A Child's History of England

by Dickens, Charles

  came over to England himself, after an absence of seven years. He

  was privately warned that it was dangerous to come, and that an

  ireful knight, named RANULF DE BROC, had threatened that he should

  not live to eat a loaf of bread in England; but he came.

  The common people received him well, and marched about with him in

  a soldierly way, armed with such rustic weapons as they could get.

  He tried to see the young prince who had once been his pupil, but

  was prevented. He hoped for some little support among the nobles

  and priests, but found none. He made the most of the peasants who

  attended him, and feasted them, and went from Canterbury to Harrowon-

  the-Hill, and from Harrow-on-the-Hill back to Canterbury, and on

  Christmas Day preached in the Cathedral there, and told the people

  in his sermon that he had come to die among them, and that it was

  likely he would be murdered. He had no fear, however - or, if he

  had any, he had much more obstinacy - for he, then and there,

  excommunicated three of his enemies, of whom Ranulf de Broc, the

  ireful knight, was one.

  As men in general had no fancy for being cursed, in their sitting

  and walking, and gaping and sneezing, and all the rest of it, it

  was very natural in the persons so freely excommunicated to

  complain to the King. It was equally natural in the King, who had

  hoped that this troublesome opponent was at last quieted, to fall

  into a mighty rage when he heard of these new affronts; and, on the

  Archbishop of York telling him that he never could hope for rest

  while Thomas a Becket lived, to cry out hastily before his court,

  'Have I no one here who will deliver me from this man?' There were

  four knights present, who, hearing the King's words, looked at one

  another, and went out.

  The names of these knights were REGINALD FITZURSE, WILLIAM TRACY,

  HUGH DE MORVILLE, and RICHARD BRITO; three of whom had been in the

  train of Thomas a Becket in the old days of his splendour. They

  rode away on horseback, in a very secret manner, and on the third

  day after Christmas Day arrived at Saltwood House, not far from

  Canterbury, which belonged to the family of Ranulf de Broc. They

  quietly collected some followers here, in case they should need

  any; and proceeding to Canterbury, suddenly appeared (the four

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  knights and twelve men) before the Archbishop, in his own house, at

  two o'clock in the afternoon. They neither bowed nor spoke, but

  sat down on the floor in silence, staring at the Archbishop.

  Thomas a Becket said, at length, 'What do you want?'

  'We want,' said Reginald Fitzurse, 'the excommunication taken from

  the Bishops, and you to answer for your offences to the King.'

  Thomas a Becket defiantly replied, that the power of the clergy was

  above the power of the King. That it was not for such men as they

  were, to threaten him. That if he were threatened by all the

  swords in England, he would never yield.

  'Then we will do more than threaten!' said the knights. And they

  went out with the twelve men, and put on their armour, and drew

  their shining swords, and came back.

  His servants, in the meantime, had shut up and barred the great

  gate of the palace. At first, the knights tried to shatter it with

  their battle-axes; but, being shown a window by which they could

  enter, they let the gate alone, and climbed in that way. While

  they were battering at the door, the attendants of Thomas a Becket

  had implored him to take refuge in the Cathedral; in which, as a

  sanctuary or sacred place, they thought the knights would dare to

  do no violent deed. He told them, again and again, that he would

  not stir. Hearing the distant voices of the monks singing the

  evening service, however, he said it was now his duty to attend,

  and therefore, and for no other reason, he would go.

  There was a near way between his Palace and the Cathedral, by some

  beautiful old cloisters which you may yet see. He went into the

  Cathedral, without any hurry, and having the Cross carried before

  him as usual. When he was safely there, his servants would have

  fastened the door, but he said NO! it was the house of God and not

  a fortress.

  As he spoke, the shadow of Reginald Fitzurse appeared in the

  Cathedral doorway, darkening the little light there was outside, on

  the dark winter evening. This knight said, in a strong voice,

  'Follow me, loyal servants of the King!' The rattle of the armour

  of the other knights echoed through the Cathedral, as they came

  clashing in.

  It was so dark, in the lofty aisles and among the stately pillars

  of the church, and there were so many hiding-places in the crypt

  below and in the narrow passages above, that Thomas a Becket might

  even at that pass have saved himself if he would. But he would

  not. He told the monks resolutely that he would not. And though

  they all dispersed and left him there with no other follower than

  EDWARD GRYME, his faithful cross-bearer, he was as firm then, as

  ever he had been in his life.

  The knights came on, through the darkness, making a terrible noise

  with their armed tread upon the stone pavement of the church.

  'Where is the traitor?' they cried out. He made no answer. But

  when they cried, 'Where is the Archbishop?' he said proudly, 'I am

  here!' and came out of the shade and stood before them.

