biographies, all of which appear to have | scribed, and few give such an insight into been written within fifty years of the murder, the manners and customs, the thoughts and and some of which are confined to that sin- feelings, not only of the man himself, but of gle subject. To these we must add the ac- the entire age, as the eventful tragedy, counts of the contemporary or nearly contem-known successively as the "martyrdom,' porary chroniclers-Gervase, Diceto, Hove- the "accidental death," the "righteous exeden, and, although somewhat later, Bromp-cution," and the "murder of Thomas à ton; and, what is the most important, be- Becket. cause the earliest, the French biography in verse by Guernes, or Garnier, of Pont S. Maxence, which was composed only five years after the event. Dr. Giles has promised a supplement to his valuable work, containing this curious relic-the more interesting from being the sole record which gives the words of the actors in the language in which they spoke. We wish Dr. Giles good speed in his undertaking, and meanwhile avail ourselves of the concluding fragment of the poem which has been published by the great scholar Immanuel Bekker in the Berlin Transactions.

The year 1170 witnessed the termination of the struggle of ten years between the King and the Archbishop; in July, the first reconciliation had been effected with Henry in France; in the beginning of December, Becket had landed at Sandwich-the port of the monks of Canterbury-and thence entered the metropolitan city, after an absence of six years, amidst the acclamations of the people. The cathedral was hung with silken drapery; magnificent banquets were prepared; the churches resounded with organs and hymns, the palace-hall with trumpets; and the archbishop preached in the chapterhouse on the text, "Here we have no abiding city, but we seek one to come." Great difficulties, however, still remained. In addition to the general question of the immunities of the clergy from secular jurisdiction, which was the original point in dispute between the

Of these twenty-four narrators, four-Edward Grim, William Fitzstephen, John of Salisbury, (who unfortunately supplies but little,) and the anonymous author of the Lambeth MS.-claim to have been eyewitnesses. Three others-William of Canterbury, Benedict, afterwards abbot of Peter-king and the archbishop, another had arisen borough, and Gervase of Canterbury-were monks of the convent, and though not present at the massacre, were probably somewhere in the precincts. Herbert of Bosham, Roger of Pontigny, and Garnier, were not even in England, but they had been on terms of intercourse more or less intimate with Becket, and the two latter, especially, seem to have taken the utmost pains to ascertain the truth of the facts they relate. From these several accounts we can recover the particulars of the death of Archbishop Becket to the minutest details. It is true that, being written by monastic or clerical historians after the national feeling had been roused to enthusiasm in his behalf, allowance must be made for exaggeration, suppression, and every kind of false coloring which could set off their hero to advantage. It is true, also, that on some few points the various authorities are hopelessly irreconcilable. But still a careful comparison of the narrators with each other, and with the localities, leads to a conviction that on the whole the facts have been substantially preserved, and that, as often happens, the truth can be ascertained in spite, and even in consequence, of attempts to distort and suppress it. If this be so, few occurrences in the middle ages have been so graphically and copiously de

within this very year, of much less importance in itself, but which eventually brought about the final catastrophe. In the preceding June, Henry, with the view of consolidating his power in England, had caused his eldest son to be crowned king, not merely as his successor, but as his colleague; insomuch that by contemporary chroniclers he is always called "the young king," sometimes even "Henry III." In the absence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the ceremony of coronation was performed by the Archbishop of York, assisted by the Bishops of London and Salisbury. The moment the intelligence was communicated to Becket, who was then in France, a new blow seemed to be struck at his rights; but this time it was not the privileges of his order, but of his office, that were attacked. The inalienable right of crowning the sovereigns of England, inherent in the see of Canterbury from the time of Augustine downwards, had been infringed, and with his usual ardor he procured from the Pope, Alexander III., letters of excommunication against the three prelates who had taken part in the daring act. These letters he had with him, unknown to the King at the time of the reconciliation, and his earliest thought on landing in England was to get them conveyed to the offending bishops, who were

