Thomas Becket martyr patriot

Preface

LIVES of Archbishop Becket and discussions of them have been so many, that some apology may be necessary for another.

It is an easy task. We have it on the authority of Mr. Freeman : " There is scarcely any man of past times, for estimating whose life and character we have such ample means. . . . We know all about everybody and everything. . . . As to mere matters of fact, the points of controversy are exceedingly few."

But he adds : " The peculiarity of the history is, that, with the same facts before them, no two people seem to be content to draw the same inferences."

Truth is single, but attractive : error manifold and repulsive. There is scope, it appears, for further discussion ; unless we are to infer that the case is hopeless, and the real Becket an insoluble problem.

It is not a likely inference ; it becomes very unlikely when we find that writers of reputation, with all the ample sources of information in their hands, have made iv

Preface.

many mistakes in matters of plain fact. Discordant conclusions then follow as of course.

If there is still scope for discussion, there is good cause for it. Becket, in himself, is a man worth knowing. To Englishmen all the great men are worth knowing, — above others, the great and true men, — who have made the story of their forefathers one in which they can find some interest and some pride.

Yet, after all that has been written of him, the study of this man, under any form of the materials for it within reach, is, to the general reader, an impossibility. Certain simple facts have been told many times, both fairly and intelligibly, as they were forty years ago by Dr. Giles. But a large portion of the materials, and some of the more important of them, are to be gathered from many hundreds of Latin letters, some of them very long, written both by the principal actors in the events, and by eye-witnesses of their remarkable scenes.

Dr. Giles and others have published translations of some of them. But even so it takes time and pains, which few readers can afford, to gather the true purport from a voluminous correspondence.

In the present little work it has been attempted to draw out the important substance of the letters in a fair and often literal translation of their own words.

The resulting story is that of a man who was not, and who never thought himself, and never aspired to be, a saint to be worshipped in ages following ; but who, also, was not that impossible combination of incongruous

Preface.

v qualities, in which later times have represented him. He was a human being, — of no ordinary type, it is true, and therefore sure to be misunderstood ; yet of a character, if rare, at least perfectly intelligible.

No bit of history rests upon better evidence. The contemporary biographers, severally and combined, bear their plain marks of candour and truthfulness. They are confirmed by the annalists, sometimes from independent sources of information, and are fully vindicated and illustrated by the fresh and lucid narratives of the correspondence.

To many readers it will support their credibility, that they give us simple, straightforward narratives of common facts, unmixed with the tales of miracles, which sprung up abundantly after the catastrophe. The books of miracles stand apart. The biographies are, for that age, singularly free from them ; much more so than the annals and chronicles, which, for centuries, are the only sources of English history.

These pages, written in 1884, arose unsought in the course of a larger reading of mediaeval authorities, and under no intention of making a book of them. They are issued with no pretension to be exempt from the errors and oversights incidental to most writers, especially among many sources of information ; but, it is hoped, not till after sufficient care and attention, to have left no errors materially important to their main purpose.

The letters contained in the seventh volume of the vi

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" Materials " of Robertson and Sheppard, published in 1885, bring to light some interesting facts hitherto generally overlooked. These facts, found to be in accord with the writer's previous conclusions, have strengthened his conviction that his view of the great Englishman of the twelfth century is substantially the true one.

Authorities. — The "Materials for the History of Thomas Becket," with the correspondence (7 vols.) ; the Icelandic Life ; and also the annals and chronicles, and other works referred to, with a few exceptions, are printed in the great and valuable series of national " Chronicles and Memorials," published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls.

CONTENTS,

C MATTER FACE

I. England after a Hundred Years of the Norman- French ... ... ... ... ... ... i

II. Rise of Thomas Becket ... ... ... 22

IV. Thomas the Chancellor ... ... ... 56

V. The King upon the Judgment-Seat — The Battle

VI. Thomas Archbishop ... ... ... ... 89

VII. The Royal Tyranny thwarted at Woodstock and

VIII. Law-making under Terror, commonly called "The

Council of Clarendon" ... ... ... 138

IX. The Northampton Plot, known as "The Council

X. King and Archbishop in Appeal to the Pope — Papal

Duplicities in Evil Times ... ... ... 185

XI. The King's Vagaries to avoid Sentence ... 227

XII. The King submits to the Pope — The False Peace 260

XIII. The Return to England ... ... ... ... 278

Chapter I. England After A Hundred Years Of The Norman-french

DURING the century following the Norman Con- Twopeopies,

English and

quest, and long; after it, England was inhabited French, in

n ' fe ' & England.

by two distinct, although kindred peoples, the conquerors and the conquered people, calling themselves the French and the English.

