Seven years of bitter quarrel

Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, murdered in his cathedral in 1170 after seven years of bitter quarrel with his old friend Henry II, is one of the most well-known and well-documented figures in English history. Did he provoke his murder in order to become a martyr? Would he have been regarded as a saint if he hadn’t been killed? For what, exactly, did he lay down his life? (The answers to these questions are probably yes, no and not enough: some disputed ecclesiastical privileges.) The story has been told for generations; Michael Staunton does it well here, paying due attention to the hagiographical bias of most of the evidence.

The ambitious son of a Norman merchant in London, Becket, clever and personable, worked for Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury until, at thirty-five, he was appointed chancellor by a young Henry II, who was busy restoring order to England after twenty years of chaos. Henry was gifted, energetic, impetuous and effective; so was Becket (too busy to visit Theobald on his deathbed), who relished the grandeur of his position. When not working, the two men hunted and hawked and feasted like students. They operated as one until Henry made Becket archbishop, to help him reassert royal authority over the Church.

To Henry’s astonishment, in his new post Becket suddenly became pious and determined to resist the king’s encroachment on the Church’s rights. Two disastrous confrontations followed, after which Becket fled to France. The Pope and the English bishops pressed for compromise and reconciliation, but Henry and Becket were as stubborn as each other, with the latter the less forgivable: Gilbert Foliot, the learned bishop of London, said of him: “He always was a fool and he always will be”. The murder of Becket, shortly after his return from France, was the unintended consequence of Henry losing his temper once too often.

Becket had long seen himself as a Christ figure, standing alone against his enemies. After his death there followed miracles, the king’s spectacular penance and his canonization as the most famous English saint. In the last generation of Catholic England, everyone who was anyone was named after him: Wolsey, More, Wyatt, Cromwell, Cranmer, even the Duke of Norfolk. Henry VIII, enraged by Plantagenet loyalty to the Pope, had Becket’s shrine in the cathedral smashed and took its most precious jewel for himself.

Thomas Becket and his World retells its subject’s story vividly and (mostly) impartially. The best comment was Foliot’s, who wrote, years before the murder: “It is not the pain that makes the martyr, but the cause”.

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