Anglican Commemoration
Archbishop of Canterbury & Martyr
December 29 · d. 1170
also known as Thomas of London, Thomas Becket
Thomas Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his murder in the cathedral on 29 December 1170. Born in London to a family of Norman merchants, he served Henry II as Lord Chancellor before his consecration, then broke with the king over the crown's claim to jurisdiction over the clergy and spent six years in exile. Four of the king's knights killed him at vespers. Alexander III canonized him on 21 February 1173, two years and two months after his death.
Thomas Becket was the friend of a king. He had been born in London, in his father's house on Cheapside, on the feast of St Thomas the Apostle; the year is uncertain, but the day is not. His father was a merchant of Norman stock who had risen from trade to living off rents, and the boy was schooled at Merton Priory and in London, then at Paris, and later a little at Bologna and Auxerre. He learned to ride and hunt in a baron's household. He was clever, quick, and good company, and when Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury took him into his own household he learned there the second trade of his life, which was the business of the church.
In 1154 the young King Henry II made him Lord Chancellor, and for eight years no subject in England stood higher. Becket led an embassy to Paris in 1158 with a display so magnificent that people talked about it for years afterward. He campaigned in person in the king's war at Toulouse. One of the old writers says that the king and his chancellor had but one heart and one mind.
Then in June 1162 he was ordained priest, and the next day consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, and he was not the same man. He gave up the chancellorship. He fasted and kept vigil, and under the archbishop's vestments, where nobody could see it, he put on a hair shirt.
The quarrel that followed was about who could judge a priest. Henry wanted clergy accused of serious crimes tried in his own courts, which could hang a man; Becket held that the church's courts must judge her own. At Clarendon in January 1164 Becket gave the king his word aloud but would not set his seal to the document. In October he was tried at Northampton on charges left over from his chancellor's years, the demands mounting until they reached a sum no man could pay, and he fled. He crossed to France in disguise on 2 November and did not see England again for six years. He lived at Pontigny among the Cistercians until Henry's threats against the whole order drove him on to Sens. From exile he wrote to the king he had loved, and the letter begins, in Henry Riley's Victorian translation, "With great longing have I longed to see your face, and to converse with you." He addressed Henry in three ways at once: because you are my lord, because you are my king, and because you are my son in the Spirit. It was the third that Henry would not have.
In the summer of 1170 the two men were partly reconciled, and on 1 December Becket landed at Sandwich and rode to Canterbury with the people coming out to meet him. On Christmas Day he renewed the sentences of excommunication on the bishops who had crowned the king's son in Canterbury's place. Four days later four of the king's knights came for him.
The monks wanted to bar the cathedral doors. Becket would not let them. "It is not proper that a house of prayer, a church of Christ, be made a fortress," he said. When the knights shouted for the traitor he came down to them and answered, "Here I am, not a traitor of the king but a priest; why do you seek me?" They demanded that he absolve the bishops. He said, "No penance has been made, so I will not absolve them." As the swords came up he said, "For the name of Jesus and the protection of the church I am ready to embrace death," and commended himself to God, to St Mary, and to the martyr St Denis. A clerk from Cambridge named Edward Grim, who happened to be visiting, threw up his arm to shield him and had it nearly cut through; Grim lived, and wrote down what he had seen, which is how we know the words. When they took the vestments off the body they found the hair shirt underneath, and lice in it, and that told the monks what all the arguing never could.
They buried him the next morning in the crypt. People came at once, and gathered his blood from the pavement, and the sick began to be healed at the tomb, so many that the monastery set two of its brothers to write the cures down. In three years the pope had declared him a saint, and in less than four the king himself walked into Canterbury barefoot and let the monks scourge him at the tomb of his friend. The stone lid over the grave had to be drilled with holes so that pilgrims could touch him without breaking pieces off it. Long before any of that, in a foreign country, Becket had written to console himself with the psalm's word that he had not seen the righteous forsaken; and the crowds on the Canterbury road had already answered him.