then at Dover. They started for France | performance of high mass he mounted the from that port as he landed at Sandwich, pulpit, and preached on the text, (according leaving, however, a powerful auxiliary in to the Vulgate version,) "On earth, peace to the person of Randulf de Broc, a knight to men of good will." He began by speaking whom the king had granted possession of of the sainted fathers of the church of Canthe archiepiscopal castle of Saltwood, and terbury, the presence of whose bones made who was for this, if for no other reason, a doubly hallowed the consecrated ground. sworn enemy to Becket and his return. The "One martyr," he said, they had already" first object of the archbishop was to concili--Alfege, murdered by the Danes, whose ate the young king, who was then at Wood- tomb stood on the north side of the high alstock, and his mode of courting him was tar; "it was possible," he added, "that characteristic. Three magnificent chargers, they would soon have another." The peoof which his previous experience of horses ple who thronged the nave were in a state enabled him to know the merits, were the of wild excitement; they wept and groaned, gift by which he hoped to win over the and an audible murmur ran through the mind of his former pupil; and he himself, church: "Father, why do you desert us so after a week's stay at Canterbury, followed soon? to whom will you leave us?" But as the messenger who was to announce his he went on with his discourse, the plaintive present to the prince. He passed through strain gradually rose into a tone of fiery inRochester in state, entered London in a vast dignation. "You would have thought," procession that advanced three miles out of says Herbert of Bosham, who was present, the city to meet him, and took up his quar-"that you were looking at the prophetic ters at Southwark, in the palace of the aged Bishop of Winchester, Henry of Blois, brother of King Stephen. Here he received or ders from the young king to proceed no farther, but return instantly to Canterbury, In obedience to the command, he relinquished his design, and turned for the last time from the city of his birth to the city of his death. The first open manifestations of hostility proceeded from the family of the Brocs of Saltwood. Before he had left the neighborhood of London, tidings had reached him that Randulf de Broc had seized a vessel laden with wine from Henry II., and had killed or imprisoned the crew. This injury was promptly repaired at the bidding of the young king, to whom the archbishop complained of the outrage through the abbot of St. Alban's and the prior of Dover. But the enmity of the Brocs was not so easily allayed, No sooner had the primate reached Canterbury than he was met by a series of fresh insults. Randulf, he was told, was hunting down his archiepiscopal deer, with his own dogs in his own woods; and Robert, another of the same family, who had been a monk in the novitiate, but had since taken to a secular life, sent out his nephew John to way lay and cut off the tails of a sumpter-mule and a horse of the archbishop. This jest, or outrage, (according as we regard it,) which occurred on Christmas eve, took deep possession of Becket's mind. On Christmas day, after the solemn celebration of the usual midnight mass, he entered the cathedral for the services of a festival which eminently precludes the intrusion of passionate and revengeful thoughts. Before the

beast, which had at once the face of a man and the face of a lion." He spoke the fact is recorded by all the biographers, without any sense of its extreme incongruity-he spoke of the insult of the docked tail* of the sumpter-mule, and in a voice of thunder excommunicated Randulf and Robert de Broc; and in the same sentence included the Vicar of Thirlwood, and Nigel of Sackville, the Vicar of Harrow, for occupying those incumbencies without his authority, and refusing access to his officials. He also publicly denounced and forbade communication with the three bishops, who, by crowning the young king, had not feared to encroach upon the prescriptive rights of the church of Canterbury. May they be cursed," he said in conclusion, "by Jesus Christ, and may their memory be blotted out of the assembly of the saints, whoever shall sow hatred and discord between me and my lord the king." With these words he dashed the candle on the pavement, in token of the extinction of his enemies; and as he descended from the pulpit to pass to the altar to celebrate mass, he

*According to the popular belief, the excommunication of the Broc family was not the only time that Becket avenged a similar offence. Lambard, in his Perambulations of Kent, says that the peohe rode through the town, and, like the Brocs, cut ple of Strood, near Rochester, insulted Becket as

off the tails of his horses. Their descendants, as a judgment for the crime, were ever after born with horses' tails. Another explanation of the legend was, that the inhabitants of Strood were the persons whom St. Augustine is reported to have visited with this curse for fastening a fish's tail to his qack. (See Harris' Kent, 303.)

