The Conquering Family

by Thomas B. Costain

  Thou hast communicated unto us, our very dear son in Jesus Christ, that thou wouldst enter the island of Hibernia, to subdue that people to the yoke of the laws, to root out from among them the seeds of vice, and also to procure to payment there to the blessed apostle Peter of the annual pension of a penny for each house. Granting to this thy laudable and pious desire the favor which it merits, we hold it acceptable that, for the extension of the limits of the holy church, the propagation of the Christian religion, the correction of morals, and the sowing of the seeds of virtue, thou make thy entrance into that island, and there execute, at thy discretion, whatever thou think proper for the honor of God and the salvation of the country. And that the people of that country receive and honor thee as their sovereign lord and master, saving the rights of the churches which must remain untouched, and the annual pension of one penny per house due to the blessed Peter; for it is beyond a doubt, and has been acknowledged, that all the islands upon which Christ the sun of justice hath shone, and which have been taught the faith, belong of lawful right to St. Peter and the most holy and sacred church of Rome.

  If then thou think it fit to put in execution what thou hast conceived in thy thoughts, use thy endeavors to form that people in good morals, and let the church in that country, as well by thy own efforts as by those men of acknowledged sufficiency in faith and words and life, be adorned with new lustre. Let the true religion of Christ be planted there and increase. In a word, let everything which concerns the honor of God and the salvation of souls be, by thy prudence, so ordered that thou shalt become worthy of obtaining in Heaven a reward everlasting, and upon earth a name illustrious and glorious in all ages.

  The morality of the King’s plea and the Pope’s compliance will be discussed later. Henry, as it happened, found himself too concerned with other matters to proceed with his designs on the sister island. The project languished for many years, and the Pope had been at rest for a decade in his red sarcophagus of Egyptian granite when Henry finally made a move.

  Adrian’s early death may have been due to the extraordinary difficulties which confronted him at every stage of his brief incumbency. It was a tired and unhappy man who closed his eyes on September 1, 1159, at Anagni.

  The only Englishman to wear the rochet and the red mozetta and to hold spiritual sway over the Christian world was a strong pope, but he could not be listed among the great men of the papacy. He was too much a product of his times for that. Adrian’s policy was that of Thomas à Becket, who died to elevate the Church above the authority of kings. Because of the Pope’s determination on that score, Arnold of Brescia’s body was burned and his ashes, the ashes of a great man, were consigned to the waters of the Tiber. This can be said for English Adrian, he was pure to the point of austerity and as free of personal corruption as any man who ever held the vast resources of the papacy in his hands. One of the charges hurled at Becket when he was Archbishop of Canterbury was that he had failed to do anything for the old mother of Adrian, who lived, long after her great son’s death, in unrelieved poverty in the small house in Abbots Langley where he had been born.

  An interesting speculation is raised by the early death of Adrian. If he had lived longer and had seen Henry’s ambitions mature, would he have been disposed to grant what was so clearly in the English King’s mind, though never expressed in word or the scratch of a paper, the creation of an empire of the west? Hail, Caesar! And if it had so come about, where would the new emperor have established himself in a capital city? London, Rouen, Bordeaux? It would almost certainly have been London, for that city always had capacity for greatness.

  CHAPTER IV

  The King and the Archbishop

  GILBERT BECKET was not a Norman soldier who went on the First Crusade and married a Saracen princess, as many early historians asserted, nor was he a dull Saxon merchant who sent his son Thomas to France to acquire the education and manners of a Norman, as others have contended. The truth lies between. Gilbert Becket was a London merchant of Norman birth who married a Caen woman named Rohaise and became quite wealthy. He was rich enough, in fact, to have a fine solar apartment in his house in West Chepe, containing a bed of the very new tester type, with a most convenient canopy, on top of which blankets and sheets and pillows could be stored. He owned other property within the walls and he founded a chapel in the churchyard at St. Paul’s, originally, perhaps, a chantry.

