When Herbert of Bosham brought his dinner he found the exhausted Archbishop asleep on his knees. But he brought news as well as food, and he did not scruple to wake him. The news was that King Henry lay dangerously ill in Normandy; tidings of his death were expected from every messenger. Thomas was relieved to find one question settled for him.
‘I won’t excommunicate a Christian on his death-bed,’ he said at once. ‘That would be to deprive him of the opportunity for repentance, to sentence him to Hell. If Henry dies (which God avert), there must be a council of regency to rule in the name of his young son; and they can hardly govern without the Archbishop of Canterbury, the first magnate of the realm. If he recovers I shall renew the struggle. You know, Herbert, I may yet persuade the King to be a good friend to God’s Church and to me. He is a gallant warrior as well as a greedy lawyer, and he does not bear malice when a war is ended.’
‘That may be,’ answered the chaplain doubtfully. ‘I have never borne arms, and I don’t know the ways of warriors. His persecution of your kin was disgustingly spiteful, but there may be good in him that is hidden from a child of the cloister like myself. I should say that if you fail to excommunicate him when you have the power he will think you afraid, but you know him better than I do. However, though he is sick unto death, his servants persevere in his cause. His followers among the clergy have drawn up an appeal against the exercise of your legatine powers, and they plan to serve you with notice of this appeal before you have time to excommunicate anybody.’
‘Until my legatine power has been restored their petition will be invalid,’ pointed out Thomas the lawyer. ‘They can’t appeal against my doing what I have no power to do.’
‘They are aware of that. They are also aware that your powers will be restored, and soon; for the Pope makes no secret of it. Remember, the clerks in the King’s Chancery tell us all their secrets, for they are clerks first and King’s servants second. I know Henry’s plans as soon as they are formed. This is what will happen. In Rome, on Easter Day, the Pope will seal your letter of appointment, and despatch it by messenger. The King’s men will watch the roads, but they will not hinder the messenger. As soon as he arrives the King’s messenger will follow, to serve on you notice that Henry appeals against any sentence you pass as Legate. Then he and his followers may disregard your excommunication until their appeal is heard before the Roman Curia.’
‘Aha, they quibble over legal forms with me, who have been archdeacon of Canterbury and advocate before the Curia!’ said Thomas, striding about the narrow room and rubbing his hands. ‘If they try that game I can show them a thing or two. There’s no need to be subtle. I shall employ the obvious counter. Before they can serve their notice of appeal I shall ride for Vezelay.’
‘Yes, but they will intercept you on the road. They don’t know you are going to Vezelay, but it’s the obvious place to pronounce sentence, the greatest pilgrim-feast in France. You must hide, or go there in disguise.’
Thomas stood erect, hand on hip, in his eye the eager look of a jouster accepting the challenge. Herbert was delighted at the change in his lord, whom he had found on his knees in the lassitude of boredom. The cause of the Church must be safe in the hands of such a warrior.
Thomas brushed caution aside. ‘I won’t creep about France in disguise, and I won’t pay Henry the compliment of hiding from him. He dare not use force in the dominions of King Louis. Besides,’ glancing down at his long legs, ‘my form is not easy to disguise. If I disappeared Henry’s men would round up every tall beggar and pedlar on the roads of France. In Flanders I was recognized again and again. No, I shall leave this Abbey as soon as I receive my powers to loose and bind, the powers of the Pope’s Legate in England. And on the feast you will see me in Vezelay, where I shall pronounce sentence in due form. But in the meantime I shall go on pilgrimage to a holy shrine where Henry’s messengers will not look for me; and I shall ride swiftly to the feast by an unexpected road. Where I shall go is my own secret. But when you know where I have been you will acknowledge that my pilgrimage was appropriate.’
Herbert could learn no more, but seeing Thomas so confident his own confidence took root.