You will probably never be asked to die for a jurisdictional principle, and if you read Becket's quarrel closely you may not even be sure he was right about it. But notice what he was actually killed for. He was not killed for a theory. He was killed because four armed men in a dark church demanded that he say a particular sentence, and he said instead that no penance had been made, so he would not absolve them. Everything abstract in his life came down at the end to one small refusal, spoken to men who could kill him for it, about a matter he could have called a technicality if he had wanted to. Most of us are asked for that sentence in far safer rooms, and give it. When you were last asked to say the easy thing, what was it costing you to refuse?
Almost everything a reader can check about Becket's death comes from one page. Edward Grim, a clerk of Cambridge, was standing beside the archbishop on 29 December 1170 and was badly wounded in the attack, and his Latin Life is the source of the words quoted above; but he cannot have finished it before 1174, since it refers to Henry II's penance of that year, and it appears complete by 1177. What survives is therefore eyewitness testimony written down four to seven years later, by a man who was both a victim of the attack and a partisan of the devotion that grew up around it. Several near-contemporaries wrote lives of Becket, and the number of accounts is genuinely unusual for a twelfth-century death; but the celebrated death scene as it circulates in English is Grim, quoted repeatedly, rather than several witnesses independently agreeing. His partisanship shows in tone and emphasis rather than in the physical detail, which other accounts of the period corroborate.
Two further bodies of evidence stand behind the life. The correspondence survives in quantity: Anne Duggan's critical edition of 2000 collects 329 letters from the years 1162 to 1170, with the Latin and English on facing pages, and the wider controversy runs to roughly five hundred items when both sides are counted. Almost all of it is letters; Becket wrote no treatise, and the surviving corpus is a bishop's working correspondence rather than a theologian's library. Before Duggan, the standard collection was the seven-volume Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, edited by James Craigie Robertson and, for the last volume, Joseph Brigstocke Sheppard, published in the Rolls Series between 1875 and 1885, which gathers the Latin lives and the miracle collections as well.
Where the record thins, it thins sharply, and the thin places should be named. No contemporary source gives his birth year; modern scholarship reckons 1119 or 1120 by working backward from ages the medieval biographers give him, while the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia carries the older figure of 1118. The day, 21 December, is much better attested than the year. The reconciliation with Henry at Fréteval belongs to the summer of 1170, and the precise date widely repeated in reference works could not be confirmed here. The canonization date of 21 February 1173 is well attested, but the text of the bull was not retrieved and its opening words are not known. His mother's name is given differently by different modern encyclopedias; no brother or sister is attested anywhere. The later medieval story that his mother was a converted Saracen princess is an accretion, and the Catholic Encyclopedia declined to endorse it a century ago.
Two corrections are worth making plainly, because both are common. The line "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" is not medieval and is not Henry II's. Its familiar phrasing was first put close to that form by Robert Dodsley in 1740 and popularized in the twentieth century by Jean Anouilh's play and the 1964 film. Grim's report of Henry's outburst is different in substance and tone, and Grim was not present to hear it. And "Thomas à Becket" is not a contemporary form of the name either; it is first attested with the Elizabethan writer Thomas Nashe in the 1590s. His own contemporaries called him Thomas of London, or Thomas of Canterbury, or simply the archbishop.
Devotion began within hours and was never grafted on later. Pilgrims gathered his blood from the cathedral pavement; the crypt tomb, closed for about three months out of caution, was opened in April 1171 and the reported cures multiplied. Canterbury set two monks, Benedict of Peterborough and William of Canterbury, to register the miracles, and Benedict's collection, composed between 1171 and 1173, records 275 of them. Alexander III canonized him on 21 February 1173, fixing 29 December as his feast.
