BECKET, THOMAS A., archbishop of Canterbury, was the son of a merchant, and was born in London in 1119 The story which makes his mother a Saracen 'is charmingly romantic, but there are doubts if it has any historical basis. He studied theology at Oxford and Paris, and afterwards law at Bologna. and at Auxerre, in Burgundy. Hay rug been recommended to Henry II. by Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, who had had experience of his abilities, B. was promoted to the office of high chancellor and thus (according to Thierry) resuscitated the hopes of the English as the first native Eng.. Tishman, since the conquest, iviio hal filled any high ()MCC. duties as high chancellor were numerous and burdensome, but he discharged them vigorously. He was magnifi cently liberal in his hospitality. Henry himself did not live in a more sumptuous man ner. As yet, B. seems to Italic regarded himself as a mere layman, though, in point of fact, lie was a deacon; but in 1162, when he was created archbishop of Canterbury (an office which, as it then involved the abbacy of the cathedral monastery, had never but twice before been held by any but a monk or cauon-regular), a remarkable change became manifest in his whole deportment. He resigned the chancellorship, threw aside sud denly hiS luxurious and courtly habits, assumed au austere religious character, exhibited his liberality only in his "charities," and soon appeared as it zealous champion of the church against all aggressions by the king and the nobility. Several noblemen and lay men were excommunicated for their alienation of church property. Henry II .who,like all the Norman kings, endeavored to keep the clergy in subordination to the state, convoked the nobility with the clergy to a council in 1104 at Clarendon (near Salisbury), where the so-called constitutions" (or laws relative to the respective powers of church and state) were adopted. To these, the primate, at first, declared he would never consent; but afterwards, through the efforts of the nobles, some of the bishops, and, finally, of the pope himself, he was induced to give his unwilling approbation. Henry now began to perceive that B.'s notions and his were utterly antagonistic, and clearly exhibited his hostility to the prelate, whereupon B. tried to leave the country. For this offense the king charged B. with breach of allegiance, in a parliament summoned at Northampton in 1164, confiscated his goods, and sequestered the revenues of his see. A claim was also made on him for not less than 44,000 marks, as the balance due by hint to the crown when lie ceased to be chancellor. B. appealed to the pope, and next day leaving North ampton in disguise, fled to France, where he spent two years in retirement at Poutiguy, in Burgundy. The French monarch and the pope, however, now took up his cause. B. went to Home. pleaded personally before his holiness, who reinstated him in the see of Canterbury. B. now returned to France, whence he wrote angry letters to the Eng lish bishops, threatening them with excommunication. Several efforts were made to
reconcile Henry and B., which, however, proved futile: but at length, in 1170, a formal agreement was come to at Fretville, on the borders of Touraine. The result was, that B. returned to England, entering Canterbury amid the rejoicings of the people, who were unquestionably proud of B., and regarded him—whether wisely or not is another ques tion—as a shield from the oppressions of the nobility; but he soon manifested all his former boldness of opposition to royal authority. At last, it is said, the king, while in Normandy, expressed impatience that none of his followers would rid him of an inso lent priest. The fatal suggestion was immediately understood, and carried into effect by four barons, who departed by separate ways for England. On the evening of the 29th Dec., 1170,they entered the cathedral, and having failed in an attempt to drag him out of the church, there slew B. before the altar of St. Benedict. in Be n transept. Henry was compelled to make heavy concessions to avoid the ban of excommunication. The mur derers, having repaired to Rome as penitents, were sent on a pilgrimage to Palestine; and, two years after his death, B. was canonized by pope Alexander III., and the anni versary of his death was set apart as the yearly' festival of St. Thomasof Canterbury. In 1220, his hones were raised from the grave in the crypt where they had been hastily buried two days after his murder, and were by order of king Henry III. deposited in a splendid shrine, which for three centuries continued to he the object of one of the great pilgrimages of Christendom, and still lives in English literature in connection with Chaucer's Otnterbtfry Tales. At the reformation, Henry VIII. despoiled the shrine, erased B.'s name from the calendar, and caused his bones to be burnt and scattered to the winds. It is extremely difficult to estimate properly the character of Becket. We do not know what his ultimate aims were, whether, as some suppose, they were patriotic, i.e., Saxon, as opposed to Norman, or, as others believe, purely sacerdotal. At ail events, the means he used for the attainment of them was a despotic and irresponsible ecclesiasticism. Ile admitted nothing done by churchmen to be secular, or within the jurisdiction of civil courts, not even murder or larceny. Fortunately, the Plantagenets were as dogged believers in their own powers and privileges as B. in those of the church; and by their obstinate good sense, England was kept wholesomely jealous of the preten sions of Rome. See Dr. Giles' Vita et Epistobe S. Thome Ca ntuarknsis ; canon Morris' Life of St. Thomas Becket; canon Robertson's Life (f Becket; canon Stanley's Historical Me morials of Canterbury; Freeman's Historical Essays; Hook's Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury; Froude's articles on B. in the Nineteenth Century.