Part 6

King Henry was not without fear at this last desperate blow. He had not a single chaplain who had not been excommunicated, or was not virtually under ban for holding intercourse with persons under excommunication.[160] He continued his active intrigues, his subsidies in Italy. He bought the support of Milan, Pavia, Cremona, Parma, Bologna. The Frangipani, the family of Leo, the people of Rome, were still kept in allegiance to the Pope chiefly by his lavish payments.[161] He made overtures to the King of Sicily, the Pope's ally, for a matrimonial alliance with his family: and finally, he urged the tempting offer to mediate a peace between the Emperor and the Pope. Reginald of Salisbury boasted that, if the Pope should die, Henry had the whole College of Cardinals in his pay, and could name his Pope.[162]

[SN: New Legatine Commission. Mar. 10, 1169.]

But no longer dependent on Henry's largesses to his partisans, Alexander's affairs wore a more prosperous aspect. He began, yet cautiously, to show his real bias. He determined to appoint a new legatine commission, not now rapacious cardinals and avowed partisans of Henry. The Nuncios were Gratian, a hard and severe canon lawyer, not likely to swerve from the loftiest claims of the Decretals; and Vivian, a man of more pliant character, but as far as he was firm in any principle, disposed to high ecclesiastical views. At the same time he urged Becket to issue no sentences against the King or the King's followers; or if, as he hardly believed, he had already done so, to suspend their powers.

[SN: English prelates waver.]

The terrors of the excommunication were not without their effect in England. Some of the Bishops began gradually to recede from the King's party, and to incline to that of the Primate. Hereford had already attempted to cross the sea. Henry of Winchester was in private correspondence with Becket: he had throughout secretly supplied him with money.[163] Becket skillfully labored to awaken his old spirit of opposition to the Crown. He reminded Winchester of his royal descent, that he was secure in his powerful connexions; "the impious one would not dare to strike him, for fear lest his kindred should avenge his cause."[164] Norwich, Worcester, Chester, even Chichester, more than wavered. This movement was strengthened by a false step of Foliot, which exposed all his former proceedings to the charge of irregular ambition. He began to declare publicly not only that he never swore canonical obedience to Becket, but to assert the independence of the see of London and the right of the see of London to the primacy of England. Becket speaks of this as an act of spiritual parricide: Foliot was another Absalom.[165] He appealed to the pride and the fears of the Chapter of Canterbury: he exposed, and called on them to resist, these machinations of Foliot to degrade the archiepiscopal see. At the same time he warned all persons to abstain from communion with those who were under his ban; "for he had accurate information as to all who were guilty of that offence." Even in France this proceeding strengthened the sympathy with Becket. The Archbishop of Sens, the Bishops of Troyes, Paris, Noyon, Auxerre, Boulogne, wrote to the Pope to denounce this audacious impiety of the Bishop of London.

[SN: Interview of the new Legates with the King. Aug. 23.]

The first interview of the new Papal legates, Gratian and Vivian, with the King, is described with singular minuteness by a friend of Becket.[166] On the eve of St. Bartholomew's Day they arrived at Damport. On their approach, Geoffrey Ridel and Nigel Sackville stole out of the town. The King, as he came in from hunting, courteously stopped at the lodging of the Legates: as they were conversing the Prince rode up with a great blowing of horns from the chase, and presented a whole stag to the Legates. The next morning the King visited them, accompanied by the Bishops of Seez and of Rennes. Presently John of Oxford, Reginald of Salisbury, and the Archdeacon of Llandaff were admitted. The conference lasted the whole day, sometimes in amity, sometimes in strife. Just before sunset the King rushed out in wrath, swearing by the eyes of God that he would not submit to their terms. Gratian firmly replied, "Think not to threaten us; we come from a court which is accustomed to command Emperors and Kings." The King then summoned his barons to witness, together with his chaplains, what fair offers he had made. He departed somewhat pacified. The eighth day was appointed for the convention, at which the King and the Archbishop were again to meet in the presence of the Legates.

[SN: Aug. 31.]

