God and My Right

by Alfred Duggan

  The Cardinals listened attentively; they were connoisseurs of rhetoric, they had never before heard Gilbert of London, and he was speaking very well. But now the Pope himself interrupted.

  ‘Deal gently, my brother of London,’ he said with deceptive mildness.

  ‘Since your Holiness commands it, I shall deal gently with Thomas of Canterbury,’ answered Gilbert, too busy thinking of what he should say next to notice the reaction of his audience.

  ‘I do not ask you to deal gently with the Archbishop. I ask you to deal gently with your own case, which is damaged by your violence,’ said the Pope, with a sardonic smile that would have frightened a more self-possessed advocate than Gilbert.

  The effect was devastating. The unfortunate Bishop of London stammered and made ineffectual gestures with both hands; then, torn by hiccups and remorse, he begged to be excused from further speech.

  At once Bishop Hilary came forward to fill the gap. He had no speech prepared, because of the disgraceful way in which Bishop Gilbert had silenced him that morning; but that made all the sweeter his task of showing a silly old monk how a trained veteran addressed the Curia. He got off to a flying start before the Cardinals had shifted on their bench to face him; and he flattered himself on his good sense in sticking to points where Thomas had been genuinely at fault, without inventing unfounded and incredible accusations against his private life. He need not dwell on the unnecessary flight from England, for Gilbert had already dealt with it; but it was only right, in fact it was his duty, to point out that Thomas seldom consulted his suffragans, the constitutional advisers who should have formed his Council.

  Hilary knew what he wanted to say; it was forming in his head while he spoke, without preparation. When he got it out Thomas would be crushed unanswerably. But it was unfortunate that he had spent the morning listening to lay magnates talking French, for now he found himself thinking in that tongue and translating in his head as he went along. It was years since he had addressed the Curia. Once or twice he hesitated, trying to remember the correct termination of some unusual word; but his hesitation only made the speech sound the more earnest.

  Now he was thundering along splendidly. When Thomas arrived he would find the Curia with its mind made up, and made up against him. But really this switching from French to Latin was most exhausting, and he had not yet recovered from that horrible Channel crossing. How should it go? The Archbishop’s Council should never have allowed him to behave as he did; they OUGHT to have advised him better. OPORTUEBANT he shouted, to stop in dismay at the gale of laughter which swept the bench.

  ‘Your ship seeks the wrong PORT,’ shouted a Cardinal through the uproar, while all his colleagues slapped their thighs and dug their neighbours in the ribs. The Count of Leicester was extremely puzzled. He had been following the speech with careful attention, for he knew the meaning of most Latin words, though he had never bothered his head with the complicated rules of grammar. It seemed to him that Bishop Hilary had been putting the magnates’ case very fairly, with none of the venom shown by Gilbert of London; but someone seemed to have made a joke which he had not heard.

  ‘What are they laughing at?’ he inquired of his neighbour, Master John of Oxford.

  Master John answered readily, under cover of the noise which still filled the courtroom. ‘Hilary’s grammar is too much for them, as it is too much for me. How can I explain in French? Let me see. OPORTET means “it ought to be”, and you must never conjugate it. Hilary said OPORTUEBANT, a word that cannot exist; as though in French you said ‘they used to ought’. It’s not very funny in itself. But to think of it coming from Hilary of Chichester, the eminent canonist, the veteran advocate, the proud scholar specially appointed by the Pope to bring a little learning to rustic Sussex …’

  ‘Does a mere slip of the tongue matter as much as that?’ the Count of Leicester persisted.

  ‘It depends on who makes it, and when. Look at the pompous old windbag. These Cardinals live dull lives, and they haven’t had such a good laugh for years … To think that the spokesman of the King of England can’t string together two sentences of correct Latin… Hallo, our Hilary has had enough. He’s off. What do we do next? Our first spokesman was silenced by the personal intervention of the Holy Father, and our second string has forgotten his Latin. Who now volunteers to make a fool of himself in public?’

