Life of Thomas a Becket Part 2

In the first access of indignation at Becket's flight the King had sent orders for strict watch to be kept in the ports of the kingdom, especially Dover. The next measure was to pre-occupy the minds of the Count of Flanders, the King of France, and the Pope against his fugitive subject. Henry could not but foresee how formidable an ally the exile might become to his rivals and enemies, how dangerous to his extensive but ill-consolidated foreign dominions. He might know that Becket would act and be received as an independent potentate. The rank of his amba.s.sadors implied the importance of their mission to France. They were the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of London, Exeter, Chichester, and Worcester, the Earl of Arundel, and three other distinguished n.o.bles.

The same day that Becket pa.s.sed to Gravelines, they crossed from Dover to Calais.[77]

[SN: Becket in exile.]

The Earl of Flanders, though with some cause of hostility to Becket, had offered him a refuge; yet perhaps was not distinctly informed or would not know that the exile was in his dominions.[78] He received the King's envoys with civility. The King of France was at Compiegne. The strongest pa.s.sions in the feeble mind of Louis VII. were jealousy of Henry of England, and a servile bigotry to the Church, to which he seemed determined to compensate for the hostility and disobedience of his youth. Against Henry, personally, there were old causes of hatred rankling in his heart, not the less deep because they could not be avowed. [SN: From 1152 to 1164.] Henry of England was now the husband of Eleanor, who, after some years of marriage, had contemptuously divorced the King of France as a monk rather than as a husband, had thrown herself into the arms of Henry and carried with her a dowry as large as half the kingdom of France. There had since been years either of fierce war, treacherous negotiations, or jealous and armed peace, between the rival sovereigns.

[SN: Louis of France.]

Louis had watched, and received regular accounts of the proceedings in England; his admiration of Becket for his lofty churchmans.h.i.+p and daring opposition to Henry was at its height, scarcely disguised. He had already in secret offered to receive Becket, not as a fugitive, but as the sharer in his kingdom. The amba.s.sadors appeared before Louis and presented a letter urging the King of France not to admit within his dominions the traitor Thomas, late Archbishop of Canterbury. "Late Archbishop! and who has presumed to depose him? I am a king, like my brother of England; I should not dare to depose the meanest of my clergy. Is this the King's grat.i.tude for the services of his Chancellor, to banish him from France, as he has done from England?"[79] Louis wrote a strong letter to the Pope, recommending to his favor the cause of Becket as his own.

[SN: Amba.s.sadors at Sens.]

The amba.s.sadors pa.s.sed onwards to Sens, where resided the Pope Alexander III., himself an exile, and opposing his spiritual power to the highest temporal authority, that of the Emperor and his subservient Antipope. Alexander was in a position of extraordinary difficulty: on the one side were grat.i.tude to King Henry for his firm support, and the fear of estranging so powerful a sovereign, on whose unrivaled wealth he reckoned as the main strength of his cause; on the other, the dread of offending the King of France, also his faithful partisan, in whose dominions he was a refugee, and the duty, the interest, the strong inclination to maintain every privilege of the hierarchy. To Henry Alexander almost owed his pontificate. His first and most faithful adherents had been Theobald the primate, the English Church, and Henry King of England; and when the weak Louis had entered into dangerous negotiations at Lannes with the Emperor; when at Dijon he had almost placed himself in the power of Frederick, and his voluntary or enforced defection had filled Alexander with dread, the advance of Henry of England with a powerful force to the neighborhood rescued the French king from his perilous position. And now, though Victor the Antipope was dead, a successor, Guido of Crema, had been set up by the imperial party, and Frederick would lose no opportunity of gaining, if any serious quarrel should alienate him from Alexander, a monarch of such surpa.s.sing power. An envoy from England, John c.u.mmin, was even now at the imperial court.[80]

Becket's messengers, before the reception of Henry's amba.s.sadors by Pope Alexander, had been admitted to a private interview. The account of Becket's "fight with beasts" at Northampton, and a skillful parallel with St. Paul, had melted the heart of the Pontiff, as he no doubt thought himself suffering like persecutions, to a flood of tears. How in truth could a Pope venture to abandon such a champion of what were called the liberties of the Church? He had, in fact, throughout been in secret correspondence with Becket. Whenever letters could escape the jealous watchfulness of the King, they had pa.s.sed between England and Sens.[81]

[SN: The King's amba.s.sadors at Sens.]