On 7 July 1220 the relics were moved from the crypt to a jewelled shrine in the Trinity Chapel, and that day became a second feast, in medieval England the more heavily attended of the two. Stephen Langton, who officiated, had calculated the date as Becket's Levitical jubilee; it fell on a Tuesday, the weekday associated with him, and on the anniversary of Henry II's burial. The boy king Henry III attended. For three centuries the Trinity Chapel shrine was one of the great pilgrimage destinations of Christendom, and it is the shrine Chaucer's pilgrims are riding toward.
In September 1538, on Henry VIII's order, the shrine was stripped and broken up, the treasure carried off in two chests by twelve men, and a royal proclamation required his name and image to be erased from service books and church art throughout England. Where the bones went is unknown and disputed; a skeleton found in the crypt in 1888 was proposed as his, and the question has not been settled. Fragments venerated at Esztergom in Hungary and at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire were brought together in England in 2016 in a joint Anglican and Catholic observance. The place of the shrine at Canterbury is now marked by a single lit candle on the pavement.
He kept his day through the Reformation and after it. Rome commemorates him on 29 December in the General Roman Calendar; the Church of England keeps both 29 December and 7 July as Lesser Festivals, inherited from the pre-Reformation English kalendar rather than granted afresh; the ACNA calendar of 2019 carries him on 29 December.
The eyewitness account of the murder, and the four sayings quoted above from the day itself, come from Edward Grim's Life of St Thomas, in the translation by Dawn Marie Hayes made from the Latin printed in J. C. Robertson, ed., Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Rolls Series 67, volume II (London, 1875 to 1885); the relevant passage is the account of the martyrdom of 29 December 1170, and the translation is posted in Fordham University's Internet Medieval Sourcebook at https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/Grim-becket.asp.
The letter to Henry II from exile, known by its opening words Desiderio desideravi, is number 74 in Anne J. Duggan, ed. and trans., The Correspondence of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1162 to 1170, 2 vols., Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), vol. 1, pp. 292 to 299, dated to late May or early June 1166; the Latin is also in Robertson's Materials, vol. 5, pp. 278 to 282. The English quoted here is Henry T. Riley's 1853 translation of Roger of Hoveden's Annals, where the letter is printed under the year 1165 with the heading naming the king's council at Chinon, transcribed at http://elfinspell.com/Hoveden23.html. Riley's is a nineteenth-century rendering of a chronicle copy, not of Duggan's critical text, and anyone with library access should check the wording against Duggan before reprinting it.
The closing words of the letter to the nun Idonea, in Duggan's own translation, are from her Correspondence, epistle 289, vol. 2, pp. 1232 to 1235, dated May 1170; the letter is presented with Latin and English at Columbia University's Epistolae project, https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/1281.html. Duggan's translation is in copyright and is quoted here briefly and with attribution.
For the life as a whole, Herbert Thurston's article in the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1912 (https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14676a.htm) supplies most of the dated framework used above and is in the public domain; the standard modern biographies are Frank Barlow's Thomas Becket and David Knowles's book of the same title.
Thomas, martyr, of Canterbury , and first the exposition of his name.
Thomas is as much to say as abisme or double, or trenched and hewn, he was an abisme profound in humility, as it appeared in the hair that he wore, and in washing of the feet of the poor people, double in prelation that was in word and in ensample, and hewn and trenched in his passion. S. Thomas the martyr was son to Gilbert Beckett, a burgess of the city of London, and was born in the place where as now stands the church called S. Thomas of Acre. And this Gilbert was a good devout man, and took the cross upon him, and went on pilgrimage into the Holy Land, and had a servant with his knees. And on a Trinity Sunday received he his dignity, and there was at that time the king with many a great lord and sixteen bishops. And from thence was sent the abbot of Evesham to the pope with other clerks for the pall which he gave and brought to him, and he full meekly received it. And under his habit he ware the habit of a monk, and so was he under within forth a monk, and outward a clerk, and did great abstinence making his body lean and his soul fat. And he used to be well served at his table, and took but little refection thereof, and lived holily in giving good ensample.
