Beautiful Britain | Page 7

but Becket, putting aside John of Salisbury's suggestion that he
should speak privately to the angry knights, began to complain of the
grievances and insults he had himself received during the preceding
week: "They have attacked my servants," he said; "they have cut off
my sumpter-mule's tail; they have carried off the casks of wine that
were the King's own gift." To this Hugh de Moreville, who was the
least aggressive of the four, replied: "Why did you not complain to the
King of these outrages? Why did you take upon yourself to punish
them by your own authority?" But Becket, turning sharply towards him,
said: "Hugh! how proudly you lift up your head! When the rights of the
Church are violated, I shall wait for no man's permission to avenge
them. I will give to the King the things that are the King's, but to God
the things that are God's. It is my business, and I alone will see to it."
Taking up such an attitude in front of four men who had come hot-foot
to Canterbury with the express determination to seek an excuse for
killing him, Becket was sealing his own fate.
For the first time in the interview the Archbishop had assumed an

attitude of defiance; the fury of the knights broke at once through the
bonds which had partially restrained it, and displayed itself openly in
those impassioned gestures which are now confined to the
half-civilized nations of the South and East, but which seem to have
been natural to all classes of medieval Europe. Their eyes flashed fire,
they sprang upon their feet, and, rushing close up to him, gnashed their
teeth, twisting their long gloves, and wildly threw their arms above
their heads. Fitzurse exclaimed: "You threaten us--you threaten us! are
you going to excommunicate us all?"
Becket sprang up from his couch at this insulting demonstration, and in
the state of great excitement into which he could fall when roused, he
flung down his defiant challenge that all the swords in England could
not shake his obedience to the Pope. The four knights, goaded to fury
by other passionate words, left him, shouting, "To arms! to arms!"
They made their way with an excited throng to the great gateway,
where they armed, while the doors were closed to shut off the
monastery from communication with the town. The Archbishop seems
to have been fully alive to his danger, and yet he persistently refused to
take the smallest measure for his safety, opening with his own hands
the door from the cloisters into the north transept which some of the
monks had closed and barred immediately after they had dragged the
Archbishop into the nearly dark building.
Vespers had just begun when the murderers entered, but the singing of
that service was never completed. The fear of sacrilege induced the
knights to try to drag the defenceless Archbishop out of the Cathedral,
but he struggled with such vigour, flinging one of the men down on the
stone floor, that they gave up the attempt and killed him with three or
four sword strokes, the last of which, as he lay prone, was delivered by
Richard le Bret, or the Breton, and so tremendous was the force with
which it was delivered that the crown of the head was severed from the
skull and the sword broke in two on the pavement.
Canterbury being much divided in its attachment to Becket, the
murderers found escape easy, and the general regrets most expressed
seem to have been at the sacrilege rather than at the murder.

It is almost incredible how rapidly Becket became St. Thomas of
Canterbury. Within a few hours of the tragic scene, when, night having
fallen and the great church being closed and deserted, Osbert, the
Archbishop's chamberlain, entering with a light in his hand, found his
master's body lying on its face, with the frightful wound exposed, the
monks had kissed the hands and feet of the corpse and called him by
the name of Saint Thomas. What appears to have raised the fraternity to
this enthusiastic anticipation of the canonization, officially announced
at Westminster in 1173, was the discovery that Becket had on beneath
his outer robes, and the many other garments he wore, the black cowled
cloak of the Benedictines, and next to his skin a hair-cloth shirt of
unusual roughness. When the body was being prepared for the tomb
this shirt was found to be easily removable for the daily scourging
Becket had been in the habit of enduring, the marks of the stripes
administered on the previous day being plainly visible. Dean Stanley
adds another fact not easy to be believed by those who have never
become intimate with the practices of medieval monasticism:
Such austerity had hitherto