yielded the direction of ecclesiastical affairs, and who was every day assuming more authority than they were willing to allow him.

Before the conquest of England by the duke of Normandy, this island was as much separated from the rest of the world in politics as in situation; and except from the inroads of the Danish pirates, the English, happily confined at home, had neither enemies nor allies on the continent. The foreign dominions of William connected them with the king and great vassals of France; and while the opposite pretensions of the pope and emperor in Italy, produced a continual intercourse between Germany and that country, the two great monarchs of France and England formed, in another part of Europe, a separate system, and carried on their wars and negociations, without meeting either with opposition or support from the others.

On the decline of the Carlovingian race, the nobles in every province of France, taking advantage of the weakness of the sovereign, and obliged to provide each for his own defence, against the ravages of the Norman freebooters, had assumed, both in civil and military affairs, an authority almost independent, and had reduced within very narrow limits the prerogative of their princes. The accession of Hugh Capet, by annexing a great fief to the crown, had brought some addition to the royal dignity; but this fief, though considerable for a subject, appeared a narrow basis of power for a prince who was placed at the head of so great a community. The royal demesnes consisted only of Paris, Orleans, Estampes, Campaigue, and a few places scattered over the northern provinces. In the rest of the kingdom, the prince's authority was rather nominal than real. The vassals were accustomed, nay entitled, to make war without his permission, on each other. They were even entitled, if they conceived themselves injured, to turn their arms against their sovereign. They exercised all civil jurisdiction, without appeal, over their tenants and inferior vassals. Their common jealousy of the crown easily united them against any attempt on their exorbitant privileges; and as some of them had attained the power and authority of great princes, even the smallest baron was sure of immediate and effectual protection. Besides six ecclesiastical peerages, which, with the other immunities of the church, cramped extremely the general execution of justice, there were six lay peerages, Burgundy, Normandy, Guienne, Flanders, Toulouse, and Champagne, which formed very extensive and puissant sovereignties. And though the combination of all those princes and barons could, on urgent occasions, muster a mighty power; yet was it very difficult to set that great machine in movement; it was almost impossible to preserve harmony in its parts; a sense of common interest alone could, for a time, unite them under their sovereign against a common enemy; but if the king attempted to turn the force of the community against any mutinous vassal, the same sense of common interest made the others oppose themselves to the success of his pretensions. Lewis the Gross, the last sovereign, marched at one time to his frontiers against the Germans at the head of an army of two hundred thousand men ; but a petty Lord of Corbeil, of Pinset, of Conci, was able, at another period, to set that prince at defiance, and to maintain open war against him.

The authority of the English monarch was much more extensive within his kingdom, and the disproportion much greater between him and the most powerful of his vassals. His demesnes and revenue were large, compared to the greatness of his state: He was accustomed to levy arbitrary exactions on his subjects: His courts of judicature extended their jurisdiction into every part of the kingdom: He could crush by his power, or by a judicial sentence, well or ill-founded, any obnoxious baron: And though the feudal institutions which prevailed in this kingdom, had the same tendency as in other states, to exalt the aristocracy and distress the monarchy, it required in England, according to its present constitution, a great

combination of the vassals to oppose their sovereign-lord, and there had not hitherto arisen any baron so powerful as of himself to levy war against the prince, and to afford protection to the inferior barons.

While such were the different situations of France and England, and the latter enjoyed so many advantages above the former; the accession of Henry II., a prince of great abilities, possessed of so many rich provinces on the continent, might appear an event dangerous, if not fatal to the French monarchy, and sufficient to break entirely the balance between the states. He was master, in the right of his father, of Anjou and Touraine; in that of his mother, of Normandy and Maine; in that of his wife, Guienne, Poictou, Xaintogne, Auvergne, Perigord, Angoumois, the Limousin. He soon after annexed Brittany to his other states, and was already possessed of the superiority over that province, which, on the first cession of Normandy to Rollo the Dane, had been granted by Charles the Simple in vassalage to that formidable ravager. These provinces composed above a third of the whole French monarchy, and were much superior in extent and opulence to those territories which were subjected to the immediate jurisdiction and government of the king. The vassal was here more powerful than the liege lord: The situation which had enabled Hugh Capet to depose the Carlovingian princes seemed to be renewed, and that with much greater advantages on the side of the vassal: And when England was added to so many provinces, the French king had reason to apprehend, from this conjuncture, some great disaster to himself and to his family: But in reality, it was this circumstance, which appeared so formidable that saved the Capetian race.