The old English people were reduced to a The French

are masters.

condition of miserable dependence upon foreign lords, most of them to a condition of serfdom, sinking deeper and deeper towards slavery, in the land which for centuries they had made their own.

Before the end of the Conqueror's life, the lordships of English lands, with exceptions thinly scattered over the country, had, by one means or another, been transferred to the foreigners who had taken part in the Conquest on the condition of sharing in the spoils.

They took the general name of FYenchmen. For

Thomas Bcckct.

centuries the owners of the soil of England called themselves and were called "the French." To call one of them an Englishman was a heinous insult. The very name was held in contempt.

The chief losers by the Conquest were the old English lords of lands. Many of them perished ; many fled abroad ; not a few survived among the various conditions of tenants, or even below them.

Their successors in their lordships were men of Norman or other foreign blood, the offspring of adventurers from many provinces, mostly of France, but of other countries also, who " came over with the Conqueror." In the families where, from marriages of convenience, English blood had got into their veins, they ignored it and were ashamed of it. Norman-French had been the conquerors, and were the commanding people.

The Norman The Conqueror William and his successors

king claims

aii the land ciaimed the whole of the soil of England as their

as his own. o

own estate — Terra mea. The great bulk of the lordships he bestowed upon a few hundreds of lords, his "tenants in chief," who held them subject to the dues and services of a feudatory to his lord and king. A multitude of estates were given to his dependents and servants, some to eleemosynaries — these last, most of them, of English race. He took for himself the lordships of, it is estimated, 1422 manors, including many

His Times.

towns. Some of the towns and manors he and his lords kept in their own hands. They collected their rents and cultivated their lands by bailiffs, who rendered the returns in money or in kind. For some time after the Conquest every king's estate contributed its settled quota of provisions to the royal household. But the greater number of the manors were in the hands of tenants, held, for the most part, at a customary quit-rent, besides the feudal dues and services to the lord.

Among the greater tenants there remained a considerable number of Englishmen ; probably less than half of them were English when the Conqueror died. But this is a doubtful question, not likely to be solved.

It is certain, however, from evidences many and constant envarious, that as the king, in the years following oftheiteBch

. upon the

his conquest, dispossessed more and more of the English, English lords, and put foreigners in their place, so the French lords, as time went on, managed to eject Englishmen more and more from the larger tenancies, and to have their estates in the hands of Frenchmen, of their kith and kin ; or, otherwise, of Englishmen who had managed so far to conciliate their masters, and to identify themselves with them, as to be able to call themselves French.

We have a miserable picture of the dependence who are at of the English upon the French, in a well-known

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writer of about a century after the Conquest.* The men who fought at Hastings lost all hope of keeping their estates and incomes. They were held fortunate to have their lives among their enemies. Others who had not taken part, or had not been able to take part, in the fatal fight, might keep their possessions, but only for their lifetime. The land was the king's, and they had lost all right of inheritance in their families, unless at the pleasure of the lords set over them by the king.

As was natural, bitter enmity ensued between intruded lords and native tenants, and frequent assassinations. The tenants, oppressed and driven from their estates, complained to the king, and were told, for their consolation, that they had no lawful rights of inheritance, but would be protected in all they could obtain by good behaviour to their lords and agreement with them. What oppression and tyranny must have had sway under such an edict, what arbitrary fines must have been exacted as the price of continuance upon the soil, it is as difficult to imagine, as it is scantily told us. It is more than probable that before the end of that century, not only all the lords, but almost all the considerable tenants, were either French or called themselves French.

The first Henry, among his early efforts to gain supporters, gave his promise to maintain all tenants,

His Times.

French and English, in hereditary possession of their lands, subject always to a lawful and reasonable "relief" to the lord. It was a promise not easy of performance. The lords took their own views of what was fit, and could turn the " reasonable relief" into an enormous death-tax.

Among the smaller tenants, there can be nosmaiifree-

holders.

doubt that a larger number of Englishmen were able to maintain themselves in their old homes. In some parts of the country, a middle class of small freeholders, the greater number of them of Danish or Anglo-Danish origin, are still in possession in the Domesday record. There are more of them in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, the chief districts of the Dane-law, than in all the rest of England. How many of them remained a hundred years afterwards is another problem not easy of solution.

Beneath the tenants was the mass of the old English people, the labourers and tillers of the The English soil ; sprung some of them from the small English freeholders, but mostly from the various classes of the ancient peasantry, crushed by the Norman masters into the one class of the villani, villains, villeins, or villagers. The word "villager" is as nearly descriptive of their actual position as either " villein " or " villain," and is more convenient. "Villain" is now restricted to a baser signification, and " villein " is not easily distinguished from it.