  The knights had no desire to kill him, if they could rid the King

  and themselves of him by any other means. They told him he must

  either fly or go with them. He said he would do neither; and he

  threw William Tracy off with such force when he took hold of his

  sleeve, that Tracy reeled again. By his reproaches and his

  steadiness, he so incensed them, and exasperated their fierce

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  humour, that Reginald Fitzurse, whom he called by an ill name,

  said, 'Then die!' and struck at his head. But the faithful Edward

  Gryme put out his arm, and there received the main force of the

  blow, so that it only made his master bleed. Another voice from

  among the knights again called to Thomas a Becket to fly; but, with

  his blood running down his face, and his hands clasped, and his

  head bent, he commanded himself to God, and stood firm. Then they

  cruelly killed him close to the altar of St. Bennet; and his body

  fell upon the pavement, which was dirtied with his blood and

  brains.

  It is an awful thing to think of the murdered mortal, who had so

  showered his curses about, lying, all disfigured, in the church,

  where a few lamps here and there were but red specks on a pall of

  darkness; and to think of the guilty knights riding away on

  horseback, looking over their shoulders at the dim Cathedral, and

  remembering what they had left inside.

  PART THE SECOND

  WHEN the King heard how Thomas a Becket had lost his life in

  Canterbury Cathedral, through the ferocity of the four Knights, he

  was f
illed with dismay. Some have supposed that when the King

  spoke those hasty words, 'Have I no one here who will deliver me

  from this man?' he wished, and meant a Becket to be slain. But few

  things are more unlikely; for, besides that the King was not

  naturally cruel (though very passionate), he was wise, and must

  have known full well what any stupid man in his dominions must have

  known, namely, that such a murder would rouse the Pope and the

  whole Church against him.

  He sent respectful messengers to the Pope, to represent his

  innocence (except in having uttered the hasty words); and he swore

  solemnly and publicly to his innocence, and contrived in time to

  make his peace. As to the four guilty Knights, who fled into

  Yorkshire, and never again dared to show themselves at Court, the

  Pope excommunicated them; and they lived miserably for some time,

  shunned by all their countrymen. At last, they went humbly to

  Jerusalem as a penance, and there died and were buried.

  It happened, fortunately for the pacifying of the Pope, that an

  opportunity arose very soon after the murder of a Becket, for the

  King to declare his power in Ireland - which was an acceptable

  undertaking to the Pope, as the Irish, who had been converted to

  Christianity by one Patricius (otherwise Saint Patrick) long ago,

  before any Pope existed, considered that the Pope had nothing at

  all to do with them, or they with the Pope, and accordingly refused

  to pay him Peter's Pence, or that tax of a penny a house which I

  have elsewhere mentioned. The King's opportunity arose in this

  way.

  The Irish were, at that time, as barbarous a people as you can well

  imagine. They were continually quarrelling and fighting, cutting

  one another's throats, slicing one another's noses, burning one

  another's houses, carrying away one another's wives, and committing

  all sorts of violence. The country was divided into five kingdoms

  - DESMOND, THOMOND, CONNAUGHT, ULSTER, and LEINSTER - each governed

  by a separate King, of whom one claimed to be the chief of the

  rest. Now, one of these Kings, named DERMOND MAC MURROUGH (a wild

  kind of name, spelt in more than one wild kind of way), had carried

  off the wife of a friend of his, and concealed her on an island in

  a bog. The friend resenting this (though it was quite the custom

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  of the country), complained to the chief King, and, with the chief

  King's help, drove Dermond Mac Murrough out of his dominions.

  Dermond came over to England for revenge; and offered to hold his

  realm as a vassal of King Henry, if King Henry would help him to

  regain it. The King consented to these terms; but only assisted

  him, then, with what were called Letters Patent, authorising any

  English subjects who were so disposed, to enter into his service,

  and aid his cause.

  There was, at Bristol, a certain EARL RICHARD DE CLARE, called

  STRONGBOW; of no very good character; needy and desperate, and

  ready for anything that offered him a chance of improving his

  fortunes. There were, in South Wales, two other broken knights of

  the same good-for-nothing sort, called ROBERT FITZ-STEPHEN, and

  MAURICE FITZ-GERALD. These three, each with a small band of

  followers, took up Dermond's cause; and it was agreed that if it

  proved successful, Strongbow should marry Dermond's daughter EVA,

  and be declared his heir.