  ‘I do,’ said the Count of Leicester calmly, stepping forward as the blushing Hilary made for the door. The interests of his lord King Henry demanded that some other magnate should continue the complaint. In sturdy Anglo-French, stuffed with obsolete words and archaic pronunciations, he began to explain the black treason of the Archbishop.

  The court heard him patiently, though he spoke through a constant mutter of conversation, as French-speaking clerks translated to the Italian Cardinals. When he had told the Pope, in brief soldierly words, that the magnates and tenants-in-chief of England unanimously pronounced Thomas to be a traitor, he stopped. His Holiness graciously thanked him for his assistance; but he explained that the court must hear the Archbishop’s defence before sentence could be pronounced. That was the signal for adjournment, and the English delegation returned to the anteroom where they had breakfasted.

  It was all up with their appeal, as the lawyers among them at once explained to the lay magnates. When the Pope spoke of hearing the Archbishop’s defence he was treating the case as a trial at law, and legally they had not a leg to stand on. They had sought a favour, the removal of an obstreperous Primate; His Holiness had not refused outright, but his reply was a polite way of indicating that Thomas had done nothing contrary to Canon Law. The clerks added that they would like to start for home at once, before the Archbishop reached Sens; it would be irksome if the lord to whom they had sworn obedience found them here, advocates for his enemy, King Henry. That was an argument every vassal could understand,and the English delegation left Sens after dinner on that same day.

  A few days later the Roman Curia sat once more in state. But in the supreme court of Christendom there was now a more friendly and informal atmosphere; the holy and persecuted Archbishop of Canterbury was received as a friend rather than a suitor; descending from his throne the Pope embraced him, and engaged him in private conversation. But there were legal-minded clerks who had noted the point made by the Bishop of London, that the last election to the See of Canterbury had been achieved irregularly, by royal pressure. You did not often get such an admission from the representative of the King who had brought it about, and a valuable precedent should not be wasted. It was a neat little score, which appealed to the legal mind of the Archbishop himself as soon as he was apprised of it. To drive it home, and to forge another weapon for the armoury of St. Peter, Thomas formally resigned his See into the hands of the Pope, by the tender of his episcopal ring. The Pope solemnly replaced it on his finger, making Thomas of London Archbishop of Canterbury by the direct appointment of the Vicar of Christ. He held by the strongest title in the world, and henceforth no one could challenge his position.

  On a fine April morning in the year 1166 the spring sun, shining on the Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny, lightened even the gloom of Lent; though Lent in a well-ordered monastery is rather sad than gloomy, since religious spirits rise at the approach of God’s greatest victory on earth. In a fortnight the monks would be celebrating the most joyous feast of the year.

  But in the principal guest-chamber the round of liturgical mourning and rejoicing made no difference to a routine that had scarcely varied in eighteen months. At a desk under the narrow window the Archbishop of Canterbury sat writing in the morning sun, as he had written by the light of tall wax candles even before the dawn. Save when he dined at the Abbot’s table, or joined the brethren in choir, Thomas was always to be found at his desk; he took no exercise, and since Christmas he had not left the enclosure.

  His desk was piled with thick leather-bound folios, sturdy volumes made to last until Doomsday, so stoutly sewn that they might not be left ope
n to mark a passage; it was littered with fragments of scraped parchment for rough jottings, and more expensive notebooks for the next stage of composition; there were bottles of different coloured inks, a small but very sharp knife, and bundles of goosefeathers from which to cut pens. Beside the candlestick stood a round bottle of clear glass, filled with clean water, to focus light on the work. For writing in all but the very best natural light was a trying business.

  Thomas, sitting stooped over the desk, perpetually juggled with the clumsy tomes that were his authorities, leafing through the thick pages before making each short note. Half a dozen clerks had followed him from England, and any choir-monk of Pontigny would have been proud to help so famous a victim of persecution; there was no need for him to look up his own references. But he preferred to do all this for himself. For more than thirty years he had worked hard every day, and now that all his administrative duties had been taken from him he invented tasks to fill the empty hours.