In an aisle of the Cathedral of Soissons stood a small shrine, poorly ornamented and seldom visited by the clergy. But there were usually a few suppliants before it, and a curious collection of votive offerings hung on a neighbouring pillar. Nothing is known of St. Drausius, who lay buried there, save that he lived a long time ago; but the offerings gave a clue to his present interests, as he looks down on the world from his place in Heaven. There were shattered lances, notched swords, and dented knightly shields. All the chivalry of France knew that if a knight must face his accuser in mortal duel, to prove by victory his innocence of a charge of felony, he would be well advised to pass the night before the encounter at the shrine of St. Drausius.
On the 8th of June 1166, the Wednesday before Pentecost, a very tall clerk slipped quietly into the cathedral and approached the shrine. Knightly spurs peeped incongruously from under his Cistercian cowl, and the sacristan put him down as a knight who had recently taken vows after years of earthly warfare. But they were used to queer figures among the suppliants of St. Drausius, and this clerical knight knew how to comport himself in church; in fact he prayed with great devotion.
Thomas did not pray for victory. There was no need to pray for it, since he could not be defeated. The Pope holds the keys of Heaven and Hell, and the Pope had delegated certain powers to his legate the Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry could not turn aside the bolts launched at him by due authority; whatever was bound at Vezelay would be bound in Heaven.
He prayed that his dear friend Henry would recognize defeat, and accept it in the spirit in which a good knight accepted his overthrow by a better. This was a personal struggle. The legal form of the settlement which must come eventually did not matter, for in a fallen world clerks who break the law must expect punishment from secular rulers. But Henry must be brought to admit that there was, here on earth, a higher authority than his kingly sceptre. He must abandon his claim to rule the English Church as though consecrated Bishops and ordained priests were no more than other men. He must acknowledge the one indivisible Church which rules all Christians, and cease to sever the seamless robe of Christ into segments labelled England or Aquitaine. If only he could be made to see it! He was intelligent; he must see it. Then he would yield with his whole heart to the old comrade whom duty had compelled to vanquish him. Henry of Anjou, the honest and vigorous enforcer of peace, and Thomas of London, the most competent man of business in Christendom, would rule together in an England of happy and loyal vassals. But if Henry struggled to the end, against a power which takes no account of Kings, he would in the end go down to Hell. St. Drausius, save my dear friend Henry; lead him to acknowledge his own weakness; show him that he is vanquished before the joust begins; bring him once more into the peace of God, and into true friendship ship with all Christian men!
After a night of prayer the Archbishop of Canterbury mounted his horse. In two days he rode ninety miles to Vezelay, the crowded shrine where lay the relics of St. Mary Magdalene. There, on the Day of Pentecost, the 12th of June 1166, he excommunicated first Ranulf de Broc, the despoiler of the lands of Canterbury, then John of Oxford and Richard of Ilchester, the royal clerks who had waited on the Emperor at Wurtzburg and there taken a schismatic oath of obedience to the anti-Pope, then the Bishop of Salisbury who had given preferment to John of Oxford, and finally ‘those who enjoy the benefices unjustly taken from my adherents’, which the whole world knew to mean the Bishop of London. But of King Henry, lying sick and in danger of death, he said nothing either good or evil.
10. The Lists are Set
In December 1167 King Henry, restored to perfect health, lay at the castle of Gisors, on the Norman border of the ever-disputed Vexin. It was hoped that an interview might be arranged with King Louis of France, and that at this private meeting between the two Kings an agreement c
ould be drawn up to regulate the position of the border castles, the dowry of the lady Margaret of France, married to the heir of England. It was in those days the fashion to hope that a personal interview between lifelong enemies would settle questions which had baffled professional diplomatists trained in negotiation, and public opinion was eager for this meeting.
King Henry was indifferent. He did not fear King Louis, and he did not desire a settled peace; ever since he could remember the French King had been the rival and foe of the House of Anjou. But a few years’ truce would be convenient, and there would be no harm in another treaty about the Vexin. It would be broken as soon as it was sealed, but then it might be possible to show the French as the aggressors; and the few square miles of harried borderland were not worth a full-scale war.
