by Jean Plaidy
He reminded me that he had been four years in France. I had been here a considerable time too, but not quite as long as that.
“Four years away from my kingdom,” he said.
“We are singularly blessed in Leicester and de Luci.”
“Yes. But it is time I went back.”
I agreed with him. I wondered whether the appointment of Thomas had anything to do with his wish to return. I think I had begun to question my relationship with him when I first knew of Thomas. In those days they had been almost like lovers. Henry’s eyes shone when he looked on the man; he began to be amused in anticipation before Becket spoke. There was some indefinable attraction Becket had for him. Thomas had never been diffident. There was nothing of the sycophant about him; indeed he had been openly critical of Henry, who had taken from him what would have enraged him from another. Perhaps I had been a little jealous in those days when Henry had meant a great deal to me.
And now, did he want to go back to England because Thomas was there? True, it was time he returned. England was the most important of his possessions. He must not neglect it.
His avaricious acquisitiveness put a great strain on him. He could never resist seizing any possession which came his way; he seemed to forget they had to be protected.
So now we were to return to England and he planned to spend Christmas at Oxford.
We traveled down to the coast. The sea was at its most treacherous, the winds violent. It would be folly to put to sea in such weather. We waited and time passed. We should certainly not be in England for Christmas.
Instead we spent it at Cherbourg without a great deal of celebration because we were unprepared; and each day we waited for the wind to abate. I was longing to see my son Henry and wondering how he was faring in Becket’s household. It was about eight months since I had seen him and, as before that we had been constantly together, I missed him very much. I planned to see him as soon as I returned to England.
As the weather did not improve and we remained at Cherbourg, Henry grew very impatient.
“I doubt not,” I said, “that the first person you will wish to see when we get to England will be your recalcitrant Archbishop.”
“I shall need to see all those who hold posts of importance,” he replied.
“I hope you will be equally eager to see your son.”
“Oh, he is in good hands . . . the best possible.”
“In the hands of the man who refused the office of Chancellor which you wished him to keep?”
“Becket has a mind of his own.”
“It would be better if that mind was in accordance with that of his King.”
“You have never liked the fellow. I can’t think why. I should have thought he would have been your sort . . . cultured . . . pretty clothes . . . nice clean hands. I think, my dear, you are a little jealous of my affection for him.”
“It was rather excessive.” He laughed aloud.
“Perhaps it has diminished a little,” I went on. “He angered you when he slid out of the chancellorship.” Henry’s face darkened at the memory, and I could not resist adding: “You made it very clear that you were displeased.”
“Thomas is too honest a man to deny what he thinks right.”
“I hope he is as honest in all his dealings. He did manage to accumulate a great deal of wealth. I wonder how.”
“He would have been a fool if he hadn’t, and Thomas is no fool.”
“I can see,” I said, “that you are looking forward to the reunion. I myself look forward with equal pleasure to seeing my son again.”
It was not until the end of January that the weather allowed us to sail. When we landed at Southampton, Becket was among the delegation waiting to welcome us; and, to my delight, with him was Henry.
My son and I embraced. I held him at arm’s length and looked into his handsome face. How I loved those fair Plantagenet looks which came from his paternal grandfather. It was a pity Geoffrey le Bel had not passed on his good looks to his son, but at least they were there in my children, having slipped a generation.
“You have been happy, I see, my son,” I cried. “How we have all missed you.”
“I missed you,” said Henry.
“And you have been happy?”
“Oh yes.” I saw him look at Becket, and there was something like adoration in his eyes. I felt a twinge of annoyance, but my maternal feelings were stronger than petty jealousy. I was glad he had found a good home and affection with Becket.
Thomas himself had changed. He was thinner. His features, which had always been of an ascetic nature, were more so. There was a look of serenity about him. He was still splendidly attired, but I learned later that under his fine garments he wore a hairshirt. I was surprised. I had always felt a certain contempt for those people who tortured their bodies. Why? I asked myself. What good were they doing to humanity? What satisfaction could such acts bring to God? And what sort of god would be impressed by such folly? The wearing of hairshirts seemed to me a form of self-righteousness which I despised. I was surprised that Thomas could have indulged in such self-torture.
I warmed to him a little because he had been good to my son. I was deeply conscious of the greeting between him and the King.
Thomas knelt before Henry and I saw the softness in the King’s face. “Get up,” he said roughly, and then they were clasping hands, Henry was laughing.
“Well Archbishop-now and Chancellor-that-is-no-more, how fare you? By the eyes of God, you look like an Archbishop. What have you done to yourself? Come, we shall ride side by side.”
And they did. I heard their laughter and some of their conversation, in which Henry referred to Thomas’s rejection of the Great Seal.
“Thomas, I could have killed you.”
“I guessed you would be displeased.”
