Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/461

 BECKET primate of all England. He incurred the dis- pleasure of his royal master by relinquishing the chancellor's office, which the king wanted him to retain ; and he was deprived of the archdeaconry, which Becket wished to keep along with the archbishopric. Becket now became as austere and sturdy as a prelate as he had been brilliant and courtier-like as a statesman ; and he acquired great renown and popularity as a fearless champion of the pre- rogatives of the church, and incidentally of the people, against the encroachments of the crown and the nobility. It has been alleged that his qualities fitted him better for the court and the camp than for the church ; but it was only through the latter that one of his origin could in his day have risen so high. He began to make his influence felt in 1163 at the council of Rheims, where he lodged com- plaints against English laymen for tampering with ecclesiastical rights and property. He claimed from the crown Rochester castle as belonging to the church, and this and other bold steps broke off his friendly relations with the government and the nobility. His opposi- tion to the famous constitutions presented at Clarendon in 1164 became the signal of bitter feuds between him and the king. The privi- lege for which he contended related to the de- livery of the most helpless masses of the peo- ple from the grasp of the royal courts, and to the trial of their cases by the milder ecclesiasti- cal jurisdiction. One of the Clarendon constitu- tions, forbidding the ordination of villeins with- out the consent of their masters, was particu- larly obnoxious to the people, with whom he rose in favor in the same degree that he lost ground with the court. Henry II. withdrew his son from his tutorship, and Becket took a solemn vow to resist the Clarendon constitu- tions, but at length was compelled to recognize them at the request of the pope, who absolved him from the violation of his pledge. Henry nevertheless continued hostile to him ; and to escape from his persecutions, he fled from Eng- land, but was driven back by stress of weather. Charging him with a breach of allegiance on account of this attempt to desert his post, the king had him tried by a parliament at North- ampton ; and Becket, overwhelmed with pen- alties, despoiled of his property, and deserted by all but the common people, fled in disguise, em- barking from Sandwich for Gravelines. Henry confiscated the revenues of his see and made unavailing eftbrts to have him expelled from Flanders and France. Becket spent nearly two years unmolested in the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny in Burgundy ; and although the king sent an embassy to Rome for the vindica- tion of his course, Becket, after resigning his see into the hands of the pope, was immedi- ately reinstated by his holiness, and his cause was also taken up by the king of France. Becket's boldness increasing with his success, the king struck his name from the liturgy, ex- pelled 400 of his relatives from England, and made it a criminal offence to correspond with him or to hold intercourse with him in any way. The pope having confirmed Becket's legatine power or primacy of all England except the see of York, the archbishop attempted to awe the church and state into submission to his and the pope's will, and is said to have been restrained only by the illness of the king from having him excommunicated. The efforts of the pope and the French monarch, and several personal interviews between the king and the archbishop, all proved unavailing to effect a reconciliation ; and the strife increased in bit- terness when Henry II. had the coronation of I his son Henry, a prerogative of the primate, performed by the archbishop of York. The latter and his assistant bishops were consequent- ly suspended by the pope at Becket's request. In 1170, however, a reconciliation took place at Freitville, a border town in Touraine, and the king restored to him his see and all its privileges. On his return to England, the peo- ple gave him an enthusiastic reception ; but he speedily revived the old feud by publishing the suspension of the archbishop of York. The king, who was in Normandy, taunted his at- tendants for their remissness in revenging him on the overbearing prelate. This incited Re- ginald Fitzurse, William de Tracy, Hugh de Moreville, and Richard Brito, four barons of the court, to undertake the task. They met Dec. 28, 1170, at the castle of Ranulph de Broc, near Canterbury, accompanied by a body of armed men. The next day they had a stormy interview with the archbishop in his palace, and on the same evening invaded the cathedral during the vesper service. Becket prevented all opposition to their ingress by declining, as he said, "to convert a church into a castle," and implored his assailants to spare everybody except himself. They attempted to drag him out of the church so as not to desecrate it by bloodshed ; but while manfully wrestling with De Tracy, Becket received a blow which in- flicted a slight wound upon him, and which shattered the arm of his faithful crossbearer, Edward Grimes. The archbishop then kneeled at the altar, when the other three barons gave him the deathblow and his brains were scat- tered on the floor. The murderers fled from the wrath of the people to Knaresborough and then to Rome, whence the pope sent them as penitents to the Holy Land. The king of Eng- land barely escaped from being excommunicated by the pope, who ordered the cathedral to be closed for one year. In 1172 Alexander III. canonized Becket as Saint Thomas of Canter- bury. His remains were deposited in 1221 by Henry III. in a rich shrine, which became a resort of pilgrims (described in Chaucer's " Canterbury Tales "), the scene of alleged mir- acles, and of periodical festivals. Henry VIII. after the reformation despoiled the shrine of its precious treasures, and had the saint's name struck out of the calendar and his bones burnt and scattered. Not a vestige remains of the