The Conquering Family

  The fateful sentence, spoken in a moment of uncontrollable passion, had not been uttered for a purpose. Henry did not want Becket killed. Death would be a triumph for the recalcitrant archbishop; it would make him a martyr in the eyes of the world for all time. There were other ways of dealing with him. The King must have repented the words as soon as they left his tongue. He was alert enough certainly to discover that four of his train had disappeared and to demand that they be found and halted. He sent mounted riders to all the ports of Normandy with orders that none of them was to be allowed to embark for England.

  The precautions taken were of no avail. The four knights had been wary and had separated. Each had succeeded in getting away on small ships. Henry threw his arms above his head in despair when he learned this. He knew that he had lost. In a fit of temper he had thrown away everything for which he had striven so long.

  The first of the four knights who thus set out to remove from the King’s path the haughty primate was the same Reginald Fitzurse who had once ridden in Becket’s train, grown heavier and darker and a little more passionate with the years and wearing on his shield three bears passant. The others were Hugh de Moreville, forester of Cumberland and owner of the castle of Knaresborough, who was reported to have had a young Saxon boiled to death on a false accusation; William de Tracey, who had a great reputation for bravery but was said to be base and ferocious; and Richard le Breton.

  5

  It was Christmas Day. A cold day, with frost in the ground and a leaden sky. But the cold outside seemed easier to bear than the frigid atmosphere in the untended and dilapidated palace of the archbishop. There was little to eat. A shipload of supplies from France had been seized by Randulf de Broc and the crew imprisoned. A brother of his, Robert de Broc, had stopped a train with food and had mutilated a horse and a mule belonging to the see. The members of the staff were an unhappy lot. It is hard enough at any time to face danger; it is doubly taxing to face it with empty stomachs.

  Before the performance of high mass Thomas à Becket preached in the chapter house, taking as his text “On earth, peace to men of good will.” So many came to hear him that they stood in the aisles and filled every inch of space from which the tall, spare figure could be seen and the passionate voice heard. But the tone of the inexorable man returned from exile had no passion in it at first. There was love and compassion only as he expounded his message. He made it clear that he knew the fate in store for him. With great emotion he referred to the death of Alfege, the primate who had been killed by the Danes, and when he said, “There will soon be another,” people laid their heads in their hands and sobbed. The backs of the monks in the choir shook with the grief which filled them.

  Perhaps, as he spoke, the archbishop’s mind went back to the Christmas Day when he had first seen the King, when Henry had faced him with thumbs tucked in his belt and had smiled instant approval. Their relationship had started with mutual liking and confidence. Why had it become distorted into opposition and hate?

  But if his thoughts turned back it was for a moment only. The voice of the passionate man changed. It was now raised in denunciation. For those who were not men of good will there could be no peace, there must be punishment. For the first time his listeners realized the significance of the candles burning beside the preacher. Excommunication was delivered by candle and book. A tremor of excitement and fear swept through the chapter house. What did the archbishop intend to do? Would he take the last desperate step, the final audacity, of placing the King outside the law of God? Or—and they shuddered at this possibility—would he ban by interdict all religious observances in the country and leave them to the machinations of the devil?

  In a voice shaken with anger, Thomas à Becket cursed the men who had despoiled the precincts of Canterbury in his absence. He named Randulf de Broc and, raising one of the candles, he extinguished it and threw it behind him as though it were now contaminated. Next he named the other De Broc, the mutilator of animals, and a second candle was raised, blotted out, and cast aside. Finally he dealt with two church officials who were occupying incumbencies without his approval, and again candles were tossed away. “May they all be cursed,” he cried in a loud voice, “by Jesus Christ, and may their memory be lost!”

  As he descended from the pulpit and walked to the high altar, he said to his cross-bearer, “One martyr, St. Alfege, you already have; another, if God will, you will have soon.”

  Three days passed. On Monday, the twenty-eighth of December, the four knights arrived at Saltwood Castle, which belonged to the see of Canterbury but had been taken by Randulf de Broc. There they remained overnight, and early the next morning they rode the fifteen miles of Roman road from Lympne to Canterbury, where they stopped outside the walls at the priory of St. Augustine’s and were received by that man of bad repute, the Abbot Clerambault. From there they rode, as the twilight shadows began to fall, into the city, Randulf de Broc accompanying them, grim-faced over the action taken against him, a troop of mounted men at his back. The black looks of the party froze the people with fear. Commands were given in sharp tones: Stand back, no interference, no noise! Then Reginald Fitzurse, taking upon himself leadership, issued a definite order. All the people of Canterbury must return to their homes and stay there behind closed doors and without lights.

  A meal had been served at three o’clock in the palace, not a good meal, for the household was still badly disorganized. There was no rich sauce on the fish to please the once cultivated palate of the archbishop. It did not matter. He finished his food and drank a glass or two of wine. It was a silent repast, the servants moving on tiptoe and with lowered heads. The primate as well as his servants knew of the arrival of armed men in the town. He rose from the table, his strength renewed for the ordeal ahead of him.

