God and My Right

by Alfred Duggan

  With the anti-Pope reigning in Rome under the protection of an army of Germans and Ghibellines, Pope Alexander, a refugee in France, summoned a Council to demonstrate to the world that the Kings of France and England still acknowledged his supremacy. In compliment to King Henry the Council met in his city of Tours, and of course the Bishops of England attended in full strength. When they were assembled they found nothing in particular to discuss; the object of the Council had been to prove that they would come when summoned. But since they were still in session on the first Sunday after Pentecost the Pope, as a graceful gesture, invited the learned Archbishop of Canterbury to preach before the assembled Doctors of Christendom on the first anniversary of his consecration.

  Thomas had never preached a sermon in his life, and he was not going to begin before the most critical audience in the world. He could prove a point of law, or argue in favour of a policy; but the graceful, empty flow of rhetoric expected on an occasion like this was beyond him. He refused politely but stubbornly. His refusal gave keen pleasure to certain lawyers whom he had defeated before the Curia. He wondered whether the invitation had been prompted by these rivals; or whether King Henry had suggested it, to remind his old friend that there were things he could not do.

  If Henry had in fact planned to make him look foolish it was a proof of continued friendship, the sort of prank young men play only on their intimates. The King’s visit to Canterbury last Palm Sunday had evidently been intended to demonstrate that the old intimacy still continued. It was unfortunate that a storm blew down all the decorations in the streets; wiseacres called it an evil omen, though the climate of England was explanation enough. They had walked together through pouring rain, and in one way the foul weather had been an advantage; Henry could wear the comfortable clothes he liked, instead of the splendid robes prepared for him by the Archbishop’s embroiderers.

  Henry had not mentioned the one awkward subject that lay between them. It was most unfortunate that the great heiress Isabel de Warenne, widow of King Stephen’s son, was unwilling to marry King Henry’s brother William, as her lord the King required of her. It was the King’s right to give heiresses in marriage and a son of Anjou was her peer in blood. All the same, in spite of the rules of feudal inheritance, Christian marriage demands the consent of the bride. Thomas had to intervene. Luckily he could find that affinity forbade her to marry that particular suitor, and no one had to bear witness in public that she hated the sight of the lord William of Anjou. William took his disappointment very hard, and some young knights of his mesnie swore revenge on the Archbishop. But the King allowed the matter to drop and their friendship remained unimpaired.

  Thomas was discovering that though the administration of his Province gave him plenty to do, his duties as first counsellor of the crown made it inadvisable for him to pass all his time at Canterbury. When next he met Henry, at the Parliament held at Woodstock, there was an unfortunate collision; just because the two rulers of England were becoming strangers to one another.

  The matter in dispute was unimportant, and the trouble would never have arisen if Henry, who spent most of his time on the Continent, had not lost touch with the public opinion of England.

  All over the country there were estates burdened with petty little dues, once the main livelihood of ancient Saxon Kings and now paid to the King of united England. These little taxes, a basket of eggs or a litter of piglets, were not worth sending to the Treasury at Winchester, so they were collected by the sheriff of the county. That gave the sheriff almost unlimited power to make himself a nuisance. He might collect his dues at inconvenient seasons, or he might harass landholders by endless suits in his shire-court. During the last century sensible Norman landholders had worked out a friendly compromise with their Norman sheriffs; each sheriff received an annual subsidy from the landholders in his shire, on the understanding that he would not bother them unreasonably.

  The arrangement was public, and as honest as could be expected in the fundamentally dishonest sphere of secular government. But Henry got it into his stubborn head that his sheriffs were intercepting a tax which should rightly go to the crown. He proposed to his magnates that the Sheriff’s Aid should be paid directly to the Exchequer.

