by Simon Schama
In England there were two flashpoints: first, whether bishops had the authority to excommunicate royal officials or nobles without first consulting the king; second, whether the clergy could be judged by the king’s courts and whether, if so judged, they could appeal to Rome. Both of these issues boiled down to one critical matter, which cut to the heart of sovereignty. Was the Church an institution of the realm or was it, by virtue of its ministry, separate from it? For Henry II the answer was straightforward. Just as the long years of civil strife had given local barons the occasion to usurp or ignore the king’s law, so too the Church had taken advantage of a power vacuum to assert a greater degree of immunity from royal law than had been the case under the earlier Normans or, indeed, the Saxon kings. Under his Norman ancestors, Henry learned, bishops had been required to swear homage to the Crown prior to, and as a condition of, their investiture. That was the old way and, he supposed, the right way.
By making Becket Archbishop of Canterbury (over much muttering of disapproval among the clergy) Henry evidently believed that he would be able to depend on someone who would share his view of the subordinate relationship of Church to state. But a story was told of Becket’s own premonition of what might actually happen. Recovering from sickness in France, he was playing chess when an old friend informed him that he was being spoken of as the next Primate. After some jokey banter Becket turned serious, saying that he knew of three poor priests he would rather see elevated: ‘for if it should come about that I am promoted I know the king too well, indeed inside out, [not to] realize that I would either have to lose his favour or, God forbid, neglect my duty to the Almighty.’
Outwardly, it seemed as if little had changed. The archbishop’s table was as heavily laden with fine food as the chancellor’s had been, and he surrounded himself as always with the bright young cosmopolitan scholars of the Church – the eruditi. At dinner there would be a reading and, afterwards, witty debate on the text. But all was not what it appeared. Becket ate none of the feast and beneath his grand garments he may have already begun to wear the hair shirt and monk’s habit that were found on his murdered body eight years later.
Once Becket began to oppose, in public, the king’s demands for a new tax, which was to be levied on barons and clergy alike, Henry saw with stunned disbelief that a mysterious transformation had taken place in his friend. That Becket had been (as he often reminded him) raised from the ranks of commoners by his special favour and now was repaying him with presumptuous opposition only added to his rage. The king found it especially difficult to understand Becket’s objections to his treating clerical malefactors like any other criminals. In royal courts rapists, thieves and murderers would have been executed or mutilated; in Church courts they were evicted from office or subject to a penance. The inequity of sentence struck Henry as a slight on his sovereignty and a fundamental violation of the premise of a common law: that all free subjects should be treated alike. To Becket, though, the efforts of royal prosecutors to re-open cases already judged in Church courts was the beginning of the end of the independence of the clergy and a failure to recognize that their ministry was not just another profession but a truly separate estate, ordained by God and accountable only to the successor of St Peter. In a series of cases Becket went out of his way to re-assert that autonomy, ruling in one case that priests should never face the death penalty.
The dispute came to a head at Henry’s hunting lodge at Clarendon near Salisbury. In January 1164 Henry summoned all the principal barons and earls, bishops and archbishops to an extraordinary royal council at which he demanded unconditional assent to what he called ‘the customs of the realm’ as they had been observed in the time of his grandfather, Henry I. Becket knew that this meant a formal affirmation that the clergy was, indeed, subject to royal jurisdiction. He had seen it coming and for months had been urging resistance. While he was getting an abusive roasting from the likes of the Earl of Leicester, his fellow clergy must have assumed that he would stay true to his word. Instead, and without warning, Becket caved in, leaving Gilbert Foliot, the learned Bishop of London, to complain, with understandable bitterness, that ‘only the leader fled the field’. But Becket then compounded his inconsistency by reverting to his original opposition. At Clarendon he had ordered general submission to the ‘Constitutions’ of the king, but he changed his mind days later when he looked at the details: the excommunication of royal officials was to be conditional on the king’s consent; the Crown was to control all communications between the English clergy and Rome; clerics who had been convicted in Church courts were to be re-arrested and re-tried in royal courts. Becket, finally, ordered all-out resistance. This didn’t mean that abbots donned chain-mail (although they certainly had it to wear if need be). The Church’s greatest weapon in these wars of the will was the threat of excommunication, a shut-down of spiritual services. There would be no more baptisms, weddings or deathbed absolutions; the ‘no Plantagenets or English need bother to apply’ sign would be posted at the gates of paradise.
