Thomas Becket: Playing a role
Clash of Church and state
Such unseemly haste and obvious politicking did not bode well for Becket. However, the barons and the common people appear to have taken the situation in their stride. It was the clergy who protested, objecting to the chancellor's extreme worldliness and fearing that his friendship with the king would lead to a reduction in the power of the Church.
Hair shirts, vigils and prayer
They needn't have worried. True to form, Becket adopted his new role as head of the Church in England with relish and complete devotion. Where once his allegiance had been totally focused on the king, it was now concentrated on pope and Church.
In addition, some historians believe that Becket became particularly religious to counter the objections of his fellow churchmen. He indulged in fasts, self-punishment, hair shirts, protracted vigils and constant prayer. On 10 August 1162, he went barefoot to receive the envoy from Rome who brought him the pallium – the ecclesiastical vestment that was his symbol of authority as archbishop.
Before the end of the year, he had stripped himself of all signs of the wealth that he had previously enjoyed, and against the king's wishes, he resigned the chancellorship. The clergy were rapidly warming to him, and Henry, not surprisingly, was becoming increasingly hurt, angry and bewildered at the behaviour of his erstwhile friend.
'Criminous clerks'
The clash with the king came all too soon. First, Becket refused to give up certain ecclesiastical preferments, including his archdeaconry, to Henry's great displeasure. Then the archbishop decided to take back various estates that had once belonged to the see of Canterbury. Even more serious, he openly resisted the king's proposal that the Church should pay a 'voluntary' offering into the royal treasury – the first recorded instance of opposition to an English king's arbitrary will in a matter of taxation and so of great constitutional importance.
But it was the matter of the 'criminous clerks' that brought matters to a head. In England at that time, one in six of the population were members of the clergy. Many of these were 'lay clergy' – that is, not ordained priests – but they could still exert their right to be tried for any crime in ecclesiastical courts (as opposed to secular ones), where they would invariably receive much more lenient sentences. In fact, these courts could not impose the death penalty – a distinct advantage to a 'criminous clerk' (criminal cleric) who was, say, a murderer.
Murder of a knight
Becket – with the unanimous support of his bishops – was keen to maintain this privilege of the Church, not because he was in favour of such leniency but because losing it would undermine the basis for clerical immunity, called 'benefit of clergy'. For his part, Henry was resolved to reassert all the rights that had been claimed and exercised 50 years before by William the Conqueror and his sons. One of these was the right to bring clerics accused of crimes under the jurisdiction of the secular courts.
A case that demonstrated the tussle between Church and state was that of Philip de Brois, a canon of Bedford, who was acquitted of murdering a knight in the bishop of Lincoln's court. When the sheriff of Bedford attempted to reopen the case in the royal court, he was furiously abused by Philip. The king angrily demanded justice on the charge of homicide and, now, on the additional charge of contempt. Becket attempted to solve the problem by banishing Philip, but this did little to assuage Henry. The whole affair merely showed how inadequate canon law was in punishing serious criminals.
Constitutions of Clarendon
After months of wrangling, Henry called the Council of Clarendon (in Wiltshire) in January 1164, where both sides – Henry and his advisers and Becket and his bishops – would meet to discuss the issues. The king presented Becket and his bishops with a list of 16 clauses – the Constitutions of Clarendon – that he proposed to use to define the relationship between secular and canon law. The third clause addressed the issue of 'criminous clerks' head on:
Clerks charged and accused of any matter, summoned by the king's justice, shall come into his court to answer there to whatever it shall seem to the king's court should be answered there; and in the church court to what it seems should be answered there; however the king's justice shall send into the court of holy Church for the purpose of seeing how the matter shall be treated there. And if the clerk be convicted or confess, the church ought not to protect him further.
For three days, the bishops refused to sign. Then, suddenly, Becket told them to agree to the Constitutions. 'It is the Lord's will that I forswear myself,' he said. 'Submit for the present and take a false oath, to do penance for it hereafter as I may.' Reluctantly they obeyed. Becket later wrote that he did this to divert the king's anger away from the bishops.
Almost immediately Becket made a great show of regretting his actions – beginning a fast, putting on the clothes of a penitent and publicly repenting of his oath (that is, his agreeing to the Constitutions).
Refusing the king's judgement
As a result, Henry's anger was certainly diverted from the bishops – his rage was now completely focused on Becket and he began a campaign of persecution against his former friend. Various charges were levelled against the archbishop, including financial dishonesty dating from his time as chancellor. Eventually it was claimed that he owed the crown the fantastic sum of 44,000 marks – nearly £30,000.
The crisis was building. On 13 October 1164, Henry called the Council of Northampton to hear the charges. As Becket approached the place where it was being held, he was met by the earl of Leicester, who said: 'The king commands you to render your accounts. Otherwise you must hear his judgement.'
'Judgement?' exclaimed Becket. 'I was given the church of Canterbury free from temporal obligations. I am therefore not liable and will not plead with regard to them. Neither law nor reason allows children to judge and condemn their fathers. Wherefore I refuse the king's judgement and yours and everyone's. Under God, I will be judged by the pope alone.'
Without waiting to hear the council's verdict, a disguised Becket slipped away in the dead of night, heading for Sandwich in Kent and then for France. On 23 November, he threw himself on the mercy of Pope Alexander III who was then at Sens in Burgundy, south-east of Paris.
