Gilbert proposed that Thomas should be given leave to lodge his appeal with the Curia. At the same time all the suffragans of Canterbury should lodge an appeal of their own, begging the Pope to remove their Metropolitan.
Nothing in Canon Law forbade such an appeal; though there was no precedent, for an Archbishop did not usually unite all his suffragans in opposition. It would be a most resounding insult; and if the Pope valued the support of England in his struggle with the Emperor it should end in the transfer of the factious clerk to some undistinguished titular See.
In the early afternoon it was announced that the King permitted appeals to the Curia from every Bishop in England, including the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Court might now convene to hear the charge that a great magnate had refused to answer in his lord’s court when summoned.
Everyone was tired and cross and hungry. When Richer de l’ Aigle heaved himself to his feet he felt all around him a fierce determination to make an end of this troublesome affair. The matter of criminous clerks was tangled, and it did not interest lay magnates who would never dare to compel clerks to answer in their own courts. But a lord must be able to compel attendance at his court, or the foundations of Law would collapse. Most of these magnates had come unwillingly to Northampton, because their lord commanded it; unless they could compel their vassals to attend their own courts they would lose the power which made them great. The Archbishop was plainly guilty, and must suffer for it.
Suddenly everyone began to shout that Thomas was a traitor. The Justiciar, as eager as all the other magnates to finish this unsavoury business in time for supper, announced at the top of his voice that the tenants-in-chief of the King, the highest court in England, held Thomas Archbishop of Canterbury to be guilty of treason, and advised their lord to punish him with life-long imprisonment. The cause was not rehearsed in open court, according to law (though the suitors, who had discussed nothing else all that long morning, were thoroughly conversant with it); and some clerical magnates, who might not sit in judgment on their lord, had no time to get out of the hall and down the stairs. In fact, Richer noted, this discussion had been so informal that it might be argued that the case remained untried. Probably the Justiciar and the more responsible Counts were aware of this, glad to leave an opening for an appeal later on. But in the meantime the Council of Northampton had got through its agenda.
Or very nearly through its agenda; there was still one formality. Though hysterical shouts of treason could be heard all over the castle, the culprit had not been officially informed of verdict and sentence. Until he had been so informed the proceedings remained incomplete. It was a task for the Justiciar, and boisterous young knights pushed Richard de Lucy to the head of the stairs.
A crowd jostled down the narrow way to the lower hall. In their forward surge they overtook clerks with drawing as the session opened, and they were joined by idle attendants on great magnates, who had been waiting all day within the main door. An excited mob of miscellaneous adherents of King Henry, not a formal deputation from the highest court in the land, milled and pushed round the entry to the lower solar.
Since he had dismounted in the courtyard that morning, when the Archbishop snatched the Metropolitan cross from his hands, Dom Herbert of Bosham had realized that this was the greatest day of his life. It looked as though it would also be the last; but he strove to be a good monk, and much reading in the Lives of the Saints had shown him how a martyr should face death. At the beginning he had been nervous and discomposed, which he knew was wrong; then the Archbishop had ordered him to join in reciting the office, and in reading his psalter he had recovered his composure. This is a fleeting world, and soon to be destroyed; he concentrated on reaching the end of each verse, looking no further into the future.
There had been minutes of great strain, when the Archbishop sat still as a statue, his great cross between his knees, while fierce knights threatened or saintly Bishops begged him to be meek. It was hard for a simple monk to remain undismayed when the Bishop of Exeter wept tears of genuine terror. Now his vigil was ended. The persecutors had worked up the requisite pitch of rage (for these men were baptized Christians, and many of them had fought to defend God’s Sepulchre in Outremer; when they were sober again their remorse would be ghastly). He heard shouts of ‘Traitor’, and a rush of feet on the stairs; they were coming, swords drawn, to make an end of the chief servant of God in England, and presumably at the same time of his crossbearer and companion. Well, they would find Dom Herbert recollected and ready.
