BECKET'S CHARACTER.

511

of a system which exposed them to be slain more cheaply than goats or Jews. Within four years of Becket's death, his successor gave up the principle for which the martyr had contended, and allowed offenders against the clergy to be tried in secular courts. His apologetic letter to the pope seems to imply that even more than this had been resigned; and that the clergy by a just analogy were to be subject to lay tribunals for felonies.' A year earlier, A. D. 1175, their immunity in all cases relating to the forest-laws had been surrendered. Becket had won nothing; even the archbishops of York continued to wage ceremonial war with the see of Canterbury.

...

1 Trivet, p. 85. His exact words are, "Let the Church first exercise her jurisdiction, and if that is not sufficient, let the civil sword supply its defect. . . . And let it not be said that any one is on this account twice punished for the same offence, for what one begins and another consummates, is one act." In one instance, where he claimed a knight captured in a churchyard, he seems to have allowed an appeal to the crown to over-ride the Church claims. Epist. Foliot, 131. Accordingly, Peter of Blois denounces him (Ep. 5) for having given up the dignities of the Church which the glorious martyr had sealed by his blood. Radulfus Niger says (p.

168), "Causam fidei læsæ et advocationis ecclesiarum in curia decidi constituit" (sc. Henricus). Benedictus Abbas, vol. i. pp. 149-151, records the case of a certain Adam, chancellor to Henry's eldest son, who betrayed his master's plans to the king during the civil war. Prince Henry, finding that the bishop of Poitiers claimed him as a clerk, gave way so far as not to kill him, but had him whipped through the streets of every town, till he came to Argentan, and imprisoned there (A. D. 1176). Passing over John's reign as exceptional, we find Grostete complaining (Ep. 72) that it was an usurped and customary abuse in England for ecclesiastics to be forced to plead before lay tribunals, under pretence that they had disobeyed a royal rescript. The restrictions in England are the more important, because in Normandy benefit of clergy was allowed to bar all punishments except degradation and exile for a first offence. See the articles agreed to at Rouen in 1205. Duchesne, p. 1059.

512

BECKET'S MERITS AND DEMERITS.

Becket has enjoyed the singular privilege of being known to us almost solely by his own letters and the writings of his friends. The portrait thus handed down is abundantly life-like. His person, his conversation, the friendly jest with his attendants, the oaths and foul abuse to his enemies, the healthy love of field sports, the open-handedness to all around him, are as fully recorded, as the austerities by which he struggled against an animal nature, the pride with which he held the resolve once taken against a king, the courage with which he died for it. Not a scholar in the estimation of his age,' he delighted to surround himself with learned men, and found leisure during his exile to procure transcripts of the treasures of foreign libraries.2 Not a man of noble birth, at a time when the pride of race was extravagant, he flung back the taunts of his enemies with a splendid scorn: "It is true I am not sprung from an ancient line of princes. But I would rather be one whose nobleness of mind makes its own pedigree, than one in whom the generous blood of his fathers degenerates." It is difficult not to admire such a man: he seems to tower above his contemporaries; it is his personality and character that bear down the violent but weak-willed king, who rolled on the ground in paroxysms of frenzy, attempted the life of those who brought him ill-news, and blasphemed God for allowing the beardless king of France to defeat a sovereign who had given so largely to the Church. Yet Becket, with

"It

1 William of Canterbury says: "Quatenus lascivia ætatis et angustia temporis permisit, in illis (sc. liberalibus artibus) profecit." Compare the remark in the Lambeth MS., that he might have been a good scholar if he had studied longer.

4

FAILURE OF BECKET'S LIFE.

513

more decorum of manner, was not less passionate. Believing that the sentence of the Church excluded from life eternal, and ought to exclude from fellowship with men, he chose the day of the Lord's nativity, a time when he himself expected death, to excommunicate the ruffian who had cut off the tail of his horse. Trammelled by a theory too monstrous for any man but himself to have asserted fully, he involved himself in repeated inconsistencies, and incurred the charge of insincerity by retracting promises which his common sense had made, and which a fatal logic repudiated. During life he represented no idea; he viewed the supremacy of Church above State, not as a struggle of eternal with temporal law, but as a question of ceremonial and privilege.1 With Dunstan we connect English monachism, with Anselm church independence, with Innocent the supremacy of the popes over all kings; but Becket's exile and death won nothing for his order: a title, a splendid shrine, the devotion of worshippers, showed that a heroic man had passed away; but what in England or the world embodies Becket's thoughts??