For the moment, however, it was the state that could bring more obvious force to bear on the argument. When Becket tried to see the king at Woodstock, the doors were slammed in his face. Fearing the worst, he attempted to leave the country but was recognized by the sailors, who returned him to the shore and the king’s tender mercies. ‘Why do you want to leave?’ asked Henry. ‘Don’t you think the country is big enough to hold both of us?’ The king knew he had the upper hand. By attempting to flee without royal permission, Becket had already fallen foul of the law, but Henry brought him to trial at Northampton in October 1164 on two other charges: failing to answer a summons in a dispute over archiepiscopal lands and accusations of improper use of funds when he had been chancellor. The charges were deadly serious. If he were found guilty, the punishment would be the confiscation of all Becket’s personal and movable property. The bishops were in an even more frightening predicament. If they went against Becket they risked excommunication. But many of them, like Foliot, had never liked him in the first place and had not believed that he was the right choice for Canterbury. Why should they have to pay for his extravagance as chancellor or his erratic behaviour at Clarendon? So when Becket was seen on his way to court, dressed up in full archiepiscopal rig as the defender of the Church, carrying the great silver cross of Canterbury himself rather than have it borne by a cross-bearer, Foliot was incensed by the play-acting and tried, in vain, to seize it from him. Episcopal grappling ensued. ‘A fool he always was, and a fool he’ll always be,’ was the bishop’s judgement on the histrionic tomfoolery.
By the time Becket got to Northampton another very serious accusation had been added to the charges against him. In violation of the promises made at Clarendon he had attempted to appeal to the pope over the head of the king. This opened him to charges of treason, and at the trial Henry’s barons hardly minced their words, shouting ‘perjurer’ and ‘traitor’ at him, while Becket, for his part, gave as good as he got, replying ‘whoremonger’ and ‘bastard’ at the particular lords for whom the labels were most apt. Convicted on the charges, he was now in dire peril. But one of his most loyal followers, Herbert of Bosham, found a key to a normally locked gate. With no time to saddle two horses, Becket swung Herbert up on the saddle behind him and the two galloped away from captivity. For days they led the life of fugitives, changing disguises, sleeping behind altars in friendly churches, finally reaching the Channel. In November 1164 Becket and a small group of die-hard followers landed on the coast of Flanders; they were demoralized, penniless, exhausted and frightened at what they had done.
They ended up at the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, about 100 miles southeast of Paris. The undecorated white limestone of the church was a conscious choice to emphasize the austerity of the order, and it was a perfect place for Becket’s single-mindedness to harden, untroubled by the outside world’s need for compromise. His mind-set is vividly illustrated by the Bible that he commissioned at this time and that includes a
self-portrait set immediately below the figure of the enthroned Christ. He had Pope Alexander III send him a specially designed monk’s habit, and beneath it he wore a shirt of goat’s hair for maximum discomfort. Becket naturally assumed he would receive unequivocal support from Alexander, who was, after all, in much the same position as himself, having been evicted from Rome and forced into a French exile by a ferocious secular ruler, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who had appointed a more malleable antipope to the see of Rome. The snag was that in order to survive, Alexander was dependent on the goodwill and money of the kings of France – and England! So when a delegation of bishops (including Gilbert Foliot) came to see Alexander in Sens to put Henry’s case, he greeted them with calculated ambiguity: ‘I am happy [to hear] the king is so good. May God make him even better.’ And when Becket’s party denounced the Constitutions of Clarendon, he did no more than agree that they were indeed very shocking and very wicked.
