Part 21 (2/2)
”They have not repented, and I will not.”
”Then you shall die.”
”I am ready, for the Lord's sake; but, in the name of Almighty G.o.d, I forbid you to harm these, whether priests or laymen.”
”Flee, or you are a dead man!” cried one, striking him with the back of his sword, and unwilling, apparently, to slay him in the church. They tried to push him away from the pillar against which he was standing, but in vain. Becket was a tall, powerful man, expert in the use of weapons. Had he s.n.a.t.c.hed a sword from one of these, he might have saved his life; but temporal arms he had long since laid aside, and he only stood still, clasped his hands in prayer, and commended his soul to his G.o.d. Reginald Fitzurse began to fear the people might break in to his rescue, and struck a blow which wounded his head, as well as the arm of Edward Grim, who fled to the altar; but Becket did not move hand or foot--only, as the blood flowed from his face, he said, ”In the name of Christ, and for the defence of the Church, I am ready to die.” Tracy struck him again twice on the head: he staggered, and, as he was falling, the fourth stroke, given by Brito, cleft off the top of his skull with such violence, that the sword broke against the pavement.
The murderers, after making sure of his death, left the church; the monks took up his corpse, unwounded, save the crown of his head, which was shattered to pieces above his tonsure, and laid it out on the high altar, deeming that he had indeed been a sacrifice, and weeping as they beheld the beauty of his peaceful expression, as if he had calmly fallen asleep. They folded outward the haircloth s.h.i.+rt he had always worn secretly; and as the blood still trickled from the wound, it was caught in a dish.
The threats of Randolf de Broc obliged them to bury him in haste the next morning; and they were strictly forbidden to place his coffin among those of the former archbishops--a command which they obeyed, from the dread that otherwise his remains might be insulted. They had not long to fear. Europe rang with horror at the crime, and admiration, rather than compa.s.sion, for the victim. No one was more shocked than the King himself, who was at Bure, in Normandy, when the news reached him. For three days he remained shut; up in his room, taking no food, and seeing no one, in an agony of grief and dismay at the consequence of his hasty words, and dwelling on those days of early friends.h.i.+p which he had pa.s.sed with the murdered Becket. Not till these first paroxysms of grief were over was he even able to think of the danger he was in; and he then sent off an emba.s.sy to explain to the Pope how far he was from intending the b.l.o.o.d.y deed, and to entreat forgiveness.
He was at a loss how to treat the murderers. He could not punish what his own words had been supposed to authorize, and he dared not let them escape, lest he should be supposed to be their defender. He therefore let them reap the benefit of the liberties for which Becket had died: their crime was done on the person of a clerk; therefore it was left to the censures of the Church.
They had, in the meantime, fled to Morville's Castle, in c.u.mberland, where they found themselves regarded with universal execration; their servants shrank from their presence, and, in the exaggerations of tradition, it was said that the very dogs would not approach them.
Overwhelmed with remorse, they set out for Italy, and dreaded and avoided, as if they bore a mark like the first ”murderer and vagabond,”
they threw themselves at the feet of the Pope, and entreated to know what they should do to obtain mercy. He ordered them to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and they all went except Tracy, who, lingering behind, was seized with a dreadful illness, and died at Cosenza. The others all died within three years, with deep marks of penitence, and were buried before the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Henry obtained pardon from the Pope on giving up all attempts at subjecting the Church to the law of the State, and on giving a large sum of money to maintain 200 knights for three years in the Holy Land. He also largely endowed Mary and Agnes Becket, the Archbishop's sisters, with possessions in his newly-conquered domain in Ireland; and one of them became the ancestress of the n.o.ble family of Butler, Earls of Ormonde.
The cathedral at Canterbury had, in the meantime, been sprinkled with holy water, to purify it from the crime of sacrilege and murder there committed, and for which it had been a whole year left neglected, and without the celebration of Divine service. On its reopening, gifts poured in from all quarters, in honor of the Archbishop, and it was repaired and beautified to a great degree. The beautiful circular chapel at the east end was named Becket's Crown, and the spot by the north transept, where he fell, was termed The Martyrdom. Reports of miracles having been performed at his intercession were carried to Rome, and Pope Alexander canonized him as St. Thomas of Canterbury. The next year, 1174, Henry II., who was broken down with grief at the rebellion of his sons, rode from Southampton to Canterbury without resting, taking no food but bread and water, entered the city, and walked through the streets barefoot to the cathedral, and into the crypt, where he threw himself prostrate on the ground, while Gilbert Folliot preached to the people.
In the chapter-house Henry caused each of the clergy present, to the number of eighty, to strike him over the shoulders with a knotted cord, and afterward spent the whole night beside the tomb. He heard ma.s.s the next morning, and returned to London.