But this unforeseen delay was very trying. As the crowd shuffled in the entry Dom Herbert raised his eyes, which had been fixed on the Host hanging from his lord’s shoulders. The ruffians, undecided, were pushing one another, each reluctant to be the first to invade the solar.
Now they had found a ringleader. The Count of Leicester stood forward in the narrow doorway. But, good Heavens, the man had begun a rambling extempore speech, not even in the dignified Latin in which a formal sentence should be couched! He babbled in sloppy French of the Two Swords of Temporal and Spiritual Justice, and the divine origin of Kingship, founded on the anointing of King Saul! Must a brave man, about to die, first hear these tendentious and misleading arguments, the stock-in-trade of miserable Ghibellines who divided the Seamless Robe of Christ by setting up their private imitation of the true Pope? Perhaps he was not about to die, after all? The Count of Leicester was stumbling to a close. It looked as though he had begun with a conclusion in mind, and collapsed from nervousness before he could reach it.
Now the Count of Cornwall took up the speech, still in that clumsy French of England which was unfitted for legal pronouncements. Herbert understood what these magnates were at. They were trying to promulgate the sentence of their lay court, which by God’s Law could have no jurisdiction over an Archbishop. The sentence could hardly be death, or they would not have bothered with this formality; but so far they had not even rehearsed the crime they were proposing to punish. Naturally they would make a mess of it, for since the Bishops and Abbots had withdrawn they had no skilled clerks to hold them to the forms of even their secular and unwritten law.
Herbert felt more cheerful, and at the same time more worried. Martyrdom was a final act, soon over, which any good monk could face with fortitude; life-long imprisonment, and probably a beating to begin with, would be harder to bear with dignity. Glancing at his lord, he saw stoic resignation beginning to give place to anger, the anger of a proud knight who must listen to a string of unjustified and insulting reproaches. He hoped Thomas would have the self-control to keep silence; if he answered his accusers this historic occasion would dwindle into an exchange of vulgar abuse.
The Count of Cornwall was as unable to reach a conclusion as the Count of Leicester; young knights at the back shouted blasphemous obscenities which should have no place in a court of law, but the responsible magnates clustered in the entry of the solar could not bring themselves to pronounce the Primate of All England guilty of treason and felony. There seemed no way to end this uncomfortable scene.
At last the Bishop of Chichester pushed his way through the throng. ‘Make way, my lords,’ he shouted. ‘I am a lawyer trained in the Curia. I will deliver your sentence in proper form.’
Herbert looked again into his lord’s face. Bishop Hilary was a veteran foe, who had never forgotten his defeat over Battle Abbey; but it was the boast of legal training which caught the Archbishop’s attention. A scholar of Paris, who had pleaded before the Curia when Hilary was a papal clerk, must gather his wits to meet that challenge. Herbert saw his lord no longer resigned to suffer with dignity whatever a tyrant might inflict; he was thinking of how to get the better of Bishop Hilary.
All the laymen fell silent, pleased that a Bishop had undertaken their burdensome duty. Hilary cleared his throat, bowed to the seated Archbishop, and spoke formally, in clear Curial Latin. But before he had completed his first sentence, explaining that the magnates of England, his peers, held the Archbi
shop of Canterbury to be a traitor, Thomas intervened with a curt bark of ‘Tace!’
It was the word used by an angry judge to call an impudent advocate to order, and Hilary, the veteran lawyer, stopped in the middle of a phrase, his mouth hanging open. Thomas burst into a torrent of legal Latin. By the universal consent of Christendom no Bishop might pass sentence on his Metropolitan, he shouted; what answer had Hilary to that? The two lawyers forgot their uncomprehending lay audience in the crackling exchange of rebuke and excuse. Then Bishop Hilary, knowing himself in the wrong, stepped back, ploughing a gap through the crowd in his anxiety to get away.
In the instant Thomas was on his feet, the Metropolitan cross in both hands, as a knight bears his standard into battle. As he strode to the door Herbert followed.