The villagers were the tillers of the ground.

Thomas Becket.

They worked for their lords and masters under a hard service, doing all the labour of the manor, of which the lord or the tenant had the profit ; and they had for their wages the right of common, and a piece of arable, which they tilled among them, for their maintenance. They had their rights in the land, after the Conquest, as before it ; and their hardest service, when kept within lawful service, was not so hard as that of labouring men has been, under landlords and farmers, in far more recent times.

But the English people, villagers as well as tenants, had hardships and miseries to endure, far beyond the limits of lawful service. For a time, they were not, either of them, lawfully at the mercy of their masters and lords. The Conqueror did not overthrow the social fabric which he found established. The old Teutonic co-partnership of lords and workers in the lands of the vill or manor was, for some time at least, maintained. The villagers did all the work, and the lord had the lion's share of the produce and profits. But the workers had their homes or hovels, and their rights of portion upon the land to which they were tied. They could not leave it without the lord's consent ; but neither, except in rare instances, could they desire to leave the only place in which they had any rights, and were able, with hard labour, to support themselves.

His Times.

But, during the century following the Conquest, Reduced

i r • >ii i • slavery.

the foreign masters were continually encroaching, not only upon the rights of the old tenants, but also upon those of the villagers ; until, at the end of that time, the villagers were reduced to the condition of slaves, and could be bought and sold as chattels.*

At that time, and long afterwards, the bulk of the population consisted of a race of lords and great tenants, who spoke French and called themselves Frenchmen ; with, beneath them, a mixed race of smaller tenants, and, lower still, the most numerous class, the labourers, who spoke English and called themselves Englishmen, and were not ashamed of the name. It was long before the two races were even so far united as to regard themselves as one English people.

Under such relations as existed between the two Fusion of

the races

peoples, an amalgamation of the races, except slow and among the middle class in town or country, could proceed but very slowly, and could hardly ever be more than partial.

In the middle classes, no doubt, intermarriages soon became frequent ; and it is within these limits that we must understand another statement of the writer already quoted — that, among freemen, it had become difficult to show who was English, and who was Norman. He is speaking of a law of the

Thomas Becket.

Conqueror for putting a check upon the assassinations of Normans, which made the local hundred responsible if the murderer was not found, and held every murdered man to be a Norman unless he was proved to be an Englishman. " Proof of Englishry " was required ; and this would become a difficulty in the middle classes, while there were still distinct races above and below them. No one can doubt, and the writer admits it, that all the villagers were English. It is not less certain that the upper classes long called themselves French.

The two races lived side by side throughout the country, and regarded themselves as distinct and hostile peoples. We shall meet with other evidence that the French in England, in the reign of Henry II., considered themselves — as every royal proclamation, Francis et Anglis, and every official document addressed them and spoke of them — a race distinct from the despised English, of whom they lived in constant suspicion and distrust. After some generations, the English people acquiesced in sullen submission ; but it was not till three centuries after the Conquest, when the English arrows at Cressy and Poitiers reversed the old tradition of conquerors and conquered, that the lords began to call themselves Englishmen, of one people with their serfs. Thenceforward, it came to be a distinction of class, and not of race, to be descended from one of the Conqueror's men.

His Times.

The total, although, in most of the counties, Y.%?UiUl

' ° "Woe to

stealthy and gradual, ejection of a great nation of j^jj™-,,, landowners from their lands was not effected without enormity of suffering. No book in the world covers so huge a mass of misery, thinly disguised under its cold curt phraseology, as the great terrier of the Norman king's English estate, to which the English people gave the name of Domesday.

Yet the miseries inflicted by formal process under his "stark" will were but small, compared with the sufferings of the vanquished people under arbitrary tyrannies. Lawful rights of the peasantry, which the captain of the invaders would have maintained, were trampled down by intruded lords and their successors. For a long time, the lords, by their private jurisdictions and by clandestine cruelties, could set the king's law at defiance, and were a law to themselves. The worst sufferings of the village folk, during the century and more after the Conquest, were the arbitrary misdeeds of the lords.

The first three Norman kings were able to put some restraint upon overbearing masters. If the lords were despots to their serfs, the king was a despot to them. Yet even in those reigns encroachment never ceased, and there can be no doubt that horrors were perpetrated in castle dungeons which never reached the light of day.

