Horsea, scattering the brains on the pavement; ‘this man will rise up no more.’

The corpse was buried next day in the crypt without any religious service, as none could be held in the desecrated church till it was formally reconciled. But the grave immediately became a place of pilgrimage and a scene of visions and miracles, and the vox populi clamoured for the canonisation which was pronounced by the pope on 21 Feb. 1173. On 12 July 1174 the king did public penance at the martyr's tomb. In that year the choir of Canterbury Cathedral was burnt down. When its rebuilding was completed the body of St. Thomas was translated, on 7 July 1220, to a shrine in the Trinity chapel, behind the high altar. Thenceforth the ‘Canterbury pilgrimage’ became the most popular in Christendom; jewels and treasures were heaped on the shrine, till in September 1538 (, Annals ad ann.) it was destroyed (as were, in the same year, all the shrines in England save one) by order of Thomas Cromwell (1485?–1540) [q. v.], acting as vicar-general for Henry VIII. It was afterwards reported that Henry had, on 24 April 1536, caused the martyr to be summoned to take his trial for high treason, and that on 11 June 1538 the trial had been held, the accused condemned as contumacious, and his body ordered to be disinterred and burnt (, Concilia, iii. 835–6, 841; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, xiii. pt. ii. p. 49); but the tale is of doubtful authenticity. Whether the contents of the shrine were really burnt has been much questioned, and in January 1888 they were for a moment thought to have been discovered buried in the crypt. Further investigation, however, showed that the bones then found could not be those of St. Thomas, and that the evidence for the burning of the latter far outweighs that which has been adduced for their burial.

On 16 Nov. 1538 Henry issued a proclamation declaring that the death of Thomas was ‘untruly called martyrdom;’ that he had been canonised by ‘the bishop of Rome’ merely ‘because he had been a champion to maintain his usurped authority, and a bearer of the iniquity of the clergy;’ and that ‘there appeareth nothing in his life and exterior conversation whereby he should be called a saint, but rather esteemed to have been a rebel and traitor to his prince;’ wherefore he was in future to be called no more St. Thomas of Canterbury, ‘but Bishop Becket;’ all images and pictures of him were to be ‘put down,’ and all mention of him in calendar and service book to be erased (, Hist. Reformation, Records, pt. iii. bk. iii. No. 62). In consequence of this, mediæval representations and direct memorials of the most famous of English saints are extremely rare in his own land. Our one contemporary portrait of him is the figure on his archiepiscopal seal; it agrees with the descriptions given by his biographers of his tall slender form, dignified bearing, and handsome features, at