BOBEIITSON'S BECKET. * "Tin three centuries and a half," says Becket's
present biogra- pher, "during which Thomas of Canterbury was revered as the most glorious of English Saints were followed by an almost equally long period of disrepute." With the Protestant his name was degraded into a byword ; while even with the Catholic it lost much of its time-honoured splendour. In. our own time there has been a re- action in his favour. The reaction commenced in France with the historian Augustin Thieriy. Thierry who sees everywhere the influence of race, and who through the whole course of English history, detects the antagonism of Saxon and Norman, interprets the contest between Becket and Henry II, as essentially a struggle of the conquered with the conqueror race ; and makes the renowned churchman the representative of the oppressed Saxons. In Eng- land again "the reaction originated in a religious interest." The late Mr. Froude, in a period of great political and religious ex- citement, "felt himself attracted towards the character of Becket as a champion of the church against the secular power." Mr. Froude, our author is of opinion, must be considered in some points as having established his case ; while in others he writes as a mere apologist, arguing from possibilities rather than from facts. To Mr. Fronde succeeded Archdeacon Churthn, Dr. Giles, and Mr. Waster, all following the same general line of argument with the English vindicator of Becket. Among the more distinguished opponents of King Henry's ecclesiastical policy we may include also Michelet, Comte, and J. S. Mill.
Mr. Robertson, on the other hand, is no admirer of the Saxon saint. He appears to us to see little of the saint in Becket ; as he certainly sees nothing of the Saxon in him. He does not find in Becket the spirit of meekness and resignation ; and certainly the contest in which the great Archbishop was engaged, was more favourable to the growth of the manly defiance of the Christian soldier than the sweet womanly submission of the Christian mar- tyr. His look of stern resolution "the face of a man at once and the face of a lion," seems to us the necessary aspect of so harassed and warring a mortal. Adverting to M. Wohelet's opinion our author declares that Becket was not influenced in his resistance to kingly power, by any desire to check the tyranny of the strong over the weak. Thierry's view stands condemned, for it was not for the protection or elevation of the oppressed Saxons that Becket laboured. Dr. Giles's notion, which assimilates his hero to a modern philanthropist, is maintained to be untenable ; for it was not to mitigate the barbarous punishments of the age that the Archbishop confronted his sovereign. His real object was to establish for his own class a superiority over all other men ; to secure clerical de- linquents not against all penalties, but against the jurisdiction of the secular courts. The real charge against him is that " he set up and obstinately maintained, as a right of the church, a claim which was without any real foundation, and which in its working had been proved to be seriously hurtful, not only to social order, but to the character of the clergy themselves." The attempt to reverse the verdict of his recent predecessors is executed with such temper, research, and vigorous good sense, as to entitle the learned author of this new biography of Becket to ; a courteous and thoughtful hearing. There is little or nothing in Mr. Robertson's book of the heaviness of controversial detail. It is less an argument that he conducts, than a life that he illus- trates; and those who differ from him in opinion will find his biographical presentment valuable and interesting. Mr. Robertson does not allow his intellect to be imposed upon by his imagination. He commences the history of his hero by removing from his brow the golden aureole of romance with which popular tradition had invested him. The story of the Saxon father and the Saracen mother, which Dr. Giles "sees no reason to doubt," his more sceptical successor pronounces a fie- tion—" a tale that ends as it ought to end." He refuses even to believe in the Saxon origin of the Saearen emir's captive. Far from being exclusively Saxon, the word bee was a relic of the old
* Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. A Biography. By James Craigie Robertson, M.A., Canon of Canterbury. Published by John Murray.
Teutonic language, which lingered among the descendants of the Norththen after their settlement in France. Thus Caudebec, BoTheo', and Le Bee, which gave to the English Church the three primates, Lanfrane, Anselm and Theobald, each denied its name from its beck or brook. And as bee was used to signify a brook, so we have positive evidence to show that bequet or becket was used to signify a little brook. Moreover, the surname first ap- pears, in a documentary form, not in England but in Normandy. There are also express statements in the early writers that the Archbishop's descent was Norman. On the whole, Mr. Robertson favours the conjecture that Becket's grandfather was the original settler in England, bearing like his son the name of Gilbert, and having a wife named Roesa, a name which reappears in one of his andehildren.
-Thomas Becket first saw light in London, probably in the year 1118; possibly on the feast of the Apostle whose name he bore.
