Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/126

106 He had thus laid himself open to prosecution for treason; and whatever penalty was due to an avowal of being the Pope's liegeman had been doubly earned by treachery. If he had been tried and had suffered like Sir Thomas More and the Monks of the Charterhouse, his sentence would have ranked with theirs. The same causes which explained the executions of honourable men would have applied with greater force to that of one who had deepened his offences by duplicity. But the Crown prosecutors, for some unknown reason, bestowed upon him a distinction in suffering.

When first arrested he was terrified: he acknowledged his offences, submitted, and was pardoned. But his conscience recovered its strength: he returned to his loyalty to the Papacy; he declared his belief that, in matters spiritual, the Pope was his proper sovereign, that the Bishop of Rochester was a martyr, as Thomas à Becket had been a martyr. Becket he held up as the pattern of all churchmen's imitation, courting for himself Becket's fortunes. Like others, he attempted a