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DESCRIPTION OF THE WELSH.

[1157.

and forty-three villages; and, though a dry and stony land, is so fertile in corn, as to be called "the mother of Wales." Crossing the Dee below Chester, he proceeds into Powys. In this district there is a breed of horses of remarkable fleetness, deriving their origin from Spanish horses brought into these parts by Robert de Belèsme, earl of Shrewsbury. The archbishop and his train, having thus made the circuit of the country by the coast and border lands, with little observation of the interior, reach the point from which they set out, having signed three thousand men with the cross, well skilled in the use of arrows and lances. Let us glean a few particulars of these people from the "Description of Wales," by the same writer.

Light and active, hardy rather than strong, the nation universally is trained to arms. Flesh is consumed by the people more than bread, with milk, cheese, and butter. With this pastoral character, having little agriculture, they are always ready for war; and they have neither commerce nor manufactures. They fish with the little wicker boats which they carry to their rivers. Lightly armed with small breastplates, helmets, and shields, they attack their mailed foes with lance and arrow. They have some cavalry, but the marshy nature of the soil compels the greater number to fight on foot. Abstemious both in food and drink, frugal, and capable of bearing great privations, they watch their enemies through the cold and stormy nights, always bent upon defence or plunder. Their hospitality is universal; for the houses of all are common to all. The conversation of the young women, and the music of the harp, give a charm to their humble fare; and no jealousy interferes with the freedom with which a stranger is welcomed by the females of the household. When the evening meal is finished, a bed of rushes is placed in the side of the room, and all without distinction lie down to sleep. The men and women cut their hair close round to the ears and eyes; and the men shave all their beard except the whiskers. Of their white teeth they are particularly careful. They are of an acute intellect, and excel in whatever studies they pursue. They have three musical instruments, the harp, the pipe, and the crowd; and their performances are executed with such celerity and delicacy of modulation, that they produce a perfect consonance from the rapidity of seemingly discordant touches. Their bards, in their rhymed songs, and their orators, in their set speeches, make use of alliteration in preference.to all other ornament. In their musical concerts they do not sing in unison, but in many different parts; and it is unusual to hear a simple melody well sung. The heads of families think it their duty to amuse their guests by their facetiousness. The highest, as well as the lowest of the people, have a remarkable boldness and confidence in speaking and answering; and their natural warmth of temper is distinguished from the English coldness of disposition. They have many soothsayers amongst them. Noble birth, and generous descent, they esteem above all things. Even the common people retain genealogy. They revenge with vehemence any injuries which may tend to the disgrace of their blood, whether an ancient or a recent affront. They are universally devout, and they show a greater respect than other nations to churches and ecclesiastical persons, and especially revere relics of saints. Giraldus, having described at much length the particulars which redound to the credit of the British nation (for so he calls the Welsh), then proceeds to those things which pass the line of encomium. The people, he says, are inconstant, and

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WARS ON THE CONTINENT.

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regardless of any covenant. They commit acts of plunder, not only against foreigners and hostile nations, but against their own countrymen. Bold in their warlike onsets, they cannot bear a repulse, and trust to flight for safety; but defeated one day, they are ready to resume the conflict on the next. Their ancient national custom of dividing property amongst all the brothers of a house leads to perpetual contests for possessions, and frequent fratricides. They constantly intermarry within the forbidden degrees, uniting themselves to their own people, presuming on their own superiority of blood and family; and they rarely marry without previous cohabitation. Their churches have almost as many parties and parsons as there are principal men in the parish; the sons, after the decease of the father, succeed to the ecclesiastical benefices, not by election, but by assumed hereditary right. Finally, in setting forth how this people is to be subdued, and preserved to the English crown, Giraldus says that from the pride and obstinacy of their dispositions they will not, like other nations, subject themselves to the dominion of one lord and king. How long a time it was before that subjection was even imperfectly accomplished, will be seen as we proceed in our narrative.*

