God and My Right

by Alfred Duggan

  It was all true, thought Thomas, that was the worst of it. What use was it to explain to these resentful politicians that you could not trust King Henry to keep an agreement honestly; that even his mother, whom he had cheated of the crown, thought his alleged customs a disgusting piece of tyranny; that if Henry were allowed any power at all over the Church he would bend it completely to his will, until it permitted him to put away his wife in favour of a prettier face, to steal the endowments of the monasteries for his pleasures, to use the benefices given by the piety of past ages as rewards for dubious political services? The King of France did not know Henry. Thomas did. But that was not a reason he could give publicly on this occasion.

  King Louis was speaking, addressing the assembly with all the dignity of a crowned King who was also a good knight and an eminent Crusader.

  ‘My lord Archbishop, it seems to me that the King of England has just cause to complain. I know you for a gallant knight and a man of honour. Will you not once more repeat the oath of homage you owe to your sovereign, omitting the final clause which, justly, displeases him?’

  The clerks of his household gazed beseechingly at Thomas, mutely begging him to make peace with the King and permit them to go home; the whole assembly hung on his words, expecting him to give way gracefully. All the world knew King Louis as the pattern of chivalry, the chosen arbiter in difficult questions of honour; he had advised the Archbishop to swear as King Henry demanded, and he was not accustomed to see his advice disregarded.

  But Thomas remained stubborn. He could give no convincing reason for his refusal; convincing, that is, to men who did not know King Henry as he did. He took refuge in an evasion which sprang naturally to the mind of a scholar trained in debate.

  ‘If King Henry wishes me to obey him when he dishonours God, or invades the right of Holy Church or of the episcopal order, I am amazed at his shamelessness in demanding public agreement from me beforehand. Let him find another clerk to be his accomplice in such wickedness. I have already sworn that I will obey him in all things lawful. He shall get no further oath from me.’

  King Louis regarded him with a disdainful stare. He was too sensible to argue with a trained rhetorician, but he did not pretend to be convinced. ‘Is that your last word, my lord Archbishop? I am sorry to hear it,’ he said quietly. Then he wheeled his horse, with a glance at King Henry. In a moment, without a word of farewell, the two Kings and their followers were riding towards the town of Montmirail; the Archbishop and his clerks were left alone.

  Herbert of Bosham was the first to speak. ‘Well, my lord, I suppose we ride east, to St. Colombe where we left our baggage. We won’t be staying there, of course. After today’s colloquy King Louis will not press us to be guests in his royal Abbey. It’s a pity you had to add that clause to the homage every English Bishop has sworn since we Normans taught the English to live as civilized Christians; no earlier Bishop felt the need for it. But there it is; what’s done is done and there’s no use complaining. Where shall we go when we leave Sens? In Italy or the Empire the Ghibellines would compel us to serve their schismatic anti-Pope, and the Count of Flanders tried to catch us when we traversed his dominions. That seems to leave only Spain. Aragon and Navarre are allied with England, but we shall be safe in Castile until you quarrel with their King also.’

  Even his most intimate companion had never before used that tone to Thomas; the shock stirred him more strongly than had the disapproval of King Louis, which he had expected. He was tempted to answer in anger, but he remembered the rages of King Henry. A man who lost his temper might commit any crime; that was a warning ever in his mind. He replied in a neutral, expressionless voice:

  ‘I am answerable only to my conscience for the form of the oath I swear. Learned theologians may dispute over which oaths are licit, but an Archbishop is not bound to any particular version. If King Louis expels us from France I don’t know where I shall go. It doesn’t matter, anywhere will do. But I shall not be able to provide for my followers. You, my faithful brethren, may swear whatever oath King Henry demands, to get back the benefices he has stolen from you. If you prove obedient there is no reason why you should not live happily in England. I may visit Ireland, where the great Abbots like to have a consecrated Bishop about them to ordain priests and bless the oils. The Pope may translate me to a titular See and give me work in the Curia. Or I can lecture in the schools for a living.’

  In truth Thomas did not greatly care what became of him. He knew he was right; but everyone else thought he was wrong, and he felt too weary and discouraged to set about the task of persuading even the faithful Herbert. He had to keep on repeating to himself that he was right, for half his mind told him that Pope Alexander would think he had mishandled this long-awaited interview, from which such great results had been expected. He had now sentenced himself to penury as well as exile; and all for nothing. Some other Bishop would be translated to Canterbury, and the Pope would barter the liberties of the Church in England for King Henry’s financial and political support. He was quite alone in the world, the last upholder of a defeated cause.

  Even the unimportant Henry of Houghton, a minor member of his train, thought it appropriate to make his sentiments clear. His horse stumbled over a stone; as he jerked at the reins he muttered, so loud that the Archbishop must hear: ‘Will you pick up your feet? But of course you need not obey my command if it is against the honour of God or the rights of Holy Church or the rights of your order.’