  Dusk had now settled over the cathedral town, but only in the palace had candles been lighted. The servants were reluctant to have them, feeling there might be security in darkness. The hymn of grace over, their master repaired to his own room and seated himself on the side of the bed, where he conversed with a small group of his closest adherents, including John of Salisbury, his chaplain William Fitzstephen, and a visitor named Grim from Cambridge, a Saxon monk.

  The knights reached the court before the hall, and here they dismounted and left their weapons. The outer court was crowded with the usual beggars, and the four men pushed their way through them, wearing over their chain mail long white cloaks. They were escorted to the room where the archbishop sat.

  Reginald Fitzurse, in his role of leader, said, “We bring you the commands of the King.”

  It was an unfortunate opening. If the King had sent commands it was unfitting that they should be delivered by messengers of such comparative unimportance. It was worse if they were assuming royal sanction for their visit. Thomas à Becket, his brow drawn into a frown, refused to look at them and, at first, to address them. It was only when Fitzurse began to recite the wrongs which the primate had heaped on the King that his one-time leader took a part in the conversation. The excommunications laid on the bishops, declared Becket, were from the Pope and had been uttered with the knowledge and consent of the King. Fitzurse was thunderstruck. “What is it you say?” demanded the knight. “Do you charge the King with treachery?”

  Becket turned then and looked at his former aide. “Reginald, Reginald,” he said, “I do no such thing.”

  The tone of the altercation rose to greater heat. The archbishop, unable as usual to control his high temper, became involved in sharp rebuttals to the charges they made. Fitzurse then took it upon himself to say that the King demanded the departure of the archbishop and his servants from the realm, never to return.

  A silence fell on the room at that. Thomas à Becket rose to his feet. He towered over the four stocky knights in their white cloaks, making them look insignificant and as futile as schoolboys debating with their master. He spoke in even tones at first. “Never again shall I leave England.” There was no mistaking
the finality of the words. “Do you think I will fly?” His voice rose suddenly in a burst of scornful laughter, then subsided again. “Not for living man, not for the King, will I fly!”

  Then his voice dropped lower to a mystical note. “You cannot be more willing to kill me,” he said, “than I am to die.”

  Fitzurse and his companions realized now that nothing but violence was left to them. The man who had once served under the Becket banner turned a face distorted with deep passion to the group about the primate. “We command you,” he said brusquely, “to see that this man does not escape.”

  The dusk had deepened into darkness, and the knights stumbled as they left the chill of the palace and felt their way across the unlighted courtyard, now deserted, issuing a command to their men, “To arms!” The gate was closed and the armed troops poured inside, shouting, “Reaux! Reaux!” The monks threw aside their cloaks under a sycamore tree and buckled on their swords.

  In the meantime two palace servants, Osbert and Algar, shut and barred the entrance to the palace hall. Then they ran frantically from door to door and window to window, bolting them against the aggressors. Thomas à Becket was left alone. He was so deeply sunk in thought that he did not hear the slamming of the shutters, otherwise he would have commanded the servants to stop. He had not moved from the rumpled bed but sat up straight, staring at the solitary candle. When seen in dim light his face always wore an aspect of singular nobility; the fire of the eyes subdued under the finely arched eyebrows, the proud and courageous nose with a generosity of bridge which suggested the soldier, the mobile lips from which the bitterness had departed. What were his thoughts as he sat there? If they were known, the enigma which was Thomas à Becket would be solved. Was he possessed of such pride that he could not recede from a position once taken and so must go on to a tragic death? Was it ambition which activated him, a determination to set himself above everyone, even the King? Was he an actor, a supremely fine one, awaiting the cue for his last great scene? Or was he possessed of such faith, such an overwhelming sense of the greatness of the God he served, that he wanted to fill the earth with voices praising Him and none else?

  He was so deeply absorbed that he did not notice the cessation of the bells which had been ringing for vespers.

  His people returned to the musing archbishop. They were fairly panting with fear. The knights were arming themselves. What was to be done?

  Thomas à Becket, roused from his thoughts, said in an indifferent tone, “Let them arm.”

  A sound of hammering and broken glass suddenly disturbed the silence of the palace. The knights, finding the doors barred against them, were breaking through the oriel window in a passage between the hall and the private apartments of the archbishop. One of the frightened servants thought of a little-used corridor which ran from the suite to the entrance of the north cloister. By going at once, they could escape into the cathedral, where vespers were now being sung and where they would be in sanctuary.

  But Thomas à Becket was not concerned with safety. He preferred to wait for the armed assassins who had been sent, as he had every reason to believe, by the King. They had to take him by the arms and practically drag him to the passage. Once there, he recollected that he had intended to be present at vespers and he then did not hold back. He insisted, however, that someone return for the archiepiscopal cross, and he waited, quite oblivious to the sounds of armed invaders within the palace, until the monk Grim arrived with it. As a result he had not traversed the full distance of the north cloister when the knights issued from the palace and turned into the south passage. Even in the deepening gloom the followers of the primate could see across the garth that the invaders were driving a group of monks ahead of them and that Reginald Fitzurse was brandishing an ax over his head. This was too much. They seized their reluctant master by the arms and hurried him into the chapter house.

