COUNCIL OF NORTHAMPTON.

361

to the exchequer, unless the crown should content itself with a fine.1 This decision is said to have been chiefly due to the bishops; it involved Becket in great difficulty, as he could not mortgage or sell the lands of his see; had his offence been adjudged to be simple contempt of court, he might, by the custom of Kent, where his manors lay, have compounded for a fine of forty shillings. Accordingly, when the king proceeded to reclaim moneys which he said were due from Becket's chancellorship, the archbishop had to find sureties. Even these were of no use, when he was called to account for the revenues of benefices that had fallen vacant during his term of office; their value reached the enormous sum of thirty thousand marks. It is not easy to understand how far these claims were warrantable; but Becket's old intimacy with the king, and lavish habits of expense, make it probable that he had often been allowed to use the royal income as his own. When he resigned the chancellorship, he had provided against the danger of being called to account, by obtaining a formal quittance from the grand justiciary. This was now pleaded, but not with complete success; perhaps it was not held to include private debts. But the king did not want to extort money; he refused an offer of two thousand marks in Becket's behalf from Henry of Winchester; the object of all these measures was to force Becket to resign his office. Almost all the lords, spiritual and temporal, sided with the king; even those who, like Foliot, had been ready to withstand the constitutions of Clarendon, now accepted them as a fact, and were indignant at the primate's breach of promise. On the 7th and last day of the council (October 13th), Becket, having celebrated the mass for St. Stephen's day, entered the king's hall, bearing his own cross. The act was understood as defiance. "Lo," said Foliot, "if the king should draw his sword, prince and prelate would be properly armed," and he vainly tried to persuade Becket to lay it down. Roger of York, now legate,

1 "Non deberent eum condemnâsse ad misericordiam regis, in pœnam pecuniariam omnium rerum mobilium."-Fitz-Stephen, Vitæ Beck., vol. i., p. 230.

362

THE PRIMATE RECEIVES SENTENCE.

swept insultingly through the hall with a rival crozier borne before him; the spears, as it were, were crossed. It was now impossible for the king, had he wished it, to recede. He learned that Becket had forbidden his suffragans to take any further part in the council, and appealed to the pope. The primate was questioned, admitted and renewed the appeal. Yet Henry excused the bishops from giving sentence on their chief. Headed by Hilary of Chichester, they passed from the council-chamber to the hall, and told the archbishop that they considered him perjured, renounced their obedience, and appealed against him to the pope. Becket answered that an oath against conscience and right was not binding. Presently, the venerable and pious earl of Leicester came in at the head of a procession to pronounce the sentence of the barons. Becket would not listen to him. "What will ye do? Have ye come to judge me? ye haye no right. A judgement is the decision of a suit; I have put in no pleadings to-day. I was only summoned here in the case of John the Marshal. Moreover, I am your father; ye are laymen. I will not listen to your sentence. I appeal to the pope." Presently raising his crozier, Becket moved to the door amid a storm of curses and taunts, "traitor, perjured one," from the knights present. The hot spirit flashed out: "If I might bear arms, De Broc, I would soon prove you liar in single combat;" and he bandied foul names with the fiercest of his enemies. It was a clamour as of a city on fire, till the king sent orders that he should depart in peace, and commissioned a herald to attend him. The people in the streets were for church against king; they fell on their knees and implored the primate's blessing. His household were wiser in their generation; forty clergymen, and many knights and squires, left his service that day.

1 Only one of his biographers records the foul names.—Will. Cant., Vitæ Beck., vol. ii., p. 13. Garnier says (p. 68), "The holy man said not a word." But even Garnier admits that he had addressed the archbishop of York with "Get thee behind me, Satan," and Becket's habitual use of bad language is notorious. Nothing can well be worse than calling his archdeacon "archidiabolus" (Epist 15), or Tracy "leno."-Grim, Vita Beck., vol. i., p. 76.

BECKET'S FLIGHT TO FRANCE.

363

Becket now considered his life in danger, and contrived, in the course of the next three weeks, to escape to the continent. It soon appeared that he had not miscalculated where his strength lay. He was cordially and respectfully welcomed by the king of France, who was at once superstitious and jealous of Henry's power. The pope, then resident at Sens, received Becket as a sufferer in the cause of the church; declared that the constitutions were mostly intolerable; refused to accept his proffered resignation, and consigned him to Pontigny, a Cistercian monastery some twelve leagues off. Henry's envoys found popular feeling so strong in France that the bishops among them thought it better to sink their names and titles. They fared ill with the pope; Gilbert Foliot was sharply rebuked for using strong language; and Hilary of Chichester derided for his barbarous Latin. Nevertheless, Alexander temporized. He did not care to break with the king of England while Barbarossa, at the head of the Roman empire, supported an anti-pope. Moreover, it was not the interest of any pope to strengthen a national church or its primate unduly. Nothing would be left to Rome if Canterbury became supreme in England. It is not the least service of the papacy to civilization that it saved Europe from national patriarchates, like the Russian, no less than from a feudal church establishment.