  They were devout people, the Beckets, and on each birthday of her only son, Madame Rohaise made a ceremony of weighing him and then sending to the poor the equivalent of his weight in food, clothing, and money. This quickly became a costly charity, for Thomas of the Snipe grew rapidly. He kept growing until he had reached his reputed six feet, which would make him one of the tallest men in England. The handsome youth was sent to the fashionable priory of Merton and then to Oxford. Then he returned to London, where he was occupied for a few years in business, and it was during this London phase that the Archbishop of Canterbury, good old Theobald, a friend of the family, took serious notice of him. The primate had made a practice of keeping about him a circle of promising young men for service in the Church, and Thomas à Becket became immediately the one for whom the highest hopes were entertained. Believing that his prodigy needed the advantages of a legal education, Theobald sent him to Paris and Bologna, where he gained a thorough grounding in both canon and secular law. He came back a polished man of the world, a convincing talker, a diplomat of great charm, and the possessor of a keen and active mind. The archbishop now took him into his own organization, making him Archdeacon of Canterbury and provost of Beverley. A deacon’s degree sufficed for these posts, but it was understood that later he would take holy orders. Certain other benefices were given him, and he began to enjoy a quite considerable income.

  His first chance to show his full capacity came when Theobald sent him to Rome on a secret mission to Pope Eugenius. Stephen was King and trying every means to have his son Eustace declared his successor. Becket’s instructions were to convince the Pope that to do this would be to perpetuate the division in England and that, apart from the political issues involved, Matilda’s son Henry gave great promise of developing into a wise ruler while Eustace gave very little. It appears that the tall young Becket handled this delicate mission with much discretion and address and succeeded in persuading Eugenius that papal influence should be thrown quietly to the Angevin succession. Young Henry did not know at the time that such skilled advocacy was being exerted in his behalf, but he heard of it later. The success of Becket’s diplomacy had something to do, of course, with the favorable impression he made on Henry at their first meeting, and it certainly was a factor in his selection for the post of chancellor.

  The chancellors in the past had been members of the Curia Regis, acting in the capacity of legal advisers. They had superintended the work of the clerical staff around the King; they presided at “the trial of the pyx,” when the accuracy of new mintings was decided by a panel of London silversmiths; they were custodians of the Great Seal. The post took on a fresh importance and significance, however, from the moment that Thomas à Becket stepped into it. The era he inaugurated amazed the men about the King, accustomed to the old ways. The chancellery had been quiet enough: two guards with bared pikes at the entrance; a long and drafty hall in which churchmen were certain to be encountered, walking sedately and talking in low tones; a few open doors into small stone apartments where clerks could be seen at work; an anteroom filled with the usual sour-faced petitioners.

  Becket’s staff grew so quickly that he soon had fifty-two clerks. How they were disposed of is a mystery. There had been no enlargement of the Westminster facilities when Henry I put government on a businesslike basis, nor had there been any since. It can only be assumed that in the Becket period the small stone apartments had three or four occupants instead of the customary one and that the anteroom was taken over for clerical work, driving the sour-faced petitioners to waiting in the long hall. The chancellery, as all recor
ds agree, became a hive of industry, and the chancellor himself was the busiest man there. He saw visitors without delay, sometimes walking along the line and pausing for a few words with each, disposing of their concerns fairly as well as quickly. He wrote scores of letters each day; he was always in attendance at the Curia Regis; he always had time for long consultations with the King.

  Henry was delighted with the change which had come about. This hum of activity, this furious driving of quills in the hands of competent scriveners meant that the work of all the earls and sheriffs throughout the kingdom was being supervised and corrected. No corner of the country, he knew, was now unwatched. This was government as he understood it, as he wanted it.