King Henry was far too busy governing his dominions to have time for the ceremonious state more frivolous Kings employed every day. But he enjoyed a rare formal occasion, if he had plenty of warning to prepare for it and knew it would not continue too long. He was a magnificent horseman, not yet too fat to look well in the sumptuous robes which were among the treasures of his wardrobe; he spent freely on jewels and golden ornaments, knowing that in an emergency they could quickly be turned back into money; and he flattered himself that the force of his character would wring a profitable agreement out of the gentle and well-mannered King Louis; though of course the counsellors of the French King would break it or repudiate it as soon as was convenient. In this solemn interview he would cut a good figure, and he might pick up some useful private information. He looked forward to the grand occasion.
But he had just learned of another approaching interview, which would be much less enjoyable; and he was giving a private display of the famous Angevin rage as he discussed it with his counsellors. Now that he was thirty-three years of age the anger which had seemed mere high spirits in a ruler of twenty-one was beginning to appear childish in the bad sense. His sandy hair had grown very thin on top, his ruddy cheeks were seamed with purple veins, and he sweated rather disgustingly into his rough serge tunic, too tight for the bulging muscles of his stomach. He sat with his advisers at the high table in Gisors castle, withdrawn into privacy by the buzz of conversation from the body of the hall; as his big chapped hands twisted a broken spur he pricked a chilblain, and swore vividly.
He turned the oath into a complaint about the matter in hand, and continued his address to his most intimate advisers.
‘Cardinals! What the Devil have I to say to two Cardinals! Let them stay at home and manage the Roman Church, until the Emperor marches and once more they take to flight. They must be thieves, or they would never have bought their way into the Curia. Well, I can’t afford to bribe them! If I had the money I could find a better use for it. If they come only to inspect the Church in Normandy, to compel those loose-living parish priests to put away their concubines, let them get on with it. Why should they bother me? I will never crawl to Thomas Becket of Cheapside, and the Pope won’t translate the confounded rebel to some titular See where he would have no subjects to misrule. So the dispute will endure until one of us dies. I suppose Thomas will die first, since he is many years my senior. I’ve a damned good mind to tell these Cardinals to go away and convert the Saracens. Why must I waste time on them?’
The Justiciar and the Archbishop of Rouen sighed together. They must always endure this drip of whining complaint before they could persuade the King to deal with any matter that displeased him; and it did not really make things easier that, when Henry had at length been persuaded to deal with the facts as they were, his plans were usually practical and ingenious.
‘Nevertheless, you must meet these Cardinals, my lord,’ the Archbishop said firmly. ‘They have taken a whole year to reach you, dodging I don’t know how many Ghibelline bands before they could get over the Alps. Their pains prove that the mission is important. And their proposals may even turn out to be useful. Cardinal William of Pavia is an opponent of that stubborn Archbishop; they say that before he left Rome he was already convinced that Thomas is in the wrong.’
‘But Cardinal Otho set out convinced that no Archbishop can do wrong. That’s typical of the way the Curia muddles everything it undertakes. Fancy sending on an embassy two men of opposite views, without a third envoy to be arbiter! The Pope deserves to be chased out of Rome again. I bet he is, too, within the year.’
‘Yes, yes, my lord, it is a poorly chosen delegation,’ said the Justiciar, who took less trouble than the Archbishop to soothe his King. Richard de Lucy was a great magnate in his own right, who did not care if he was dismissed from his laborious office; and he was very tired of this particular subject. ‘But Cardinal William is on our side, remember. The other point is that they have already met Thomas. They wouldn’t bother to come here unless they had some feasible proposition to offer, and they must have gained his consent to it when they met him at Sens.’
