On a May morning in 1157 the Abbey of Colchester was filled with the confusion and chaos that monks must suffer as the price of being hosts to their lord and King. The Abbot’s lodging was crammed with short-tempered courtiers, who nearly came to blows over the assignment of the too-few beds. In the pilgrim’s dormitory a crowd of brutal and licentious sergeants drank and diced and sang unsuitable songs. In the outer court scullions and pages pitched shabby tents and fried smelly messes, stolen from the King’s stores, over untidy little fires. The work-oxen had been driven from the barton to make room for savage destriers. Outside the enclosure hovered a mass of loose women and masterless men, jugglers, cut-purses, fortune-tellers, the wastrels who followed a court in peacetime. In this maddening confusion there were only two patches of calm and good order; the King’s little canvas tent, and the great silken pavilion of his lordly Chancellor.
At least the monks had been spared a crowd of females. The Queen was with child again, and living quietly at Woodstock; the whole world knew that husband and wife quarrelled, but Henry seemed able to get her with child in a single night, and then she was packed off to a corner until the birth. Little Henry, two years old, and Matilda, born last year, proved that her husband did not neglect her; but regular breeding kept her from following her lord and being unpleasant to his girl-friends.
The King had the good manners to leave these girl-friends behind when he lodged in a monastery. They were probably dotted about in half the castles of Essex and Suffolk; but the court in the Abbey of Colchester was entirely masculine.
Besides the court, the neighbourhood contained another eminent visitor. The Bishop of Chichester had been following the King for weeks, hoping that if he was always at hand Henry would find leisure to decide his case. But even Bishop Hilary had enough tact to keep clear of a Benedictine Abbey while he prosecuted the Abbot of Benedictine Battle. He lodged in the town, where he would not be exposed to awkward encounters with the delegation from Battle who had come to answer his suit.
The only part of the Abbey where routine continued undisturbed was the church. Courtiers did not bother to attend the monastic office, even when it was as well chanted as at Colchester. While the psalms of Prime rose antiphonally from the choir the prior glanced round with satisfaction, pleased that under this holy roof the community might forget their importunate visitors. There were few strangers in the nave; fewer than good manners demanded. He looked again to see if the King and the great lords had at least sent clerks to represent them, out of politeness. He saw the usual sprinkling of poor and tiresome pilgrims, men who would have been monks if only the Rule were not so exacting; they would lurk about the church until dinner-time, and then complain of the almoner’s stinginess, as though a morning’s praying had earned them a square meal. But there was no one from the court.
Yes, here came one lord, a little late but remarkably self-possessed in the sonorous calm of an abbey-church during the office. He was dressed very splendidly, in a mingling of clerical and knightly garb; riding-boots and gilded spurs below the padded chausses of a horseman; the long gown of a scholar, made from the finest cloth, black, over the snow-white chausses; the hood on his shoulders was of scarlet silk, which was so often worn by Masters of Paris that it was almost the badge of their degree. As this unattended stranger hesitated by a side-door the prior could measure his height; he must be nearer seven than six feet tall, and very thin. In short, he must be Master Thomas of London, the King’s Chancellor.
The prior sent a monk to invite the late archdeacon of Canterbury to the qualified comfort of a seat within the choir. Master Thomas came forward gravely, stood decently in his place with his bottom propped against the ledge of his miserere; he leaned over the great service-book from which his neighbour chanted, and joined the responses in a decent convent-trained voice. Of course, this Thomas had been reared by the Augustinians of Merton. Men said he led a more godly life than one would expect from a royal courtier. Certainly he knew how to behave in choir.
The prior was impressed, all the more to see the Chancellor linger in church when Prime was ended. After an interval for the celebrant to vest there began the short spoken Morrow Mass, and Thomas came up to receive communion with those monks who would not be saying their own private Masses later in the day. It was really exceptionally devout in a retired archdeacon, a class of clerk notoriously given to secular living. Perhaps even this King’s servant still felt a hankering after the heavenly things he had wilfully put aside. Then the prior remembered that this was the day appointed for hearing the great suit between Chichester and Battle. The Chancellor would be among the judges, and he was preparing himself as he should.