Before them stretched the long hall, filled with knights and grooms and magnates; at the far end the outer door stood open, and beyond it lay the yard and the gate and the Priory of St. Andrew and a respite from persecution. Herbert was praying. If they could win their way to the open the King might be cheated of his prey.
He caught a low whisper from the Archbishop. ‘They have no order to arrest me, and they may fear to act without it. Let us make straight for St. Andrew’s, stopping for no man.’
Thomas drew himself to his full, immense height, raising the cross far above him. His cope billowed out behind, and his fierce eyes were fixed above the heads of the tallest spectators. In that crowd of enemies, the King’s most loyal adherents, no one was anxious to be the first to lay hands on an Archbishop. Herbert, pattering beside him, began to hope for the future.
If the Archbishop could awe the crowd for a few minutes they would be safe. His dignity was certainly awe-inspiring; knights and grooms shrank back as though before an angel with a fiery sword. But once he was past, when they could see only his back, their courage began to revive. A young page made a rude noise with his mouth, and threw a handful of muddy rushes plucked from the floor. They hit the Archbishop square between the shoulders, leaving a foul stain on the crimson cope. Thomas checked his stride as though to round on the offender; but Herbert, forgetting he was a humble choir-monk in attendance on his Abbot, dared to offer advice.
‘Take no notice, my lord,’ he whispered. ‘If you stay to quarrel this will be the beginning of such bloodshed as England has never seen.’
The Archbishop, with a gesture of assent, continued to stalk towards the door.
Others had noticed his hesitation, and quick wits among his enemies set to work to drive him to frenzy. Young Count Hamelin of Warenne was the boldest; as Thomas passed he shouted ‘Traitor!’ into his face, and seemed about to spit. Walking on, the Archbishop answered his tormentor over his shoulder.
‘I could prove on your body that I am no traitor,’ he hissed, ‘but my hands are consecrated. Furthermore, a man of my condition cannot joust against a nameless bastard.’
The Count turned away. He was a feeble jouster, but what really quelled him was the reminder of his birth. At his brother’s court he passed as a great man, but he was ever conscious that in the world he had no place of his own.
Nearing the door Thomas stumbled over a bundle of faggots, litter dumped by lazy servants. That was the most dangerous moment of the dangerous day, for a snigger came from the back of the crowd; they would beat him to death if they began to think him ridiculous. But his dignity overcame even this mischance. Still with his cross erect in both hands he descended the steps to the castle yard.
Herbert looked anxiously at the gate. But the Archbishop, without losing the immovable carriage of his head, had taken in the situation with an even swifter glance.
‘We must ourselves unlock the outer gate. The porters have run away, to avoid the responsibility of stopping me. Don’t waste time, but don’t look frightened. Get mounted as quickly as you can.’
Beside the gate more than a score of horses stood picketed in a row, an overflow from the crowded stable. Herbert had a vague recollection of seeing his own horse tethered there that morning; but in his agitation he could not remember what it looked like. He had a clear picture of a rough mane and scarred withers, which he had seen when he rode, bearing the cross, to this horrible council; but he could not for the life of him recall its colour. Before that line of restless rumps he hesitated, and some of the beasts, sensing a frightened man behind them, drew up their hind legs to kick.
The Archbishop dodged calmly under the belly of a restless stallion to unhitch his own destrier. Still hampered by his great cross he jumped at the saddle, and lay balanced over the animal’s back. As his right foot felt for the off stirrup he called softly: ‘If you can’t find your own horse leave him. In a minute the King will order them to stop us. We must be away before that. Here, jump up behind me, and hang on to my cope. If you fall off I must leave you lying.’
The tall destrier was trained for war; confusion all round him and the excitement of his own rider made him the more willingly obedient to leg and rein. Under his double burden he walked sedately to the closed gate. It seemed that the Archbishop intended to burst it open by a charge; but that desperate step was unnecessary. Beside it, where the porter had left them when he fled, hung a bunch of keys.
