vereign, came forth from the inner apartment, and throwing himself on his knees, implored the primate to have pity on himself and his brethren the bishops, for the king had vowed to slay the first of them that should attempt to excuse his conduct. "Thou fearest," replied Becket; "flee then! thou canst not understand the things that are of God!" Soon afterwards, the rest of the bishops appeared in a body, and Hilary of Chichester, speaking in the name of all, said, "Thou wast our primate, but now we disavow thee, because, after having promised faith to the king, our common lord, and sworn to maintain his royal customs, thou hast endeavoured to destroy them, and hast broken thine oath. We proclaim thee, then, a traitor, and tell thee we will no longer obey a perjured archbishop, but place ourselves and our cause under the protection of our lord the pope, and summon thee to answer us before him." "I hear," said Becket; and he deigned no further reply. who call me traitor!"1 He then mounted his horse amidst the acclamations of the lower clergy and common people, and rode in a sort of triumph to his lodgings, the populace shouting, "Blessed be God, who hath delivered his servant from the hands of his enemies!" The strength of Becket's party was in the popular body; and it has been supposed, with some reason, that his English birth and Saxon descent contributed no less than his sudden sanctity, to endear him to the people, who had never since the Conquest seen one of their race elevated to such dignities. Abandoned by the great, both lay and clerical, who had hitherto been proud to wait upon him, his house was empty; and in a spirit of imitation which some will deem presumptuous, he determined to fill it with the paupers of the town, and the lowly wayfarers from the road-side. "Suffer," said he, "all the poor people to come into the place, that we may make merry together in the Lord." "And having thus spoken, the According to Roger of Hoveden, the arch- people had free entrance, so that all the hall and bishop was accused in the council chamber of the all the chambers of the house being furnished impossible crime of magic; and the barons pro- with tables and stools, they were conveniently nounced a sentence of imprisonment against him. placed, and served with meat and drink to the The door of that chamber soon opened, and full," the archbishop supping with them, and Robert, Earl of Leicester, followed by the barons, doing the honours of the feast. In the course of stepped forth into the hall to read the sentence, the evening he sent to the king to ask leave to beginning in the usual old Norman-French form retire beyond sea, and he was told that he should -"Oyez-ci.” The archbishop rose, and, inter- receive an answer on the following morning. rupting him, said, "Son and earl, hear me first. The modern historians who take the most unThou knowest with how much faith I served the favourable view of the king's conduct in these king with how much reluctance, and only to particulars, intimate, more or less broadly, that please him, I accepted my present charge, and a design was on foot for preventing the archin what manner I was declared free from all se- bishop from ever seeing that morrow; but the cular claims whatsoever. Touching the things circumstances of time and place, and the characwhich happened before my consecration, I ought ter of Henry, are opposed to the belief that secret not to answer, nor will I answer. You, more-assassination was contemplated; nor does any conover, are all my children in God; and neither law nor reason permits you to sit in judgment upon your father. I forbid you therefore to judge me; I decline your tribunal, and refer my quarrel to the decision of the pope. To him I appeal: and now, under the holy protection of the Catholic church and the apostolic see, I depart in peace." After this counter-appeal to the power which his adversaries had been the first to invoke, Becket slowly strode through the crowd towards the door of the hall. When near the threshold, the spirit of the soldier, which was not yet extinguished by the aspirations of the saint, blazed forth in a withering look and a few hasty but impassioned words. Some of the courtiers and attendants of the king threw at him straw or rushes, which they gathered from the floor, and called him traitor and false perjurer. Turning round and drawing himself up to his full height, he cried, "If my holy calling did not forbid it, I would make my answer with my sword to those cowards temporary writer give reasonable grounds for entertaining such a belief, or, indeed, say more than that the archbishop's friends were sorely frightened, and thought such a tragical termination of the quarrel a probable event. Becket, however, took his departure as if he himself feared violence. He stole out of the town of Northampton at the dead of night, disguised as a simple monk, and calling himself Brother Dearman; and being followed only by two clerks and a domestic servant, he hastened towards the coast, hiding by day and pursuing his journey by night. The season was far advanced, and the stormy winds of November swept the waters of the Channel when he reached the coast; but Becket embarked in a small boat, and after many 1 Fitz-Steph.; Gervase; Grym.; Diceto. Diceto, we know, was at this meeting; and what gives singular interest to the accounts all closely connected with Becket, were also present. 