As archbishop

For almost a year after the death of Theobald, the see of Canterbury was vacant. Thomas was aware of the king’s intention and tried to dissuade him by warnings of what would happen. Henry persisted and Thomas was elected. Once consecrated, Thomas changed both his outlook and his way of life. He became devout and austere and embraced the integral program of the papacy and its canon law. This spectacular change has baffled historians, and several explanations have been attempted: that Thomas was intoxicated by his ambition to dominate or that he threw himself, as before, into a part he had agreed to play. It is simpler to suppose that he accepted at last the spiritual obligations he had ignored as chancellor and turned into a new channel his mingled energy, force of character, impetuosity, and ostentation. Greatly to Henry’s displeasure, he immediately resigned the chancellorship but clung to the archdeaconry until forced by the king to resign.

Henry had been in Normandy since August 1158, and on his return in January 1163 Thomas began the struggle by opposing a tax proposal and excommunicating a leading baron. More serious was his attitude in the matter of “criminous clerks.” In western Europe, accused clerics for long had enjoyed the privilege of standing trial before the bishop rather than secular courts and usually received milder punishments than lay courts would assess. In England before the Norman Conquest this was still the custom. If found guilty in an ecclesiastical court, clerics could be degraded or exiled but were not liable to death or mutilation. For 60 years after the Norman Conquest, little is heard of clerical crime or its punishment, while on the Continent Gregorian reformers were tending to emphasize the sole right of the church to try and punish clerks in major orders. The position of Thomas, that a guilty clerk could be degraded and punished by the bishop but should not be punished again by lay authority—“not twice for the same fault”—was canonically arguable and ultimately prevailed. Henry’s contention that clerical crime was rife and that it was encouraged by the absence of drastic penalties commends itself to modern readers as a fair one. But it must be remembered that the king’s motives were authoritarian and administrative rather than enlightened. Nevertheless, it may be thought that Thomas was ill-advised in his rigid stand on this point.

The issue was joined in a council at Westminster (October 1163), but the crisis came at Clarendon (Wiltshire, January 1164), when the king demanded a global assent to all traditional royal rights, reduced to writing under 16 heads and known as the Constitutions of Clarendon. These asserted the king’s right to punish criminous clerks, forbade excommunication of royal officials and appeals to Rome, and gave the king the revenues of vacant sees and the power to influence episcopal elections. Henry was justified in saying that these rights had been exercised by Henry I, but Thomas also was justified in maintaining that they contravened church law. Thomas, after verbally accepting the Constitutions of Clarendon, revoked his assent and appealed to the pope, then in France, who supported him while deprecating precipitate action.

Quarrel with Henry

Good relations between Thomas and Henry were now at an end; the archbishop was summoned to trial by the king on a point of feudal obligation. At the Council of Northampton (October 6–13, 1164), it was clear that Henry intended to ruin and imprison or to force the resignation of the archbishop. In this he was encouraged by some of the bishops, among them Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London. Thomas fled in disguise and took refuge with Louis VII of France. Pope Alexander III received him with honour but hesitated to act decisively in his favour in fear that he might throw Henry into the arms of the Holy Roman emperor Frederick I and his antipope, Paschal III.

Thomas’s exile lasted for six years (November 2, 1164–December 2, 1170). He was joined by many of his distinguished household and lived ascetically, first at Pontigny Abbey and then, when Henry threatened the monks, at an abbey near Sens. Henry meanwhile had seized the properties of the archbishop and his supporters and had exiled all Thomas’s close relatives. In the following years several abortive attempts were made at reconciliation, but new acts of hostility by the king and declarations of excommunication hurled by Thomas at his opponents embittered the struggles.

The bishops were divided, but a majority of them, led by Foliot, were either hostile to Thomas or hesitant in supporting him. Papal legates more than once endeavoured to mediate, and the king and the archbishop came together at Montmirail in 1169, only to part in anger. Thomas distrusted the king and was, in turn, hated by him. In the same year, Henry put out additions to the Constitutions of Clarendon, virtually withdrawing England from papal obedience. Finally, in 1170, he had his eldest son crowned as co-king by the archbishop of York, Becket’s old rival.

This was a flagrant breach of papal prohibition and of the immemorial right of Canterbury to crown the king. Thomas, followed by the pope, excommunicated all responsible. Henry, fearing an interdict for England, met Thomas at Fréteval (July 22), and it was agreed that Thomas should return to Canterbury and receive back all the possessions of his see. Neither party withdrew from his position regarding the Constitutions of Clarendon, which on this occasion were not mentioned. This “open-ended” concordat has remained an inexplicable event. Thomas returned to Canterbury (December 2) and was received with enthusiasm, but further excommunications of the hostile royal servants, refusal to lift the excommunication of Roger of York and Foliot, and his ready acceptance of tumultuous acclaim by the crowds infuriated Henry in Normandy.

Martyrdom

Some violent words of Henry were taken literally by four leading knights of the court, who proceeded swiftly to Canterbury on December 29. They forced themselves into the archbishop’s presence, and, on his refusal to absolve the bishops, followed him into the cathedral. There, at twilight, after further altercation, they cut him down with their swords. His last words were an acceptance of death in defense of the church of Christ.

Within a few days after Thomas’s death, his tomb became a goal of pilgrimage, and he was canonized by Pope Alexander III in 1173. In 1174 Henry did penance at Canterbury and was absolved. For almost four centuries, Becket’s shrine was one of the most famous in Europe. Thomas was portrayed in illuminations and sculpture, and churches were dedicated to him throughout Western Christendom.

Judgment on the character and actions of St. Thomas has been varied. From his martyrdom until the reign of Henry VIII, he was the “blisful martir” of Chaucer’s pilgrims, who had heroically defied a tyrant. Henry VIII despoiled his shrine, burned his bones, and erased his name from all service books. Thenceforth, Thomas was a hero to Catholics and a traitor to Protestants.

Many recent historians, impressed by the legal and administrative reforms of Henry II, have seen Thomas as an ambitious and fanatical nuisance. Certainly there is room for debate, for both Thomas and his king were remarkable men with complex characters. If Henry had moral failings and made private and political miscalculations, Thomas can rightly be accused, at various moments of his life, of worldly behaviour, ostentation, impetuosity, weakness, and violent language. If Henry was ill-advised in committing his claims to writing at Clarendon and in crowning his son, Thomas was equally ill-advised in needlessly opposing the king in 1163 and in wavering between compliance and intransigence when careful diplomacy might have won out. But his courage and sincerity cannot be doubted, and in the quarrel between church and state he gave his life for what he took to be a vital issue.