Forced back on his own devices, Becket established at Pontigny what was, in effect, a government in exile, complete with his own pan-European spy network, his own letter-smugglers, who knew how to get through Henry’s blockade, and his own tireless department of propaganda. He was sustained, always, by his unwavering sense of righteousness. What better place than a Cistercian abbey, devoted to re-asserting the difference between the religious and the secular life, for Becket to reiterate his own impassioned belief that the English Church ought never to be a mere appendage of the Angevin state.
In England Henry peeled back the velvet glove from the mailed fist. Anyone who was reported as saying a good word for Becket risked, at the very least, banishment. Innocent relatives – nieces and nephews – were incriminated by family association and turned into exiles. Becket’s property was seized and handed over to the knight Ranulf de Broc as ‘steward’. This was a licence for de Broc to do what he wanted with the archbishop’s estates: his forests, his deer, his cellars and his rents. And by no means all the English clergy rallied to Becket’s support. The Bishops of London and York – Gilbert Foliot and Roger of Pont l’Évêque – remained bitter enemies, believing that Becket’s own vanity and egomania had needlessly destroyed a reasonable and pragmatic working relationship with the monarchy and had actually made it harder, not easier, to secure the proper liberties of the Church. To a solemn reproof from Becket, Foliot retorted witheringly that, in fleeing like a thief in the night from the consequences of his own erratic confrontations with the king, the archbishop had abandoned the ordinary clergy whom he purported to defend.
But in the cloisters of Pontigny Becket listened only to his own adamant convictions. Tired of the temporizing pope, on Whit Sunday 1166, after celebrating mass at the abbey of Vézelay, to general shock, not least the abbot’s, Becket ‘unsheathed the sword of the Church’ against those he named as its enemies, pronouncing anathema and excommunication on those who, like Ranulf de Broc, had created ‘tyranny’, perpetrated ‘heresy’ and had made off with the property of the Church. Henry II was conspicuously omitted from the list of the damned, but if by so doing Becket supposed he was leaving an opening for a rapprochement with the king, the sentences at Vezelay had the opposite effect. Henry now counter-threatened that all Cistercians would be expelled from his lands unless they evicted the treacherous archbishop forthwith. Tearfully, the abbot of Pontigny complied. In November 1166, discharging his followers, Becket settled into a Benedictine abbey at St-Colombe. Just before he moved, he dreamed that he was being murdered by a company of four knights.
Shaken by Becket’s independence and worried by its implications for his own relationship with Henry II, Pope Alexander was now stirred to action. Henry, he knew, had one crucial incentive for reconciliation. Obsessed by anxieties about the succession, the king had decided to take a leaf from Charlemagne’s ceremonial book and have his eldest son, Henry the Younger, crowned king of England at Westminster during his own lifetime. The premature coronation carried no implication of the senior king’s abdication. Rather, it was a pre-emptive device against disaffection and a way to bind all the nobles who would swear homage to the designated successor. But precisely because it was such an alien innovation, Henry needed the Archbishop of Canterbury to do the honours if the ritual was to have any semblance of legitimacy. For two years specially appointed papal legates shuffled back and forth between Henry’s travelling court and Becket. It was not rewarding work. Becket refused point-blank to concede that Henry was entitled to attempt to restore the customs of his grandfather’s time; Henry refused to abandon the Constitutions of Clarendon. Rebuffed on principles, the legatine diplomacy fell back on pragmatism. Neither side would be asked to abandon their convictions, only to be less intemperate about their expression. That way, Becket would restore peace to the realm, end his exile and have his property returned, and Henry would get his coronation.
