came over to England himself, after an absence of seven years. He
was privately warned that it was dangerous to come, and that an
ireful knight, named RANULF DE BROC, had threatened that he should
not live to eat a loaf of bread in England; but he came.
The common people received him well, and marched about with him in
a soldierly way, armed with such rustic weapons as they could get.
He tried to see the young prince who had once been his pupil, but
was prevented. He hoped for some little support among the nobles
and priests, but found none. He made the most of the peasants who
attended him, and feasted them, and went from Canterbury to Harrowon-
the-Hill, and from Harrow-on-the-Hill back to Canterbury, and on
Christmas Day preached in the Cathedral there, and told the people
in his sermon that he had come to die among them, and that it was
likely he would be murdered. He had no fear, however - or, if he
had any, he had much more obstinacy - for he, then and there,
excommunicated three of his enemies, of whom Ranulf de Broc, the
ireful knight, was one.
As men in general had no fancy for being cursed, in their sitting
and walking, and gaping and sneezing, and all the rest of it, it
was very natural in the persons so freely excommunicated to
complain to the King. It was equally natural in the King, who had
hoped that this troublesome opponent was at last quieted, to fall
into a mighty rage when he heard of these new affronts; and, on the
Archbishop of York telling him that he never could hope for rest
while Thomas a Becket lived, to cry out hastily before his court,
'Have I no one here who will deliver me from this man?' There were
four knights present, who, hearing the King's words, looked at one
another, and went out.
The names of these knights were REGINALD FITZURSE, WILLIAM TRACY,
HUGH DE MORVILLE, and RICHARD BRITO; three of whom had been in the
train of Thomas a Becket in the old days of his splendour. They
rode away on horseback, in a very secret manner, and on the third
day after Christmas Day arrived at Saltwood House, not far from
Canterbury, which belonged to the family of Ranulf de Broc. They
quietly collected some followers here, in case they should need
any; and proceeding to Canterbury, suddenly appeared (the four
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knights and twelve men) before the Archbishop, in his own house, at
two o'clock in the afternoon. They neither bowed nor spoke, but
sat down on the floor in silence, staring at the Archbishop.
Thomas a Becket said, at length, 'What do you want?'
'We want,' said Reginald Fitzurse, 'the excommunication taken from
the Bishops, and you to answer for your offences to the King.'
Thomas a Becket defiantly replied, that the power of the clergy was
above the power of the King. That it was not for such men as they
were, to threaten him. That if he were threatened by all the
swords in England, he would never yield.
'Then we will do more than threaten!' said the knights. And they
went out with the twelve men, and put on their armour, and drew
their shining swords, and came back.
His servants, in the meantime, had shut up and barred the great
gate of the palace. At first, the knights tried to shatter it with
their battle-axes; but, being shown a window by which they could
enter, they let the gate alone, and climbed in that way. While
they were battering at the door, the attendants of Thomas a Becket
had implored him to take refuge in the Cathedral; in which, as a
sanctuary or sacred place, they thought the knights would dare to
do no violent deed. He told them, again and again, that he would
not stir. Hearing the distant voices of the monks singing the
evening service, however, he said it was now his duty to attend,
and therefore, and for no other reason, he would go.
There was a near way between his Palace and the Cathedral, by some
beautiful old cloisters which you may yet see. He went into the
Cathedral, without any hurry, and having the Cross carried before
him as usual. When he was safely there, his servants would have
fastened the door, but he said NO! it was the house of God and not
a fortress.
As he spoke, the shadow of Reginald Fitzurse appeared in the
Cathedral doorway, darkening the little light there was outside, on
the dark winter evening. This knight said, in a strong voice,
'Follow me, loyal servants of the King!' The rattle of the armour
of the other knights echoed through the Cathedral, as they came
clashing in.
It was so dark, in the lofty aisles and among the stately pillars
of the church, and there were so many hiding-places in the crypt
below and in the narrow passages above, that Thomas a Becket might
even at that pass have saved himself if he would. But he would
not. He told the monks resolutely that he would not. And though
they all dispersed and left him there with no other follower than
EDWARD GRYME, his faithful cross-bearer, he was as firm then, as
ever he had been in his life.
The knights came on, through the darkness, making a terrible noise
with their armed tread upon the stone pavement of the church.
'Where is the traitor?' they cried out. He made no answer. But
when they cried, 'Where is the Archbishop?' he said proudly, 'I am
here!' and came out of the shade and stood before them.