  He was dreadfully bored, after what had seemed the longest year of his life. He also felt ill, a new experience. In consequence his anger glowed within him, and he could scarcely behave with the outward charity demanded by his position. Now he sat nibbling the end of his pen, and brooding over the wickedness of King Henry, who had once been his friend.

  What had gone wrong? Why had the gallant warrior who had sought his aid in bringing peace to ravaged England changed so quickly into a vindictive mean-spirited tyrant? He was a crowned and anointed King, who took seriously his duty of protecting his vassals; he was not idle or frivolous, and though his private life was disgustingly unchaste he did not dissipate his time in debauchery. He had domestic trouble, of course; his wife hated him, and he hated her. But then he had married a strumpet for her fiefs, and she had married him because she needed a husband brave enough to defend her but simple enough to submit to her rule. They must have known what was in store for them, and faced it with their eyes open. He was not disappointed in Eleanor of Aquitaine, since he had never expected better things from her.

  He had wronged his brothers, but every King did that; Christendom could not endure if a realm was dismembered to give younger sons the appanage they considered their due. The ruin of Geoffrey would not trouble the King’s conscience.

  All the same, Henry had done a great wrong in the narrow circle of his family. He had seized the crown which belonged by right to his mother. It was the fashion to maintain that a woman could not rule men; but the Empress had never agreed with that doctrine. Thomas recalled the stirring days of his youth, when she had ridden in arms to Westminster and been driven out by the arms of Stephen’s Queen. The Empress must see herself as England’s rightful ruler. Sitting quiet in her Norman retirement she would have found a way to let her son know she regarded him as a usurper. That must destroy the peace of mind of a man so self-righteous as Henry.

  His nerves must be in a shocking state. It was the only excuse for his petty vindictiveness. Thomas recalled with a shudder that miserable episode last year, the arrival of his exiled supporters. Four hundred decent men and women, including the two sisters he had not met since he became Chancellor, all turned out of England penniless and landless, under oath to seek him out and show him the full extent of their misery. Only a man whose soul was sick would display such pitiful spite. Henry must have felt even worse when the exiles received safe harbourage, amid the sympathy of all Europe. Sicily was ruled by exiles driven forth by the wrath of past Dukes of Normandy, and there all Norman exiles were sure of a welcome. Perhaps they were better off than they had been in England. Certainly their sufferings had not tempted the Archbishop to yield.

  But it was time, for Henry’s sake, that this horrid quarrel was ended. He had been a good King, and if only he would admit himself beaten he might become the best King in the world. It was time to press him, now that the Pope had restored full authority to the exiled Archbishop. In a fortnight, at Easter, he would be free to excommunicate his oppressors. He had a long list of them.

  First must come the Broc family of Saltwood castle, the scoundrels who at present farmed the lands of Canterbury as escheators on behalf of the King. That in itself was evidence of malign rancour; Henry was entitled to the lands of a fugitive Archbishop, but he could have appointed honest custodians who would have collected the income while holding the fiefs intact for the Church; the Brocs were notorious ruffians, who had already begun to intrude their disreputable friends into the monastic community of Christ Church.

  Those who plundered his faithful followers must also incur the ban. He need mention no names, for the cap would fit one man in particular. Bishop Gilbert of London administered all benefices declared vacant because their holders had adhered to the Archbishop. Thomas felt a spasm of anger at the thought of the harm done by that envious clerk. If the Brocs did not rob the Church of Canterbury they would rob someone else, and when they came to die their only hope would be the Mercy of God. But Gilbert Foliot was a learned Bishop of exemplary private life, a worthy son of the zealous Abbey of Cluny; he should have been his Archbishop’s right-hand man. He had been seduced into opposition by nothing but envy, the envy of a first-class mind for the genius which put his own talent in the shade; his was the sin of Lucifer, the sin of ambition. At least he would know the full horror of the ban; no Cluniac could endure to be cut off from the Church of Christ.