After this, many times the king went over into Normandy, and in his absence always S. Thomas had the rule of his son and of the realm, which was governed so well that the king could him great thanks, and then abode long in this realm. And when so was that the king did any thing against the franchise and liberties of holy church, S. Thomas would ever withstand it to his power. And on a time when the sees of London and of Winchester were vacant and void, the king kept them both long in his hand for to have the profits of them; wherefore S. Thomas was heavy, and came to the king and desired him to give those two bishopricks to some virtuous men. And anon the king granted to him his desire and ordained one master Roger, bishop of Winchester, and the Earl of Gloucester's son, bishop of London, named Sir Robert. And anon after S. Thomas hallowed the abbey of Reading, which the first Henry founded. And that same year he translated S. Edward, king and confessor at Westminster, where he was laid in a rich shrine. And in some short time after, by the enticement of the devil, fell great debate, variance, and strife, between the king and S. Thomas, and the king sent for all the bishops to appear tofore him at Westminster at a certain day, at which day they assembled tofore him, whom he welcomed, and after said to them how that the archbishop would destroy his law, and not suffer him to enjoy such things as his predecessors had used tofore him. Whereto S. Thomas answered that he never intended to do thing that should displease the king as far as it touched not the franchise and liberties of holy church. Then the king rehearsed how he would not suffer clerks that were thieves to have the execution of the law; to which S. Thomas said, that he ought not to execute them, but they longs to the correction of holy church, and other divers points; to which S. Thomas would not agree. To the which the king said: Now I see well that you would foredo the laws of this land which have been used in the days of my predecessors, but it shall not lie in your power, and so the king being wroth departed. Then the bishops all counselled S. Thomas to follow the king's intent, or else the land should be in great trouble; and in like wise the lords temporal that were his friends counselled him the same, and S. Thomas said: I take God to record it was never mine intent to displease the king, or to take any thing that longs to his right or honour. And then the lords were glad and brought him to the king to Oxenford, and the king deigned not to speak to him. And then the king called all the lords spiritual and temporal tofore him, and said he would have all the laws of his forefathers there new confirmed, and there they were confirmed by all the lords spiritual and temporal. And after this the king charged them for to come to him to Clarendon to his parliament at a certain day assigned, on pain to run in his indignation, and at that time so departed. And this parliament was holden at Clarendon, the eleventh year of the king's reign, and the year of our Lord eleven hundred and sixty-four. At this parliament were many lords which all were against S. Thomas. And then the king sitting in his parliament,in the presence of all his lords, demanded them if they would abide and keep the laws that had been used in his forefathers' days. Then S. Thomas spake for the part of holy church, and said: All old laws that be good and rightful, and not against our mother holy church, I grant with good will to keep them. And then the king said that he would not leave one point of his law, and waxed wroth with S. Thomas. And then certain bishops required S. Thomas to obey to the king's desire and will, and S. Thomas desired respite to know the laws, and then to give him an answer. And when he understood them all, to some he consented, but many he denied and would never be agreeable to them, wherefore the king was wroth and said he would hold and keep them like as his predecessors had done before him, and would not minish one point of them. Then S. Thomas said to the king with full great sorrow and heavy cheer, Now, my most dear lord and gracious king, have pity on us of holy church, your bedemen, and give to us respite for a certain time. And thus departed each man. And S. Thomas went to Winchester, and there prayed our Lord devoutly for holy