  The trained English followers of these knights were so superior in

  all the discipline of battle to the Irish, that they beat them

  against immense superiority of numbers. In one fight, early in the

  war, they cut off three hundred heads, and laid them before Mac

  Murrough; who turned them every one up with his hands, rejoicing,

  and, coming to one which was the head of a man whom he had much

  disliked, grasped it by the hair and ears, and tore off the nose

  and lips with his teeth. You may judge from this, what kind of a

  gentleman an Irish King in those times was. The captives, all

  through this war, were horribly treated; the victorious party

  making nothing of breaking their limbs, and casting them into the

  sea from the tops of high rocks. It was in the midst of the

  miseries and cruelties attendant on the taking of Waterford, where

  the dead lay piled in the streets, and the filthy gutters ran with

  blood, that Strongbow married Eva. An odious marriage-company

  those mounds of corpse's must have made, I think, and one quite

  worthy of the young lady's father.

  He died, after Waterford and Dublin had been taken, and various

  successes achieved; and Strongbow became King of Leinster. Now

  came King Henry's opportunity. To restrain the growing power of

  Strongbow, he himself repaired to Dublin, as Strongbow's Royal

  Master, and deprived him of his kingdom, but confirmed him in the

  enjoyment of great possessions. The King, then, holding state in

  Dublin, received the homage of nearly all the Irish Kings and

  Chiefs, and so came home again with a great addition to his

  reputation as Lord of Ireland, and with a new claim on the favour

  of the Pope. And now, their reconciliation was completed - more

  easily and mildly by the Pope, than the King might have expected, I

  think.

  At this period of his reign, when his troubles seemed so few and

  his prospects so bright, those domestic miseries began which

  gradually made the King the most unhappy of men, reduced his great

  spirit, wore away his health, and broke his heart.

  He had four sons. HENRY, now aged eighteen - his secret crowning

  of whom had given such offence to Thomas a Becket. RICHARD, aged

  sixteen; GEOFFREY, fifteen; and JOHN, his favourite, a young boy

  whom the courtiers named LACKLAND, because he had no inheritance,

  but to whom the King meant to give the Lordship of Ireland. All

  these misguided boys, in their turn, were unnatural sons to him,

  and unnatural brothers to each other. Prince Henry, stimulated by

  the French King, and by his bad mother, Queen Eleanor, began the

  undutiful history,

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  First, he demanded that his young wife, MARGARET, the French King's

  daughter, should be crowned as well as he. His father, the King,

  consented, and it was done. It was no sooner done, than he

  demanded to have a part of his father's dominions, during his

  father's life. This being refused, he made off from his father in

  the night, with his bad heart full of bitterness, and took refuge

  at the French King's Court. Within a day or two, his brothers

  Richard and Geoffrey followed. Their mother tried to join them -

  escaping in man's clothes - but she was seized by King Henry's men,

  and immured in prison, where she lay, deservedly, for sixteen

  years. Every day, however, some grasping English noblemen, to whom

  the King's protection of his people from their avarice and

  oppression had given offence, deserted him and joined the Princes.

  Every day he heard some fresh intelligence
of the Princes levying

  armies against him; of Prince Henry's wearing a crown before his

  own ambassadors at the French Court, and being called the Junior

  King of England; of all the Princes swearing never to make peace

  with him, their father, without the consent and approval of the

  Barons of France. But, with his fortitude and energy unshaken,

  King Henry met the shock of these disasters with a resolved and

  cheerful face. He called upon all Royal fathers who had sons, to

  help him, for his cause was theirs; he hired, out of his riches,

  twenty thousand men to fight the false French King, who stirred his

  own blood against him; and he carried on the war with such vigour,

  that Louis soon proposed a conference to treat for peace.

  The conference was held beneath an old wide-spreading green elmtree,

  upon a plain in France. It led to nothing. The war

  recommenced. Prince Richard began his fighting career, by leading

  an army against his father; but his father beat him and his army

  back; and thousands of his men would have rued the day in which

  they fought in such a wicked cause, had not the King received news

  of an invasion of England by the Scots, and promptly come home

  through a great storm to repress it. And whether he really began

  to fear that he suffered these troubles because a Becket had been

  murdered; or whether he wished to rise in the favour of the Pope,

  who had now declared a Becket to be a saint, or in the favour of

  his own people, of whom many believed that even a Becket's

  senseless tomb could work miracles, I don't know: but the King no

  sooner landed in England than he went straight to Canterbury; and

  when he came within sight of the distant Cathedral, he dismounted

  from his horse, took off his shoes, and walked with bare and

  bleeding feet to a Becket's grave. There, he lay down on the

  ground, lamenting, in the presence of many people; and by-and-by he

  went into the Chapter House, and, removing his clothes from his

  back and shoulders, submitted himself to be beaten with knotted

  cords (not beaten very hard, I dare say though) by eighty Priests,

  one after another. It chanced that on the very day when the King

  made this curious exhibition of himself, a complete victory was

  obtained over the Scots; which very much delighted the Priests, who

  said that it was won because of his great example of repentance.