In the reign of Stephen, the antagonism of the

IO

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Horrors of races attained its climax. The hatred of suspicious

oppression.

masters vented itself with savage ferocity upon the subject people, still obstinate in resistance or sullen and dangerous in submission. The English were accused of a conspiracy to murder all the Frenchmen in the land upon one day. During the horrors which ensued the royal power was in abeyance, under the disputed claim to the crown. Every lord did what he would, and new lords, intruded by violence, were worse than the first. The country was dominated by castles, built, no doubt, most of them, for self-defence. Lords had to protect their homes from foreign mercenaries : villagers sought refuge in the woods.

But, whatever their first purpose, the castles dominated the country around, and were made strongholds of tyranny and rapine. They were all " dens of thieves " to the villagers. The whole country stood in fear of them. One writer of the time asserts that every third village had its castle. Another, more exact, or affecting to be, numbers them at 1 1 1 5. The English Chronicle, that concise and precious record of the centuries before, dies out in a wail of horror over the deeds perpetrated in the castles.

Described " Everv powerful man," it relates, " built his

by the ' r

English castles, and they filled the land full of castles.

Chronicle. '

They heavily afflicted the poor men of the land with castle-building ; and when the castles were

His Times.

built, they filled them with devils and evil men. Then, both by night and day, they took the men they supposed to possess any goods, country men and women, and threw them into prison, to obtain their gold and silver, and tortured them with unutterable tortures, for never were martyrs tortured as they were. Some they hanged up by the feet, and smoked them with foul smoke ; some they hanged by the thumbs ; others by the head, and hung burning things on their feet. To some they put knotted cords about their heads, and writhed them till they went to the brain. Some they thrust into dungeons, wherein were adders and snakes, and so they tormented them. Some they thrust into a chest, short, narrow and shallow, and put sharp stones therein, and crushed them inside it, till they broke all their limbs. Many of the castles had strange cruel things, called ' rachenteges.' It was a weight as much as two or three men could lift ; the victim was fastened to a post, and they put a sharp iron collar about his throat and neck, in such manner that he could neither sit nor lie down to sleep, but he bore all the weight. Many thousands they tortured with hunger. . . .

" They were constantly levying tribute on the towns; and they called it 'Tenserie'; and when the wretched men had no more to give, they destroyed and burnt the towns ; and well might you travel

Thomas Becket.

all day, and never find a man settled in a town, or land cultivated. So that corn was dear ; of flesh and cheese and butter, none was there in the land.

" Wretched men starved of hunger. Some went about begging who formerly had been rich men. Some fled the country. Never was greater wretched ness in the land, and never did the heathen men cause worse ills than these did.

" At last they spared not even the church or churchyard, but took whatever valuable was therein, and burnt the church and all they left in it. If two or three horsemen came near a town, all the townsmen fled, thinking them to be spoilers.

" It was ploughing the sea ; for the land bore no corn ; it was all foredone by such deeds, and men openly said that Christ and His saints were asleep."

Such is the dying song of the English Chronicle. So ends the history of the old English people, written in their old English tongue. The old, pure race of Angles and Saxons, the men of fair skin, and blue eyes, and golden hair — the angels of Pope Gregory — had perished with the houses of the nobles. In land-hunger, and greed of gain, and thirst for power, they had spent their centuries since they came to England, eating up the smaller men of their own race ; and they were now eaten

His Times.

up more thoroughly themselves. The old England comes to an end under the Norman kings. The new England, that is to be, we here find in its condition of chaos, "without form and void." Our short history is that of the man through whom God breathed into it its first "breath of life."

Its condition of chaos ! Famine and pestilence came in the wake of savage war and inhuman dungeon barbarities. By rapine and violence the land was brought to desolation. Men died in heaps, or ate greedily the flesh of dogs and horses and the garbage of raw herbs and roots. Villages were left without inhabitants ; fields were uncultivated, or were white to harvest, where no man was left to gather it.

Amidst the general desolation there remained one singular exception ; not certainly to all the sufferings of the country, but to this extremity of suffering and degradation, and to the base spirit of servitude engendered by it.

That exception was the city of London. Some London

i 1 i • • Stephen'

knowledge of the great city, as it was already "«ign.' regarded, is both interesting in itself and useful lor our purpose ; and fortunately we possess contemporary accounts of it, one especially, with considerable details, from a writer of credit, to whom, both here and otherwise, we shall be much indebted — William Fitz-Stephen, a well-informed and fair biographer of Thomas Becket, his fellow-

'4

Thomas Becket.

citizen of London, his companion, and his secretary or chaplain through life.

London was already a great and prosperous place of commerce, and was the resort or ordinary abode of men of rank who took no part in its trade.