structions to the knights as to their future course. However this may be, it was generally believed that they left Bur on the night of the king's fury. They then, it was thought, proceeded by different roads to the coast, and crossed the Channel on the following day. Two of them landed, as was afterwards noticed with malicious satisfaction, at the port of "Dogs" near Dover, two of them at Winchelsea, and all four arrived at the same hour at the fortress of Saltwood Castle, the property of the see of Canterbury, but now occupied, as we have seen, by Becket's chief enemy, Dan Randolph of Broc, who came out to welcome them. Here they would doubtless be told of the excommunication launched against their host on Christmas day. In the darkness of the long winter night of the 28th of December it was believed that the conspirators concerted the scheme with candles extinguished, and not even seeing each other's faces. Early in the morning of the next day they issued orders in the king's name for a troop of soldiers to be levied from the neighborhood to march with them to Canterbury. They themselves mounted their chargers, and gallopped along the same Roman road which still conducts the traveller by a straight line of fifteen miles from Saltwood to the city. They proceeded instantly to St. Augustine's Abbey, outside the walls, and took up their quarters with Clarembald, the abbot.

-of whom a dreadful story was told of his | Roger Archbishop of York giving full inhaving ordered a young Saxon to be boiled alive on the false accusation of his wife; William de Tracy-a brave soldier, it was said, but" of parricidal wickedness;" Richard le Brez or le Bret, commonly known as Brito, from the Latinized version of his name in the Chronicles- -more fit, they say, to have been called the "Brute." They are all described as on familiar terms with the king himself, and sometimes, in official language, as gentlemen of the bedchamber. They also appear to have been brought to gether by old associations. Fitzurse, Moreville and Tracy had all sworn homage to Becket as Chancellor. Fitzurse, Tracy and Bret had all connections with Somersetshire. Their rank and lineage can even now be accurately traced, through the medium of our county historians and legal records. Fitzurse was the descendant of Urso or Ours, who had, under the Conqueror, held Grittleston in Wiltshire, of the Abbey of Glastonbury. His father, Richard Fitzurse, became possessed, in the reign of Stephen, of the manor of Willeton, in Somersetshire, which had descended to Reginald a few years before the time of which we are speaking. He was also a tenant in chief in Northamptonshire, in tail in Leicestershire. Moreville was a man of rank, and held high office both before and after the murder. He was this very year justice itinerant of the counties of Northumberland and Cumberland, where he inherited the barony of Burgh-on-the-Sands and other possessions from his father Roger and his grandfather Simon. He was likewise forester of Cumberland, owner of the castle of Knaresborough, and added to his paternal property that of his wife, Helwise de Hauteville. Richard the Breton was, it may be inferred from an incident in the murder, intimate with Prince William, the king's brother. He and his brother Edmund had succeeded to their father, Simon le Bret, who, it would seem, had given his name to the village of Samford, still called from the family, Samford Bret. Tracy had already distinguished himself in war. His family were allied by marriage to the great house of Courtenay, and he held a fee and under-fee in Devonshire.

It is not clear on what day the fatal exclamation of the king was made. Fitzstephen reports it as taking place on Sunday, the 27th of December. Others, who ascribe a more elaborate character to the whole plot, date it a few days before, on Thursday, the 24th-the whole court taking part in it, and

It was now

The abbey was in a state of considerable confusion at the time of their arrival. A destructive fire had ravaged the buildings two years before, and the reparations could hardly have been yet completed. Its domestic state was still more disturbed. nearly ten years since a feud had been raging between the inmates and their abbot, who had been intruded on them in 1161, as Becket had been on the ecclesiastics of the Cathedral, but with the ultimate difference, that, whilst Becket had become the champion of the clergy, Clarembald had stood fast by the King, his patron, which perpetuated the quarrel between the monks and their su perior. He would, therefore, naturally be eager to receive the new-comers, and with him they concerted measures for their future movements. Having sent orders to the mayor or provost of Canterbury to issue a proclamation in the King's name, forbidding any one to offer assistance to the Archbishop, the knights once more mounted their chargers, and, accompanied by Robert of Broc, who had probably attended them from Salt