  There was a snigger from the other clerks. Thomas had to admit that it was a moderately funny joke; but it was not the first time he had been in at the birth of a popular catchword, and he groaned to think how often he would hear it in the future. Everyone who sought a reputation as a wit would tack the famous saving clause to every order, whether he called for wine or told a servant to shut the door. All the same, he had been right, even if no one agreed with him.

  The early dusk of January drained all colour from the woods as they crossed the border of Henry’s county of Maine and entered the dominions of King Louis. It was the time when peasants led their beasts to stable, when travellers should be unsaddling in monastic guest-houses or roadside inns, a time when the open country should be emptying. But to the east the great road seemed unusually crowded. With the caution of a veteran warrior, Thomas checked his horse and peered into the dusk. These men waiting on the road were all on foot, so they could not be hostile raiders; and the swift destriers of his clerks could gallop safely through mere footpads.

  As he drew level with the group who stood in silence awaiting his approach he saw they were all peasants, the miserable harried ploughmen who scratched a living from these war-torn borderlands. The peasants shuffled to the side of the road, kneeling to leave him a clear passage. Pleased at their devotion, he raised his hand in the usual gesture of blessing. To his surprise, the crowd broke into frenzied cheering as he passed.

  At the wave of sound the tired destriers danced and sidled, and the clerks looked round in astonishment. The crowd shouted phrases in unison, as men shout a war-cry; Thomas drew rein, to hear what they said.

  ‘Hail to the holy Archbishop,’ they shouted, ‘Hail to the Archbishop who would not deny God even though two great Kings so commanded!’

  Thomas knew he was not alone in his stand against King Henry, though every magnate from the King of France to the meanest knight and every Bishop from the Pope to the most junior suffragan thought him in the wrong. The poor, who saw in an independent Church the only check on their greedy and capricious lords, hailed him as their champion.

  They rode from Montmirail to the Abbey of St. Colombe at Sens by roads lined with cheering peasants.

  Two days after their return to the Abbey the King of France summoned the Archbishop to wait on him. When Thomas entered the hall of Sens castle, in the full state of cope, pallium and mitre which was fitting for a call on such a great lord, King Louis fell on his knees before him.

  ‘Bless me, father, for I have sinned,�
�� he cried for all his counsellors to hear. ‘Last week at Montmirial my heart was angry at your stubbornness, and I left the field determined to expel you from my dominions. Since then I have been much in the company of King Henry, and I recognize that you have good reason to mistrust him. My determination to expel you was sinful, even though I repented before I could put it into effect. For that sin I ask absolution from you, and pardon from God.’

  ‘Ego absolvo te,’ said Thomas hastily, unsure whether this most public declaration should be treated as a sacramental confession. When he had raised the King from his knees and blessed him he asked, proudly, ‘Do you still wish me to leave St. Colombe? I can be ready to move at a day’s notice, and beyond the Pyrenees I shall find another refuge.’

  ‘Good gracious, no, my lord,’ answered the King; and then continued, with the devastating candour that made him the darling of every gallant knight and the despair of every politician: ‘What really changed my mind was seeing the common people flock to you. I am surrounded by greedy magnates, whose mesnies are more powerful than those which follow the Oriflamme. My only chance of making myself truly King of France is to win the support of the common people. With the people behind me I can rule as well as reign, and the people are behind your lordship.’

  ‘That’s true, though not everyone would say it,’ said Thomas, falling into the easy tone of a diplomatist in a confidential discussion. ‘I think that if I went back to England the common people over there would support me also. But I must go back with King Henry’s permission and good will. If I cross the Channel uninvited I can only throw myself into the arms of his enemies; that would be to begin a civil war, and I have seen civil war.’

  There was another strong reason, though he did not copy the frankness of King Louis by mentioning it openly. The Pope would be very angry if he drove King Henry into the Ghibelline camp.

  ‘I am sorry the colloquy arranged by your lordship came to nothing,’ he continued. ‘Perhaps I was too obstinate. If you, my lord, can arrange another meeting with King Henry I shall come to it as fast as horse can carry me. I shall do all in my power to win his friendship, and to deserve it.’

  That delighted King Louis. He was never happier than when acting as peacemaker; though his efforts in that field were rarely successful, for he could never understand that serious differences of principle could not be resolved by an embrace and a few gracious words.

  Nevertheless, though not only King Louis but the Pope himself, and every politician and clerk in Christendom who fancied his skill in diplomacy, tried to heal the breach between the faithfully papalist King of England and his too-papalist Archbishop, from January to November no meeting could be arranged. There were incessant negotiations at long range through third parties, and endless redraftings of complicated saving clauses. For Henry now answered his antagonist with his own weapons; he announced that he would accept Thomas’s addition to the oath of homage if he in his turn might add that he accepted it ‘saving the dignity of the realm of England’. Thomas replied that this exception was too wide, and both sides were back where they had started.

  The long dispute had reached a stage where innocent by-standers might be hurt by flying missiles. In England the Church was drifting towards chaos, since there was no supreme authority to resolve disputes between diocesan Bishops; in so far as it was ruled at all it was administered by the Bishop of London. From his intervention he gained neither honour nor profit.