The amba.s.sadors of Henry were received in state in the open consistory.

Foliot of London began with his usual ability; his warmth at length betrayed him into the Scriptural citation,--"The wicked fleeth when no man pursueth." "Forbear," said the Pope. "I will forbear him," answered Foliot. "It is for thine own sake, not for his, that I bid thee forbear." The Pope's severe manner silenced the Bishop of London.

Hilary, Bishop of Chichester, who had overweening confidence in his eloquence, began a long harangue; but at a fatal blunder in his Latin, the whole Italian court burst into laughter.[82] The discomfited orator tried in vain to proceed. The Archbishop of York spoke with prudent brevity. The Count of Arundel, more cautious or less learned, used his native Norman. His speech was mild, grave, and conciliatory, and therefore the most embarra.s.sing to the Pontiff. Alexander consented to send his cardinal legates to England; but neither the arguments of Foliot, nor those of Arundel, who now rose to something like a menace of recourse to the Antipope, would induce him to invest them with full power. The Pope would entrust to none but to himself the prerogative of final judgment. Alexander mistrusted the venality of his cardinals, and Henry's subsequent dealing with some of them justified his mistrust.[83]

He was himself inflexible to tempting offers. The envoys privately proposed to extend the payment of Peter's Pence to almost all cla.s.ses, and to secure the tax in perpetuity to the see of Rome. The amba.s.sadors retreated in haste; their commission had been limited to a few days. The bishops, so strong was the popular feeling in France for Becket, had entered Sens as retainers for the Earl of Arundel: they received intimation that certain lawless knights in the neighborhood had determined to waylay and plunder these enemies of the Church, and of the saintly Becket.

[SN: Becket at Sens.]

Far different was the progress of the exiled primate. From St. Bertin he was escorted by the Abbot, and by the Bishop of Terouenne. He entered France; he was met, as he approached Soissons, by the King's brothers, the Archbishop of Rheims, and a long train of bishops, abbots, and dignitaries of the church; he entered Soissons at the head of three hundred hors.e.m.e.n. The interview of Louis with Becket raised his admiration into pa.s.sion. As the envoys of Henry pa.s.sed on one side of the river, they saw the pomp in which the ally of the King of France, rather than the exile from England, was approaching Sens. The cardinals, whether from prudence, jealousy, or other motives, were cool in their reception of Becket. The Pope at once granted the honor of a public audience; he placed Becket on his right hand, and would not allow him to rise to speak. Becket, after a skillful account of his hard usage, spread out the parchment which contained the Const.i.tutions of Clarendon.

They were read; the whole Consistory exclaimed against the violation of ecclesiastical privileges. On further examination the Pope acknowledged that six of them were less evil than the rest; on the remaining ten he p.r.o.nounced his unqualified condemnation. He rebuked the weakness of Becket in swearing to these articles, it is said, with the severity of a father, the tenderness of a mother.[84] He consoled him with the a.s.surance that he had atoned by his sufferings and his patience for his brief infirmity. Becket pursued his advantage. The next day, by what might seem to some trustful magnanimity, to others, a skillful mode of getting rid of certain objections which had been raised concerning his election, he tendered the resignation of his archiepiscopate to the Pope. Some of the more politic, it was said, more venal cardinals, entreated the Pontiff to put an end at once to this dangerous quarrel by accepting the surrender.[85] But the Pontiff (his own judgment being supported among others by the Cardinal Hyacinth) restored to him the archiepiscopal ring, thus ratifying his primacy. He a.s.sured Becket of his protection, and committed him to the hospitable care of the Abbot of Pontigny, a monastery about twelve leagues from Sens. "So long have you lived in ease and opulence, now learn the lessons of poverty from the poor."[86] Yet Alexander thought it prudent to inhibit any proceedings of Becket against the King till the following Easter.

[SN: Effect on King Henry.]