‘I’m tired of the whole bloody thing!’ The King bent the spur in his hands until it snapped, and threw it pettishly on the table. He picked up a little silver saltcellar in the form of a dolphin, and began to straighten the tail; he could not sit still unless he had a piece of work to occupy his rough nail-bitten hands. ‘If I could have a talk with Pope Alexander himself we would settle the matter in a day. He’s a sensible man who knows where his money comes from, now that the Empire is in schism and all Italy a battle-ground. But I know Thomas through and through. I know that if a settlement waits on his consent then the dispute will never be settled. He can’t bring matters to a head, excommunicate me in form and incite my vassals to rebellion; because the Pope won’t let him. But the Pope won’t suppress him either. There it is. I see no end. And I don’t care in the slightest.’ He glared defiantly at his advisers.
‘All the same, my lord,’ replied the Archbishop of Rouen, ‘if the dispute continues the Church in England will get into an awkward tangle. Even the holiest Bishops sometimes disagree with their brethren, for example about the boundaries of their Sees or the exemption of religious houses; and the less holy ones quarrel constantly over money. As we sit here the Abbot of St. Augustine’s in Canterbury is claiming exemption from the control of his Metropolitan; the Bishop of London, most unwisely in my opinion, is preparing a plea in Rome to get himself declared the third Archbishop in England; there is a serious quarrel between the Bishop of Hereford and an Abbey within its jurisdiction; and in Wales the whole organization of the Church is at the point of collapse. These are all matters that can be settled only by the Archbishop of Canterbury. If you keep him out of your realm for many more years you will have no Church, only a collection of quarrelling clerks out of communion with one another and refusing obedience to any superior at all.’
‘What maddens me is that we never get on with the quarrel,’ put in Lucy. ‘Look at what happened eighteen months ago! When the Archbishop pronounced all those excommunications at Vezelay we seemed to be going somewhere, even if it was in the wrong direction. But within less than six months the Pope had withdrawn his legatine commission, forbidden him to excommunicate anyone else, and remitted the sentences of Vezelay. We are back where we were two years ago. It isn’t as though the Pope would silence Thomas for good. Now and again the Archbishop gets back his powers; then he excommunicates his enemies; then the Pope takes away his powers once more and pardons everyone he has banned. Thomas can’t win that way, but he never sees that he is losing; for he blames every set-back on half-hearted support from the Pope who should be his leader.’
‘He has taken a few knocks, all the same,’ said the King, putting down the salt and rubbing his hands in satisfaction. ‘I drove him from his snug quarters in Pontigny. That made the whole Order of Citeaux look very foolish. It probably caused Thomas himself as much grief as the sufferings of his English adherents. All Christendom sees that the arm of the King of England reaches far.’
‘In all those things, my lord, your actions weakened your cause,’ said the Justiciar firmly. Ignoring the r
ed flush on the King’s neck, and the spasmodic working of his fingers, he continued to point out past mistakes with a smug air of reason.
‘When you exiled the Beckets you gave those confounded land-pirates in Sicily a chance to flaunt their independence of their natural lord, the Duke of Normandy, who should be head of the Norman race wherever it happens to rule; and the Beckets are probably better off now than they were in England. Your threats against the Cistercians made enemies of the most eloquent preachers in Christendom, who have said some very nasty things about you in every pulpit from Hamburg to Lisbon. And Thomas himself, who used to be a true Norman, is now the pensioner of France. It’s true that the Pope remitted the sentences of Vezelay; but he went out of his way to proclaim that he considered them lawful and just, and that he remitted them only by his clemency. As a result the Bishop of London, the most useful of your English supporters, is suffering from a disturbed conscience. His mind tells him Thomas is wrong, but his heart tells him a persecuted confessor may very well be right. You should leave Thomas to make his own mistakes, disgusting public opinion by his unappeasable rancour. Every time you try to harm him you harm yourself instead.’
That ended the conversation, which had been the aim of the bored Justiciar. King Henry rose, his hands clawing the air; then, foaming at the mouth, he subsided to the floor and scrabbled among the rushes. Servants came running to escort their lord to his chamber, but the diners in the body of the hall scarcely looked up from their flagons. It was only another of the King’s tantrums, they decided; probably someone had been reminding him of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
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