The Murder of Thomas Becket

In 1162 King Henry II of England gave the see of Canterbury to his chancellor, Thomas Becket. Within a year the two were at odds. The king wished clergy accused of theft, murder and other felonies to be tried and punished by lay judges like anyone else; the archbishop held that a cleric must be tried in the church’s court, and if convicted be stripped of his orders (Roger of Hoveden, Chronicle 1162–1163).

At Clarendon in January 1164 the king had the “customs” of the realm set down in sixteen articles. An accused cleric was to answer in the king’s court, and once convicted the church was not to protect him. No bishop might leave the kingdom without the king’s leave. No tenant of the crown might be excommunicated until the king had been consulted. Appeals were to go no further than the archbishop without the king’s consent. Bishops were to be elected in the king’s chapel with his assent and do him homage before consecration (Constitutions of Clarendon preamble and articles 3, 4, 7, 8, 12). Thomas first promised to observe the customs, then refused to put his seal to them and suspended himself from saying mass for having given way (Roger of Hoveden, Chronicle 1164). After a council at Northampton at which the king pressed him hard, he left by night in disguise, crossed from Sandwich to Flanders and went on to France (Roger of Hoveden, Chronicle 1165).

He was in his sixth year of exile when, in June 1170, Henry had his son Henry crowned by the archbishop of York, a rite that belonged to Canterbury. At Thomas’s complaint Pope Alexander III excommunicated or suspended the bishops who had taken part. Peace was then made between king and archbishop, and Thomas returned by Sandwich to a tearful welcome from his monks (Roger of Hoveden, Chronicle 1170).

He had been back less than a month when four knights came to Canterbury (Roger of Hoveden, Chronicle 1171). Edward Grim, a clerk who stood beside him, tells what happened. The knights followed the archbishop into the cathedral with drawn swords while the monks were singing vespers. Thomas forbade the doors to be barred, saying that a church must not be made a fortress. When they shouted for the traitor no one answered; when they called for the archbishop he came down the steps and said that he was there, no traitor to the king but a priest. They demanded that he absolve those he had excommunicated; he refused. They tried to drag him outside and could not move him from a pillar. The first blow cut into his head and through Grim’s arm, which was raised to shield him; at the third he fell to his knees, saying that he was ready to die for the name of Jesus and the protection of the church; another stroke took off the crown of his head and broke the sword on the pavement (Edward Grim, Life of Thomas 80–82).

Hoveden reports miracles at the tomb and far beyond it (Roger of Hoveden, Chronicle 1171). In 1172 Henry swore before papal legates at Avranches that he had neither ordered nor wished the death, and promised to allow appeals to Rome and to abolish the customs introduced in his time to the harm of the church (Roger of Hoveden, Chronicle 1172). In July 1174 he walked barefoot to the tomb, was scourged there by bishops and monks, and kept vigil through the night (Roger of Hoveden, Chronicle 1174).