“Displeased! I was murderous. It was a mercy for you, Thomas, that you did not bring the Seal yourself. How dared you provoke me so?”
“Because, my lord King, I knew I could not remain Chancellor and be Archbishop at the same time. The Church is apart from the State.”
“Why should they not march together?”
“They cannot always see through the same eyes.”
“Why shouldn’t we make them do so?”
“It may not always be possible.”
“Then there will be trouble between us.”
“I feared that if I took the post it would impair our friendship, and that is very dear to me.”
“To me also, Thomas. We will work together.”
“There may be battles between us.”
“Good. I like a battle. I’d rather do battle with you, Thomas, than live in peace with others.”
Besotted as ever, I thought.
But that was not quite true. I sensed that Thomas knew it and saw trouble ahead.
And how right he proved to be.
Looking back, it seems to me that for a long period after our return to England our lives were dominated by Thomas Becket.
I believe that, of all his possessions, Henry loved England best. If he had been content to be King of England only, his reign would have been completely rewarding. The people were of a less fiery nature than those across the Channel. They wanted a peaceful existence and knew that Henry was a strong king. It was because of this that he was able to leave the country in the hands of well-chosen administrators. He had already shown his ability to rule rather in the manner of his grandfather, the first Henry. At the beginning of his reign he had put the financial working of the exchequer in order and had changed the debased coinage of Stephen’s regime to a uniform currency; he had brought new laws of justice into the country and new forms of taxation. Henry himself did not live extravagantly; when he needed money, it was for the country or to build up an army, to provide arms for his wars, which he would say were for the good of England.
On our return Henry thought we should make a progress through the country, and after Oxford we traveled to Westminster, then t
hrough Kent to Windsor, to Wales and up to Carlisle in the north. Henry was very anxious to call at Woodstock and spend some time there. Later I was to discover why he was so attached to this place.
By this time there was a controversy about what was called Sheriff’s Aid. This was a tax which those who owned land paid to the sheriff to compensate him for his work on their behalf. Henry was in need of money and it occurred to him that if this tax was paid to the treasury as an ordinary one would be, instead of to the sheriffs, it could be of use to him.
At the council meeting at Woodstock, Henry brought up this matter of Sheriff’s Aid.
In the past Becket had given his opinion freely to the King, and their friendship had not been impaired by this. But he was in a different position now and perhaps he overrated the King’s affection for him, because he immediately opposed Henry’s suggestion that the tax should be paid to the treasury and not the sheriffs.
Becket said it would be a mistake to take this money from the sheriffs, which was just a payment for the services they rendered to the people who paid it. If the sheriffs were not paid, who knew what devious practices they would indulge in, to make up for their loss?
Henry was angry to be opposed—and by Becket.
“By the eyes of God,” he cried, “it shall be given to the treasury as a tax, and it is not fitting for you, Archbishop, to oppose me.”
Thomas ought to have seen Henry’s rising temper. He wanted Thomas on his side, not always pulling against him.
Thomas’s reply was: “By the reverence of those eyes, my lord King, not a penny shall be paid from any of the Church lands under my control.”
Henry’s rages were generally well timed, and the council meeting was not the place to indulge in one. Coldly he dismissed the subject. But I could imagine how Thomas’s opposition rankled; anyone else who aroused such animosity in him would have to beware. I thought then that it might have been different with Thomas—but perhaps not.
I believed Henry was waiting for some chance to show Thomas who was the master, and it did not help that he was defeated on this matter. He should have remembered that the Church had its own laws outside the State.
Even when I heard it, I could not resist mentioning this to Henry. I wanted to impress on him the mistake he had made in insisting on Becket’s taking the archbishopric. This was just a small matter of contention between them. There could be bigger ones.
I said to him: “This is one of the occasions when, in certain quarters, the Archbishop is more powerful than the King, the Church more than the State.”
“That is not so. But the Church has too much power.”
“You may think it is time that was changed. A matter like this will lead people to think that the Archbishop of Canterbury is the ruler of this country, not the King.”
That did nothing to soothe his ruffled temper, but I could not prevent myself telling him what I thought. I just had to remind him how foolish he had been to make so much of Becket and then commit the final folly of creating him Archbishop of Canterbury.
He then began to look about him to find some way of making Thomas understand that, although he had scored over this matter of the sheriff’s tax, the King was most displeased at this attitude and it was something he would not tolerate.
Shortly after the controversy about Sheriff’s Aid, there arose the case of Philip de Brois.
When Henry had taken over England after Stephen’s death, he had been appalled by the anarchy which prevailed throughout the country and he had immediately begun to reform the laws and the administration of justice. He had instituted judges who traveled around the countryside trying the cases against criminals so that these were not left to local courts. It had had an undoubted effect, and the country was considerably safer for law-abiding people than it had been in Stephen’s reign. But if a member of the Church was accused of a crime, he was not tried by the King’s court of law but by that of the Church. It seemed to Henry that, if these particular criminals had enough influence in high places, they escaped very lightly.