Normally the community would have walked in procession to the Chapter House immediately after Morrow Mass. To-day the Chapter House had been borrowed by the King to hold his court, and they must meet to confess their faults and discuss the business of the day in a corner of the cloister. Only the Chancellor went straight to the Chapter House.
It was now seven o’clock on a fine summer morning, and most men would be at work. But the King and the great lords liked to eat breakfast before beginning the day. Thomas was the first to reach the Chapter House, where he sat on the stone bench against the wall, collecting his thoughts and planning the strategy of the speech he must make.
Bishop Hilary of Chichester was a nuisance, one of those up-to-date lawyers who were always trying to abolish interesting old customs and immunities, forcing every little chapel to follow the Use of Rome. He had been trained at the papal court, and appointed to his See by the Pope in person. That was enough to make the King and the lay magnates dislike him, for all that he was of Norman stock and English birth. He was proud of his rhetoric, but he was extremely tactless; because he was so busy talking that he never noticed if he was pleasing his audience. If he were encouraged to run on, perhaps by the spur of a few stinging interruptions, he might destroy his own case.
But Hilary knew his Canon Law, confound him. In theory he had a strong claim, and the devout but unlearned Abbot would make a poor hand at answering it. That would be the opportunity of Master Thomas, late of the schools of Paris. The Abbot, a noble Norman, would talk in language that would appeal to the lay magnates of the council. As regards the law he would throw himself on the indulgence of the court, and retire while the Chancellor spoke on his behalf. It seemed a sound plan of campaign.
But a lawyer owes a duty to the Law. Right must be done. For that reason Thomas had taken communion on an ordinary feria, and now he set himself to banish from his mind any personal dislike of Bishop Hilary. The Bishop was a good man, serving the interest of his Diocese; it was not his fault that Battle Abbey was something special, which could count on the sympathy of every true-born Norman.
Thomas rose and bowed as the King entered, with a handful of lay magnates. Next came the Bishop of Chichester, alone save for a few secretaries; for the Bishop, one of the most learned lawyers in England, intended to conduct his own case. When the plaintiff’s suite was ranged at the King’s right hand the defendants entered, meek and undistinguished under their black Benedictine cowls. But the Abbot would have been recognized as a Norman of a noble house if he had been cast up naked by the sea; the breeding of Lucy showed in his bearing and in his features.
Thank Heaven King Henry was interested and alert! He enjoyed judging a difficult lawsuit, as an exercise of the mind; but sometimes he was so eager to get out, to hunt or ride on one of his endless journeys, that he could barely be civil to a longwinded lawyer.
To-day he had eaten a hearty breakfast, which ought to make for good feeling.
Before opening his plea Bishop Hilary objected to the composition of the court. He explained that the matter in dispute was the obedience owed by the Abbey of Battle to the Diocese of Chichester; the Abbot claimed freedom from episcopal control, and the Bishop contested his claim. Now exactly the same dispute had arisen between the priests of the Collegiate Church of Our Lady in the Castle of Hastings, and
the same Diocese of Chichester; a dispute of no merit, decided at once in favour of the Bishop. But the Dean of that church was Master Thomas the Chancellor. Was it fair that a defendant smarting from defeat should sit in judgement on the plaintiff in a case of the same kind?
Thomas had been prepared for this objection. He answered that the Deanery of Hastings was one of the least important of his benefices. He had never seen the church, and since he was only a deacon he could not perform the duties of the Dean. He had appointed a sufficient deputy; the Masses were said, and the endowment of the benefice was applied to the support of the government of the realm. The real defendant in that case had been his vicar, though he had assisted his subordinate in legal argument. When the decision went against him he had submitted, without appeal. This case raised different issues. He was truly impartial, and as Chancellor it was his duty to advise the King in a matter of such gravity.
