For my very last blog, which is an extremely sad thought, as I am by no means ready to leave England, I will begin by delving deeper into the conflict between Henry II and Thomas Becket, its origins, and how it finally ended with Becket’s death. As was only appropriate after our trip to Canterbury yesterday, we spent our last class meeting today talking about Becket. Unlike most other bishops and archbishops, Becket was not of high birth; rather, he was born in Cheapside, a middle-class area of London, as his father was a merchant of Norman origin. Despite not being of noble class, Becket was well-educated at Merton Priory before entering the service of the current Archbishop of Canterbury as a clerk. Around this time, Becket may have taken minor holy orders, meaning that he lived like a priest in part, but was not actually ordained in truth; this supposition seems to be confirmed by the fact that Becket never married, suggesting that he likely lived a celibate life. In 1154, Becket’s life was to change irrevocably, as that year saw the death of King Stephen, the last Norman monarch, and the beginning of the Plantagenet dynasty, in the form of Henry II. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that Becket’s relationship with Henry II and all of its consequences completely changed the course of his life.
Becket’s first-hand contact with Henry II began when he was recommended for the post of Lord Chancellor in 1155, giving him power over the government and the country’s revenues. For the most part, he enforced traditional sources of taxation and revenue, including the taxation of churches and bishops. During this period of his life, Becket was clearly working to strengthen the authority of the king, and he was quite good at his job, as he was clever and shrewd. Furthermore, throughout the years of working closely with Henry II, the two men became friends; Becket even took Henry II’s eldest surviving son, also named Henry, into his household, acting as a sort of foster father to the younger Henry. However, the cracks in the relationship between Becket and Henry II began to appear in the early 1160s when Becket was elevated to his highest office yet: Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1162, the sitting Archbishop of Canterbury died, and Becket, hastily ordained a priest, was elected Archbishop in May of that year. Henry II clearly hoped that, by elevating his longtime Lord Chancellor and friend to one of the highest church positions in England, Becket would feel gratitude toward Henry and work to extend the king’s authority over the church. The trouble between the king and the archbishop began almost immediately, as Becket worked to regain lost church power. In return, Henry began to turn the other bishops against Becket, as he was absolutely determined to hold onto his power over the church.
The entire conflict between Becket and Henry II came to a head in January 1164, when Henry called a meeting of the higher English clergy at Clarendon Palace. There, he placed sixteen constitutions before the clergymen, all dealing with less clerical independence and more royal authority over the Catholic Church in England. Nearly all of those assembled were willing to sign the Constitutions of Clarendon, likely fearing Henry II’s famous temper; as can be easily guessed, the lone dissenter was Thomas Becket, who refused to sign the constitutions. In retaliation, later that year, Becket was charged with-and convicted of-contempt of royal authority, causing him to flee to France in search of sanctuary. For the next six years, Becket lived in France, under the protection of Louis VII of France, who was always willing to do anything to confound the English king. Meanwhile, Henry fought back, issuing edicts against Becket; in what would become a continuing series of escalations, Becket threatened to excommunicate Henry and his bishops. Finally, in 1170, a settlement between Henry and Becket was negotiated, and Becket returned to England. No sooner had he returned, though, than the conflict began again, this time more serious than ever.
In the summer of 1170, Henry II’s eldest son, Henry, was crowned king in his father’s lifetime at York; the coronation was carried out by the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of London, and the Bishop of Salisbury, in direct violation of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s (Becket’s) right to crown monarchs. In retaliation, Becket excommunicated all three bishops, who immediately fled to Henry II in Normandy. True to form, Henry was absolutely furious with the news from England and is said to have exclaimed “Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?” Whether or not those were his exact words has been debated throughout the centuries; however, whatever the king did say was interpreted by four of his knights as a wish to have Becket assassinated. Accordingly, the four men immediately set out for England, arriving in Canterbury on December 29, 1170. The knights first left their weapons outside the cathedral and informed Becket that he was summoned to Winchester to account for his actions; when Becket refused to go, they rushed outside, grabbed their weapons, and reentered the cathedral. The men attempted to drag Becket out of the cathedral, so that they would not have to kill him on consecrated ground, but Becket clung to a pillar and could not be dislodged. Rather than give up, the knights fell upon him with their swords, eventually severing the crown of his head. After so many years, the conflict between Henry II and Becket was at an end; however, it was perhaps an end that Henry did not desire after all, as he would later make public penance for the death of Becket.
As the monks of Canterbury Cathedral prepared Becket’s body for burial, they discovered that he had been wearing a hair shirt, a sign of penance and a form of mortification of the flesh, under his robes. This discovery led people to almost immediately proclaim Becket to be a martyr for his beliefs; indeed, in 1173, less than three years after his death, Thomas Becket was canonized as a saint. The next year Henry II would make his public penance at Becket’s tomb, only one of many pilgrims to come to Canterbury over the centuries. Throughout the medieval period, the cult surrounding Becket continued to grow, catapulting Canterbury to prominence for English pilgrims, as I have mentioned before. Due to Canterbury’s religious significance, Geoffrey Chaucer chose to immortalize the pilgrimage route to the cathedral in The Canterbury Tales. However, in a case of great historical irony, eventually Becket was brought down for a second time by a monarch named Henry. Instead of 1170, the year was 1538, and Henry II was replaced with Henry VIII, who ordered the shrine to Becket, as well as Becket’s bones, destroyed as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Obliterating the memory of Thomas Becket served Henry VIII well, as Becket was-and still is-a prominent symbol of challenging royal authority over the church. Having just broken with the Catholic Church in Rome, Henry could not afford for his own Becket to come along.
In the twentieth century, the memory of Thomas Becket began to reappear in Canterbury Cathedral, as a new altar was erected in the Martyrdom, to replace the original, which had been destroyed in 1538. Nevertheless, what I, as a history major, most wish could be replaced-the shrine to Becket-is unfortunately lost for all time. The more I think about the destruction of the shrine-the destruction of all that history-the sadder I become; in a way, I wish it was possible to live in a world in which all history is preserved, in which people never try to erase the memory of the past. However, we live in the world we live in, for better or for worse. All that we can do, to paraphrase The Lord of the Rings, is to make the most of the time and the memory that we have. As I have come to these realizations throughout the course of my five weeks in Cambridge, I am happier-and prouder-than ever that I am a history major, that I am studying the past, and that, hopefully, I can help to inspire others to keep the past alive. For, if all the stories, as that is what they truly are, that I have told on this blog are any indication, the people of the past are not all that different from us today. The modern world may have changed the ways in which wars are fought or conflicts, such as that between Henry II and Thomas Becket, are resolved, but the human emotions behind all of these actions have not truly changed at all. One of the most important things I have learned in my time in England is that the Middle Ages were not the Dark Ages; rather, there was light, culture, and society throughout Europe. Though life for Europeans was harsher, shorter, and more dangerous than it is today, were I to meet a medieval person on the street, at the heart, they would not be so different from myself. In my opinion, that, above all else, is the true meaning of history: people are people, whether they live in the fourteenth century or the twenty-first century.
Making the Past Present 