Becket's emissaries had been present during the interview of Henry's amba.s.sadors with the Pope. Henry, no doubt, received speedy intelligence of these proceedings with Becket. He was at Marlborough after a disastrous campaign in Wales.[87] [SN: Wrath of Henry.] He issued immediate orders to seize the revenues of the Archbishop, and promulgated a mandate to the bishops to sequester the estates of all the clergy who had followed him to France. He forbade public prayers for the Primate. In the exasperated state, especially of the monkish mind, prayers for Becket would easily slide into anathemas against the king.

The payment of Peter's Pence[88] to the Pope was suspended. All correspondence with Becket was forbidden. But the resentment of Henry was not satisfied. He pa.s.sed a sentence of banishment, and ordered at once to be driven from the kingdom all the primate's kinsmen, dependents, and friends. Four hundred persons, it is said, of both s.e.xes, of every age, even infants at the breast were included (and it was the depth of winter) in this relentless edict. Every adult was to take an oath to proceed immediately to Becket, in order that his eyes might be shocked, and his heart wrung by the miseries which he had brought on his family and his friends. This order was as inhumanly executed, as inhumanly enacted.[89] It was intrusted to Randulph de Broc, a fierce soldier, the bitterest of Becket's personal enemies. It was as impolitic as cruel. The monasteries and convents of Flanders and of France were thrown open to the exiles with generous hospitality.

Throughout both these countries was spread a mult.i.tude of persons appealing to the pity, to the indignation of all orders of the people, and so deepening the universal hatred of Henry. The enemy of the Church was self-convicted of equal enmity to all Christianity of heart.

[SN: Becket at Pontigny.]

In his seclusion at Pontigny Becket seemed determined to compensate by the sternest monastic discipline for that deficiency which had been alleged on his election to the archbishopric. He put on the coa.r.s.e Cistercian dress. He lived on the hard and scanty Cistercian diet.

Outwardly he still maintained something of his old magnificence and the splendor of his station. His establishment of horses and retainers was so costly, that his sober friend, John of Salisbury, remonstrated against the profuse expenditure. Richer viands were indeed served on a table apart, ostensibly for Becket; but while he himself was content with the pulse and gruel of the monks, those meats and game were given away to the beggars. His devotions were long and secret, broken with perpetual groans. At night he rose from the bed strewn with rich coverings, as beseeming an archbishop, and summoned his chaplain to the work of flagellation. Not satisfied with this, he tore his flesh with his nails, and lay on the cold floor, with a stone for his pillow. His health suffered; wild dreams, so reports one of his attendants, haunted his broken slumbers, of cardinals plucking out his eyes, fierce a.s.sa.s.sins cleaving his tonsured crown.[90] His studies were neither suited to calm his mind, nor to abase his hierarchical haughtiness. He devoted his time to the canon law, of which the False Decretals now formed an integral part; sacerdotal fraud justifying the loftiest sacerdotal presumption. John of Salisbury again interposed with friendly remonstrance. He urged him to withdraw from these undevotional inquiries; he recommended to him the works of a Pope of a different character, the Morals of Gregory the Great. He exhorted him to confer with holy men on books of spiritual improvement.

[SN: Negotiations with the Emperor.]

King Henry in the meantime took a loftier and more menacing tone towards the Pope. "It is an unheard of thing that the court of Rome should support traitors against my sovereign authority; I have not deserved such treatment.[91] I am still more indignant that the justice is denied to me which is granted to the meanest clerk." In his wrath he made overtures to Reginald, Archbishop of Cologne, the maker, he might be called, of two Antipopes, and the minister of the Emperor, declaring that he had long sought an opportunity of falling off from Alexander, and his perfidious cardinals, who presumed to support against him the traitor Thomas, late Archbishop of Canterbury.

[SN: Diet at Wurtzburg, A. D. 1165, Whitsuntide.]

The Emperor met the advances of Henry with prompt.i.tude, which showed the importance he attached to the alliance. Reginald of Cologne was sent to England to propose a double alliance with the house of Swabia, of Frederick's son, and of Henry the Lion, with the two daughters of Henry Plantagenet. The Pope trembled at this threatened union between the houses of Swabia and England. At the great diet held at Wurtzburg, Frederick, a.s.serted the canonical election of Paschal III., the new Antipope, and declared in the face of the empire and of all Christendom, that the powerful kingdom of England had now embraced his cause, and that the King of France stood alone in his support of Alexander.[92] In his public edict he declared to all Christendom that the oath of fidelity to Paschal, of denial of all future allegiance to Alexander, administered to all the great princes and prelates of the empire, had been taken by the amba.s.sadors of King Henry, Richard of Ilchester, and John of Oxford.[93] Nor was this all. A solemn oath of abjuration of Pope Alexander was enacted, and to some extent enforced; it was to be taken by every male under twelve years old throughout the realm.[94] The King's officers compelled this act of obedience to the King, in villages, in castles, in cities.