63. THE RISE OF THOMAS A BECKET.

C. MAC FARLANE.

The most powerful churchman, the most remarkable man of his country or of the times in which he lived-the priest that was strong enough to contend with the powerful, able, and popular Henry II.-was of the Saxon race, a native of the city of London, and the son of a London merchant. The traditionary history of the family and birth of Thomas à Becket is highly romantic and picturesque. His father, Gilbert Becket or Beckie, who was born in London either at the end of the reign of the Conqueror or during the reign of William Rufus, went to the Holy Land during the reign of Henry I. It has been stated, but more upon conjecture than upon any contemporary proof, that he went in the train of some great Norman lord or crusading knight; but it appears to be quite as probable that he was carried to Palestine by his own devotion, and his commercial and enterprising spirit, and that he was a merchant of some substance before he went. Such journeys, undertaken by men of his class, had not been uncommon even in the old Saxon times; they were rather frequent between the time of the Conquest and the time of the first Crusade, and when the Crusaders had obtained by conquest a firm establishment in Palestine with possession of all the seaports of that country, such journeys certainly became very common. Trade and devotion have often travelled together, and thrived together. In all the countries of the East, a good portion of the pilgrims to the holy places were, and still are, traffickers. The shrines, the holy wells, the fountain-heads of rivers, the sacred islands, whether on the Nile or elsewhere, the holy mounts, and all other places that were reputed holy and attracted pilgrims to them, became either the regular seats of commerce, or the scenes of great annual fairs, for the interchange of commodities, often brought from very distant districts and from countries much varying in soil, production, and manufactures. Perhaps

Gilbert Becket, like other merchant-pilgrims from England, may, for the sake of protection, have enrolled himself under the banner of some great Norman knight. While in the Holy Land, he had the misfortune to be taken prisoner by the Saracens, who generally made domestic slaves of the captives of their sword. Gilbert is represented as living in a state of slavery in the house of an Emir or Mohammedan chief; but, as the romantic story goes, the fair daughter of the Emir fell in love with his handsome person, and assisted him in making his escape; and when he was gone, finding that she could not live without him, she fled from her father's house and from her own sunny climate, to seek her lover through the unknowu countries of the West; and knowing only two words that were intelligible to European ears, her lover's name and the name of his birthplace and home, she repeated wherever she went. "London! London! Gilbert! Gilbert!" Having, after many dangers and strange adventures, reached the English capital, she went from street to street, calling upon Gilbert, and weeping for that she could not find him. Her Eastern dress, her beauty, and her helpless condition drew crowds around her, and excited the sympathy of some good Londoners; and at last her lover was either found out for her, or he met her in the streets as she was calling his name. Such lasting and heroic love could not go unrewarded, and Becket, now a very thriving citizen, resolved to make the Syrian maiden his wife. But first she must renounce Mohammed and the Koran. She was speedily converted and baptized; and then married to Gilbert. The story struck the fancy of the artists and illuminators, and the baptism of the fair Syrian and her espousals seem to have been delineated and repeated in a good many old manuscripts.