It is not within the scope of this history, nor would it add greatly to its interest, to follow out the negotiations and wars in which the Norman princes were engaged with regard to their continental dominions. Henry II., having a larger extent of territory to defend, and a stronger disposition to acquire more, than any of his predecessors, had at this period abundant need of his talent and his energy. His pretensions to Toulouse roused the hostility of Louis of France. Becket was his boldest adviser in this war; for he counselled Henry to take Toulouse by assault, and secure Louis as his prisoner. Henry had scruples about a direct attack on his feudal superior, and resisted the dangerous counsel. He went to Normandy, and then Becket, in company with Henry, Earl of Essex, stormed castles and fought battles, with his own hundreds of knights and thousands of mercenaries. It would be difficult to say how the people of England were governed in the absence of the king and his favourite chancellor, if we placed implicit credit in the common opinion that Becket, in England, presided in the Aula Regis, superintended the domestic administration of the kingdom, was preceptor to the king's sons, and altogether the great master-spirit of the government. We believe that he was a most convenient instrument in the hands of the sagacious king-having one heart, and one mind, as Peter of Blois writesbecause the chancellor was wholly moulded by the inflexible regal will, as long as he stood in a position of dependence. Whether he partook Henry's pleasures, assumed his port and state as an ambassador, or fought his battles as a military chief, the ambitious deacon was still a servant, and, in all probability, subject to the passionate outbursts of a lord who is described as "a lamb when in good humour, but a lion, or worse than a lion, when seriously angry." The capricious energy of the king was often most harassing to his courtiers. He would announce his intention to take a journey in three days, and would start the next morning at day-break, when every one must start with him; and therefore the good Peter of Blois thus prays,—“ Make

* We have condensed this view of Wales and the Welsh of the twelfth century from the two * clumes of Giraldus, translated by Sir Richard Colt Hoare.

Peter of Blois.

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BECKET ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

[1162. him know that he is a man, and let him have and practise the grace of royal bounty and kindness to those who are compelled to follow him, not from ambition but from necessity." It is not difficult to understand how the haughty spirit of Becket would silently rebel under this servile yoke. But wealth flowed in upon him. In addition to his vast pluralities in the Church, he was warden of the Tower, and had other lay offices. But the time of his life was come when the desire of power is a stronger motive than the excitement of acquiring riches or the seduction of luxurious gratifications. Becket, in 1162, was forty-three years of age. Henry, upon the death of Theobald, the archbishop of Canterbury, had offered his chancellor the primacy. He, known only in the Church as a deacon, never having discharged any clerical office-a soldier more than a priest-one who had devoted himself rather to hunting and falconry than to the study of the scriptures-(for so runs a protest against Becket's appointment)—was not exactly the man to raise the honour of a Church against whose corruptions that spirit of satire which is most dangerous under repression had already burst forth. There was a certain Walter Mapes living in those times, who is popularly known as the writer of a drinking-song, but who was one of many who from the days of Henry II. poured out his scholarly invective in bitter rhymes against the corruptions of the monastic orders, and the encroachments of the ecclesiastical power. A Latin poem ascribed to Walter Mapes, entitled, "Apocalypsis Goliæ," describes the Pope as a lion that thirsts after gold,-the bishop as a calf that feeds on other men's pastures,-the archdeacon as an eagle that sees afar off his prey,—the dean with the shape of a man, but full of fraud and deceit. The satires of the days of the Reformation were thus preceded by those of the twelfth century.* Did Becket cast off the sleeved cloak of the gay courtier, to put on the hair-shirt of the penitent archbishop, that he might effect that change in the Church which in moderating her worldly pretensions would have increased her spiritual power over the hearts and consciences of men? The dignity of the primacy was forced upon him, it is said. Henry knew that he had a great battle to fight against an authority out of his realm which claimed to hold in subjection the mightiest order within his realm. The civil power, too, had been gradually encroached upon by the ecclesiastical, for nearly a century. The first William, in separating the civil and ecclesiastical tribunals, had made a political mistake. In the abuse of that separation, those who belonged to the priesthood were not subject to the laws of the state for the punishment of crime. They claimed to be tried by their own courts, and those courts were partial. The inequality required adjustment; and Becket was chosen as Henry's reliable agent, to bring the Church within the bounds of its lawful authority and influence.

There is nothing more difficult than to form an impartial judgment of the men of a past age, if we do not wholly lay aside the tests which we apply to the motives and principles of the men of our own age. Lord Campbell, in speaking of the sincerity of Becket's devotion to the Church, says: "Let us consider the sudden effect of the touch of the mitre on men of honour in our own time." How can such a comparison in the least enable us to understand the case of Becket? A newly-created bishop may give a

* See the "Latin Poems attributed to Walter Mapes," published by the Camden Society.