3 Holinshal. perils and fatigues, landed at Gravelines, in Flanders, on the fifteenth day after his departure from Northampton. From the seaport of Gravelines he and his companions walked on foot, and in very bad condition, to the monastery of St. Bertin, at St. Omer, where he waited a short time the success of his applications to the King of France, and the pope, Alexander III., who had fixed his residence for a time in the city of Sens. Their answers were most favourable; for, fortunately for Becket, the jealousy and disunion between the Kings of France and England, disposed Louis to protect the obnoxious exile, in order to vex and weaken Henry; and the pope, turning a deaf ear to a magnificent embassy despatched to him by the English sovereign, determined to support the cause of the primate as that of truth, of justice, and the church. The splendid abbey of Pontigny, in Burgundy, was assigned to him as an honour able and secure asylum; and the pope reinvested him with his archiepiscopal dignity, which he had surrendered into his hands. As soon as Henry was informed of these particulars, he issued writs to the sheriffs of England, commanding them to seize all rents and possessions of the primate within their jurisdictions, and to detain all bearers of appeals to the pope till the king's pleasure should be made known to them. He also commanded the justices of the kingdom to detain, in like manner, all bearers of papers, whether from the pope or Becket, that purported to pronounce excommunication or interdict on the realm-all persons, whether lay or ecclesiastic, who should adhere to such sentence of interdict-and all clerks attempting to leave the kingdom without a passport from the king. The primate's name was struck out of the liturgy, and the revenues of every clergyman who had either followed him into France, or had sent him aid and money, were seized by the of Becket's friends were included; and it is said crown. If Henry's vengeance had stopped here that they were all bound by an oath to show it might have been excused, if not justified; but, themselves in their miserable exile to the cause irritated to madness by the tone of defiance his of their ruin, that his heart might be wrung by enemy assumed in a foreign country, he proceeded the sight of the misery he had brought down to further vindictive and most disgraceful mea- | upon the heads of all those who were most dear sures, issuing one common sentence of banishment against all who were connected with Becket, either by the ties of relationship or those of friendship. The list of proscription contained four hundred names, for the wives and children | 1 This abbey was suppressed in 1790. The church has been preserved, and, after the cathedrals of Sens and of Auxerre, and the church of Vezelay, is the finest and largest religious edifice in the department of Yonne. The length of its interior is 354 ft., breadth 77 ft.; height of centre of transept, 69 ft. 2"Odo of Kent was one of the intimate friends of Thomas Becket and of John of Salisbury, and is mentioned with expressions of great esteem by the latter writer. He appears first in history in 1172, as prior of Canterbury, when he distinguished himself by a protracted resistance to the attempts of the crown to usurp the right of electing the archbishop. In 1175 he was to him. It is added that his cell at Pontigny was accordingly beset by these exiles, but that he finally succeeded in relieving their immediate wants by interesting the King of France, the Queen of Sicily, and the pope, in their favour. made abbot of Battle; and in the time of Leland a handsome marble tomb marked the place of his burial in the abbey church." Wright's Biog. Brit. Liter. ii. 224. From the specimen given in Latin of the kind of preaching with which this Odo, John of Abbeville, and Roger of Salisbury enlightened such of their hearers as understood Latin, one cannot form any high estimate of the improvement introduced by the Norman clergy into the pulpits of England, or consider that much was lost by those plain Anglo-Saxons who could not understand them. Anything more silly than the story introduced to illustrate how the devils are to spit on the faces of fops in hell, can hardly be imagined. In 1165, the year after Becket's flight, Henry sustained no small disgrace from the result of a campaign, in which he personally commanded, against the Welsh. That hardy people had risen once more in arms in 1163, but had been defeated by