At the age of ten his education began to be systematically con- ducted by the Prior of St. Mary's, at Merton, in Surrey. From
Merton he was removed to the school in London. His prompt abilities and strength of memory attracted some notice • but Thomas preferred hunting and hawking with the wealthy and powerful lord of Pevensey Castle, Richer de l'Aigle who some- times visited Londcp and lodged in the house of Gilbert Becket. Among other occasional residents under the same roof were two brothers of Boulogne Archdeacon Baldwin and Master Eustaee. Struck with the abilities and manners of the graceful youth, these Norman ecclesiastics introduced him into the service of the primate Theobald. In 1147 we find Becket a prosperous and triumphant incumbent, and already noted for his splendour, charity, and munificence. Deficient in legal knowledge the young churchman determined to compensate for past neglect, and. a year at Bologna, and 'a shorter period at Auxerre, were devoted by him to the study of Law, we suppose in both its civil and ecclesiastical branches.
Becket early became a skilful diplomatist. Through him the Archbishop obtained a revocation of the legatine commission which had raised the Bishop of Winchester to a position of dan- gerous rivalry with the primate ; and through him Henry the eoond's succession to the throne was facilitated by the papal pro- hibition of the coronation of Eustace, son of King Stephen. Lucrative preferments attested the talent and rewarded the zeal of this undeniably able man. Tall, handsome, eloquent, witty, of swift and dexterous intellect, an accomplished chess player, and a splendid sportsman, Beeket ultimately gained an ascendant over the youthful king, and in the first year of Henry's reign was raised to the dignity of Chancellor. In his new eminence envy and malice, as heretofore, followed him: but he speedily triumphed Over all intrigues and secured his sovereign's confidence. "As Henry's chief adviser," says Mr. Robertson, "he is entitled to a large share of praise for the measures which were taken to im- prove the state of the country. The predaceous mercenaries that oppressed the people were compelled to leave the realm ; the numerous castles of lawless tyrants were razed to the ground ; thieves and robbers were put clown or reclaimed; families were reinstated in their rightful possessions; agriculture, and other peaceful arts, encouraged; and ecclesiastical abuse in favour of the Crown, mitigated." It is touching and beautiful to read. how when these two great men had done their stint of noble work, they played together like boys of the same age. We praise both king and minister for the exercise of their vocation as statesmen ; while, whatever may become of Becket's character as a saint, "we can scarcely help admiring the patriot clancellor-churohman, with his noble and sumptuous hospitalities—his horses, hawks, money, vestments, gold and silver vessels, in the days when knights and barons trod over the rushes or green branches that strewed his state rooms' and men of highest rank regarded a household, in which even the heir apparent was an inmate, as the best school of noble breeding they could select." Passing over Becket's military achievements in 1159, when with 1200 knights and four thousand infantry of his own, he espoused King Henry's quarrel and aided that monarch to assert his right to the county of Toulouse we come about two years later' to Becket's instalment as Archbishop of Canterbury. "I shall be your Majesty's greatest enemy," was the reply made by the future martyr, when Henry apprised him of his intention.; a reply which, whether intended to be seriously taken or not, was destined to have a terrible significance. Soon after his elevation to the primacy, Becket resigned the Chancellorship; a resignation which 31r. Robertson agrees with Miohelet was nothing less than a practical avowal of the "incurable duality of the middle ages, distracted between religion and the state." Becket recognized in himself the champion of the church, and with something of an honourable, though possibly partizan sense of duty, took up a posi- tion of his own. For this reason, perhaps, it was that he at first retained the Archdeaconry of his diocese, his immediate object being to keep out the King's friends. In accordance with his new conviction he determined to resume the possessions of his see, which "had. most likely been in many oases" wrongfully and in- formally alienated, in a summary and forcible manner. In one case, says Mr. Robertson, the Primate appeared as a sort of Hamp- den, maintaining that a species of land-tax claimed by the King was not paid as a due but voluntarily ; and when Henry swore by God's eyes that it should be paid as revenue, by those same eyes, answered Becket, "so long as I live no such payment shall be made from all my lands, and not a penny of the church's right." "By this opposition the project was defeated;" and so says
Grim out of resentment to the Archbishop, the King was led to turn his anger against the clergy. A fair pretext soon presented itself for interference. Various outrages, murders included, had been perpetrated by members of the clerical body. In virtue of a law of William the Conqueror the civil tribunals had been separated from the ecclesiastical ; absolute independence of all political power being thus guaranteed
