BECKET, Thomas, lord chancellor of England, and archbishop of Canterbury, in the twelfth century. The story of his birth is as extraordinary as that of his life. It is related that his father Gilbert Becket, some time sheriff of London, went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where being surprised and enslaved by a party of Saracens, his master’s daughter fell in love with him, and, when he made his escape, followed him to London. So singular an instance of heroic affection made a deep impression on his mind; so, after consulting with some bishops, he had her baptized by the name of Matilda, and then married her; and from this marriage sprung the haughty Thomas Becket. Raised to the primacy, the latter began the dispute between die crown and the tiara, and sided with the pope in the quarrel. At this King Henry II. was greatly offended; and convoking an assembly of the bishops at Westminster, offered six articles against papal encroachments, to which he urged Becket to assent. Yielding to the importunities of several lords, Becket signed the articles; but speedily relapsing into his former opinions he was ordered to be tried as a traitor; upon which he fled into Flanders. The king lost no time in banishing all his relations, and Becket retaliated by excommunicating all his opponents. At last, after seven years spent in unavailing hostility, he was, by the intercession of the French king and the pope, allowed to return; but he peremptorily refused to absolve the bishops and others whom he had excommunicated; upon which the king, enraged at his obstinacy, exclaimed, that he was an unhappy prince, who maintained a great number of lazy insignificant persons about him, none of whom had gratitude or spirit enough to revenge him on a single insolent prelate, who gave him so much disturbance.” The deadly hint was understood; and four gentlemen, or rather ruffians, of the court, immediately formed a design against the archbishop’s life; which they executed in the cathedral church of Canterbury, on the 29th of December 1171. Superstitiously afraid of polluting the sanctuary with blood, more especially with that of a mitred priest, they endeavoured to drag him out of the church; but finding they could not effect this without difficulty, they killed him at the altar. Afraid they had gone too far in violating the sanctity of the church, the assassins durst not return to the king s court at Normandy, but retired to Knaresborough ln Yorkshire, where everybody avoided their company; scarcely any one, however low, deigning to eat or drink wit h them. Finding the curse of murder pursue them, they at length took a voyage to Rome, and being admitted to penance by Pope Alexander III. set out for Jerusalem, where, according to the pope’s orders, they spent the remainder of their lives in penitential austerities. They died in the Black Mountain, and were buried at Jerusalem, outside the door of the church belonging to the Templars. King Henry affected to be much disturbed at the news of Becket’s death, and dispatched an embassy to Rome to clear himself from the imputation of having caused or suggested it. The celebration of divine offices was discontinued in the church of Canterbury for a year, deducting nine days; at the end of which period it was reconsecrated by order of the pope. Two years after this Becket was canonized; and Henry returning to England the ensuing year, went to Canterbury, where he did penance in testimony of his regret for the murder of Becket. When he came within sight of the church where the archbishop lay buried, he alighted from his horse, and walked barefooted in the habit of a pilgrim till he came to Becket’s tomb, where, after he had prostrated himself and prayed for a considerable time, he submitted to be scourged by the monks, and passed all that day and night without any refreshment, kneeling upon the bare stones. In 1221, fifty years after the murder, Becket’s body was disinterred in the presence of King Henry III., and a great concourse of the nobility and others, and deposited in a rich shrine, erected at the expense of Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, which was soon visited from all parts, and enriched with the most costly gifts and offerings; and the miracles said to have been wrought at the tomb of the saint were so numerous that Gervase of Canterbury tells us two large volumes kept in the cathedral church were filled with accounts of them. The monks used to raise his body every year; and the day on which this annual resurrection was performed, being called the “day of his translation,” was kept as a general holyday. Every fiftieth year a jubilee was celebrated in his honour, which lasted fifteen days; plenary indulgences were then granted to all who visited his tomb; and 100,000 pilgrims were registered at a time in Canterbury: The worship of the saint in that city indeed had quite effaced the adoration of the Deity, nay, even that of the Virgin. At God’s altar, for instance, there were offered in one year only L.3. 2s. 6d.; at the Virgin’s L.63. 5s. 6d.; but at St Thomas’s, L.832. 12s. 3d. And next year the disproportion was still greater; for at God’s altar not a penny was offered; the Virgin’s obtained only L.4. Is. 8d.; while St Thomas got for his share L.954. 6s. 3d. ;—a large sum, if the value of money in those times be considered, and a correspondingly strong proof of the hold which superstition then possessed over men’s minds. Even Louis VII. of France made a pilgrimage to this miraculous tomb, and bestowed on the shrine a jewel which was esteemed the richest in Christendom. But Henry VIII., to whom a saint of so high character was naturally very obnoxious, not only pillaged the rich shrine dedicated to St Thomas, but caused the saint himself to be cited to appear in court, and to be tried and condemned as a traitor; at the same time ordering his name to be struck out of the calendar, the office for his festival to be expunged from all breviaries, and his bones to be burnt, and the ashes thrown in the air. Becket was the subject of poetical legends; and The Lives of the Saints in verse, a manuscript which is supposed to belong to the fourteenth century, contains an account of his martyrdom and translation. We also learn from Peter de Blois that the palace of Becket was perpetually filled with bishops highly accomplished in literature, who passed their time there in reading, disputing, and deciding important questions relating to the state. “These prelates, though men of the world, were a society of scholars; yet very different from those who frequented the universities, in which nothing was taught but words and syllables, unprofitable subtilties, elementary speculations, and trifling distinctions.
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De Blois was himself eminently lcarned, and one of the most distinguished ornaments of Becket’s attendants. We know that John of Salisbury, his intimate friend, the companion of his exile, and the writer of his life, was scarcely exceeded by any man of his time for his knowledge in philological and polite literature.”