The Conquering Family

by Thomas B. Costain

  On the last day of the trial he went to St. Stephen’s to celebrate mass, using the psalm Princes sat and spake against me. Then, arrayed in his full vestments and carrying the heavy archiepiscopal cross in his own hands, he rode to the castle, only two of his forty attendants daring to accompany him. A great crowd of the common people gathered and followed him to the gates of the castle, shouting to him to be of good cheer and praying loudly. The noise reached the chamber where the Council sat, and Henry cried out to those about him to draw up a charge of treason against this man who was denying royal authority. The bishops, regaining a measure of their courage, refused to participate and were ordered truculently to withdraw. They changed sides of the hall, taking the chamber where the lesser nobility had stayed all these days, dicing, telling stories, cursing the obstinacy of this scurvy priest who thus kept them kicking their heels in pestilential idleness. The lesser nobles took possession of the Great Hall itself. Some stretched themselves out on the trestle tables and went to sleep.

  Thomas à Becket dismounted in the courtyard and, holding the cross high in front of him, walked over the rough clay surface. There was a mist, and the tops of the towers could not be seen. A servant, more courageous than the bishops inside, dropped on a knee and begged the primate’s blessing.

  Inside the screens, the archbishop stopped and looked about him. Then, with an ironic sense of the fitness of it, he crossed to the chamber where his bishops were sitting. He stood in the door and looked at each one in turn with a brooding air. The Bishop of Hereford got to his feet and offered to carry the cross which the head of the Church still held out stiffly in front of him like a standard-bearer in the van of an army. The accused man shook his head. Foliot cried out at him angrily, “If you come thus armed into court, the King will draw a still sharper sword!”

  Thomas motioned him to be silent and was met with another acrimonious outburst. “Fool!” cried the Bishop of London. “Fool thou hast ever been, and from thy folly, I now see, thou wilt never depart!”

  The archbishop walked to the head of the chamber and seated himself, so that he seemed to be presiding at a meeting of the prelates of England. A few of the company became uncomfortable and left. The rest pressed him to give in, earnestly and vehemently. To all of them he had one reply only, “I hear you!”

  Hours passed. Supper was served in the Great Hall and the sound of rattling dishes reached them and the chamber was filled with the odor of warm food. Darkness had fallen and servants brought in tall candle-holders and placed them in the corners. The Bishop of Worcester, a bastard brother of the King, begged with increased heat that the primate give in and so put an end to all this. The answer was the same, “I hear you!”

  Finally the earls of Cornwall and Leicester entered the chamber. The first named was a good friend of Becket and would remain so to the end, but when he opened his mouth to speak the archbishop cut him off impatiently.

  “You come to speak of a sentence,” he said. He rose from his chair, still holding the massive cross in front of him. “Do thou first listen to me. The child may not judge his father. The King may not judge me. I will be judged only by the Pope under God and, in your presence, I make my appeal to him.” His voice rose to a higher pitch. “I forbid you, my lord, under threat of anathema, to pronounce your sentence.”

  He left the chamber and crossed the Great Hall. Supper was over and the servants were moving the dismantled trestle tables back to their positions along the wall. The place was filled with well-fed men looking for something to amuse them. They were all a little drunk from their potations, and the spectacle of the erect figure crossing the space with set face roused them to action. They began to jeer, to shout insults at him, calling him “Traitor!”

  The floor was covered with rushes, on top of which lay the broken evidences of the meal, bones and the heads of fish and pieces of bread. The company began to pick up handfuls from the floor and to pelt the archbishop with this refuse.

  Outside the castle walls great crowds were waiting for him. They had waited all day, being deeply concerned as to what might happen to him. “See what a glorious train escorts me!” said the archbishop. “These are the poor to whom Christ so often turned!” The people followed him to the monastery, where he had the doors thrown open and food served to them.

  A small party of men, English from their faces and the special intonations in their use of the Norman tongue, entered an inn at Gravelines, a port on the Norman coast. Night was falling and so the moat around the town was deep with tidal water, locking everyone in as securely as by bar and chain within its tall stone ramparts. It was a bad time for trouble of any kind, escape being out of the question, and it was clear from the manner of some of the party that they were acutely aware of this. One of them was a very tall man with deeply lined face and a commanding eye. The landlord looked at him closely, noticing that the long and sensitive hands did not busy themselves with the good food on the table. Dropping on one knee beside the tall stranger, he begged his blessing.

  One of the other men demanded in an angry whisper that the landlord get to his feet at once. Did he want to attract the attention of the other guests? The man rose slowly.

  “You are the good Bishop of England, my lord,” he said in a low tone. “We all know about you, my lord, and are happy you are here.”

  He had guessed correctly. Thomas à Becket had ridden out of Northampton in a pelting rain after leaving the castle and had made for the coast. With no attempt at disguise except that he assumed the name of Dearman, he had crossed the Channel and was now on his way to lay his case before the Pope. All over England letters had been received by the officers of the Crown, by the wardens of ports, by the captains of ships. This notice read: Thomas, heretofore archbishop, a traitor to the King of England and a fugitive of evil intent, is to be seized and held.