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CHARACTER OF BECKET.

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vote against the minister who raised him, with perfect satisfaction to his own conscience. But Becket, in accepting the primacy, must have thoroughly known that he must take one of two courses-either to be a moderator between the State and the Church, or to precipitate the Church into a contest with the State. His biographer, Fitz-Stephen, relates that Becket thought he should be driven, if he accepted the primacy, to lose the king's favour, or to sacrifice the service of God. It is said that the king's mother warned her son that Becket would become a rival, and disturb the peace of the kingdom. Becket paused a year before he accepted the archbishopric. What struggles must that mind have undergone before he resolved to enter upon that dangerous course which his enthusiasm saw before him! After his election and consecration, he resigned his office of chancellor, to the great offence of the king. Through that common mistake of judging extraordinary men and actions by a familiar standard, an acute historian writes, "By continuing to flatter the king's wishes, and by uniting in himself the offices of chancellor and archbishop, he might, in all probability, have ruled without control both in Church and State." * What would such a rule have been to Becket? There were two thrones to be filled in England, as we venture to interpret the views of the archbishop-the throne of Canterbury and the throne of Westminster. It was not with him a question of revenue, a question of selfgratification, a question of the best management of a mixed and subordinate power. He well knew the character of the man with whom he should have to contend. He had a just estimate of the strength of the nobles who would be banded against him. But the authority of the universal Church had already made kings hold the Pope's stirrup; and Gregory VII. had excommunicated an emperor of Germany, and compelled him to wait his pleasure, for three winter days, in his outer courts, with all the humiliation of naked feet and the penitent's woollen shirt. What Pope Gregory was in the eleventh century, Pope Alexander would be in the twelfth, if Henry were contumacious. It was no vulgar ambition that precipitated a contest in which the Saxon priest should defy the Norman king, and make all Christendom look on with wonder at his courage and unequalled self-reliance. Coleridge calls this contest "the struggle between the men of arms and of letters, in the persons of Henry and Becket."+ The poetical critic suggests this as the subject of a drama. But a true historical play would not marshal a fiery king and an ignorant nobility on one side, and a mild prelate and a learned clergy on the other. It would show an almost unprecedented battle between a wise and accomplished statesman, strong in the possession of powers almost despotic, and a most fearless and proud ecclesiastic, confident in his own intellectual strength, and fortified by the support of his spiritual superior. The two great principles upon which the world was to be governed had come into mortal conflict, instead of each moderating the other, and harmonising for the common good. The men of arms and the men of letters looked on with fear and wonder.

Lingard, "History of England," vol. ii. chap. 5.
"Literary Remains," vol. ii. p. 162. 8vo.

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Deportment of Becket as Archbishop-State of the Secular Law-Clerical Exemption from Secular Law-Council of Clarendon-Constitutions of Clarendon-Becket arraigned at Northampton--Becket's Flight from England-Excommunication-Punishment of Heretics -Henry and Becket meet at Touraine-Becket returns to England-His Murder at Canterbury-Consequences of Becket's Murder-The Shrine of Becket.

IN the June of 1162, Becket was elected archbishop of Canterbury by the suffragan bishops and the prior and monks of Canterbury, assembled at Westminster. In this proceeding there was nothing beyond the pretence of election; for Henry had sent his justiciary from Normandy, to bear his royal mandate for the elevation of his chancellor to the primacy. No churchman dared to raise an objection to this arbitrary command. One only, the bishop of Hereford, ventured to express his opinion, in saying that the king had worked a miracle, for he had turned a layman and a soldier into an archbishop. Becket was then, at Canterbury, ordained a priest; and afterwards consecrated with extraordinary magnificence. But the mandate of Henry had worked a more miraculous transformation than that described by the bishop of Hereford -a metamorphosis as unexpected by the king as by the church. The man who had displayed before the astonished people the most extravagant luxury, with nobles in his train and belted knights for his body-guard, now wears a monk's frock and a hair cloth next his skin; feeds the poor daily in his private chambers, waiting on them, and washing their feet; entertains the great in his hospitable halls, but allows no one to sit at his own table except monks and other ecclesiastics; hears a Latin book read aloud, instead of listening, as was his wont, to the music of the banquet; and when, in the holiest office of the cathedral, he kneels before the altar, weeps and groans as the most afflicted of penitents. The king is astonished that Becket should

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