From this romantic marriage proceeded the great Thomas à Becket, who was born in London, in or about the year 1119. The boy was gifted with an extraordinary intelligence, a handsome person, and most prepossessing manners; and his prosperous father gave him all the advantages of education. He studied successively at Merton Abbey, London, Oxford, and Paris. In the French capital he applied himself to civil law, and acquired as perfect a mastery and as pure a pronunciation of the French language as any, the best educated, of the Norman nobles and officers. While yet a very young man, he was employed as clerk in the office of the sheriff of London, and probably acted as under-sheriff, a post then requiring much knowledge of law, and which was in after times occupied by Sir Thomas More. While in the sheriff's office, he attracted the notice of Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, a learned Norman, who had previously been prior of the great Benedictine abbey of Bec. Before this acquaintance with the primate began, the handsome and alert Thomas had become the intimate friend of a great baron who resided near London; and with this lord he rode, hunted, and hawked, and enjoyed all the other pleasures which were then considered as a monopoly of the aristocracy. He was qualified for the military profession and the honours of knighthood, but Archbishop Theobald, who conceived a great affection for him, advised him to take orders and to continue the study of law, all lawyers and judges being at that time chosen out of the priesthood. Thomas followed the primate's advice, and went to complete his study of the civil law at the then famous school of Bologna. After profiting by the lessons of the learned Gratian, and making himself master of the Italian language, Becket recrossed the Alps, and stayed some time at Auxerre in Burgundy, to attend the lectures of another celebrated law professor. On his return to London, he took deacon's orders, and his powerful patron, the archbishop, gave him some valuable church preferment, free from the necessity of residence and the performance of any church duties. Not long after this, Theobald having some important negotiations to conclude at the court of Rome, sent Thomas à Becket to the pope as the best qualified person he knew. The young

diplomatist acquitted himself with great ability and complete success, obtaining from the pontiff a prohibitory bull which defeated the design of crowning Prince Eustace, the son of King Stephen, and which most materially contributed to put an end to the long and destructive civil war, and to place the brave and accomplished Henry II. peacefully on the English throne. Becket's services were not forgotten by the Empress Matilda and the house of Plantagenet. On Henry's accession, in 1154, Archbishop Theobald had all the authority of prime minister, but being old and infirm, delegated the most of it to the active and able Becket, who was made Chancellor of the Kingdom in 1156, being the first Englishman since the Conquest that reached any eminent office under government. At the same time, King Henry, who was charmed with his wit, and who already preferred his services and society to those of any other man, whether French or English or of the mixed race, appointed him preceptor of the heir of the crown, and gave him the wardenship of the Tower of London, the castle of Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire, and the honour of Eye in Lincolnshire, with three hundred and forty knights' fees. His revenue, flowing in from so many sources, was immense; and no man ever spent money more freely or magnificently, or, for that time, with so much taste. He was the Cardinal Wolsey of an earlier and ruder but more picturesque age. His house was a palace. It was stocked with the choicest hangings and furniture, with vessels of gold and silver; it was constantly frequented by numberless guests of all goodly ranks from barons and earls to knights and pages and feudal retainers-of which last classes he had many hundreds that were his immediate vassals. His tables were spread with the choicest viands, his cups of silver and gold were filled with the choicest wines, the richest dresses were allotted to his pages and serving men. There was a never ceasing exercise of hospitality; his feasts were more frequent and more splendid than those of any baron in the land-they were all but equal to those of the king. Mixed with this magnificence of the twelfth century there were of course certain things which would nowadays be considered as capital wants of common comfort. The walls of the room were hung with costly tapestry, the hanging roofs were beautiful and rich, but the floors were strewed with rushes or with hay and straw like stables. Fitz Stephen the minute biographer of à Becket relates that as the number of guests was ofttimes greater than could find place at table, my Lord Chancellor ordered that the floor should be every day covered with fresh hay or straw, in order that those who sat upon it to eat their dinners might not soil their dresses. The chancellor's out-door appearance was still more splendid. Like Cardinal Wolsey he environed the office of chancellor with all possible dignity and splendour, and never went to the court without having an immense retinue with him. On his foreign embassies he travelled like a king, and perhaps with more magnificence than any king in Europe, with the exception of his own master, could have displayed. When he went on his famous embassy to Paris he took with him for his own use twenty changes of rich apparel; and he was attended by many great barons, two hundred knights, and a host of domestics, all richly armed and attired. As he travelled through France, his train of baggagewaggons and sumpter-horses, his huntsmen and falconers with his hounds and hawks, excited the wonderment of all beholders. Whenever he entered a town, the ambassadorial procession was led by two hundred and fifty boys singing national songs; then followed his hounds, led in couples; and then eight waggons, each with five large horses, and five drivers in new frocks. Every waggon was covered with skins, and guarded by two soldiers and one fierce mastiff. Two of these waggons were loaded with that wine of Ceres, the generous old English ale, to be given to the people of the country. One carried the vessels and furniture of his chapel, another of his bed-chamber; a fifth was loaded with his kitchen apparatus;