It was held at Bayeux. With the King appeared the Archbishops of Rouen and Bordeaux, the Bishop of Le Mans, and all the Norman prelates. The second day arrived one English bishop--Worcester. John of Poitiers kept prudently away. The Legates presented the Pope's preceding letters in favor of Becket. The King, after stating his grievances,[167] said, "If for this man I do anything, on account of the Pope's entreaties, he ought to be very grateful." The next day at a place called Le Bar, the King requested the Legates to absolve his chaplains without any oath: on their refusal, the King mounted his horse, and swore that he would never listen to the Pope or any one else concerning the restoration of Becket. The prelates interceded; the Legates partially gave way. The King dismounted and renewed the conference. At length he consented to the return of Becket and all the exiles. He seemed delighted at this, and treated of other affairs. He returned again to the Legates, and demanded that they, or one of them, or at least some one commissioned by them, should cross over to England to absolve all who had been excommunicated by the Primate. Gratian refused this with inflexible obstinacy. The King was again furious: "I care not an egg for you and your excommunications." He again mounted his horse, but at the earnest supplication of the prelates he returned once more. He demanded that they should write to the Pope to announce his pacific offers. The Bishops explained to the King that the Legates had at last produced a positive mandate of the Pope, enjoining their absolute obedience to his Legates. The King replied, "I know that they will lay my realm under an interdict, but cannot I, who can take the strongest castle in a day, seize any ecclesiastic who shall presume to utter such an interdict?" Some concessions allayed his wrath, and he returned to his offers of reconciliation. Geoffry Ridel and Nigel Sackville were absolved on the condition of declaring, with their hands on the Gospels, that they would obey the commands of the Legates. The King still pressing the visit of one of the Legates to England, Vivian consented to take the journey. The bishops were ordered to draw up the treaty; but the King insisted on a clause "Saving the honor of his Crown." They adjourned to a future day at Caen. The Bishop of Lisieux, adds the writer, flattered the King; the Archbishop of Rouen was for God and the Pope.

Two conferences at Caen and at Rouen were equally inconclusive; the King insisted on the words, "saving the dignity of my Crown." Becket inquired if he might add "saving the liberty of the Church."[168]

The King threw all the blame of the final rupture on the Legates, who had agreed, he said, to this clause,[169] but through Becket's influence withdrew from their word.[170] He reminded the Pope that he had in his possession letters of his Holiness exempting him and his realm from all authority of the Primate till he should be received into the royal favor.[171] "If," he adds, "the Pope refuses my demands, he must henceforth despair of my good will, and look to other quarters to protect his realm and his honor." Both parties renewed their appeals, their intrigues in Rome; Becket's complaints of Rome's venality became louder.[172]

Becket began again to fulminate his excommunications. Before his departure Gratian signified to Geoffry Ridel and Nigel Sackville that their absolution was conditional; if peace was not ratified by Michaelmas, they were still under the ban. Becket menaced some old, some new victims, the Dean of Salisbury, John Cummin, the Archdeacon of Llandaff, and others.[173] But he now took a more decisive and terrible step. [SN: Nov. 2, 1170.] He wrote to the bishops of England,[174] commanding them to lay the whole kingdom under interdict; all divine offices were to cease except baptism, penance, and the viaticum, unless before the Feast of the Purification the King should have given full satisfaction for his contumacy to the Church. This was to be done with closed doors, the laity expelled from the ceremony, with no bell tolling, no dirge wailing; all church music was to cease. The act was specially announced to the chapters of Chichester, Lincoln, and Bath. Of the Pope he demanded that he would treat the King's ambassadors, Reginald of Salisbury and Richard Barre, one as actually excommunicate, the other as contaminated by intercourse with the excommunicate.[175]

The menace of the Interdict, with the fear that the Bishops of England, all but London and Salisbury, might be overawed into publishing it in their dioceses, threw Henry back into his usual irresolution. There were other alarming signs. Gratian had returned to Rome, accompanied by William, Archbishop of Sens, Becket's most faithful admirer. Rumors spread that William was to return invested in full legatine powers--William, not only Becket's friend, but the head of the French hierarchy. If the Interdict should be extended to his French dominions, and the Excommunication launched against his person, could he depend on the precarious fidelity of the Norman prelates? Differences had again arisen with the King of France.[176] Henry was seized with an access of devotion. [SN: Henry at Paris.] He asked permission to offer his prayers at the shrines and at the Martyrs' Mount (Montmartre) at Paris. The pilgrimage would lead to an interview with the King of France, and offer an occasion of renewing the negotiations with Becket. [SN: Nov. 1169.] Vivan was hastily summoned to turn back. His vanity was flattered by the hope of achieving that reconciliation which had failed with Gratian. He wrote to Becket requesting his presence. Becket, though he suspected Vivian, yet out of respect to the King of France, consented to approach as near as Château Corbeil. After the conference with the King of France, two petitions from Becket, in his usual tone of imperious humility, were presented to the King of England. The Primate condescended to entreat the favor of Henry, and the restoration of the Church of Canterbury, in as ample a form as it was held before his exile. The second was more brief, but raised a new question of compensation for loss and damage during the archbishop's absence from his see.[177] [SN: Negotiations renewed.] Both parties mistrusted each other; each watched the other's words with captious jealousy. Vivian, weary of those verbal chicaneries of the King, declared that he had never met with so mendacious a man in his life.[178] Vivian might have remembered his own retractations, still more those of Becket on former occasions. He withdrew from the negotiation; and this conduct, with the refusal of a gift from Henry (a rare act of virtue), won him the approbation of Becket. But Becket himself was not yet without mistrust; he had doubts whether Vivian's report to the Pope would be in the same spirit. "If it be not, he deserves the doom of the traitor Judas."

