St. Thomas Becket

Thomas Becket enters history first as Thomas of London, son of Gilbert and Matilda, educated at Merton, shaped in the service of Archbishop Theobald, and then raised by Henry II to be chancellor. He was brilliant, handsome, energetic, magnificent in state, quick in action, and entirely at home in diplomacy, government, hunting, and the king's intimate friendship. Yet even in those years Thomas was not simply frivolous. When Henry forced the archbishopric of Canterbury upon him in 1162, Thomas warned plainly that the friendship would not survive, because the king would ask things in prejudice of the Church that he could not in conscience allow. Once consecrated, he changed his manner of life sharply, wearing a hair-shirt, adopting stricter discipline, and taking the office of shepherd with real seriousness. The struggle then came into the open: Woodstock, the case of Philip de Brois, Westminster, Clarendon, the king's financial and political pressure, Thomas's momentary wavering and bitter remorse, his flight from Northampton, and the long years of exile at Pontigny and St. Columba.

The broken negotiations, the uneasy reconciliation, and the archbishop's return to England in 1170 followed, when popular joy was already shadowed by danger. At Canterbury the quarrel over censures and the rights of the see brought four knights from the king's court. In the cathedral, refusing to treat the church as a castle or to buy safety by surrender, Thomas was struck down near the choir, commending himself to God and declaring himself ready to die for the name of Jesus and in defense of the Church. He was not an easy man: proud, impetuous, and difficult traits remain visible throughout. But his death was understood across Christendom as a true martyrdom against an overreaching royal power.