If the amba.s.sadors of Henry at Wurtzburg had full powers to transfer the allegiance of the King to the Antipope; if they took the oath unconditionally, and with no reserve in case Alexander should abandon the cause of Becket; if this oath of abjuration in England was generally administered; it is clear that Henry soon changed, or wavered at least in his policy. The alliance between the two houses came to nothing. Yet even after this he addressed another letter to Reginald, Archbishop of Cologne, declaring again his long cherished determination to abandon the cause of Alexander, the supporter of his enemy, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He demanded safe-conduct for an emba.s.sy to Rome, the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of London, John of Oxford, De Luci, the Justiciary, peremptorily to require the Pope to annul all the acts of Thomas, and to command the observance of the Customs.[95] The success of Alexander in Italy, aversion in England to the abjuration of Alexander, some unaccounted jealousy with the Emperor, irresolution in Henry, which was part of his impetuous character, may have wrought this change.

The monk and severe student of Pontigny found rest neither in his austerities nor his studies.[96] The causes of this enforced repose are manifest--the negotiations between Henry and the Emperor, the uncertainty of the success of the Pope on his return to Italy. It would have been perilous policy, either for him to risk, or for the Pope not to inhibit any rash measure.

[SN: Becket cites the King.]

In the second year of his seclusion, when he found that the King's heart was still hardened, the fire, not, we are a.s.sured by his followers, of resentment, but of parental love, not zeal for vengeance but for justice, burned within his soul. Henry was at this time in France. Three times the exile cited his sovereign with the tone of a superior to submit to his censure. Becket had communicated his design to his followers:--"Let us act as the Lord commanded his steward:[97] 'See, I have set thee over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out and to pull down, and to destroy, and to hew down, to build and to plant.'"[98] All his hearers applauded his righteous resolution. In the first message the haughty meaning was veiled in the blandest words,[99]

and sent by a Cistercian of gentle demeanor, named Urban.[100] The King returned a short and bitter answer. The second time Becket wrote in severer language, but yet in the spirit, 'tis said, of compa.s.sion and leniency.[101] The King deigned no reply. His third messenger was a tattered, barefoot friar. To him Becket, it might seem, with studied insult, not only intrusted his letter to the King, but authorized the friar to speak in his name. With such a messenger the message was not likely to lose in asperity. The King returned an answer even more contemptuous than the address.[102]

[SN: Nov. 11, 1165.]

But this secret arraignment of the King did not content the unquiet prelate. He could now dare more, unrestrained, unrebuked. Pope Alexander had been received at Rome with open arms: at the commencement of the present year all seemed to favor his cause. The Emperor, detained by wars in Germany, was not prepared to cross the Alps. In the free cities of Italy, the anti-imperialist feeling, and the growing republicanism, gladly entered into close confederacy with a Pope at war with the Emperor. The Pontiff (secretly it should seem, it might be in defiance or in revenge for Henry's threatened revolt and for the acts of his amba.s.sadors at Wurtzburg[103]) ventured to grant to Becket a legatine power over the King's English dominions, except the province of York.

Though it was not in the power of Becket to enter those dominions, it armed him, as it was thought, with unquestionable authority over Henry and his subjects. At all events it annulled whatever restraint the Pope, by counsel or by mandate, had placed on the proceedings of Becket.[104]

The Archbishop took his determination alone.[105] As though to throw an awful mystery about his plan, he called his wise friends together, and consulted them on the propriety of resigning his see. With one voice they rejected the timid counsel. Yet though his most intimate followers were in ignorance of his designs, some intelligence of a meditated blow was betrayed to Henry. The King summoned an a.s.sembly of prelates at Chinon. The Bishops of Lisieux and Seez, whom the Archbishop of Rouen, Rotran, consented to accompany as a mediator, were dispatched to Pontigny, to antic.i.p.ate by an appeal to the Pope, any sentence which might be p.r.o.nounced by Becket. They did not find him there: he had already gone to Soissons, on the pretext of a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Drausus, a saint whose intercession rendered the warrior invincible in battle. Did Becket hope thus to secure victory in the great spiritual combat? One whole night he pa.s.sed before the shrine of St. Drausus: another before that of Gregory the Great, the founder of the English Church, and of the see of Canterbury; and a third before that of the Virgin, his especial patroness.