The King decided he might remain in the council, and Thomas, searching his conscience as he had been trained to do at Merton, knew Henry was right. He had almost forgotten that unimportant suit, argued to enhance the touchy dignity of his vicar; he remembered Hastings only as a source of revenue, and the Bishop could not diminish his income. Truly he did not dislike Hilary, though he despised him as a poor advocate; it had been bad tactics to impugn the motives of the King’s close friend.
The second objection had more merit. The Bishop urged that Abbot Walter was brother to Richard de Lucy the Justiciar, who sat on the council. Henry dismissed this point with some asperity. Thomas knew that at the back of his mind was the recollection that the Lucys had been supporters of Blois, expelled from Normandy by Count Geoffrey his father. He was proud of the public spirit which had led him to give the great office of Justiciar to an antagonist in the Civil War; he must be furious to hear this evidence of his fair dealing twisted into an appearance of partiality. The Bishop had made another, more serious, error in tactics.
Undeterred, Bishop Hilary opened his plea with a display of calm reasoning, as though addressing a bench of Cardinals in Curia. He first sketched the normal right of every Diocesan Bishop to visit and inspect the monasteries within his Diocese. He admitted that Battle claimed by charter certain peculiar immunities; but if the case were to be withdrawn from the common rule of Canon Law and judged by written charter, then he had with him a charter which must override anything his opponents could produce. Behold, a Bull sealed by His Holiness now reigning, Adrian IV, the first Englishman to attain the chair of Peter. The Holy Father, who must be familiar with conditions in his native land, in set terms ordered the Abbot of Battle to render due obedience to his Ordinary, the Bishop of Chichester.
That was final. Shrugging, Thomas smiled towards the Abbot. You might have a cast-iron case in Canon Law, but there was no disputing with the Pope. When he intervened instant submission was the only course.
Then he noticed that no one else looked towards the crestfallen Abbot. All eyes were fixed on the King, who was behaving very oddly. He had cast himself to the floor, and was now screaming at the top of his voice. As usual, he was dressed like an underpaid huntsman who had thrown on his clothes in a hurry; on his purple face the freckles showed lighter than the skin; his hairy hands writhed, and his short carroty hair stood in disorder. The Bishop of Chichester, that elegant Roman lawyer, gazed down at him with an expression of calm distaste.
‘It’s treason, that’s what it is,’ shouted the hysterical boy. ‘My great-grandfather, who conquered this miserable island, ordained that no Bishop might write to the Pope without the King’s leave. It’s the custom of England, and only a traitor would go against it. Hilary, you have put yourself in danger of the gallows. A fine Bishop you will look, castrated and blind. That’s what I’ll do to you. As for you, Richard de Lucy, how can you stand there and hear your lord defied? You should have drawn your sword when the rogue drew out his Bull! Cut him down! Kill him at once! I shan’t leave this room until he lies dead at my feet!’
The screams died out in a mutter of disgusting and obscene oaths.
To Thomas’s surprise the councillors seemed to find nothing amiss. They crowded round their lord with soothing condolences. The Bishop held himself erect with the dignified expression of a prospective martyr; Hilary was a Norman of knightly stock, not a bit afraid of death in a righteous cause. Abbot Walter looked acutely miserable; he had done his bare duty in standing up for the rights of the community entrusted to his care, and in all innocence had provoked a collision between a consecrated Bishop and an ungovernable young tyrant. It was his brother who was being incited to murder and sacrilege. But of course no one would be mad enough to obey the ravings of that silly youth.
The quarrel was dangerous, Thomas knew, because it was a family quarrel within the Norman ruling class; such affairs often ended in bloodshed. At any moment a warrior, or the clerical son of a long line of warriors, might decide to do right though the heavens fall. A Norman in a rage never counted the cost of his action, and if some striking exploit entailed hanging for himself and outlawry for his family that only encouraged a hero to prove that he was willing to challenge the world. The Bishop himself, or a monk of Norman Battle, might snatch at a sword to attack the King.