  The letters had been issued too late.

  4

  For more than seven years the Archbishop of Canterbury remained in exile. At one time the King of France would shower him with favors and promise war in his behalf, at others he would close his doors to the uncompromising primate. Pope Alexander blew hot and cold. When Becket placed the Constitutions of Clarendon in his hands, he claimed never to have seen them and flew into a rage over the rigorous clauses. Having once commanded Becket to accept them, he now censured him for having made his first verbal submission. Henry was in Normandy, where he received the cardinals the Pope sent to him in efforts to arrive at a solution of the difficulties. The King was lavishing gold in all directions in bids for support. One meeting was arranged between King and archbishop at Montmirail which came to nothing. Through it all the primate kept suspended over the head of Henry the threat of excommunication and the laying of England under an interdict.

  At first Thomas lived in the Cistercian monastery at Pontigny and about him, as always, legends began to grow. It was said that in dining with the Pope he had turned water into wine twice, not intending to do so (performing miracles before the Pope would smack of insolence) but not being able to control the divine power in his hands. Two of the stories told of him became widespread.

  The first was that he wore hair drawers as well as shirts and was particular to keep them in neat repair. One night he was sewing patiently and with small success in his cell. Sensing a presence in the room, he looked up and found a lady of gentle face bending over him. She took the needle and thread into her own hands, completed the task, smiled at him with compassion, and vanished. He had recognized her at the first glance as Mary, Mother of Christ.

  The other story was that on an occasion when he supped at the table of the King of France, the Queen noticed that the cuffs of his tunic were tight around his wrists and that something seemed to be moving under them. She asked him about it and he became evasive, not wanting to acknowledge that the movement was made by maggots. She insisted that he open his sleeves, and when he did the maggots were transformed into pearls which rolled onto the surface of the table and glistene
d in the light of the candles. The Queen would have liked one as a gift from this strange holy man, but something held her back from asking. And when the pearls had been replaced in the sleeves and the cuffs had been tied as securely as before, they turned back to maggots again.

  It will be noticed at once that discrepancies exist between these stories. If the exile were as particular as the first anecdote indicates, he would not allow himself to fall into the condition involved in the second; but both seem to have been accepted generally.

  At one stage of this long and bitter tug of war Henry became so incensed that he told the Cistercians in England he would confiscate their lands if their order continued to harbor Thomas à Becket at Pontigny. Accordingly Becket was under the necessity of moving and he elected to live at Sens, much to the discomfiture of Alexander.

  It seemed that nothing could be done to settle the differences between these two strong and violent men who had been once on such close terms. Henry would be enraged over some episode and would unbuckle his baldric, roll himself up in the coverings of his bed, screaming with anger and biting the edges of the mattress. Becket wrote letters to his enemies in England which scorched them, and he seemed ever on the point of excommunicating the King. Persons who were thus thrust outside the Church were supposed to be damned for eternity; no one was to come near them or speak to them. A curse was on their food, on the glass from which they drank, on their clothes, on their couches, on the air they expelled from their lungs. The Pope was continually restraining Becket. The King, he would say, must not be put under the ban, not at least until after the next Easter. Then it would become the Easter after that.

  At the end of five years Henry reached a momentous decision in another matter. He would have his eldest son crowned King of England. For a moment the contest with Becket must be set aside to consider what this meant. On the surface it indicated this much and no more, that Henry was removing all possible doubts of the succession and so insuring the country from any of the trouble which followed the death of Henry I. Such, however, was the smallest part of what was in the King’s mind. There was no reason to anticipate opposition to his son after his own death. His position was so strong that no other claims existed. He had four healthy sons, and it was not within the range of possibility that all would die. In addition, Henry had the engrained Norman sense of possession and he would not give up willingly the brightest gem in his diadem, the kingship of England. No, his decision had a much more far-reaching implication. He wished to show that his dominions had outgrown the appellation of kingdom, that with such broad frontiers he must set up rulers under himself, his own sons: Henry in England, Normandy, and Anjou, Richard in Aquitaine, Geoffrey in Brittany, John in Ireland (alas, poor Ireland!), with himself the overlord of all; in other words, the empire of the west, with himself seated on a throne as important as that of Charlemagne. The crowning of the eldest son may be accepted as the final indication, after so many others, of the nature of the dream in Henry’s mind.

  At the time that he announced the imminence of his son’s coronation, someone in his presence spoke of the King of Germany. Henry flew into a temper and cried, “Why do you diminish his dignity by calling him King instead of Emperor of the Germans?”

  The decision to elevate the prince to royal rank raised a serious difficulty, for only the Archbishop of Canterbury possessed the right to crown a king of England. Henry had no intention of giving in to Becket in order to have him in England for the ceremony, and he wrote to Alexander asking papal dispensation by which the Archbishop of York might preside. The Pope obliged with the necessary authorization but, on receiving a vehement protest from Becket, changed his mind and wrote direct to Roger of York, withdrawing his consent. It was said that the second letter was not received. At any rate, the ceremony was performed and young Henry began to assume some of the responsibilities of kingship. This rather complicated affair was to prove the fuse which finally set everything ablaze.