a sixth carried his plate and wardrobe; and the remaining two waggons were de voted to the use of his household servants. Some of the grotesqueness of the time entered into this splendour. After the waggons came twelve sumpter-horses, a monkey riding on each, with a groom behind on his knees. Then came the esquires, carrying the shields, and leading the war-horses of their respective knights; then other esquires (youths of gentle birth nurtured in Becket's house), falconers, officers of the household, knights and priests; and last of all appeared the great chancellor himself, with his noblest and most familiar friends. As Becket passed from town to town in this guise the French people were heard to exclaim, "What manner of man must the King of Eugland be, when his chancellor can travel with so much state."

At home, this exaltation and splendour of a man of the Saxon race, the son of a London citizen and trader, evidently gave satisfaction to the mass of the English people, for he was to all intents their countryman, and in a manner of their own class and condition. At the same time the Angevin-born king encouraged all his pomp and magnificence, though he sometimes twitted the chancellor on the finery of his attire. All such offices of regal government as were not performed by the ready and indefatigable king himself, were left to Becket, who had no competitor in authority and no rival in the royal favour and consideration of the people. Henry and his minister lived together like brothers. According to Peter of Blois, a contemporary, who knew more of Henry than any other that has written about him, it was notorious to all men that he and à Becket were "cor unum et animam unum" (of one heart and one mind in all things). The chancellor was an admirable horseman, and expert in hunting and hawking and in all the sports of the field. These accomplishments, and a never failing wit and vivacity, made him the constant companion of the king's leisure hours, and the sharer (it is hinted) in less innocent pleasures than hunting and hawking-for Henry, who had married a princess of a very indifferent character for the sake of the dominions she brought him, was a very unfaithful husband, and the general licentiousness of the time was great. More than once à Becket accompanied Henry in his wars in the south of France, and at several sieges he is said to have displayed his fearlessness and activity in being the first man to mount the breach.

At the same time it is universally admitted that Becket was an able and honest minister, and that his administration was not only advantageous to his master, but, on the whole, extremely beneficial to the nation. He took a pride in protecting the quiet citizen against the violent man of war; and the experience of his father, and the things he had seen in his father's house and in the city of London in his early days, had given him a sense of the importance of trade and industry. The envy of the aristocracy only bound him the more to the cause of the people, or of that portion of them who were free men, and who were slowly but gradually and surely forming the broad basis of our tiers état. Most of the excellent measures which distinguished the early part of the reign of Henry II. have been attributed to Becket's advice, discriminating genius, good intentions, and patriotism. We must not look for perfect legislature in such a period, or expect to find in the twelfth the political or public economy of the nineteenth century; but during Becket's administration internal tranquillity was restored to a country that had scarcely had a glimpse of that blessing for the space of twenty years, the baronial power was curbed, better judges were appointed, the currency, which had been alloyed and spoilt in the time of Stephen, was reformed, and trade with foreign countries was protected and encouraged. A charter was granted confirming the liberties and privileges of the citizens of London, who had valorously proved in the preceding reign their importance in the state. Fitz-Stephen says that there was