[SN: Becket at Vezelay.]

From thence he proceeded to the ancient and famous monastery of Vezelay.[106] The church of Vezelay, if the dismal decorations of the architecture are (which is doubtful) of that period, might seem designated for that fearful ceremony.[107] There, on the feast of the Ascension,[108] when the church was crowded with wors.h.i.+pers from all quarters, he ascended the pulpit, and with the utmost solemnity, condemned and annulled the Const.i.tutions of Clarendon, declared excommunicate all who observed or enforced their observance, all who had counseled, and all who had defended them; absolved all the bishops from the oaths which they had taken to maintain them. This sweeping anathema involved the whole kingdom. But he proceeded to excommunicate by name the most active and powerful adversaries: John of Oxford, for his dealings with the schismatic partisans of the Emperor and of the Antipope, and for his usurpation of the deanery of Salisbury; Richard of Ilchester Archdeacon of Poitiers, the colleague of John in his negotiations at Wurtzburg (thus the cause of Becket and Pope Alexander were indissolubly welded together); the great Justiciary, Richard de Luci, and John of Baliol, the authors of the Const.i.tutions of Clarendon; Randulph de Broc, Hugo de Clare, and others, for their forcible usurpation of the estates of the see of Canterbury. He yet in his mercy spared the King (he had received intelligence that Henry was dangerously ill), and in a lower tone, his voice, as it seemed, half choked with tears, he uttered his Commination. The whole congregation, even his own intimate followers, were silent with amazement.

This sentence of excommunication Becket announced to the Pope, and to all the clergy of England. To the latter he said, "Who presumes to doubt that the priests of G.o.d are the fathers and masters of kings, princes, and all the faithful?" He commanded Gilbert, Bishop of London, and his other suffragans, to publish this edict throughout their dioceses. He did not confine himself to the bishops of England; the Norman prelates, the Archbishop of Rouen, were expressly warned to withdraw from all communion with the excommunicate.[109]

[SN: Anger of the King.]

The wrath of Henry drove him almost to madness. No one dared to name Becket in his presence.[110] Soon after, on the occasion of some discussion about the King of Scotland, he burst into a fit of pa.s.sion, threw away his cap, ungirt his belt, stripped off his clothes, tore the silken coverlid from his bed, and crouched down on the straw, gnawing bits of it with his teeth.[111] Proclamation was issued to guard the ports of England against the threatened interdict. Any one who should be apprehended as the bearer of such an instrument, if a regular, was to lose his feet; if a clerk, his eyes, and suffer more shameful mutilation; a layman was to be hanged; a leper to be burned. A bishop who left the kingdom, for fear of the interdict, was to carry nothing with him but his staff. All exiles were to return on pain of losing their benefices. Priests who refused to chant the service were to be mutilated, and all rebels to forfeit their lands. An oath was to be administered by the sheriffs to all adults, that they would respect no ecclesiastical censure from the Archbishop.

[SN: Becket driven from Pontigny.]

A second time Henry's ungovernable pa.s.sion betrayed him into a step which, instead of lowering, only placed his antagonist in a more formidable position. He determined to drive him from his retreat at Pontigny. He sent word to the general of the Cistercian order that it was at their peril, if they harbored a traitor to his throne. The Cistercians possessed many rich abbeys in England; they dared not defy at once the King's resentment and rapacity. It was intimated to the Abbot of Pontigny, that he must dismiss his guest. The Abbot courteously communicated to Becket the danger incurred by the Order. He could not but withdraw; but instead now of lurking in a remote monastery, in some degree secluded from the public gaze, he was received in the archiepiscopal city of Sens; his honorable residence was prepared in a monastery close to the city; he lived in ostentatious communication with the Archbishop William, one of his most zealous partisans.[112]

[SN: Controversy with English clergy.]

