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Updated: July 27, 2025
Becket now turned round for the first time, and gazed steadfastly on each in silence, which he at last broke by saluting Tracy by name. The conspirators continued to look mutely at each other, till Fitzurse, who throughout took the lead, replied with a scornful expression, "God help you!"
A defence of Becket against Henry, of the Church against the State, from the pen of a competent writer, would have been as interesting and as important a contribution as Froude's own papers to the great issue between Sacerdotalism and Erastianism.
The election of Becket to the see of Canterbury seems to have followed closely the forms which had come into use since the compromise between Henry I and Anselm, and which were soon after described in the Constitutions of Clarendon. The justiciar, Richard de Lucy, with three bishops went down to Canterbury and made known the will of the king and summoned the monks to an election.
Then, coming out on the road again, he saw that he must be within a mile or two of Becket; and finding himself suddenly very hungry, determined to go there and get some breakfast.
His eyes would disappear upwards, his face grow gray, his limbs cold. No wonder, then, that the first time that the Wolverhampton doctor's warning was disregarded, and Henry played "The Bells" at Bradford, his heart could not stand the strain. Within twenty-four hours of his last death as Matthias, he was dead. What a heroic thing was that last performance of Becket which came between!
At last Becket was persuaded to concede the form of words desired, though his biographers asserted that he did this on the express understanding that the concession should be no more than a form to save the honour of the king. He had an interview with Henry at Oxford and engaged that he would faithfully observe the customs of the realm.
After a few days spent in deliberation, Becket went to church and said mass, where he had previously ordered that the introit to the communion service should begin with these words, PRINCES SAT, AND SPAKE AGAINST ME; the passage appointed for the martyrdom of St. Stephen, whom the primate thereby tacitly pretended to resemble, in his sufferings for the sake of righteousness. Hist. Quad. p. 53.
On the next day he set out for Canterbury. The penance of a king imposed upon him by the Church for the murder of Thomas Becket he might already have performed to the satisfaction of the pope, but the penance of a private person, of a soul guilty in the sight of heaven, he had still to take upon himself, in a measure to satisfy the world and very likely his own conscience.
But Avranches has an historical spot that no student of history, and indeed no one who cares anything for the picturesque events that crowd the pages of the chronicles of England in the days of the Norman kings, may miss. It is the famous stone upon which Henry II. knelt when he received absolution for the murder of Becket at the hands of the papal legate.
None of the prelates dared to oppose his will, except Becket, who, though urged by the Earls of Cornwall and Leicester, the barons of principal authority in the kingdom, obstinately withheld his assent. Quad. p. 38. Epist. St. Hist. Quad. p. 39.
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