Those silly courtiers were pouring oil on the flames, standing round to admire this splendid specimen of an Angevin rage. If the Justiciar had forgotten his duty the Chancellor must intervene. Thomas strode to the centre of the Chapter House and announced in a formal tone that the court stood adjourned because of the King’s sudden indisposition. Let the parties return at None. The Bishop and the other priests were fasting, since they had not yet said their Masses; Thomas hoped that after a good breakfast they would return in sunnier mood.
As the Bishop and the Abbot made for the door Thomas hastened over to Henry, who now lay full length on the floor, drumming with his heels on the pavement and foaming at the mouth. He seemed really possessed by a Devil, as in the old legend of the rage of Anjou. But though by now he had lost control of himself, in the beginning he had deliberately surrendered to a rage he might have stifled if he had wished. His conduct was the outcome of childish pique, not of diabolic possession.
Catching him by the shoulder, Thomas shook him roughly. ‘Get up,’ he said sternly. ‘You are making a fool of yourself. Someone take his other shoulder. We must get the silly boy to his feet. Then if he still raves let us duck him in the horse-trough. Perhaps we should strap him in a litter and send him to the Queen at Woodstock. Or would his mother in Rouen control him better?’
Henry heard and understood, which proved he had no genuine Devil inside him. There was no fun in yielding to his rage if it earned him the mockery of his elders. Soon he was on his feet, glaring sulkily at Thomas who still gripped him by the shoulder.
‘My lords,’ announced the Chancellor, ‘the King is once more himself. These attacks are an unhappy heritage, for which we must not blame him. Now he needs rest and quiet. He will dine alone with me, in my pavilion. At None we gather here again to decide this suit.’ The King leaned heavily on him as they stumbled out of the door, but he came willingly.
In the little solar at the end of the pavilion they ate, and for drink with his light dinner Henry was offered only boiled lime-water. Soon he was calm enough to listen intelligently, while Thomas talked to him for his own good.
‘Bishop Hilary must be the clumsiest advocate who ever practised before the Roman Curia. He put a good case badly, so that it was certain to anger you. But you should have restrained your anger. As a child you found that if you kicked and screamed long enough you got your own way; and that’s what you tried to do this morning. Now you are twenty-three years of age and a King. You should desire, not the death of your enemies, but the welfare of your realm. Suppose the Justiciar had obeyed your wild order, and cut down a Bishop in your presence? Such an attack on the Church would have cost you your crown. Men may admire a hero who stops at nothing to avenge an insult, but they wish to be ruled by someone of greater fore
thought and self-control. This afternoon I want you to judge the suit as it should be judged. Hear both sides patiently and in silence, and then ask the opinion of your counsellors. If you do that Bishop Hilary hasn’t a chance. He has a good case, but Battle Abbey has something stronger, the sympathy of every Norman who remembers the glory of the Conquest. The Abbot must succeed, even if you keep every tittle of the law.’
‘But the Bishop is hopelessly in the wrong,’ answered the King. ‘I shall keep my temper. Yet any King of England must be angry when he hears a Bishop boast he has appealed to Rome, in breach of the customs of the Conqueror.’
‘He is a tiresome quibbler, but you need not quibble to answer him,’ said Thomas, tapping the ends of his fingers together, every inch the learned lawyer explaining to a client. ‘The Conqueror ordained that no clerk might appeal to Rome without his consent. In my opinion he had no right to make such a rule, but let that pass. He gave consent whenever it was asked, and his custom made little difference in practice. Remember, this was not an appeal against the King, or against a royal official. It is a suit between two clerks who are your subjects. Whether Battle is subject to Chichester, or subject only to Rome, you will neither lose nor gain. So why not judge the case honestly? I advise you to keep quiet about the customs of the Conqueror, in case Hilary should answer by referring to King Stephen’s coronation oath. Twenty years ago he granted the Church full liberty of appeal to Rome.’
‘He was a usurper. His grants cannot bind me.’
‘He was a crowned King, as you are, neither more nor less. If you had overthrown him by force you might annul his acts; but you were crowned as his lawful successor. You are bound by his charters. You must be, if there is to be any law in the land; for half the fiefs in England are held by his grant. Would you upset every tenure in the country?’
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