an Anglo-Norman army, which subsequently plundered and wasted with fire the county of Carmarthen. Somewhat more than a year later a nephew of Rees-ap-Gryffiths, Prince or King of South Wales, was found dead in his bed, and the uncle, asserting he had been assassinated by the secret emissaries of a neighbouring Norman baron, collected the mountaineers of the south, and began a fierce and successful warfare, in which he was presently joined by his old allies, Gwynned, the Prince of North Wales, and Owen Cyvelioch, the leader of the clans of Powisland. One Norman castle fell after another, and, when hostilities had continued for some time, the Welsh pushed their incursions forward into the level country. The king, turning at length his attention from the church quarrel, which had absorbed it, drew together an army "as well of Englishmen as strangers," and hastened to the Welsh marches. At his approach the mountaineers withdrew " to their starting-holes "-their woods and strait passages. Henry, without regard to difficulties and dangers, followed them, and a general action was fought on the banks of the Cieroc. The Welsh were defeated, and fled to their uplands. Henry, still following them, penetrated as far as the lofty Berwin, at the foot of which he encamped. A sudden storm of rain set in, and continued until all the streams and torrents were fearfully swollen, and the valley was deluged. Meanwhile the natives gathered on the ridges of the mountain of Berwin; but it appears to have been more from the war of the elements than of man that the king's army retreated in great disorder and with some loss. Henry had hitherto showed himself remarkably free from the cruelty of his age, but his mind was now embittered, and in a hasty moment he resolved to take a bar This reverse in England was soon followed by successes on the Continent. A formidable insurrection broke out in Brittany against Henry's subservient ally Conan, who applied to him for succour, according to the terms of the treaty of alliance subsisting between them. The troops of the king entered by the frontier of Normandy, under pretext of defending the legitimate Earl of the Bretons against his revolted subjects. Henry soon made himself master of Dol, and several other towns, which he kept and garrisoned with his own soldiers. Conan had shown himself utterly incapable of managing the fierce Breton nobles, by whose excesses and cruelties the poor people were ground to the dust. Henry's power and abilities were well known to the suffering Bretons, and a considerable party, including the priests of the country, rallied round him, and hailed him as a deliverer. Submitting in part to the force of circumstances and the wishes of Henry, and in part, perhaps, following his own indolent inclinations, Conan resigned the remnant of his authority into the hands of his protector, who governed the state in the name of his son Geoffrey, and Conan's heiress Constantia, the espousals of these two children being prematurely solemnized. In the month of December, 1166, Henry kept his court in the famed old castle on Mount St. Michael, whence his eye could range over the long and extending land of Brittany; and MOUNT ST. MICHAEL, Normandy.3-Cotman's Antiquities of Normandy. barous vengeance on the persons of the hostages whom the Welsh princes had placed in his hands, seven years before, as pledges of their tranquillity and allegiance. The eyes of the males were picked out of their heads, and the noses and ears of the females were cut off. The old chroniclers hardly increase our horror when they tell us that the victims belonged to the noblest families of Wales.' 1 Gervase. Newbrig.; Girald. Camb. Itin.: Diceto. there he was visited by William the Lion, who had recently ascended the Scottish throne on the death of his brother, Malcolm IV. 2 Script. Rer. Franc.; Daru, Hist. de la Bretagne. 3 This singular rock is situated in the province of Normandy and the modern department of Manche in France, seven miles south-west from Avranches. It is about 400 ft. high, including the building; above five miles in circumference; and lies three miles from the coast, on sandy flats that are covered each tide, and thus isolate it from the mainland. It was once strongly king; for although he had excited fresh disturbances in Brittany and Maine, and leagued himself with some of Henry's revolted barons of Poictou and Aquitaine, he gained no advantage whatever for himself, was the cause of ruin to most of his allies, and was compelled to conclude a peace at the beginning of the year 1169. Nothing but an empty pride could have been gratified by a series of feudal oaths; but the designations given to his sons on this occasion, by the English king, contributed to fatal consequences which happened four years later. Prince Henry of England, his eldest son, did homage to his father-in-law, the King of France, for Anjou and Maine, as he had formerly done for Normandy; Prince