The knights had no desire to kill him, if they could rid the King
and themselves of him by any other means. They told him he must
either fly or go with them. He said he would do neither; and he
threw William Tracy off with such force when he took hold of his
sleeve, that Tracy reeled again. By his reproaches and his
steadiness, he so incensed them, and exasperated their fierce
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humour, that Reginald Fitzurse, whom he called by an ill name,
said, 'Then die!' and struck at his head. But the faithful Edward
Gryme put out his arm, and there received the main force of the
blow, so that it only made his master bleed. Another voice from
among the knights again called to Thomas a Becket to fly; but, with
his blood running down his face, and his hands clasped, and his
head bent, he commanded himself to God, and stood firm. Then they
cruelly killed him close to the altar of St. Bennet; and his body
fell upon the pavement, which was dirtied with his blood and
brains.
It is an awful thing to think of the murdered mortal, who had so
showered his curses about, lying, all disfigured, in the church,
where a few lamps here and there were but red specks on a pall of
darkness; and to think of the guilty knights riding away on
horseback, looking over their shoulders at the dim Cathedral, and
remembering what they had left inside.
PART THE SECOND
WHEN the King heard how Thomas a Becket had lost his life in
Canterbury Cathedral, through the ferocity of the four Knights, he
was f
illed with dismay. Some have supposed that when the King
spoke those hasty words, 'Have I no one here who will deliver me
from this man?' he wished, and meant a Becket to be slain. But few
things are more unlikely; for, besides that the King was not
naturally cruel (though very passionate), he was wise, and must
have known full well what any stupid man in his dominions must have
known, namely, that such a murder would rouse the Pope and the
whole Church against him.
He sent respectful messengers to the Pope, to represent his
innocence (except in having uttered the hasty words); and he swore
solemnly and publicly to his innocence, and contrived in time to
make his peace. As to the four guilty Knights, who fled into
Yorkshire, and never again dared to show themselves at Court, the
Pope excommunicated them; and they lived miserably for some time,
shunned by all their countrymen. At last, they went humbly to
Jerusalem as a penance, and there died and were buried.
It happened, fortunately for the pacifying of the Pope, that an
opportunity arose very soon after the murder of a Becket, for the
King to declare his power in Ireland - which was an acceptable
undertaking to the Pope, as the Irish, who had been converted to
Christianity by one Patricius (otherwise Saint Patrick) long ago,
before any Pope existed, considered that the Pope had nothing at
all to do with them, or they with the Pope, and accordingly refused
to pay him Peter's Pence, or that tax of a penny a house which I
have elsewhere mentioned. The King's opportunity arose in this
way.
The Irish were, at that time, as barbarous a people as you can well
imagine. They were continually quarrelling and fighting, cutting
one another's throats, slicing one another's noses, burning one
another's houses, carrying away one another's wives, and committing
all sorts of violence. The country was divided into five kingdoms
- DESMOND, THOMOND, CONNAUGHT, ULSTER, and LEINSTER - each governed
by a separate King, of whom one claimed to be the chief of the
rest. Now, one of these Kings, named DERMOND MAC MURROUGH (a wild
kind of name, spelt in more than one wild kind of way), had carried
off the wife of a friend of his, and concealed her on an island in
a bog. The friend resenting this (though it was quite the custom
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of the country), complained to the chief King, and, with the chief
King's help, drove Dermond Mac Murrough out of his dominions.
Dermond came over to England for revenge; and offered to hold his
realm as a vassal of King Henry, if King Henry would help him to
regain it. The King consented to these terms; but only assisted
him, then, with what were called Letters Patent, authorising any
English subjects who were so disposed, to enter into his service,
and aid his cause.
There was, at Bristol, a certain EARL RICHARD DE CLARE, called
STRONGBOW; of no very good character; needy and desperate, and
ready for anything that offered him a chance of improving his
fortunes. There were, in South Wales, two other broken knights of
the same good-for-nothing sort, called ROBERT FITZ-STEPHEN, and
MAURICE FITZ-GERALD. These three, each with a small band of
followers, took up Dermond's cause; and it was agreed that if it
proved successful, Strongbow should marry Dermond's daughter EVA,
and be declared his heir.