  Thomas, sitting on the King’s left (for the Justiciar sat on his right), tried earnestly to break into the announcement; for he knew that when Henry had spoken in public it was very hard to make him admit he was mistaken. But he had not been given advance notice of the royal decision; the intimacy of the Chancellorship, when Henry talked over with him every public decision before he announced it, was gone for ever. All he could do was to catch the royal sleeve as the King sat down, and whisper in his ear while the Council watched in hostile silence. ‘Don’t you see?’ he whispered urgently. ‘These men must keep on the right side of the sheriff, or spend their lives as defendants in the courts. Of course every landholder subscribes to an annual present for the sheriff; if you take this Aid they will have to raise another subscription in addition. How do you think your sheriffs live? They get no wages, and yet men pay you large sums for the appointment. If you persist I must oppose you in open Council. Please, my dear Henry, withdraw your pronouncement at once.’

  The King shook his head angrily. By his own wit he had discovered this fraud; because Thomas, when Chancellor, had never spotted it, he now pretended it wasn’t a fraud after all. But Henry knew himself a grown man, free from tutelage; he would show the ungrateful Archbishop that he could get on very well without his advice.

  With a shrug of despair Thomas rose to his feet, to address the Council formally. None of the magnates approved of the King’s pronouncement, partly because it touched their pockets but even more because it seemed to be an innovation; and they were against all innovation, on principle. When they heard the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom they knew to be a learned lawyer, reminding them that by the ancient custom of the realm new taxes might not be imposed save with the unanimous consent of the magnates, they decided that to pay the Sheriff’s Aid to the Exchequer made it a new tax, and that certainly it lacked their consent. As Henry looked round the circle of stubborn faces he recalled that these men had a background of twenty years of civil war; if he flouted them they might take up their arms again. He announced that he had been persuaded by the learned Archbishop of Canterbury, and that the Sheriff’s Aid might continue to go where it would do most good.

  But that evening, at the feast which ended the Parliament, he allowed Thomas to see he had lost the King’s favour. There was no Angevin rage, no screams or writhing on the floor; cold and formal politeness, instead of warm intimacy, was the due of a clerk who had been raised from the gutter by a gracious lord, and after he had been promoted beyond his deserts, openly opposed him in council.

  In the autumn of 1163 the King toured the English midlands, before going oversea to keep Christmas in Rouen. Every day he rode forty or sixty miles, and wherever he passed he did strict and bloody justice. That was what the country expected from a King, and he enjoyed the esteem which it brought him; but his courtiers did not share his passion for order, and in his loneliness he thought with regret of his late Chancellor. Thomas had basely deserted him, and at Woodstock he had dared to speak openly in opposition. But he was the only colleague who had ever seen the importance of Henry’s work, who made the dull business of day-to-day administration an exciting and romantic sport. In addition he had been a good companion out hawking, and as Henry hawked in the watermeadows outside Northampton, where he would sleep that night, he missed him continuously.

  But a chance incident reminded him that he had a serious quarrel with the Archbishop. He noticed a new peregrine among the royal birds, and asked the cadger about it. At the answer, that she was one of the forfeited chattels of Canon Philip de Brois, his mind was flooded with his grievance.

  The sheriff of Bedford was convinced that Canon Philip de Brois had committed murder. He had done his duty in bringing the culprit to trial, and judgement and hanging sh
ould have followed immediately; for in practice no prisoner was acquitted if the sheriff considered him guilty. But the Archbishop of Canterbury had intervened, on the irrelevant ground that the prisoner, a clerk, was within the jurisdiction of the Church courts. The end of the matter was that Philip got away oversea, and though the King had seized his chattels there was still a murder unavenged, a blemish on the King’s Peace.

  Thomas was using his own judgement: that was the root of the trouble. It was a new experience for Henry, who had never been thwarted save by open foes against whom he could ride in arms. In the old days Thomas had never disagreed with him; they had talked things over, and perhaps in the end the Chancellor had persuaded the King; but it had always been done delicately, and the policy announced had been what the King of England had decided of his own free will. Now the Archbishop of Canterbury seemed to be claiming that he alone ruled certain aspects of English life; and his knowledge of the Law sometimes made it possible for him to assert this claim successfully. All the same, Thomas had been a most stimulating companion; it was unfortunate that his exaggerated sense of duty made him stay most of the year in his own city. They would soon be good friends again if only he would travel with the court, as the King’s adviser should.