  That a new star on the political horizon had arisen was soon recognized by everyone with the results that might be expected. People went to great pains to make the acquaintance of the new chancellor. His table was frequented by the great nobles and courtiers. More and more the young men of his staff were driven to the extreme ends of the table. Thomas à Becket never sat down to meat without a large company, and he saw to it that his guests were well fed. The fancy era in cooking had begun which was to reach its peak a century later in the fantastic embellishments of the great French royal cook, Taillevent. There were carvers at the chancellor’s side tables to baste the joints with the rare spices now coming from the East and with rose water and sauces of onion and young leeks before they were carried along the tables. One writer of the day asserts that a hundred shillings was paid on one occasion by the chancellor for a dish of eels from across the Channel, but this is one of the absurd exaggerations which are often copied and believed. One hundred shillings was a very considerable amount, enough to set a man up in the fishmongering trade with warehouse and kiddles to catch fish in the Thames.

  The new power in the kingdom generally appeared at table in a super-tunic of a deep wine shade which had no suggestion of the clerical about it. He wore a long gold chain around his neck and a girdle of gold links with a sapphire in the clasp. He was abstemious about food and so had plenty of opportunity to talk. His conversation was lively and diverting, and it is said that he never had a guest who failed to fall under his spell.

  Henry had become so fond of his new minister that he would often drop in for supper after an afternoon’s hunting. He would ride his horse right into the hall, bring it up sharply with jingling of accouterments and stamping of hoofs, spring from the saddle, and then vault across the table, to take the seat always reserved for him beside the chancellor. He was hungry, he would boom in his deep voice, hungry for food and good talk. He would get both in as much quantity as he desired. The young King never tired of the talk of Becket, which was sometimes witty and entertaining, sometimes contentious, always wise and discerning. The supper would last well into the evening, neither the King nor the chancellor drinking much but monopolizing the conversation between them with a cross fire of question and answer, a verbal jousting with some of the impact of tipped lances; while the other guests, often men of the highest degree and the deepest pride, listened and had nothing to say but drank a great deal.

  The minds of Henry and his new minister met on common ground so far as the problems of administration were concerned. But Becket had mental resources which the young King lacked and willingly conceded: a subtlety in reasoning, an ingenuity which led to unusual improvisation in ways and means. He could think of new methods of arriving at a desired result which surprised and delighted the King.

  There seemed no limit to the qualifications of the merchant’s son who was now recognized as a power behind the once all-sufficient throne. When Henry took an army into the south of France to substantiate his claim as overlord of Toulouse, a most imposing army with the King of Scotland and a prince of Wales in his train, Becket led a company of seven hundred knights, organized and equipped at his own expense. There were four thousand foot soldiers in the troop, the best-trained body of men in the whole army. The semi-clerical chancellor showed himself an amazingly fine soldier, surprising everyone without a doubt. He was supreme in the tilting grounds; he led his men through the first breach in the walls; he displayed the strategic sense of a great captain. It should be added that among the seven hundred knights in his train was a certain Reginald Fitzurse, who was as Norman in appearance and temperament as his name—dark of eye and long of nose, almost passionately resolute, and with a furious temper. There is no reason to suppose that the chancellor paid any more attention to the touchy, black-a-vised Fitzurse (of whom there will be much to tell later) than to any of the rest. It is quite probable that the young knight would have remained in his service if he had not given up the chancellery for a higher post.

  When it was found that Louis of France, caught off guard by the English move on Toulouse, had thrown himself into that city with a few knights only, Henry hesitated to make an attack, because on French soil the King of France was his suzerain. Becket, more realistic about it than the usually hardheaded King, contended that Louis had entered Toulouse in an obvious effort to thwart English plans. He believed the city should be stormed as first intended. For once Henry did not follow his minister’s advice and he regretted it later, for he did not accomplish what he had set out to do in this expensive southern foray.