The hostile crowd was now more willing to take action; the sight of the Archbishop baulked by a locked gate reminded some bold spirits that the King might give a handsome reward for his capture. Herbert, in desperation, suggested that they should dismount and try to clamber over the wall.
‘Then we should look silly, and they would be on us at once,’ answered the Archbishop. ‘Just lean over and see if that key fits the lock. Pray to God we find the right key quickly. It must be there, but we cannot linger.’
His voice was calm but throbbing. Herbert recalled where he had heard that icy but urgent tone once before; in his childhood, when the routiers of King Stephen plundered the Channel coast, he had been taken to the shelter of a little walled town. His mother held him on her lap just under the town wall, to avoid random arrows. In just such a voice the commander of the garrison heartened his men at the crisis of the assault. Now, while the foe pressed round him, his Archbishop was wholly a knight, as years ago when he led his mesnie to the assault of Cahors.
Leaning dangerously from his perch, wishing he had learned to ride properly before he entered the cloister, Herbert snatched at a key, thrusting it in the direction of the gate. At that moment the destrier passaged sideways, and the key seemed to enter the lock unguided; as it turned the gate swung open towards them.
Of course the right key must have been in that bunch, and it was pure chance which he seized first. But if it was not a miracle it was a piece of very good luck. As they thundered through the archway Herbert shouted: ‘Deo Gratias’ in pious gratitude; but the way he shouted it made it sound very like a war-cry.
At the Priory of St. Andrew Thomas ate his first meal since breakfast. He was completely unafraid, and not even tempted to lose his temper. In the morning, while his enemies insulted him, he had felt so angry that only concentration on his psalter had given him the strength to sit unmoved. But now the campaign had reached its crisis; he was all warrior.
While he ate the boiled fish with egg sauce which was the most luxurious supper St. Andrew’s could produce the porter announced that two separate deputations wished to see him. First came the Bishops of London and Chichester, his opponents. They showed no credentials, but spoke as though in the King’s name, and Thomas did not doubt they were his envoys.
They suggested that if Thomas would resign the lands of his See to the King (who already had his chattels), he might live unmolested in a monastery until the Pope had settled the dispute. Gilbert of London, a monk who cared nothing for money and very little for legal rights, seemed to think this a reasonable compromise. But Hilary the lawyer delivered his terms with a hang-dog air; he knew that a Bishop had no right to impoverish his See by granting its land to a secular lord. For Thomas to accept these terms would be to buy his personal safety with
the property of the Church; he indignantly refused the simoniacal suggestion.
The two Bishops went back to the castle. Thomas was delighted to see them go, but he could not accuse them of betraying their ecclesiastical superior. They were entitled to support the King in a purely temporal dispute over the book-keeping of a retired Chancellor; they were competent Diocesan Bishops, and though they made it plain where their sympathy lay they had not broken any rule of Canon Law.
It was odd that the second delegation, his friends the Bishops of Rochester, Worcester and Hereford, should bring him substantially the same proposal. They also suggested that he should abandon the lands of Canterbury to the King; but instead of staying in a monastery they wanted him to visit the Pope. So even his friends would be glad to see him leave England!
There was a great deal to be said for this plan, since at present he could not rule his Province unmolested by the secular power. But when he sent to King Henry for a passport the King would neither grant nor refuse it. It was a grave matter, he said; he would sleep on it, and give his decision tomorrow.
When at last he was alone, the only Bishop within the Priory of St. Andrew, Thomas consulted his confessor. Would it be desertion to leave his flock unshepherded, exposed to that ravening wolf, King Henry? Robert of Merton, as usual, gave him a straight answer.
‘It is never wrong to flee from persecution, since no man can be certain that his courage is equal to martyrdom. This can be proved from the Scriptures. St. Peter followed his Lord, at peril of his life, to the house of the High Priest; and before the cock crew he had denied Him thrice. St. John fled from Gethsemane, and so avoided the sin of denial. You would be right to flee. But I believe you cannot, for a scullion tells me that the city walls are guarded to keep you in.’
God and My Right Page 28
