King Henry II and Thomas Becket in earnest dispute, as depicted in a 14th century manuscript.
Part 1 of 2
THOMAS Becket was in exile in France, at a monastery in Pontigny, when he remarked to the Abbot, “I dreamt, last night, that I was put to death.”
“Do you think you are going to be a martyr?” smiled the Abbot. “You eat and drink too much for that!”
King Henry II allowed Becket to return home in 1170, but found the Archbishop still refused to be his puppet. “As long as Thomas lives” said one Bishop to the King, “you will never be at peace.”
“What miserable drones and traitors have I nurtured and promoted in my household” Henry burst out, “who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born clerk!”* Four knights heard it, and thinking they had received their King’s orders, cut Becket down in his own Cathedral on December 29th that year.* But all the trouble he had given his King while he was alive was nothing compared to the trouble Becket gave him dead.
The more familiar line is “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”, but the words quoted here were recorded by Edward Grim, who was present and tried to intervene.
The Feast of the Holy Innocents, which commemorates the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem by King Herod the Great in about 4 BC. In the Greek Church, the day also remembers everyone who has perished by thirst, hunger, cold or sword for the glory of Christ. See Matthew 2:13-18, and our story The Adoration of the Magi.
Précis
Thomas Becket had a premonition that he might lose his life in his defence of the English Church’s independence from the Crown. And after King Henry II had publicly voiced his frustration with the Archbishop, four knights thought he would be pleased if Becket were gone. However, making a martyr of Becket only made Henry’s position worse. (57 / 60 words)
Part Two
Pendragon Castle a few miles south of Kirkby Stephen in Cumbria, just to the east of the Settle to Carlisle Railway. Built in the 12th century, Sir Hugh de Morville, Lord of Westmorland and one of Becket’s assassins, owned the castle for time; it was ruined by the Scots in 1541. Lady Anne Clifford had it rebuilt in 1660 but it fell into ruin once again.
THE four knights soon found England too hot for them. Hugh Morville let the others hide out with him in his Cumbrian castle, but his servants (and even his dog) refused to know them. So they fled to Rome, to throw themselves on Pope Alexander III’s mercy. He ordered them to make pilgrimage to the holy land, where three of them died;* William Tracy died before leaving Italy.
Nor did King Henry spare himself. In 1174 he rode from Southampton to Canterbury fasting severely, then walked barefoot to the Cathedral where he did public penance, bidding the clergy scourge him with knotted ropes.* He too sought pardon from the Pope, for which he was obliged not only to make generous benefactions to the Church and to Becket’s relatives, but more irksomely to renounce all his plans for control over the English Church.
“For the defence of the Church, I am ready to die” Becket had declared; and by his death he had defended it.
Their penance was apparently deep and sincere, for they were buried before the doors of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
His grandson, Henry III, built a magnificent new shrine in the Cathedral, but it was one of the first to be destroyed in the Reformation under King Henry VIII. Becket had come to symbolise the independence of the Church from State interference, making him a prime target for the Reformers’ wrath.
Précis
The four knights who assassinated Thomas Becket fled to Rome and asked pardon of the Pope; as penance, they were ordered to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem but within a short time all were dead. King Henry did public penance in Canterbury, and abandoned his ambitions for control over the Church, so Becket’s sacrifice had not been made in vain. (60 / 60 words)