church, and to give him aid and strength for to defend it, for utterly he determined to abide by the liberties and franchise, and fell down on his knees and said, full sore weeping: O good Lord, I acknowledge that I have offended, and for mine offence and trespass this trouble comes to holy church, I purpose, good Lord, to go to Rome for to be assoiled of mine offences; and departed towards Canterbury. And anon the king sent his officers to his manors and despoiled them, because he would not obey the king's statutes. And the king commanded to seize all his lands and goods into his hands, and then his servants departed from him, and he went to the seaside for to have gone over sea, but the wind was against him, and so thrice he took his ship and might not pass. And then he knew that it was not our Lord's will that he should yet depart, and returned secretly to Canterbury, of whose coming his meiny made great joy. And on the morn came the king's officers for to seize all his goods, for the noise was that S. Thomas had fled the land; wherefore they had despoiled all his manors and seized them into the king's hand. And when they came they found him at Canterbury, whereof they were sore abashed, and returned to the king informing him that he was yet at Canterbury, and anon after S. Thomas came to the king to Woodstock for to pray him to be better disposed towards holy church. And then said the king to him in scorn: May not we two dwell both in this land? Are you so sturdy and hard of heart? To whom S. Thomas answered: Sire, that was never my thought, but I would fain please you, and do all that you desire so that you hurt not the liberties of holy church, for them will I maintain while I live, ever to my power. With which words the king was sore moved, and swore that he would have them kept, and especial if a clerk were a thief he should be judged and executed by the king's law, and by no spiritual law, and said he would never suffer a clerk to be his master in his own land, and charged S. Thomas to appear before him at Northampton, and to bring all the bishops of this land with him, and so departed. S. Thomas besought God of help and succour, for the bishops which ought to be with him were most against him. After this S. Thomas went to Northampton where the king had then his great council in the castle with all his lords, and when he came tofore the king he said: I am come to obey your commandment, but before this time was never bishop of Canterbury thus entreated, for I am head of the Church of England, and am to you, Sir King, your ghostly father, and it was never God's law that the son should destroy his father which has charge of his soul. And by your striving have you made all the bishops that should abide by the right of the church to be against holy church and me, and you know well that I may not fight, but am ready to suffer death rather than I should consent to lose the right of holy church. Then said the king, You speak as a proud clerk, but I shall abate your pride ere I leave you, for I must reckon with you. You understand well that you were my chancellor many years, and once I lent to you £500 which you never yet have repaid, which I will that you pay me again or else incontinent you shall go to prison. And then S. Thomas answered: You gave me that £500, and it is not fitting to demand that which you have given. Notwithstanding he found surety for the said £500 and departed for that day. And after this, the next day the king demanded £30,000 that he had surmised on him to have stolen, he being chancellor, whereupon he desired day to answer; at which time he said that when he was archbishop he set him free therein without any claim or debt before good record, wherefore he ought not to answer unto that demand. And the bishops desired S. Thomas to obey the king but in no wise he would not agree to such things as should touch against the liberties of the church. And then they came to the king, and forsook S. Thomas, and agreed to all the king's desire, and the proper servants of S. Thomas fled from him and forsook him, and then poor people came and accompanied him. And on the night came to him two lords and told to him that the king's meiny had emprised to slay him. And the next night after he departed in the habit of a brother of Sempringham, and so chevissed that he went over sea.
