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His career outwardly is memorable only for this contest, which was afterwards renewed by Thomas Becket with a greater king than either William Rufus or Henry I. It is interesting, since it was a part of the great struggle between the spiritual and temporal powers for two hundred years, from Hildebrand to Innocent III. This was only one of the phases of the quarrel, one of the battles of a long war, not between popes and emperors, as in Germany and Italy, but between a king and the vicegerent of a pope; a king and his subject, the one armed with secular, the other with spiritual, weapons.
But there is little at the present time at Argentan to remind one that it is in any way associated with the murder of Becket. The castle that now exists is occupied by the Courts of Justice and was partially built in the Renaissance period.
The north-western transept is known as the Transept of the Martyrdom, where Becket was slain just after Christmas by four knights in 1170. A small square piece cut out of one of the flagstones marks the spot, and there still remain the door leading from the cloisters by which Becket and the knights entered the cathedral, and the part of the wall in front of which the assassinated archbishop fell.
The only question is whether they happened in England, in Toulouse, or in Aquitaine. Freeman exposed his own ignorance by alleging that Grim meant the suppression of the free lances, which happened before Becket became Chancellor. He did not in fact know the subject half so well as Froude, though Froude might have more carefully qualified his general words.
Amid the calamities which saddened his latter days, he felt that all were the judgments of God for his persecution of the martyr, and did penance at his tomb. So Becket slew more by his death than he did by his life. His cause was gained by his blood: it arrested the encroachments of the Norman kings for more than three hundred years. He gained the gratitude of the Church and a martyr's crown.
With no ordinary feeling does one stand amid the scene of this most interesting and curious chapter in church history. Not far from the shrine is the place where the murder of Becket was committed. You are shown the actual stone that was stained with his blood.
Four knights who heard him understood from this angry speech that he desired the death of Becket, and they went to England to murder the Archbishop. When they met Becket they first demanded that he should do as the king wished, but he firmly refused. At dusk that same day they entered Canterbury Cathedral, again seeking for him. "Where is the traitor, Thomas Becket?" one of them cried.
Men of a very different class now rose to the direction of ecclesiastical affairs, men whose spirit resembled that of Dunstan and of Becket. The Roman Pontiffs exhibited in their own persons all the austerity of the early anchorites of Syria. Paul the Fourth brought to the papal throne the same fervent zeal which had carried him into the Theatine convent.
'And let's call each other by our right names to-day, just to get into it. Don't you think so, Knight? 'Yea, Nun-Priest, Oswald was replying, but Noel said she was only half the Nun-Priest, and again a threat of unpleasantness darkened the air. But Alice said 'Don't be a piggy-wiggy, Noel, dear; you can have it all, I don't want it. I'll just be a plain pilgrim, or Henry who killed Becket.
The said Thomas Becket was so proud that he wrote to King Henry the Second, as to his lord, to his king, and to his son, offering him his counsel, his reverence, and due correction, etc.
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