A few years after, Louis VII. came to pray at the tomb of his friend for the recovery of his son Philippe Auguste, who was ill of a fever. He made splendid gifts to the cathedral, and in especial a very large diamond, and a golden cup. In Italy Thomas was equally honored. William the Good, of Sicily, who married Joan, daughter to Henry II., placed a colossal statue of St. Thomas of Canterbury in his new foundation, the Church of Monreale; and at Agnani there is still preserved a richly-embroidered cope, presented by Pope Innocent III., bearing thirty-six different scenes in delicate needlework, and among them the death of the English Archbishop. There are also many German and French representations of the subject; the murderers, in the more ancient ones, carefully distinguished by their s.h.i.+elds: Morville, _fretty fleur-de-lis_; Tracy, _two bars gules_; Brito, _three bears, heads muzzled_; Fitzurse, _three bears pa.s.sant_.
In Henry III.'s reign a new shrine was built at Canterbury, and the Archbishop's relics were thither translated. No saint in England was more popular than St. Thomas of Canterbury, and frequent pilgrimages were made to his shrine. The Canterbury Pilgrims of Chaucer are thither journeying, and Simon of Sudbury, the archbishop killed by Wat Tyler's mob, is said to have made himself unpopular by rebuking the superst.i.tion that made the ignorant believe in the efficacy of these pilgrimages.
Then came the reaction. Henry VIII., little able to endure such a saint as Becket, sent the spoilers to Canterbury. Lord Cromwell burnt his relics, and carried off the treasures of gold and jewels, which filled two chests, so heavy that six or eight men were wanted to carry each of them. Henry wore Louis VII.'s diamond in a ring. The costly shrine was destroyed, and the pavement, worn by the knees of the pilgrims, alone remained to show where Becket's tomb had been. In London, the house of Gilbert a Becket, in Southwark, where the Saracen lady had ended her toilsome journey, and where Thomas had been born, had, in Henry III.'s reign, been made a hospital; Edward VI. granted it for the same use; and thus it still remains, by its old name of St. Thomas's Hospital, which perhaps would not so generally be given it, if it were known after what saint it was so called. His likeness was destroyed in every church and public building, so that but one head of St. Thomas a Becket is known to exist in England--namely, one in stained gla.s.s, at the village of Horton, in Ribblesdale--and even in missals and breviaries it was defaced.
No one has met with more abuse than Becket, ever since the Reformation.
Proud, ostentatious, hypocritical, and rebellious--these are the terms usually bestowed on him. How far he deserves them, may be judged from a life detailed with unusual minuteness by three intimate companions, none of them treating him as faultless. Of the rights of the struggle we will not speak. No one can doubt that Becket gave his life for the cause which, in all sincerity, he deemed that of the Church against the World.
The fate of the murderers has been questioned in later times. It is said that they died at home, in peace and fair prosperity; but the evidence on either side is nearly balanced.
CAMEO XXII. THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND. (1172)
Few histories are more strange and confused than the Irish. The inhabitants of Ierne, or Erin, as far as anything credible can be discovered about them, were of three different nations, who had in turn subdued the island before the beginning of history. These were the Tuath de Dunans, the Firbolg, and the Scots, or Milesians. Who the two first were, we will not attempt to say, though Irish traditions declare that some of them were there before the Flood, and that one Fintan was saved by being transformed into a salmon, and so swimming about till the water subsided, after which he resumed the human form, and lived so long that the saying was, ”I could tell you much, if I was as old as Fintan.”
The Milesians are not much behind their predecessors in their claim, for they say they are descended from a son of j.a.phet, and first discovered writing, and all the arts commonly said to have been derived from Egypt, but which they a.s.sert were carried thither by one Neill, who gave his name to the river Nile, as well as to his sons, all the O'Neills of Ireland.
It is more certain that these Milesians were Kelts, and were in early times called Scots. A colony of them conquered the Picts; drove the Caledonians into Galway, and gave North Britain, or Albin the name of Lesser Scotland, while their own country, or Greater Scotia, returned to its former name of Erin, called by the Romans Hibernia, and by the English, Ireland.
The Erse tongue is nearly the same as the Gaelic, and there was much in the Irish and Highland inst.i.tutions showing their common origin. The clan system prevailed in Ireland, the clans being called Septs, and all having, as a surname, the name of the common ancestor. His representative, the chief, was known as the Carfinny; but the succession was not determined by the rules of primogeniture. It was always in one family, but the choice was made by election of the next heir. When a Carfinny died, another came into office who had been chosen on his accession as heir, or Tanist, and at the same time another Tanist was chosen to succeed him as Carfinny at his death. The land was the property of the tribe, divided into holdings; and whenever the death of a considerable proprietor took place, there was a fresh allotment of the whole, which, of course, as well as the choice of a Tanist, set the whole population at war.
<script>