And in the meanwhile certain bishops went to Rome for to complain on him to the pope, and the king sent letters to the king of France not to receive him. And the King Louis said that, though a man were banished and had committed there trespasses, yet should he be free in France. And so after when this holy S. Thomas came, he received him well, and gave him licence to abide there and do what he would. In this meanwhile the king of England sent certain lords into the pope complaining on the Archbishop Thomas, which made grievous complaints, which when the pope had heard said, he would give none answer till that he had heard the Archbishop Thomas speak, which would hastily come thither. But they would not abide his coming, but departed without speeding of their intents, and came into England again. And anon after, S Thomas came to Rome on S. Mark's day at afternoon, and when his caterer should have bought fish for his dinner because it was fasting day, he could get none for no money, and came and told to his lord S. Thomas so, and he bade him buy such as he could get, and then he bought flesh and made it ready for their dinner. And S. Thomas was served with a capon roasted, and his meiny with boiled meat. And so it was that the pope heard that he was come, and sent a cardinal to welcome him, and he found him at his dinner eating flesh, which anon returned and told to the pope how he was not so perfect a man as he had supposed, for contrary to the rule of the church he eats this day flesh. The pope would not believe him, but sent another cardinal which for more evidence took the leg of the capon in his kerchief and affirmed the same, and opened his kerchief tofore the pope, and he found the leg turned into a fish called a carp. And when the pope saw it, he said, they were not true men to say such things of this good bishop. They said faithfully that it was flesh that he ate. After this S. Thomas came to the pope and did his reverence and obedience, whom the pope welcomed, and after communication he demanded him what meat he had eaten, and he said: Flesh as you have heard tofore, because he could find no fish and very need compelled him thereto. Then the pope understood of the miracle that the capon's leg was turned into a carp, and of his goodness granted to him and to all them of the diocese of Canterbury licence to eat flesh ever after on S. Mark's day when it falls on a fish day, and pardon withal, which is kept and accustomed unto this day. And then S. Thomas informed the pope how the king of England would have him consent to divers articles against the liberties of holy church, and what wrongs he did to the same, and that for to die he would never consent to them. And when the pope had heard him he wept for pity, and thanked God that he had such a bishop under him that had so well defended the liberties of holy church, and anon wrote out letters and bulls commanding all the bishops of Christendom to keep and observe the same. And then S. Thomas offered to the pope his bishopric up into the pope's hand, and his mitre with the cross and ring, and the pope commanded him to keep it still, and said he knew no man more able than he was. And after S. Thomas said mass tofore the pope in a white chasuble; and after mass he said to the pope that he knew by revelation that he should suffer death for the right of holy church, and when it should fall that chasuble should be turned from white into red. And after he departed from the pope and came down into France unto the abbey of Pontigny, and there he had knowledge that when the lords spiritual and temporal which had been at Rome were come home and had told the king that they might in no wise have their intent, that the king was greatly wroth, and anon banished all the kinsmen that were longing to S. Thomas that they should incontinent void his land, and made them swear that they should go to him and tell to him that for his sake they were exiled, and so they went over sea to him at Pontigny and he being there was full sorry for them. And after there was a great chapter in England of the monks of Citeaux and there the king desired them to write to Pontigny that they should no longer keep ne sustain Thomas the Archbishop, for if they did, he would destroy them of that order being in England. And, for fear thereof they wrote so over to Pontigny that he must depart thence with his kinsmen, and so he did, and was then full heavy, and remitted his cause to God. And anon after, the king of France sent to him that he should abide where it pleased him, and dwell in his realm and he would pay for the costs of him and his kinsmen. And he departed and went to Sens, and the abbot brought him on the way. And S. Thomas told him how he knew by a vision that he should suffer death and martyrdom for the right of the church, and prayed him to keep it secret during his life. After this the king of England came into France, and there told the king how S. Thomas would destroy his realm, and then there told how he would foredo such laws as his elders had used tofore him, wherefore S. Thomas was sent for, and they were brought together. And the king of France laboured sore for to set them at accord, but it would not be, for that one would not minish his laws and accustoms, and S. Thomas would not grant that he should do England against S. Thomas, and was wroth with him and commanded him to void his realm with all his kinsmen. And then S. Thomas knew not whither to go; but comforted his kinsmen as well as he might, and purposed to have gone in to Provence for to have begged his bread. And as he was going, the king of France sent for him again, and when he came he cried him mercy and said he had offended God and him, and bade him abide in his realm where he would, and he would pay for the dispenses of him and his kin. And in the meanwhile the king of England ordained his son king, and made him to be crowned by the Archbishop of York, and other bishops, which was against the statutes of the land, for the Archbishop of Canterbury should have consented and also have crowned him, wherefore S. Thomas gat a bull for to do accurse them that so did against him, and also on them that occupied the goods longing to him. And yet after this the king laboured so much that he accorded the king of England and S. Thomas which accord endured not long, for the king varied from it afterward. But S. Thomas, upon this accord, came home to Canterbury, where he was received worshipfully, and sent for them that had trespassed against him, and by the authority of the pope's bull openly denounced them accursed unto the time they come to amendment. And when they knew this they came to him and would have made him to assoil them by force; and sent word over to the king how he had done, whereof the king was much wroth and said: If he had men in his land that loved him they would not suffer such a traitor in his land alive.