Henry was not daunted by the ill result of his embassy. The barons, the bishops, and the court clergy were with him. Becket once said that the king's advisers were more to blame than himself.1 De Lucy, the primate's old colleague and friend, had met him when he first set foot on the continent, and formally renounced the homage he owed him. But Henry had the ungovernable passions of a spoiled child, and ruined his own cause by violence. Public humanity was shocked by the exile of all the archbishop's kindred and servants; even pregnant women and the sick were driven from their homes in mid-winter. The exclusion of Becket's name from the public prayers, was even a greater outrage on the good feeling of the

1 Becket, Epist. 2.

364

THE YEARS OF EXILE.

twelfth century. But Henry did not spare Rome itself. He ordered that Peter's pence should be paid into the royal treasury and that all who brought in letters from the pope or the archbishop should be hanged, or set adrift on the sea. He seems, at the diet of Würzburg (1165 A.D.), to have held out conditional hopes of supporting the anti-pope. But the English barons, although fully prepared to assert the rights of the state against the church, would not have followed their king in a revolt against the lawful successor of St. Peter. Henry perceived his mistake, and forced his envoys to disclaim the overtures they had made.

Becket's exile lasted six years in all. The first two were passed at Pontigny in the practice of monastic austerities, and the study of canon law. His character became sterner; the sense of his own rights more intense; and the sentiment of burning indignation at his exile, and the treatment of his friends, more intolerable. Three times he cited the king to submit to his censure, the last time choosing a tattered, barefoot monk as his envoy. Henry answered with bitter contempt; but sent envoys to lodge an appeal while he was still in communion with the church. Becket now withdrew for a few days to Vézelay, on the borders of Burgundy. There, on Whit-Sunday, 1166 A.D., he anathematized the obnoxious constitutions; excommunicated his chief enemies, among them Foliot, and suspended the sentence over the king. A devoted emissary was found to deliver the sentence to Foliot at St. Paul's altar; but the bishop disregarded it till it was confirmed from Rome. Generally the excommunicated in England were supported by public feeling, and set the primate at defiance.1 The king drove him from Pontigny to Sens by a threat to confiscate all the Cistercian property. But the bishops had no resource except to appeal against their head to Rome, and work, by bribes and intrigues, among the curia. Even this resource failed in May, 1168 A.D., and the pope, who had sus

1 "Quod illi non evitantur, quos dominus Cantuariensis denuntiavit excommunicatos," &c.-Joan. Sarisb., Epist. 180.

FRUITLESS ATTEMPTS AT MEDIATION.

365

pended the censures, renewed them. A conference at Montmirail (January, 1169 A.D.,) offered a hope of peace; Becket had promised to concede; and actually declared his readiness to make every concession, "except so far as God's honour was concerned." The king asked him to define that elastic formula: did it mean as much obedience as the greatest of Becket's five predecessors had shown to the least of the kings they lived under? or should the traditional rights of church and state be decided by the evidence of a hundred men from England, and a hundred from Normandy and Anjou? Becket declined to bind himself by any limitations. The council broke up in disgust at his self-will and bad faith. But the people were still with him; they flocked to see the man "who would not for the sake of kings deny his God, or be silent as to his honour." Within three days, Henry, in a fit of passion, had violated his political treaty with Louis, and the king of France again espoused the archbishop's cause. Other events favoured Becket. Alexander III. was beginning to triumph over the emperor, and adopted a haughtier tone in his dealings with England. Repeated attempts at mediation by the papal legates failed. Once Henry insisted on inserting a conditional clause "saving the rights of my crown," to balance the primate's favourite formula, "saving the rights of my order." Then Becket declared that he could not return in safety without the king's kiss of peace. He even threatened to lay England under an interdict, and excommunicate the king. Henry retorted by issuing orders that all his subjects should abjure the archbishop and the pope; those who regarded the interdict were to be banished. This extremity was not reached, though several bishops, fearing the worst, took refuge in convents. Matters were complicated by the coronation of prince Henry during his father's life-time. He was crowned by the archbishop of York, without any oath to respect the liberties of the church, while the bishops, it was said, swore anew to observe the constitutions of Clarendon. Becket felt keenly the indigdeprived of its immemorial

nity to his see, which was thus