  He was now in sanctuary, and the men with him sighed with relief, convinced that the pursuers must give up. One servant, however, tugged at the archiepiscopal sleeve and whispered that it would be wise to take refuge in the chapel of St. Blaise. This was a very small chapel above that of St. Benedict and was reached by an obscure door which would not be seen in the dark. If Thomas à Becket heard him, he paid no heed. He knew there were many safe hiding places in the blackness of the cathedral, but he had no intention of concealing himself. He crossed the chapter house and entered the lower north transept.

  Pause now for a moment. The tall archbishop was walking to martyrdom for a cause which was lost centuries ago and has been abandoned long since. But this much must be said for the strange man who would die rather than yield; he had always known what the ending must be and in his last moments he was sublime.

  The chanting of the monks in the Lady Chapel had stopped with an abruptness which told of panic. Word of an armed intrusion had reached them as they began the fourth psalm of vespers, and the sound died in their throats. Some did not hesitate to scatter and flee for safety, but most of them made no effort to leave, remaining motionless in their stalls behind the high arched screen, their heads lowered, their hands taut on their prayer books.

  Can history present a more dramatic and terrifying moment than when Thomas à Becket walked slowly into the transept? The tall figure moved through the gloom of the great church, lighted in small areas only by the candles burning before shrines. He found his way through the pillars, the whole arched space above a void of impenetrable darkness from which faint echoes came; walking without haste, although the clang of armed feet could be heard not far behind on the stone flagging. The courageous Grim carried the cross in the lead, at the same leisurely pace of the man whose fate he expected to share.

  As the primate reached the steps of the choir above which the porphyry chair of the archbishops stood (which, clearly, he hoped to attain so they would have to kill him there), his followers swung the gates to and would have locked them if their master had not rebuked them.

  “The church of God,” he said sternly, “must not be made a fortress!”

  His people scattered at that. Having refused this last precaution, he was lost. None wanted to share his fate save the stouthearted Grim, who still stalked ahead, maintaining the cross meticulously at the prescribed level.

  Thomas à Becket had not reached the chair when the first of the knights entered heavy-footed into the choir space. The others followed and remained there for a moment, unable to see anything.

  “Where is the traitor?” demanded Fitzurse in a voice which echoed from all parts of the cathedral.

  No answer came. They began to fear that the man they sought had done what common sense dictated and had found refuge in the crypt or in some dark recess.

  “Where is the archbishop?”

  An answer came to that without any pause. “Reginald, here I am.” Thomas à Becket emerged from the shadows and walked down the steps toward them. Now they saw him clearly, and it is impossible that they could have escaped a feeling of awe and dread. His face had taken on the rapt look of martyrdom.

  “Here I am,” he repeated. “No traitor, but the archbishop and priest of God. What do you want?”

  Word of what was happening had passed from house to house in Canterbury. Disobeying the order to remain indoors, people poured out into the streets, saying to one another, “They will kill our kind father.” They moved in a body to the cathedral and began to rush in through the east entrance. Hugh de Moreville detached himself from his companions and ran down the broad dark aisle, waving his sword above his head and calling out in a loud voice that no one was to move a step closer. They could see little, the bewildered citizens, save the faint glow of the candles at side shrines and perhaps the lights of the Lady Chapel far ahead of them. They were aware of De Moreville, however, as he swung his sword and threatened to kill anyone who made a move forward. They were unarmed and so there was nothing they could do, although they were desperately afraid that somewhere ahead of them in the dark their patron and great frien
d was being done to death.

  Many stories are told of what ensued in the space later called The Martyrdom. It is said that bitter taunts were exchanged, that the knights made efforts to seize the archbishop and carry him off a prisoner. It seems of little moment to recount all the conflicting details. Save these: that the first blow, delivered by the sword of De Tracey (whose shield, appropriately, carried two bars gules, as red as blood), was taken by Grim on his raised arm. It shattered the bone, and the sole remaining adherent of the doomed man fell back against the wall. The point of the sword, however, had touched the scalp of the archbishop. He took a step closer to them with blood pouring down his lofty forehead.

  “I am prepared to die for Christ,” he said, “and for His Church.”

  They were his last words. De Tracey’s sword smote him again. Le Breton then struck him, and he sank to the floor. De Broc stepped viciously on the neck of the wounded man and broke his skull open so that the brains were spread on the stone.

  (1) A recent photograph of all that is left today of the tiny chapel at Chinon where Henry II died. These ruins are at the extreme end of the imposing remains of Chinon Castle.

  (2) A recent photograph of the medieval stronghold and its many towers which still stand in Angers. The Angevins are still proud to claim that the castle was never reduced.

  Pointing with the bloody end of his weapon at the inert form, De Broc said: “The traitor is dead. We may go.”

  6

  A Saxon monk named Godric, living the life of an anchorite where the Wear River rises in the Cumberland Hills at the far limit almost of the kingdom, knew of the death of Thomas à Becket the instant it occurred. This is the most extreme case on record, but it was amazing how quickly the news spread. A major convulsion of nature—an earthquake, a rain of forty days and forty nights, the appearance of a terrifying comet in the sky—could not have created a wider and wilder interest.