  In spite of the exile’s bitterness over what had happened, a meeting was arranged between the two enemies at a place called Fréteval. Henry surprised the archbishop by agreeing that he was to return to England to crown the young King a second time and that the differences between them would be settled. After this had been arranged the two old friends rode to one side and talked together with no one in earshot. The churchman claimed later that the essence of their secret talk was this, that Henry agreed there must be punishment for the bishops who had officiated at the first coronation. Certain it is that Thomas suddenly sprang from his saddle with a return of his old agility and knelt beside the King. Henry dismounted in turn and held the clerical stirrup while Thomas à Becket climbed back into the saddle. Many saw what had occurred, and the incident caused much excited speculation. Had a full reconciliation been brought about?

  When the time came for the two men to part there was a long silence between them. Then Thomas said in a low tone, “My lord, my heart tells me that I part from you as one whom you shall see no more in this world.”

  The archbishop encountered difficulties in arranging his return to England. He had been promised the restitution of his archiepiscopal estates and benefices and the immediate payment of some of the money due him. Nothing reached him, and the requests he sent to the King met with no response. Finally, after borrowing three hundred pounds to defray his expenses, he set sail from France and landed in due course on the coast of Kent.

  It was the resourceful man of the chancellery days and not the uncompromising archbishop who took charge of the landing. He knew that the sheriff of Kent, Sir Randulf de Broc, had been taking the crops from Canterbury lands and had burned the stables and possessed himself of all the livestock. The sheriff was now riding up and down the coast like a raging lion, declaring that the exile would not be permitted to land alive. Becket heard also that the three bishops he planned to punish for taking part in the coronation had gathered at Dover and would try to prevent him from delivering his writs. The clever mind behind the austere brow, that resourceful mind which had once functioned so well in the King’s behest, saw a way to outwit all of them.

  He sent a small sailing ship ahead of him, and a boy was put ashore. It was later said that the boy was a woman in disguise. At any rate, this innocent-appearing arrival went at once to St. Peter’s Priory, where the Archbishop of York was staying. He succeeded in placing in the hands of York the notice of his suspension and had vanished before the recipient realized what had happened. The same thing happened to the bishops of London and Salisbury, who had the notices of their excommunication pressed into their hands. The affair threw all of the Kong’s party into a panic. The blustering Randulf de Broc rode about Dover but did not succeed in finding any trace of the clever messenger.

  The whole coast was now ablaze. When Thomas à Becket sailed up the river to Sandwich instead of landing at Dover, he found the townspeople out in force and ready to defend him against the armed troops of De Broc. That far from subtle servant of the King arrived in time to witness the landing of the archbishop but found his hands tied by the royal safe-conduct which the primate carried. He sat his horse and glowered at the demonstration of the citizens, marking victims for future reprisals.

  Becket rode at once to Canterbury. At each foot of the way, it seemed, he was passing through kneeling throngs. Processions of chanting priests met him, showing their joy at his return. It was a triumph for the man who would not bend his back to the storm, who dared the lightning.

  At Canterbury a sad disillusionment awaited him. Seven years of neglect and poverty had turned his palace into a shambles. It was partly dismantled, with the windows devoid of glass, cobwebs everywhere, the beautiful brass on the doors defaced and broken. There were no supplies in the place, and the servants were cowed by long adversity.

  But he did what he could to restore order and then set out for Winchester to see his old pupil and admirer who had now been crowned Henry of England. Many men had rallied to him, a few even of the nobility, and h
e rode through Rochester and up to London with an escort of armed attendants, as in the old days when he had been chancellor and proud of all the display he could mount. As he approached the great city a company of three thousand priests and soldiers joined him and marched ahead to London Bridge, chanting a Te Deum. All London, it seemed, had turned out to greet him. It was a truly royal welcome such as a primate had never before been accorded. Disregarding a command which reached him to return at once to Canterbury and stop stirring up dissension, Thomas à Becket rode as far as Harrow. Here he received word that the young Henry would not see him. Bus first thought was to remain where he was until his demand for an audience had been met. Finally, however, he decided he should spend Christmas, which was fast approaching, at Canterbury. His return journey was less triumphant, but nevertheless great throngs met him at every turn, and it was clear that his popularity with the common people was at its height.

  In the meantime Henry had been informed of everything. He was in Bayeux at the castle of Bur, where William of Normandy had made Harold swear his oath of allegiance. The news of the excommunication of the bishops had been followed by the arrival at Bur of the three prelates. Henry saw York but was compelled to refuse audience to the others because they were under the ban. This chagrined him beyond words, being an acknowledgment of the validity of the writs, but as King he did not feel free to break the law of the Church. When the reports came of the welcome which had been extended to the exile, he fell into a long silence. Roger of York was with him at the time and is reported to have said, “As long as Thomas lives, you will have neither good days nor peaceful kingdom nor a good life.”

  The words of the prelate drove him into one of his furies. He raved and fumed and then was guilty of the greatest error of a lifetime. Raising a fist above his head, he fell into a tirade, concluding with, “What cowards have I about me that no one will deliver me from this lowborn priest!”