Richard, his second son, did homage for Aquitaine; and Geoffrey, his third son, for Brittany: and it was afterwards assumed that these ceremonies constituted the While still abroad, he ordered a tax to be levied | short and still more inglorious for the French on all his subjects, whether English or foreign, for the support of the war in the Holy Land, which was taking a turn more and more unfavourable to the Christians; but at that very time his peace was broken by his own war with the church and the unremitting hostility of Becket. In the month of May the banished archbishop went from Pontigny to Vezeley, near Auxerre, and, encouraged by the pope, he repaired to the church on the great festival of the Ascension, and mounting the pulpit there," with book, bell, and candle," solemnly cursed and pronounced the sentence of excommunication against the defenders of the Constitutions of Clarendon, the detainers of the sequestrated property of the church of Canterbury, and those who imprisoned or persecuted either laymen or clergy on his account. This done, he more particularly excommunicated by name Richard de Lucy, Joycelin Baliol, and four other of Henry's courtiers and prime favour-boys sovereigns and absolute masters of the seveites. The king was at Chinon, in Anjou, when he was startled by this new sign of life given by his adversary. Though in general a great master of his feelings, Henry was subject to excesses of ungovernable fury, and on this occasion he seems fairly to have taken leave of his senses. He cried out that they wanted to kill him, body and soul-that he was wretched in being surrounded by cowards and traitors, not one of whom thought of delivering him from the insupportable vexations caused him by a single man. He took off his cap and dashed it to the ground, undid his girdle, threw his clothes about the room, tore off the silk coverlet from his bed and rolled upon it, and gnawed the straw and rushes -for it appears that this mighty and splendid monarch had no better bed. His resentment did not pass away with this paroxysm; and after writing to the pope and the King of France, he threatened that, if Becket should return and continue to be sheltered at the abbey of Pontigny, which belonged to the Cistercians, he would seize all the estates appertaining to that order within his numerous dominions. The threat was an alarming one to the monks, and we find Becket removing out of Burgundy to the town of Sens, where a new asylum was appointed him by Louis. A paltry war was begun and ended by a truce, all within a few months: it was followed the next year by another war, equally ral dominions named. At the same time the two kings agreed upon a marriage between Prince Richard of England, and Alice, another daughter of the King of France, the previous treaty of matrimony with the King of Arragon being set aside. Sixteen months before these events Henry lost his mother, the Empress Matilda, who died at Rouen, and was buried in the celebrated abbey of Bec, which she had enriched with the donations of her piety and penitence. About this time Henry was prevailed upon by the pope, the King of France, and by some of his own friends, to assent to the return of Becket and his party. The Kings of France and England met at Montmirail, and Becket was admitted to a conference. Henry insisted on qualifying his agreement to the proposed terms of accommodation by the addition of the words, "saving the honour of his kingdom," a salvo which Becket met by another on his part, saying that he was willing to be reconciled to the king, and obey him in all things, "saving the honour of God and the church." Upon this, Henry, turning to the King of France, said, "Do you know what would happen if I were to admit this reservation? That man would interpret everything displeasing to himself as being contrary to the honour of God, and would so invade all my rights: but to show that I do not withstand God's honour, I will here offer him a concession-what the greatest and houses that follow in successive lines, leaving but a scanty space fortified, but is now used as a state prison. Duke Rollo of Nor-rection incline in a comparatively easy slope, and are covered with mandy is said to have endowed the monastery which crowns St. Michael's Mount on the fourth day after his baptism into the Christian faith. Richard I. of England greatly enlarged the church, and added spacious buildings for a body of monks of the Benedictine order. The base of the mount is surrounded with high thick walls, flanked with semicircular machicolated towers and bastions. Toward the west end its sides present only steep, black, bare, pointed rocks. The portions lying in an opposite di 2 Script. Rer. Franc. Henry seems to have acted in this mad way on more than one occasion. holiest of his predecessors did unto the least of | bishop in the best possible disposition, and that mine, that let him do unto me, and I am con- it would be sinful