  The chancellor’s household became even more splendid after the return to England. He had kept all his clerical posts and the stipends thereof, and the funds of empty bishoprics passed through his hands. Henry, as plain and unpretentious as the shabby shoes he wore, wanted no such pomp himself, but he did not object to the way Becket displayed his wealth and importance. Sometimes he made a jest of it. One winter night they were riding together through London and passed a beggar who whined for help. Henry looked at Thomas à Becket riding a few feet behind him and most handsomely wrapped up in a cloak with ermine lining. He grinned delightedly. The poor man was in bad stead, he declared, lacking a cloak on such a night. Should not his gossip Thomas, who had many cloaks, give the beggar the one he happened to be wearing? The chancellor made a facetious reply, something to the effect that to give such a cloak to this lousy scamp would be as unfitting as to transfer the doors of Canterbury to a London spitalhouse. Henry then reached out and tried to take the cloak from his shoulders. Becket resisted. The pair of them wrestled and tussled in their saddles, roaring with delight the while. The King won, of course, and the fine cloak was handed over to the shivering and probably frightened beggar. Later Henry saw to it that a new cloak, quite as grand and sumptuous, was sent to the chancellery. How the beggar disposed of this embarrassing largesse was never discovered.

  Becket’s magnificence and his sense of showmanship reached a peak when he was sent to France to negotiate a marriage between Prince Henry and Marguerite, daughter of Louis of France by his second marriage. The princess was seven at the time and the English heir a little older. The chancellor had two hundred horsemen in his train and eight wagons drawn by double teams of gaily caparisoned horses. One of the wagons was fitted up as a traveling kitchen, one as a chapel; two contained ale to be distributed wherever they went; the rest were used for the plate and the costumes of the party. There were singing boys to lead the procession, and pack horses with monkeys in the saddles, and all manner of devices to attract attention. In town and village the same question was always asked: Who was this great man making a journey in such state? They were told it was a very great and wealthy and powerful man who, nevertheless, was servant to the King of England.

  Henry was delighted. He knew that such display gave Europe an appreciation of his importance. Unwilling to indulge in such capers himself, he was happy there was someone to do it so well for him.

  Becket was soon on the best of terms with Louis of France, and the negotiations for the marriage were concluded without difficulty. The princess, according to the custom of the day, was to be educated in England. When she arrived in London shortly thereafter, she and the prince were placed in the chancellery so that Thomas à Becket could act as tutor to them. Th
e heir to the throne and the stranger from France developed an affection for him which nothing could change, not even the tragic differences which developed later. The princess in particular was so attached to him that when her young husband was crowned King of England by his father while Becket was in France after his breach with Henry, she refused to be crowned at the same time because her beloved master could not officiate. She spoke continually of how understanding he had been when she first arrived, a small and very frightened girl in a strange land, and how patiently he guided her somewhat unwilling feet in the path of knowledge. His life was a continuous mystery to her, for he never seemed to have time for sleep. When he did slumber, it was not in his imposing bed but on the hard boards of the floor beside it. Here is evidence that even in his most ostentatious stage the ascetic in him was beginning to assert itself.

  In the year 1162 an event occurred which was to end the amity and the perfect teaming of Henry the King and his most useful and versatile servant. Theobald died and, without a doubt, was translated to the very special share of heaven reserved for the rare men who succeed in living saintly lives in high office. A successor now had to be found.

  Henry had made up his mind in this matter long before. He had followed an aggressive policy in any clash between Church and State, and Becket had never failed to range himself on the side of kingly authority. To make his chancellor archbishop as well seemed to him a shrewd stroke, assuring himself of leadership in the Church in sympathy with his own desires and designs. He lost no time in letting the merchant’s son know what was in his mind.

  The King was in Normandy, and Becket had made one of his periodic visits, probably to discuss the situation created by the death of Theobald. Henry drew the chancellor aside and told him what he desired. Becket was wearing a crimson dalmatic over his shoulders, an unusually handsome garment. He laughed and extended his arm to show the pearls embroidered in the cuff.