But the fury of haughtiness in Becket equaled the fury of resentment in the King: yet it was not without subtlety. Just before the scene at Vezelay, it has been said, the King had sent the Archbishop of Rouen and the Bishop of Lisieux to Pontigny, to lodge his appeal to the Pope.

Becket, duly informed by his emissaries at the court, had taken care to be absent. He eluded likewise the personal service of the appeal of the English clergy. An active and violent correspondence ensued. The remonstrance, purporting to be from the Primate's suffragans and the whole clergy of England, was not without dignified calmness. With covert irony, indeed, they said that they had derived great consolation from the hope that, when abroad, he would cease to rebel against the King and the peace of the realm; that he would devote his days to study and prayer, and redeem his lost time by fasting, watching, and weeping; they reproached him with the former favors of the King, with the design of estranging the King from Pope Alexander; they a.s.serted the readiness of the King to do full justice, and concluded by lodging an appeal until the Ascension-day of the following year.[113] Foliot was no doubt the author of this remonstrance, and between the Primate and the Bishop of London broke out a fierce warfare of letters. With Foliot Becket kept no terms. "You complain that the Bishop of Salisbury has been excommunicated, without citation, without hearing, without judgment.

Remember the fate of Ucalegon. He trembled when his neighbor's house was on fire." To Foliot he a.s.serted the pre-eminence, the supremacy, the divinity of the spiritual power without reserve. "Let not your liege lord be ashamed to defer to those to whom G.o.d himself defers, and calls them 'G.o.ds.'"[114] Foliot replied with what may be received as the manifesto of his party, and as the manifesto of a party to be received with some mistrust, yet singularly curious, as showing the tone of defence taken by the opponents of the Primate among the English clergy.[115]

The address of the English prelates to Pope Alexander was more moderate, and drawn with great ability. It a.s.serted the justice, the obedience to the Church, the great virtue and (a bold a.s.sertion!) the conjugal fidelity of the King. The King had at once obeyed the citation of the Bishops of London and Salisbury, concerning some encroachments on the Church condemned by the Pope. The sole design of Henry had been to promote good morals, and to maintain the peace of the realm. That peace had been restored. All resentments had died away, when Becket fiercely recommenced the strife; in sad and terrible letters had threatened the King with excommunication, the realm with interdict. He had suspended the Bishop of Salisbury without trial. "This was the whole of the cruelty, perversity, malignity of the King against the Church, declaimed on and bruited abroad throughout the world."[116]

[SN: John of Oxford at Rome.]

The indefatigable John of Oxford was in Rome, perhaps the bearer of this address. Becket wrote to the Pope, insisting on all the cruelties of the King; he calls him a malignant tyrant, one full of all malice. He dwelt especially on the imprisonment of one of his chaplains, for which violation of the sacred person of a clerk, the King was _ipso facto_ excommunicate. "Christ was crucified anew in Becket."[117] He complained of the presumption of Foliot, who had usurped the power of primate;[118]

warned the Pope against the wiles of John of Oxford; deprecated the legatine mission, of which he had already heard a rumor, of William of Pavia. And all these letters, so unsparing to the King, or copies of them, probably bought out of the Roman chancery, were regularly transmitted to the King.

John of Oxford began his mission at Rome by swearing undauntedly, that nothing had been done at Wurtzburg against the power of the Church or the interests of Pope Alexander.[119] He surrendered his deanery of Salisbury into the hands of the Pope, and received it back again.[120]

John of Oxford was armed with more powerful weapons than perjury or submission, and the times now favored the use of these more irresistible arms. The Emperor Frederick was levying, if he had not already set in motion, that mighty army which swept, during the next year, through Italy, made him master of Rome, and witnessed his coronation and the enthronement of the Antipope.[121] Henry had now, notwithstanding his suspicious--more than suspicious--dealings with the Emperor, returned to his allegiance to Alexander. Vast sums of English money were from this time expended in strengthening the cause of the Pope. The Guelfic cities of Italy received them with greedy hands. By the gold of the King of England, and of the King of Sicily, the Frangipani and the family of Peter Leonis were retained in their fidelity to the Pope. Becket, on the other hand, had powerful friends in Rome, especially the Cardinal Hyacinth, to whom he writes, that Henry had boasted that in Rome everything was venal. [SN: Dec. 1166.] It was, however, not till a second emba.s.sy arrived, consisting of John c.u.mmin and Ralph of Tamworth, that Alexander made his great concession, the sign that he was not yet extricated from his distress. He appointed William of Pavia, and Otho, Cardinal of St. Nicholas, his legates in France, to decide the cause.[122] Meantime all Becket's acts were suspended by the papal authority. At the same time the Pope wrote to Becket, entreating him at this perilous time of the Church to make all possible concessions, and to dissemble, if necessary, for the present.[123]