Henry at length, agreed that on the question of compensation he would abide by the sentence of the court of the French King, the judgment of the Gallican Church, and of the University of Paris.[179] This made so favorable an impression that Becket could only evade it by declaring that he had rather come to an amicable agreement with the King than involve the affair in litigation.

[SN: Kiss of peace.]

At length all difficulties seemed yielding away, when Becket demanded the customary kiss of peace, as the pledge of reconciliation. Henry peremptorily refused; he had sworn in his wrath never to grant this favor to Becket. He was inexorable; and without this guarantee Becket would not trust the faith of the King. He was reminded, he said, by the case of the Count of Flanders, that even the kiss of peace did not secure a revolted subject, Robert de Silian, who, even after this sign of amity, had been seized and cast into a dungeon. Henry's conduct, if not the effect of sudden passion or ungovernable aversion, is inexplicable. Why did he seek this interview, which, if he was insincere in his desire for reconciliation, could afford but short delay? and from such oaths he would hardly have refused, for any great purpose of his own, to receive absolution.[180] On the other hand, it is quite clear that Becket reckoned on the legatine power of William of Sens and the terror of the English prelates, who had refused to attend a council in London to reject the Interdict. He had now full confidence that he could exact his own terms and humble the King under his feet.[181]

[SN: King's proclamation.]

But the King was resolved to wage war to the utmost. Geoffry Ridel, Archdeacon of Canterbury, was sent to England with a royal proclamation containing the following articles:--I. Whosoever shall bring into the realm any letter from the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury is guilty of high treason. II. Whosoever, whether bishop, clerk, or layman, shall observe the Interdict, shall be ejected from all his chattels, which are confiscate to the Crown. III. All clerks absent from England shall return before the feast of St. Hilary, on pain of forfeiture of all their revenues. IV. No appeal is to be made to the Pope or Archbishop of Canterbury under pain of imprisonment and forfeiture of all chattels. V. All laymen from beyond seas are to be searched, and if anything be found upon them contrary to the King's honor, they are to be imprisoned; the same with those who cross to the Continent. VI. If any clerk or monk shall land in England without passport from the King, or with anything contrary to his honor, he shall be thrown into prison. VII. No clerk or monk may cross the seas without the King's passport. The same rule applied to the clergy of Wales, who were to be expelled from all schools in England. Lastly, VIII. The sheriffs were to administer an oath to all freemen throughout England, in open court, that they would obey these royal mandates, thus abjuring, it is said, all obedience to Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury.[182] The bishops, however, declined the oath; some concealed themselves in their dioceses. Becket addressed a triumphant or gratulatory letter to his suffragans on their firmness. "We are now one, except that most hapless Judas, that rotten limb (Foliot of London), which is severed from us."[183] Another letter is addressed to the people of England, remonstrating on their impious abjuration of their pastor, and offering absolution to all who had sworn through compulsion and repented of their oath.[184] The King and the Primate thus contested the realm of England.

[SN: The Pope still dubious.]

But the Pope was not yet to be inflamed by Becket's passions, nor quite disposed to depart from his temporizing policy. John of Oxford was at the court in Benevento with the Archdeacons of Rouen and Seez. From that court returned the Archdeacon of Llandaff and Robert de Barre with a commission to the Archbishop of Rouen and the Bishop of Nevers to make one more effort for the termination of the difficulties. On the one hand they were armed with powers, if the King did not accede to his own terms within forty days after his citation (he had offered a thousand marks as compensation for all losses), to pronounce an interdict against his continental dominions; on the other, Becket was exhorted to humble himself before the King; if Henry was inflexible and declined the Pope's offered absolution from his oath, to accept the kiss of peace from the King's son. The King was urged to abolish in due time the impious and obnoxious Customs. And to these prelates was likewise intrusted authority to absolve the refractory Bishops of London and Salisbury.[185] This, however, was not the only object of Henry's new embassy to the Pope. He had long determined on the coronation of his eldest son; it had been delayed for various reasons. He seized this opportunity of reviving a design which would be as well humiliating to Becket as also of great moment in case the person of the King should be struck by the thunder of excommunication. The coronation of the King of England was the undoubted prerogative of the Archbishops of Canterbury, which had never been invaded without sufficient cause, and Becket was the last man tamely to surrender so important a right of his see. John of Oxford was to exert every means (what those means were may be conjectured rather than proved) to obtain the papal permission for the Archbishop of York to officiate at that august ceremony.