  Other, minor, figures merited excommunication even more than these principal actors in the drama. There were the envoys who had negotiated on behalf of King Henry with the Emperor and his protege the anti-Pope, and the venal Bishop who had rewarded one of these envoys. Thomas dwelt on the transaction with pleasure, for it proved that if Henry risked excommunication he risked his throne. If their lord tried to lead them into schism the magnates of England would revolt, and in dealing with the Emperor’s envoy they had already shown their mettle. When the schismatic Archbishop of Cologne visited England to arrange a marriage between the princess Matilda and the Duke of Saxony he was refused the Kiss of Peace, and every altar on which he said Mass was deemed desecrated and in need of reconsecration. If Henry tried to place England under the anti-Pope he would be overthrown by his vassals.

  Henry must not lose his crown, but he must yield for fear of losing it; and Thomas suspected that Henry did not want to imprison him, but to force him to yield for fear of legal proceedings. It was a delicate game of bluff between two antagonists who knew one another intimately, each striving to break the nerve of a loved enemy endowed with exceptional courage. It was no wonder, Thomas thought, that he suffered in health from the strain of these intricate menaces and warnings. Was Henry also suffering?

  As he sat hunched over his desk, composing political manifestos with the surface of his mind while its depths worried over the question of excommunicating his old friend, Thomas shivered with the unnatural cold which perpetually tormented him, and a sharp pain stabbed at the ulcer in his stomach. In this quarrel his strength had been so undermined that for the first time in his life he had been compelled to pamper his sturdy body. On his arrival at Pontigny he had naturally essayed to share the life of his Cistercian hosts; but scanty food and lack of sleep, after ten years of soft living as Chancellor and Archbishop, soon drove him to the edge of collapse. Now, at the command of learned physicians, he ate chicken and beef specially cooked for him in the Abbot’s private kitchen, and lay abed when the brethren rose for Matins. But he had not given in until great damage had been done, and he could never feel warm. In his own chamber he wore the black gown of an Augustinian Canon over the long tunic which was the informal dress of his rank, and over that a Cistercian cowl which the Pope had sent him with a special pontifical blessing; it was thrice the clothing of an ordinary man, and underneath were the stiff folds of the hair shirt. He looked so bulky that stray visitors from England thought him grown fat in the idleness of exile; and still he shivered.

  He shivered more violently when his thoughts returned to the question he could no longer avoid: should he excommu
nicate King Henry by name? Henry deserved it; at Northampton he had deserved it a hundred – fold, and Thomas, on his arrival at Pontigny, had been eager to pass sentence as soon as possible. First the Pope imposed delay by suspending his faculties; and now that they were to be restored in a fortnight he sought some way of avoiding this final step. There was good in Henry, if only he would control his temper; excommunication would render him reckless of consequences. He would die cut off from salvation, and unless saved by the uncovenanted Mercy of God he would go straight to Hell. Thomas could not pass such a sentence on the comrade with whom he had ridden against Toulouse, the boon companion of Cheapside, the ardent reformer who had been his colleague in bringing peace to England after the long wars.

  Yet he could not permit the Church in England to submit to the secular power. A Church ruled by a tempestuous Angevin King, even by a good King such as the first Henry or the present Louis of France, would serve Mammon, not God. Unless Henry could be brought to yield his soul must pay the penalty. But the penalty would not bring Henry to submission, and in the result all England would be led either into schism or into another devastating civil war. The first task of an Archbishop was to bring his flock to salvation, and the irreversible breach would be proof that he, Thomas, had failed in the trust. God had imposed on him. In agony of spirit he put down his pen, to kneel on the bare floor beside his desk.

  Like every other learned clerk or lay magnate in France or England he had forgotten the pettifogging causes of the quarrel. Whether clerks guilty of felony should forfeit their chattels to the King, or whether suitors might appeal from Canterbury to Rome, seemed unimportant trifles compared to the great question: would Thomas or Henry be the first to crave quarter? He felt himself committed to a mortal duel; if it continued it must end in death, even the eternal death of the soul. But the struggle was also a joust, and a champion overcome by a stronger could be afterwards the firm friend of his conqueror; such was the teaching of the chivalrous code he had learned at Pevensey.