In January 1169, in a wintry meadow at Montmirail, on the border between the kingdom of France and the Angevin lands, on the day after the feast of Epiphany – the feast of the kings – Henry and Becket met. The two former bosom companions turned deadly enemies had not seen each other for four years, since the archbishop’s traumatic arraignment at Northampton. Henry was now thirty-six, more manically energetic, acutely intelligent and explosively temperamental than ever. Becket was forty-eight, middle-aged by the standards of the Middle Ages. His beard was grey and his face lined, set in the flinty manner of the apostle of truth and justice he believed he was. The encounter had been scrupulously prepared. Becket had agreed not to say anything to upset the king, although as he approached the field where King Louis of France and Henry were astride their horses, conferring, Becket’s most die-hard follower, Herbert of Bosham, tugged his sleeve and urged fortitude, not reconciliation on him. Becket seemed, at first, to stick to the agreed script, falling to his knees before Henry, who raised him from the ground. The archbishop then announced: ‘I now submit the whole case between us to your clemency and judgement.’ But the general relief turned to horror when, after a meaningful pause, Becket added the words: ‘saving the honour of God.’ This meant, in effect, that Becket was ‘reserving my position on any matters concerning the Church’! It was Clarendon all over again: concession followed by contradiction. Louis VII and Henry were appalled and then livid, and Henry reverted to his own hard line, demanding assent to the ‘customs of the realm’. Becket duly refused. As dusk closed in and the crows gathered on the field, the archbishop was left alone with his righteousness.
If anything, after Montmirail Becket became more militant, passing sentences of excommunication on the Archbishop ofYork and the Bishop of London. He was convinced that, with the king reportedly still desperate to have his son crowned before he himself died (for no man knew when that might be), time was ultimately on his side. And sure enough, his toughness seemed to be paying off. Reports came back that Henry would agree to restore Becket’s title and property and drop the charges of chancellery corruption. Emboldened, Becket asked, finally, for the kiss of peace. Such medieval kisses were not given lightly, as airy cheek pecks. They were oaths of good faith. Your kiss was your bond. Asking for it implied unworthy suspicions. Henry balked. It was a kiss too many.
So when the two met again on 22 July 1170, in another grassy meadow, this time on the east bank of the Loire, near the village of Fréteval, there was, inevitably, a certain air of wariness along with the expectation that, this time, at last, an accord could be reached. Herbert of Bosham thought the site auspiciously beautiful; only later did he discover that it was known locally as ‘Traitor’s Field’. Henry and Thomas rode out to each other. The king removed his hat in greeting. The two men embraced and then sat for hours talking, the archbishop’s irritation with Henry increased by the chafing of his goat’s hair underwear. He had discovered that, tired of waiting, the king had gone ahead without him and in June 1170 had had his son crowned by the Archbishop of York (still under Becket’s anathema). For once, however, Henry bridled his own anger, and he agreed to Becket’s condi
tions and to treat his enemies as the king’s. When all the talking was done and Thomas appeared to have everything he wanted, a dam broke. A flood of tearful emotion swept through Becket, who dismounted and flung himself at the feet of the king’s horse. Henry, in turn, got off his own mount, walked to his old friend, took hold of him bodily, set one foot in the stirrups and hoisted him back into the saddle. He then rode Becket over to the royal tent, at the end of the field by the water, and announced that they were reconciled and that henceforth he would be a most kind and generous lord.
It seemed that nothing could now break the restoration of goodwill. But Becket found a way. When Henry, wanting to hold the moment in the palm of his hand for just a little longer, asked his old friend to ride further with him Becket declined, saying he needed to thank all those who had supported his cause in France. Then, when the king had pardoned Becket’s loyalists, including Herbert of Bosham, he asked Becket to reciprocate with a pardon for his own royal officers and was ungraciously refused. ‘It’s not the same,’ retorted the archbishop. This did not bode well. ‘If he chooses to love me,’ said one of the unpardoned knights, Geoffrey Ridel, ‘I’ll love him back. If he hates me, I’ll hate him.’ The sour aftertaste of Fréteval was not lost on Becket. He wrote pessimistically to the pope that he was returning to England, although whether to peace or punishment he could not surely say.