The absolution of the Bishops of London and Salisbury was an astounding blow to Becket. He tried to impede it by calling in question the power of the archbishop to pronounce it without the presence of his colleague. The archbishop disregarded his remonstrance, and Becket's sentence was thus annulled by the authority of the Pope. Rumors at the same time began to spread that the Pope had granted to the Archbishop of York power to proceed to the coronation. Becket's fury burst all bounds. He wrote to the Cardinal Albert and to Gratian: "In the court of Rome, now as ever, Christ is crucified and Barabbas released. The miserable and blameless exiles are condemned, the sacrilegious, the homicides, the impenitent thieves are absolved, those whom Peter himself declares that in his own chair (the world protesting against it) he would have no power to absolve.[186] Henceforth I commit my cause to God--God alone can find a remedy. Let those appeal to Rome who triumph over the innocent and the godly, and return glorying in the ruin of the Church. For me I am ready to die." Becket's fellow exiles addressed the Cardinal Albert, denouncing in vehement language the avarice of the court of Rome, by which they were brought to support the robbers of the Church. It is no longer King Henry alone who is guilty of this six years' persecution, but the Church of Rome.[187]

The coronation of the Prince by the Archbishop of York took place in the Abbey of Westminster on the 15th of June.[188] The assent of the clergy was given with that of the laity. The Archbishop of York produced a papal brief, authorising him to perform the ceremony.[189] An inhibitory letter, if it reached England, only came into the King's hand, and was suppressed; no one, in fact (as the production of such papal letter, as well as Becket's protest to the archbishop and to the bishops collectively and severally, was by the royal proclamation high treason or at least a misdemeanor) would dare to produce them.

The estrangement seemed now complete, the reconciliation more remote than ever. The Archbishop of Rouen and the Bishop of Nevers, though urged to immediate action by Becket and even by the Pope, admitted delay after delay, first for the voyage of the King to England, and secondly for his return to Normandy. Becket seemed more and more desperate, the King more and more resolute. Even after the coronation, it should seem, Becket wrote to Roger of York,[190] to Henry of Worcester, and even to Foliot of London, to publish the Interdict in their dioceses. The latter was a virtual acknowledgment of the legality of his absolution, which in a long letter to the Bishop of Nevers he had contested:[191] but the Interdict still hung over the King and the realm; the fidelity of the clergy was precarious.

[SN: Treaty of Fretteville.]

The reconciliation at last was so sudden as to take the world by surprise. The clue to this is found in Fitz-Stephen. Some one had suggested by word or by writing to the King that the Primate would be less dangerous within than without the realm.[192] The hint flashed conviction on the King's mind. The two Kings had appointed an interview at Fretteville, between Chartres and Tours. The Archbishop of Sens prevailed on Becket to be, unsummoned, in the neighborhood. Some days after the King seemed persuaded by the Archbishops of Sens and Rouen and the Bishop of Nevers to hold a conference with Becket.[193] As soon as they drew near the King rode up, uncovered his head, and saluted the Prelate with frank courtesy, and after a short conversation between the two and the Archbishop of Sens, the King withdrew apart with Becket. Their conference was so long as to try the patience of the spectators, so familiar that it might seem there had never been discord between them. Becket took a moderate tone; by his own account he laid the faults of the King entirely on his evil counselors. After a gentle admonition to the King on his sins, he urged him to make restitution to the see of Canterbury. He dwelt strongly on the late usurpation on the rights of the primacy, on the coronation of the King's son. Henry alleged the state of the kingdom and the necessity of the measure; he promised that as his son's queen, the daughter of the King of France, was also to be crowned, that ceremony should be performed by Becket, and that his son should again receive his crown from the hands of the Primate.

At the close of the interview Becket sprung from his horse and threw himself at the King's feet. The King leaped down, and holding his stirrup compelled the Primate to mount his horse again. In the most friendly terms he expressed his full reconciliation not only to Becket himself, but to the wondering and delighted multitude. There seemed an understanding on both sides to suppress all points which might lead to disagreement. The King did not dare (so Becket writes triumphantly to the Pope) to mutter one word about the Customs.[194] Becket was equally prudent, though he took care that his submission should be so vaguely worded as to be drawn into no dangerous concession on his part. [SN: July.] He abstained, too, from all other perilous topics; he left undecided the amount of satisfaction to the church of Canterbury; and on these general terms he and the partners of his exile were formally received into the King's grace. If the King was humiliated by this quiet and sudden reconcilement with the imperious prelate, to outward appearance at least he concealed his humiliation by his noble and kingly manner. If he submitted to the spiritual reproof of the prelate, he condescended to receive into his favor his refractory subject. Each maintained prudent silence on all points in dispute. Henry received, but he also granted pardon. If his concession was really extorted by fear, not from policy, compassion for Becket's six years' exile might seem not without influence. If Henry did not allude to the Customs, he did not annul them; they were still the law of the land. The kiss of peace was eluded by a vague promise. Becket made a merit of not driving the King to perjury, but he skillfully avoided this trying test of the King's sincerity.

[SN: Becket's schemes of vengeance.]