If John of Oxford boasted prematurely of his triumph (on his return to England he took ostentatious possession of his deanery of Salisbury[124]), and predicted the utter ruin of Becket, his friends, especially the King of France,[125] were in utter dismay at this change in the papal policy. John, as Becket had heard (and his emissaries were everywhere), on his landing in England, had met the Bishop of Hereford (one of the wavering bishops), prepared to cross the sea in obedience to Becket's citation. To him, after some delay, John had exhibited letters of the Pope, which sent him back to his diocese. On the sight of these same letters, the Bishop of London had exclaimed in the fullness of his joy, "Then our Thomas is no longer archbishop!" "If this be true," adds Becket, "the Pope has given a death-blow to the Church."[126] To the Archbishop of Mentz, for in the empire he had his ardent admirers, he poured forth all the bitterness of his soul.[127] Of the two cardinals he writes, "The one is weak and versatile, the other treacherous and crafty." He looked to their arrival with indignant apprehension. They are open to bribes, and may be perverted to any injustice.[128]

John of Oxford had proclaimed that the cardinals, William of Pavia, and Otho, were invested in full powers to pa.s.s judgment between the King and the Primate.[129] But whether John of Oxford had mistaken or exaggerated their powers, or the Pope (no improbable case, considering the change of affairs in Italy) had thought fit afterwards to modify or retract them, they came rather as mediators than judges, with orders to reconcile the contending parties, rather than to decide on their cause. The cardinals did not arrive in France till the autumn of the year.[130] Even before their arrival, first rumors, then more certain intelligence had been propagated throughout Christendom of the terrible disaster which had befallen the Emperor. Barbarossa's career of vengeance and conquest had been cut short. [SN: A. D. 1167. Flight of Frederick.] The Pope a prisoner, a fugitive, was unexpectedly released, restored to power, if not to the possession of Rome.[131] The climate of Rome, as usual, but in a far more fearful manner, had resented the invasion of the city by the German army. A pestilence had broken out, which in less than a month made such havoc among the soldiers, that they could scarcely find room to bury the dead. The fever seemed to choose its victims among the higher clergy, the partisans of the Antipope; of the princes and n.o.bles, the chief victims were the younger Duke Guelf, Duke Frederick of Swabia, and some others; of the bishops, those of Prague, Ratisbon, Augsburg, Spires, Verdun, Liege, Zeitz; and the arch-rebel himself, the antipope-maker, Reginald of Cologne.[132] Throughout Europe the clergy on the side of Alexander raised a cry of awful exultation; it was G.o.d manifestly avenging himself on the enemies of the Church; the new Sennacherib (so he is called by Becket) had been smitten in his pride; and the example of this chastis.e.m.e.nt of Frederick was a command to the Church to resist to the last all rebels against her power, to put forth her spiritual arms, which G.o.d would as a.s.suredly support by the same or more signal wonders. The defeat of Frederick was an admonition to the Pope to lay bare the sword of Peter, and smite on all sides.[133]

[SN: Becket against the legates.]

There can be no doubt that Becket so interpreted what he deemed a sign from heaven. But even before the disaster was certainly known he had determined to show no submission to a judge so partial and so corrupt as William of Pavia.[134] That cardinal had urged the Pope at Sens to accept Becket's resignation of his see. Becket would not deign to disguise his contempt. He wrote a letter so full of violence that John of Salisbury,[135] to whom it was submitted, persuaded him to destroy it. A second was little milder; at length he was persuaded to take a more moderate tone. Yet even then he speaks of the "insolence of princes lifting up their horn." To Cardinal Otho, on the other hand, his language borders on adulation.