The trained English followers of these knights were so superior in
all the discipline of battle to the Irish, that they beat them
against immense superiority of numbers. In one fight, early in the
war, they cut off three hundred heads, and laid them before Mac
Murrough; who turned them every one up with his hands, rejoicing,
and, coming to one which was the head of a man whom he had much
disliked, grasped it by the hair and ears, and tore off the nose
and lips with his teeth. You may judge from this, what kind of a
gentleman an Irish King in those times was. The captives, all
through this war, were horribly treated; the victorious party
making nothing of breaking their limbs, and casting them into the
sea from the tops of high rocks. It was in the midst of the
miseries and cruelties attendant on the taking of Waterford, where
the dead lay piled in the streets, and the filthy gutters ran with
blood, that Strongbow married Eva. An odious marriage-company
those mounds of corpse's must have made, I think, and one quite
worthy of the young lady's father.
He died, after Waterford and Dublin had been taken, and various
successes achieved; and Strongbow became King of Leinster. Now
came King Henry's opportunity. To restrain the growing power of
Strongbow, he himself repaired to Dublin, as Strongbow's Royal
Master, and deprived him of his kingdom, but confirmed him in the
enjoyment of great possessions. The King, then, holding state in
Dublin, received the homage of nearly all the Irish Kings and
Chiefs, and so came home again with a great addition to his
reputation as Lord of Ireland, and with a new claim on the favour
of the Pope. And now, their reconciliation was completed - more
easily and mildly by the Pope, than the King might have expected, I
think.
his prospects so bright, those domestic miseries began which
gradually made the King the most unhappy of men, reduced his great
spirit, wore away his health, and broke his heart.
He had four sons. HENRY, now aged eighteen - his secret crowning
of whom had given such offence to Thomas a Becket. RICHARD, aged
sixteen; GEOFFREY, fifteen; and JOHN, his favourite, a young boy
whom the courtiers named LACKLAND, because he had no inheritance,
but to whom the King meant to give the Lordship of Ireland. All
these misguided boys, in their turn, were unnatural sons to him,
and unnatural brothers to each other. Prince Henry, stimulated by
the French King, and by his bad mother, Queen Eleanor, began the
undutiful history,
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First, he demanded that his young wife, MARGARET, the French King's
daughter, should be crowned as well as he. His father, the King,
consented, and it was done. It was no sooner done, than he
demanded to have a part of his father's dominions, during his
father's life. This being refused, he made off from his father in
the night, with his bad heart full of bitterness, and took refuge
at the French King's Court. Within a day or two, his brothers
Richard and Geoffrey followed. Their mother tried to join them -
escaping in man's clothes - but she was seized by King Henry's men,
and immured in prison, where she lay, deservedly, for sixteen
years. Every day, however, some grasping English noblemen, to whom
the King's protection of his people from their avarice and
oppression had given offence, deserted him and joined the Princes.
Every day he heard some fresh intelligence
of the Princes levying
armies against him; of Prince Henry's wearing a crown before his
own ambassadors at the French Court, and being called the Junior
King of England; of all the Princes swearing never to make peace
with him, their father, without the consent and approval of the
Barons of France. But, with his fortitude and energy unshaken,
King Henry met the shock of these disasters with a resolved and
cheerful face. He called upon all Royal fathers who had sons, to
help him, for his cause was theirs; he hired, out of his riches,
twenty thousand men to fight the false French King, who stirred his
own blood against him; and he carried on the war with such vigour,
that Louis soon proposed a conference to treat for peace.
The conference was held beneath an old wide-spreading green elmtree,
upon a plain in France. It led to nothing. The war
recommenced. Prince Richard began his fighting career, by leading
an army against his father; but his father beat him and his army
back; and thousands of his men would have rued the day in which
they fought in such a wicked cause, had not the King received news
of an invasion of England by the Scots, and promptly come home
through a great storm to repress it. And whether he really began
to fear that he suffered these troubles because a Becket had been
murdered; or whether he wished to rise in the favour of the Pope,
who had now declared a Becket to be a saint, or in the favour of
his own people, of whom many believed that even a Becket's
senseless tomb could work miracles, I don't know: but the King no
sooner landed in England than he went straight to Canterbury; and
when he came within sight of the distant Cathedral, he dismounted
from his horse, took off his shoes, and walked with bare and
bleeding feet to a Becket's grave. There, he lay down on the
ground, lamenting, in the presence of many people; and by-and-by he
went into the Chapter House, and, removing his clothes from his
back and shoulders, submitted himself to be beaten with knotted
cords (not beaten very hard, I dare say though) by eighty Priests,
one after another. It chanced that on the very day when the King
made this curious exhibition of himself, a complete victory was
obtained over the Scots; which very much delighted the Priests, who
said that it was won because of his great example of repentance.