to the latter. Clerical exemption from secular judgment had been favoured by the operation of this law ; the punishments in- flicted on tonsured criminals were of strictly spiritual derivation. As sacerdotal crime continued to increase, Henry determined to suppress the growing nuisance ; and to efect his purpose he re- solved to make all ecclesiastical offenders amenable to lay juris- diction. Becket, convinced that clerical immunity was an in- herent right of the Church, stood by his order, with, our author thinks, an irrational perverseness and most reprehensible party- spirit. In milking this stand, Mr. Robertson contends that Becket was usurping a jurisdiction for the ohurch to which the
church was not entitled ; that the evil of which the king com- plained was one that amply justified complaint, and one which was remediable only by the civil sword ; and that Becket "thrust from him such opportunities of effecting good as few men have ever enjoyed that he might suffer exile and death for a groundless and mischievous pretension." We are not so sure as 31r. Robertson that these and other allegations are as incontestable as he supposes ; but we do think that, if the question could be legitimately narrowed to his small quarter sessions view of the matter; if it could be shown that Henry did not aim, as Hume implies that he did, at a triumph over the Church, but would have been contented with a specific reform in criminal judicature; the claim put forth by the Crown and sustained by the present bio- grapher of Becket, would. have every appearance of being a just and reasonable claim; a claim that circumstances possibly might suspend, but could never annul. Unfortunately, Henry presented this claim in an utterly unacceptable shape—in the shape of the famous Constitutions of Clarendon. These consti- tutions were divided into sixteen articles; in entire con- travention of the laws published. eighty years before in the name of William I. and his barons. Not only, too were they designed to take effect in England, but, according to Thierry, were decreed as obligatory upon the inhabitants of nearly all the West of Gaul. Hence the growing amplitude of the contest be- tween the Primate and the King. These articles, our author ac- knowledges, bore very hardly on what the high hierarchical party regarded as the rights of the church. They abolished appeals to the Pope and made them criminal by law ; they gave the custody and revenues of every vacant benefice from an archbishofric to a priory to the King ; they prohibited all ecclesiastics from leaving the kingdom without royal permission ; they forbade the ordina- tion of serfs without the consent of the lords on whose lands they were born ; lastly they conferred on Henry and his great Justiciary, we quote the words of J. S. Mill, "a veto on the purely spiritual act of excommunication—the last resort of the church— the ultimate sanction on which she depended for her moral juris- diction. No one of the King's tenants was to be excommunicated without his consent. On which side was here the usurpation F" If it can be clearly made out that Becket's mind never rose to the heights of this argument, he would be a less admirable man than his eulogists represent. But if, not only in vindication of his order, but in defence of that great and sacred corporation, which, united under a Pope who spoke with authority to kings and emperors," dared to "reprimand and denounce" the injus- tice and brutality of baronial feudalism, (Lord Macaulay's "fero- cious aristocracy,")—if we say, that fearless Archbishop of Can- terbury, rose against the Constitutions of Clarendon, on their own demerits, then we think him a far greater man than his most re- cent biographer is willing to allow. The question of Church and State has always been a perplexing one. And for our own part we are inclined to believe with Thomas Becket and Miehelet in a necessary antagonism, prelimi- nary if not perennial, of the two social powers. We fear alike the encroachments of both. To the State properly belongs the pro- vince of action; to the Church that of education. There may be seasons when the soundest policy for both would be a compromise of even reasonable pretensions. Assuming that the true idea of the Church is that of a moral and intellectual power, intended to teach and guide a nation by the sole coercion of superior wisdom
and prevailing love, we think that it ought to be as free to dis- charge its functions to regulate its discipline and interpret its doctrines as exemption from all State interference can make it. Nothing in our judgment could be more fatal, especially in this age of unsettled questions than -to confer material power on the Church, on the one hand, or to decree truth by act of Parliament, or order in council on the other.
We have no present intention to follow the argument further. We leave to those who have the requisite leisure and the special knowledge an exhaustive prosecution of the controversy, the grounds of which we have endeavoured to indicate. We are un- able to accompany the author of this excellent biography through the sequel of Becket's contest with the king—or to show how, even with the Bishops and Pope against him he stood his ground, on the whole manfully, bearing up under persecution and deser- tion, as best he could, till after vain essays at reconciliation and. futile interposition of papal aid, the intrepid and fiery-hearted. man placed himself with his back against a pillar in the dim religious light of his own cathedral, welcoming death for God and for the Church's freedom."
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