in him to nourish rancour any tented therewith." All present exclaimed that longer. this was enough-that the king had humbled himself enough. But Becket still insisted on his salvo; upon which the King of France said he seemed to wish to be "greater than the saints, and better than St. Peter;" and the nobles present murmured at his unbending pride, and said he no longer merited an asylum in France. The two kings mounted their horses and rode away without saluting Becket, who retired much cast down. No one any longer offered him food and lodging in the name of Louis, and on his journey back to Sens he was reduced to live on the charity of the common people.' In another conference the obnoxious clauses on either side were omitted. The business now seemed in fair train; but when Becket asked from the king the kiss of peace, which was the usual termination to such quarrels, Henry's irritated feelings prevented him from granting it, and he excused himself by saying it was only a solemn oath taken formerly, in a moment of passion, never to kiss Becket, that hindered him from giving this sign of perfect reconciliation. The primate was resolute to waive no privilege and no ceremony, and this conference was also broken off in anger. Another quarrel between the two kings, and an impotent raising of banners on the part of Louis, which threatened at first to retard the reconciliation between Henry and his primate, were in fact the causes of hastening that event; for hostilities dwindled into a truce, the truce led to another conference between the sovereigns, and the conference to another peace, at which Henry, who was apprehensive that the pope would finally consent to Becket's ardent wishes, and permit him to excommunicate his king by name, and pronounce an interdict against the whole kingdom, slowly and reluctantly pledged his word to be reconciled forthwith to the dangerous exile. On the 22d of July, 1170, a solemn congress was held in a spacious and most pleasant meadow, between Freteval and La Ferté-Bernard, on the borders of Touraine. The king was there before the archbishop; and as soon as Becket appeared, riding leisurely towards the tent, he spurred his horse to meet him, and saluted him, cap in hand. They then rode apart into the field, and discoursed together for some time in the same familiar manner as in by-gone times. Then returning to his attendants, Henry said that he found the arch The primate came up, accompanied by the Archbishop of Sens and other priests, and the forms of reconciliation were completed; always, however, excepting the kiss of peace, which, according to some, Henry promised he would give in England, where they would soon meet.' The king, however, condescended to hold Becket's stirrup when he mounted. By their agreement, Becket was to love, honour, and serve the king in as far as an archbishop could "render in the Lord service to his sovereign;" and Henry was to restore immediately all the lands and livings, and privileges of the church of Canterbury, and to furnish Becket with funds to discharge his debts, and make the journey into England. These terms were certainly not all kept: the lands were not released for four months; and, after many vexatious delays, Becket was obliged to borrow money for his journey. While tarrying on the French coast, he was several times warned that danger awaited him on the opposite shore. This was not improbable, as many resolute men had been suddenly driven from the church lands on which they had fattened for years, and as he was known to carry about his person letters of excommunication from the pope against the Archbishop of York, and the Bishops of London and Salisbury, whom he held to be his chief enemies, and who were men likely to adopt strong measures to prevent his promulgating the terrible sentence. He was even assured that Ranulf de Broc, a knight of a family who all hated him to the death, and who had himself boasted that he would not let the archbishop live to eat a single loaf of bread in England, was lying with a body of soldiers between Canterbury and Dover, in order to intercept him. nothing could move Becket, who said seven years of absence were long enough both for the shepherd and his flock, and that he would not stop though he were sure to be cut to pieces as soon as he landed on the opposite coast. The only use he made of the warnings he received, was to confide the letters of excommunication to a skilful and devoted messenger, who, preceding him some short time, stole into England without being suspected, and actually delivered them publicly to the three bishops, who were as much startled as if a thunderbolt had fallen at their feet. This last measure seems to have had as much to do with Becket's death as any anger of the king's. As he was on the point of embarking, a vessel arrived from England. The sailors were asked what were the feelings of the good English people Fitz-Stephen; Epist. S. Thoma. But |