  At that moment there was a stir among the sportsmen, and the sergeants of the escort shortened their reins. A strange band of horse was approaching.

  ‘Talk of the Devil,’ muttered Henry, ‘here I was wishing Thomas would come to court, and there’s the Metropolitan cross leading a troop of horse. The effect is very like a mesnie riding behind the banner of their lord, but I suppose Thomas can’t forget that not long ago he was a gallant knight.’

  The King cantered forward to meet the Archbishop alone. Thomas ordered his men to halt, and also rode forward alone. But each rode a destrier, trained for war, and a trained destrier knew his duty when his master cantered out between the armies to encounter a rival champion. Both beasts reared on their hind legs, striking with steel-shod forefeet and darting open-mouthed heads to seize the hostile rider by the thigh. Then curb-chains tightened, and long gilded spurs sank into their sides. As they drew apart Thomas was relieved to see Henry laughing.

  ‘What, my lord Archbishop,’ he called gaily, ‘do you take me for Engelram de Trie? You shall not have my destrier as a trophy. I will defend myself, unarmed as I am, even if you take that tall cross from your squire and joust against me.’

  Thomas dismounted in haste, and a groom led away his excited warhorse. The King also jumped down, and approached smiling.

  ‘What will they say at Citeaux when they hear that the Archbishop of Canterbury rides a destrier, so fierce that it must fight all other stallions? A mule is the mount that befits your rank.’

  ‘The monks of Citeaux think poorly of Archbishops as a class. We need not worry about their opinion. But I have a valid excuse. To catch the most hard-riding King in Christendom I must mount the fleetest destrier in my stable.’

  ‘You always have an answer. But what is the reason for your haste? Have you decided to let me hang that murderous Canon? You should, you know. It is wrong for the Church to protect murderers, even though clerks must stick together against laity.’

  ‘My dear Henry, Philip de Brois has been punished for insulting your judge, which was the only crime proved against him. We can’t hang him because there was murder done, and the local sheriff doesn’t like his face. I came to discuss the case, certainly. I want to have it out with you in private, before you strike an attitude in Council and find it difficult to withdraw gracefully. Your sheriffs are trying to alter the Law of England, when they claim that clerks must plead in their courts. That is wrong. You can’t alter the Law. You didn’t make it; it was there from the beginning, and the English are entitled to be judged by it. That Law lays down that clerks may be judged only by clerks. There’s no more to be said.’

  ‘There is a great deal more to be said,’ Henry answered hotly. ‘The Law as you describe it was defined by Stephen of Blois, and what that usurper made I can unmake.’

  ‘It is the Law of King Edward,’ Thomas interjected.

  ‘Nonsense. Besides, the King must keep the peace. Murder is a crime against the peace, my peace. Why do you think I ride the land until my bottom grows corns and my horses founder? To keep my peace. Remember the England of twenty years ago! Your father suffered oppression from Geoffrey de Mandeville, in walled London under the eye of the King. How did that Geoffrey treat the fens? Under my peace the hedge keeps the cow and the latch keeps the door, from Cornwall to York. You rode here from Canterbury, with ten sergeants for escort and a great silver cross borne before you. There were no brigands, and in every castle the gate stood open and the portcullis raised. While I work for every minute of my waking hours, work harder than any ploughman, I can just keep the peace in England; but only if the whole realm, clerk as well as lay, acknowledges my power and submits to my judgements.’

  ‘You keep good peace, and work hard to keep it. My dear Henry, I admire you, as you know I love you. But your grandfather kept good peace, as I remember. When I rode as a boy to Merton the road was safer than it had been in the memory of man, as safe as it is now. Yet your grandfather allowed full liberty to the Church of God.’