It was another example of the Church’s taking precedence over the State.
Thus the case of Philip de Brois.
The man was a canon who was accused of murdering a knight. I think it was some trouble over the knight’s daughter, whom the canon was said to have seduced. When the canon was threatened by the girl’s father and realized that his villainy was revealed, he promptly killed him. De Brois had been taken before an ecclesiastical court, presided over by the Bishop of Lincoln, where all he had been required to do was swear to his innocence—and having done so, he was released.
Henry, seeking ammunition with which to attack the Church, thought he might have it here.
“All this man did,” he pointed out, “was to swear he was innocent. Any criminal could do that. There was no submission of evidence, no witnesses called . . . and he goes free. Why? Because he is a canon of the Church, and the Church protects its own. Well, I am going to protect my people.”
In this battle with Becket he turned more to me. He knew that from the first I had resented his friendship with the man and he supposed that I would certainly not be ready to support Becket against him. I was not entirely in agreement with him because I felt he was doing harm to the people’s image of him as a wise king by taking up the battle against Becket. By making Becket Archbishop, he had also made him a holy man in the eyes of the people. Chancellor Becket had been the worldly sophisticate; as an Archbishop he had made a complete turnabout; his tall, spare figure and his ascetic, pale face were an indication of his abstinence; the rich garments he wore were only a concession to his former tastes, and under them was the hairshirt.
My fortunes were bound up with those of Henry, and although I liked to score over him in private, I did not want his position to be shaken in the smallest way.
I said: “The man is said to be innocent because he swears before God that he is, and it is said that any churchman would prefer to take his punishment on Earth, rather than suffer eternal damnation.”
“That’s all very well,” said Henry, “but a great many of these churchmen are rogues and they should be seen as such. Philip de Brois is going to come before one of my judges and he can plead innocence there, but if he is found guilty, he shall suffer a just punishment. How can I keep order in my land if the crimes which are forbidden to some are allowed to go free in priests?”
“You are fighting against the Church,” I said.
“The Church must obey the laws of the land like anyone else. And if I wish to fight against the Church, I will.”
But, of course, he was fighting against Becket.
He had ordered the judges to bring him a list of the priests who had recently been accused and released after swearing their innocence before a Church tribunal. It was one of these justices, Simon Fitz-Peter, who had brought up the case of Philip de Brois.
He said that he felt there was a strong case against the man and, acting on the King’s order, when he was holding his assizes at Dunstable, he ordered Philip de Brois to appear before him to stand trial. Philip de Brois promptly refused and, moreover, was insulting to Fitz-Peter who reported the matter to Henry.
Henry was enraged. He demanded that de Brois now appear on two charges—murder and contempt of court.
This was where Becket came into the battle.
I could not understand the man. He was recklessly exposing himself to the King’s wrath. Why? I have never understood Becket. It was as though there were two men in one body. In the days of his chancellorship when he had played the affluent dandy, with his luxurious living, his sumptuous table, surrounding himself with valuable possessions, always adorned in the finest clothes, there had yet been something austere about him. In spite of his grandeur and love of pomp, those fine classical features of his had suggested an ascetic man. Now one side of his nature seemed completely subdued. The ascetic had come forth, the sybarite had retreated. I was appalled to think of that hairshirt beneath his magni
ficent robes.
Becket was a man who could not be halfhearted on any matter. Now he had determined to defend the Church against the State—the State being his onetime close friend Henry. He was going to stand for the rights of the Church no matter in what danger it placed him. He was a dangerous man. As I watched this battle between them, I was growing very uneasy, and I was turning more and more against Henry. He was acting foolishly. He wanted to proclaim to all that he held supreme power. But the Church had stood through centuries, and I believed that he did not completely realize the formidable nature of his foe, so sure was he of his own strength.
Becket pointed out that the law could not be changed over one case. Men of the Church were tried by the Church. That was Church law. Henry might rant and rage but he had to accept Becket’s logic. This was the law; and Henry, who set such store by law, could not enforce it on others and disregard it himself.
It seemed to me that he was losing this battle with Becket.
They both had to compromise. De Brois could not be tried in a lay court because he was a churchman. On the other hand, since the King wished there to be a further trial, this would have to be before an ecclesiastical court.
The result was a foreseen conclusion. The murder case, said the prelates who were gathered together to form judgment, had already been settled. De Brois had sworn his innocence. No priest would lie before God, for to do so was to imperil his immortal soul and destroy all hope of a future life. Therefore de Brois was innocent of murder.