John of Oxford accused him of looking mainly throughout the struggle to the profit derived from the commutations of church penances. Becket, Epist., 346. The charge is that of a virulent enemy, but it shows at least one aspect of the contro

versy.

2 In writing this chapter, I have freely availed myself of the spirited and masterly sketch of Becket's life by Dean Milman (Latin Christianity,

vol. iii.), of the more elaborate researches of Canons Robertson and Morris, of the almost exhaustive article by Professor Stanley on "The Murder of Becket," and of an article in the Dublin Review, No. 97, “St. Thomas at Battle Abbey." It is to be hoped that the lives and letters of Becket and his correspondents will before long find a careful and competent editor.

L L

CHAPTER XXX.

THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND.

EARLY IRISH CIVILIZATION AND POLITY. ENGLISH SCHEMES OF CONQUEST. DIARMAID MAC-MURTAGH. FIRST INVASION UNDER FITZ-STEPHEN. SECOND INVasion under STRONGBOW. HENRY RECALLS HIS SUBJECTS. STRONGBOW'S DIFFICULTIES. SIEGE OF DUBLIN. HENRY'S VISIT TO IRELAND. CHURCH REFORMS AND TERRITORIAL CHANGES. TREATY WITH RODERIC O'Connor.

TH

HE conquest of Ireland is among the most important episodes in the reign of Henry II. Placed at the extremity of Europe, Ireland, by a fatal fortune, was free when the world was enslaved by Rome, and learned and pious while the Saxons of England were pagan and barbarous. The legends of Welsh conquest in the island must probably be reduced to one or two successful landings on the coast;' but they indicate a connection between the two shores of St. George's Channel, which was often interrupted and as constantly renewed. During the Roman dominion there are traces that Druidism retreated to Ireland as to a last stronghold, and the sacred fire of St. Bridget's chapel and rocking-stones and giants' rings remained almost undisturbed till the time of its English conquerors. In the middle of the fifth century, St. Patrick commenced the preaching of Christianity by lighting forbidden fires on the sacred altar of Tara; and the seers foretold that

1 Bran the Blessed. Mabinogion, vol. iii.

IRISH ARTS AND MECHANICS. ·

515

the flame so kindled, if not extinguished that night, would burn for ever. The triumph of Christianity brought with it the learning and civilization of Rome,1 and Romans or Romanized citizens of Britain, fugitives from the Saxon conquest, crossed over into the island where their faith was a bond of union and their lives secure. The missionaries Columba and Gall, the geographer Dicuin, the thinker Scotus Erigena, and the historian Marianus Scotus, illustrated their country by names of European celebrity. An Irish divine was called in by the married clergy of England to plead for them at the synod of Calne, and his eloquence over-matched Dunstan's authority. The school of Glastonbury was an Irish colony, and the native school of Banchor is said to have numbered three thousand scholars in the eighth century. Northumbrian scholars, one of them afterwards a king, flocked to the sacred island, and devoted years to study under its great masters. Side by side with this literary eminence went a certain progress in the arts. Stone buildings, cemented with lime, became increasingly common after the fifth century.3 The famous round towers, which belong to the transitional period between Roman and Gothic art, and served as belfries, lighthouses, and towers of defence, show that the theory of construction had advanced beyond its mechanical appliances. Their symmetry is perfect; but the courses of rough stones which compose the most ancient have evidently owed little to the mason; their very form is probably due to the

1 Petrie's Round Towers, pp. 137-9.

2 Bede, H. E., lib. iii. c. 27; lib. v. c. 10. Vita S. Cudbercti, c. 24. The insulæ Scotorum in which Ald

2

the neighbouring isles; but the Irish poem, Prince Aldfrid's Itinerary, is some evidence of a tradition that he visited Ireland. Mangan's Poems,

p. 379.

frid studied might be only Iona and 3 Petrie's Round Towers, p. 158,&c.