  Henry felt a glow in his heart. Thomas had gone out of his way to pay him a compliment, and he was always delighted to hear praise of his grandfather’s rule. They would be friends again. He answered, smiling:

  ‘Then if I keep the Law as it was in my grandfather’s time you and your clerks will be satisfied? I cannot remember that England, my dear Thomas, but you remember it. Together we shall work to bring back the old days, and we shall be friends as before. That’s settled. Now I must ride back to my mesnie and you to yours. I shall be King of England and you Archbishop of Canterbury, and we shall enter Northampton in state, my lord the Archbishop beside my lord the King. But let us never forget this meadow, where we talked together as Thomas and Henry.’

  As they rode side by side through the crowded town Thomas recalled that in fact the question of clerks charged with felony had not been settled; that was typical of Henry, who hated to yield ground openly. But their friendship had been reaffirmed, and while that endured awkward cases could be settled as they arose.

  It was unfortunate that mere day-to-day administrations kept Thomas too busy in Canterbury to draw up the detailed statement of the rights and immunities of the clergy which he ought to provide for Henry’s guidance. Their broad agreement in principle, to return to the conditions of affairs under the first Henry, was all right as far as it went; but the Lion of Justice had been dead for twenty-eight years, and it was hard to find an official who could recall the correct precedent in every doubtful case. Besides, the settlement was vague in one important aspect. Would Henry claim only the powers exercised by his grandfather, or would he say he might do what any of his grandfather’s predecessors had done?

  At Canterbury there were copious records, and when Thomas looked into them he was appalled at some of the things done by earlier Kings of England, without protest from the Church. This was easily explained. William the Conqueror had favoured the new Gregorian reforms; the Pope had therefore permitted him to enforce the discipline of the Roman Curia. As for Rufus, in his time the Bishops had yielded everything, hoping only to avoid bloody persecution; but no honest ruler would appeal to precedents established during that unhappy reign.

  All the same, his predecessors at Canterbury had overlooked some shocking usurpations. He found, to his amazement, that if he rebuked his flock for purely spiritual offences the offenders could seek protection from the King’s Council. The lord William de Eynsford had put himself hopelessly in the wrong, as any lawyer must admit. He claimed an advowson, the right to present the clerk of his choice to a certain benefice. Thomas disputed the claim, and investigated it in his own court. Eynsford, after he had lost, intruded his nominee by force. Where-upon Thomas excommunicated the lord William, as a despoiler of the property
of the Church. At once he received an angry message from the King, demanding William’s absolution; since it had been agreed in the days of William the Conqueror that no tenant-in-chief might be excommunicated without the previous consent of the King.

  That was absurd. Eynsford had been guilty of a spiritual offence, and spiritual punishment was the appropriate penalty. Of course no true shepherd of souls would keep a Christian under the ban if he showed contrition or tried to make amends; it is the business of Bishops to get sinners into Heaven, not to keep them out. As soon as Eynsford admitted his fault he would be absolved. The King demanded that the ban be lifted at once, for an excommunicate might not perform knight-service and the sinner was lost to his army. That was unfortunate for the King, but his obvious remedy was to keep his tenants-in-chief under better control. The Archbishop was doing his duty as laid down by Canon Law; a local agreement with a long-dead King could not supersede that universal code.

  After a few weeks Eynsford withdrew the intrusive clerk; his excommunication was lifted immediately, and peace was restored between King and Archbishop. As Thomas said to Herbert of Bosham, this proved that Canon Law and the law of the land need never conflict; after all, every Christian was bound to obey both codes.

  At Michaelmas the military tenants of Canterbury rendered homage to their lord. To Thomas this was a new experience; the seven hundred knights he had led as Chancellor had been hired soldiers, owing obedience only while they were paid. Now he undertook the lifelong responsibility of a lord, and these noble Normans swore lifelong duty to the son of a drysalter in Cheapside. But he also was a Norman, of free birth; they owed him obedience, as he owed them protection. As they came up one by one to place their hands within his clasped hands he vowed to himself that he would be their true lord and protector. At Pevensey he had been trained in chivalry; he had fought for his King and earned the spurs of knighthood; he was capable of protecting them.