The first Norman, having plundered the city, after his manner ; having, in the early days of his conquest, carried off what he could of its gold and silver and precious chattels ; having bridled it with his Tower ; and, as in other places, confiscated a large portion of its ground and buildings, and bestowed them upon some of his hireling adventurers, who became " the barons of the city ; " * and, taking no part in trade themselves, lived at their ease upon rents exacted from traders, for the use of buildings which had been their own ; — the Conqueror, having wrought his will upon the people of London and their accumulated wealth, was wise enough to see that it would be bad policy and against his own interest to check the growth of fresh wealth. He therefore re-established and confirmed the liberties and privileges of the city. His son, Henry, ratified and extended them by a charter, which makes mention of the religious houses, the barons, and the citizens. They are empowered to

* This is stated with reserve, as what appears to be the most iikely inference from all we know of " the barons of the city." They are sometimes identified with the aldermen j and this may be a true view, without making the other false.

His Times.

hold the county of Middlesex, or the king's domain in it, in farm for ever, at a rent of .£300 a year. They are to appoint their own sheriff and justiciar, and to be under the jurisdiction of no other justiciar. They are exempted from various tolls and dues over all England, and in all seaports. The rights and privileges of their courts are maintained. Claims of debts by citizens are to be paid or answered within the city, where their husting sits every Monday. Among other provisions the document reserves to the citizens their rights of chase in Chiltern, Middlesex, and Surrey.

Our picture of the inner life of London is from Fitz-Stephen.*

" London," he says, in a curious jumble of its advantages, " is fortunate in its healthy air, its Christian religion, the strength of its fortifications, the natural advantages of its situation, the honour of its citizens, the chastity of its matrons, delightful for its games, fertile in noble men."

In his exposition of these several heads, he informs us that, besides the cathedral of St. Paul's, the city possesses thirteen great conventual churches and a hundred and twenty-six lesser churches. It has three privileged and ancient schools, besides many other schools, in all of which great attention is paid to the art of speaking.

The Tower, on the east, is a very large and

* Fitz-Stephen, c. 2-18; Robertson, vol. iii.

Thomas Becket.

strong fortification, with lofty walls springing from a deep ditch. A high turreted wall, with seven double gates, surrounds the city to the north, running from the Tower to two strong forts on the west. A similar wall ran along the south of the city, but was undermined by the river and has fallen.

Westminster Palace, an incomparable edifice, two miles from the city, stands up above the river, with surrounding walls and forts. It is joined to the city by a suburb of many houses, surrounded by spacious and beautiful gardens and trees.

To the north of the city are pleasant fields, and streams merry with the sound of mill-wheels. Beyond is a great forest abounding in deer, boars, and wild bulls, i The citizens' rights of chase extend over Middlesex, Hertford, Chiltern, and in Kent as far as Cray.

On the Strand is a public cook-shop, daily provided with meats for rich and poor. Wines are sold in cellars, and in ships on the river. The commerce of the city is with every nation under heaven.

Every Friday there is a horse-fair in Smoothfield (afterwards corrupted into Smithfield), a field close without one of the gates, which takes its name from its level surface. There are departments of the fair for pigs, cows, sheep, and agricultural implements.

His Times.

The city is under the government of its own yearly sheriffs, aldermen, and lesser magistrates, and has its various court-houses, where courts are held on certain days.

No city has more admirable customs of worship and festivity, or institutions for charity and hospitality. The chief troubles of the place arise from the drunkenness of foolish people and from frequent fires.

Hither resort the bishops, abbots, and nobles of the realm, at the summons of the king or the metropolitan, and reside in their own houses as citizens.

The writer dwells, with manifest delight, on the various sports of the merry people. They have theatrical passion-plays, representing the deeds of the martyrs. The boys take fighting-cocks to school on Shrove Tuesday, and the morning is spent in fighting them. After dinner they go out and play at ball in the fields, and the rich elders come on horseback to look on. On the Sundays in Lent there is tilting ; the sons of citizens and nobles and of bishop's families go out on horse, with lance and shield. In the Easter holidays there is tilting on the river. A youth, standing at the poop of a boat pulled by oarsmen, would strike with spear at a shield fixed upright upon a pole in the river. His object was to break the spear-shaft, and keep himself in the boat. If he failed to break

C i8

Thomas Becket.

it he was thrown into the water, amid the laughter of the spectators.

In the summer, the favourite games are archery, running, leaping, stone-throwing, and others, with moonlight dances ; in the winter, bull and bearbaiting, and sports on the ice, with skates made from tibia-bones.