  Bishop Gilbert had been studying the new fashionable romances about King Arthur, a frivolous diversion for a holy monk of Cluny. Geoffrey of Monmouth described a state of affairs, in the fifth century, when the Church in Britain was ruled by an Archbishop of London. At this Gilbert’s imagination took fire, and he began to claim that his See should be raised to Metropolitan status; at the same time King Henry relied on him to administer all benefices left vacant by the exile of the Archbishop’s supporters. At last Thomas lost patience with the holy and ambitious prelate. On Palm Sunday in 1169, at the great Abbey of Clairvaux, the Abbey which St. Bernard had made so famous that anything done there was speedily known all over Christendom, he pronounced public sentence of excommunication against the Bishop of London.

  Bishop Gilbert could not deny the Archbishop of Canterbury’s authority to excommunicate him. He took refuge in the quibble that this talk of excommunication might be only a rumour; he would submit to the ban when he received a formal document bearing the seal of his Archbishop. Since the King forbade anyone to bring such a document into England, and the ports were watched against it, the stalemate might have endured indefinitely.

  But for the first time since his exile Thomas intervened directly in the affairs of England. When a layman, a knight of Champagne named Odo, volunteered to serve the writ at risk of his life, the Archbishop gave him the precious parchment and allowed him to try the dangerous enterprise. Since Sir Odo was a vassal of the King of France he could not be accused of treason against King Henry; the worst punishment he might face would be unpleasant confinement until he was deported across the Channel.

  Sir Odo was completely successful. In July he returned to Sens triumphant. For once the little study where the exiles penned their interminable manifestos was lit by an air of accomplishment; as Sir Odo stood by the door, telling his carefully prepared story to the Archbishop and his companions, he might have been a trouvere reciting the gallant deeds of a Crusader. He was very pleased with himself, and rightly; Thomas felt his flagging energy revived by the fresh breeze of knightly prowess.

  ‘When we got to London, my squire and I,’ said Odo, hand on hip and right foot advanced in proud flamboyance, ‘we learned that Bishop Gilbert had gone into hiding. He feared that a stranger might hand him the notice of his excommunication, in spite of all King Henry’s precautions. So he travelled about his Diocese, alone and meanly dressed; even the Canons of St. Paul’s Cathedral did not know where he was. We made a few inquiries, but evidently we would never reach him; so we decided to use our second plan. We had been told that if we could not serve the document on the Bishop in person, the next best thing was to have it read from the altar of his cathedral. I believe that is binding in law.’

  ‘Legally it is as binding as if you handed it to Gilbert,’ said Herbert of Bosham. ‘But of course he thought it could never happen. How did you persuade a priest to read it from the altar, and how did you get away afterwards?’

  ‘We thought it out carefully. Peter, my squire, who has a very strong head, drank with the Londoners in their taverns until he knew the habits of the congregation in St. Paul’s. It seems that on great feasts most Londoners go early to the parish church, to fulfil the obligation; then at midday those of them who appreciate good music and eloquent preaching drop in at St. Paul’s to hear some of the High Mass. On Ascension Day we went early to the cathedral, and found good places near the altar rails. I had the writ of excommunication all ready in my pouch, folded with the seal outside so that it might have been any kind of legal deed.’

  ‘How had you got it into England in the first place? I heard that they were searching the baggage of all travellers from France,’ asked Thomas.

  ‘We were never searched. We chose to travel on a crowded boat, and though a sergeant of the Dover garrison stood on the quay, reminding us that it was forbidden to introduce papal writs into England, he searched only the baggage of clerks, and left us alone.’

  ‘I see. Nowadays King Henry is not well served. When I was Chancellor there would have been a knight on the quay to see that the sergeant carried out his orders in full.’

  ‘Anyway, I had the writ safe, and I waited through the long Mass until the priest came to the Offertory. Then we went up to the altar rails and knelt, displaying the sealed writ. I suppose the priest thought we were offering the deeds of a manor for his cathedral, and had chosen this public way of displaying our generosity. He came down to the rails, took the parchment from my hands, and began to read it aloud. As soon as we heard him pronounce the opening w
ords my squire and I stepped back into the crowd. There was a great stir as the congregation began to take in what he was reading. Someone shouted that the citizens must arrest these impudent messengers. We were trying to push our way to the west door, while the rest of the crowd surged towards the altar to hear better. I thought we were stuck; but an elderly burgess caught me by the shoulder. “I worked with Tom Becket in the counting-house of Osbert Huitdeniers,” he whispered, “and when I was chosen Alderman I swore to aid all my fellow-burgesses from the Ward of Cheap. I shall aid their friends also. Follow me.” He struggled towards the west door, while his servant went in front crying: “Way for Goodman Robert, who is sick and must get into the fresh air.” The crowd let us through, and Goodman Robert took us at once to his own house. At dawn next day we passed through the city gate, mounted on the Goodman’s horses, disguised as his serving-men. He had a train of pack-horses leaving for Southampton and we journeyed with it to the coast, unmolested. That is all. But you may be sure that Bishop Gilbert now knows he is excommunicate.’