And forthwith four knights took their counsel together and thought they would do to the king a pleasure, and emprised to slay S. Thomas, and suddenly departed and took their shipping towards England. And when the king knew of their departing he was sorry and sent after them, but they were on the sea and departed ere the messengers came, wherefore the king was heavy and sorry.
These be the names of the four knights: Sir Reginald Fitzurse, Sir Hugh de Morville, Sir William de Tracy, Sir Richard le Breton. On Christmas day S. Thomas made a sermon at Canterbury in his own church, and weeping, prayed the people to pray for him, for he knew well his time was nigh, and there executed the sentence on them that were against the right of holy church. And that same day as the king sat at meat all the bread that he handled waxed anon mouldy and hoar, that no man might eat of it, and the bread that they touched not was fair and good for to eat.
And these four knights aforesaid came to Canterbury on the Tuesday in Christmas week about Evensong time, and came to S. Thomas and said that the king commanded him to make amends for the wrongs that he had done, and also that he should assoil all them that he had accursed anon, or else they should slay him. Then said Thomas: All that I ought to do by right, that will I with a good will do, but as to the sentence that is executed I may not undo, but that they will submit them to the correction of holy church, for it was done by our holy father the pope and not by me. Then said Sir Reginald: But if you assoil the king and all other standing in the curse, it shall cost you your life. And S. Thomas said: You know well enough that the king and I were accorded on Mary Magdalene day, and that this curse should go forth on them that had offended the church.
Then one of the knights smote him as he kneeled before the altar on the head. And one Sir Edward Grim, that was his crossier put forth his arm with the cross to bear off the stroke, and the stroke smote the cross asunder and his arm almost off, wherefore he fled for fear, and so did all the monks, that were that time at compline. And then smote each at him, that they smote off a great piece of the skull of his head, that his brain fell on the pavement. And so they slew and martyred him, and were so cruel that one of them brake the point of his sword against the pavement. And thus this holy and blessed Archbishop S. Thomas suffered death in his own church for the right of all holy church. And when he was dead they stirred his brain, and after went in to his chamber and took away his goods, and his horse out of his stable, and took away his bulls and writings, and delivered them to Sir Robert Broke to bear into France to the king. And as they searched his chamber they found in a chest two shirts of hair made full of great knots, and then they said: Certainly he was a good man; and coming down into the churchward they began to dread and fear that the ground would not have borne them, and were marvellously aghast, but they supposed that the earth would have swallowed them all quick. And then they knew that they had done amiss. And anon it was known all about, how that he was martyred, and anon after took this holy body, and unclothed him, and found bishop's clothing above, and the habit of a monk under. And next his flesh he wore hard hair, full of knots, which was his shirt. And his breech was of the same, and the knots slicked fast within the skin, and all his body full of worms; he suffered great pain. And he was thus martyred the year of our Lord one thousand one hundred and seventy-one, and was fifty-three years old. And soon after tidings came to the king how he was slain, wherefore the king took great sorrow, and sent to Rome for his absolution.
Now after that S. Thomas departed from the pope, the pope would daily look upon the white chasuble that S. Thomas had said mass in, and the same day that he was martyred he saw it turned into red, whereby he knew well that that same day he suffered martyrdom for the right of holy church, and commanded a mass of requiem solemnly to be sung for his soul. And when the quire began to sing requiem, an angel on high above began the office of a martyr: Letabitur justus, and then all the quire followed singing forth the mass of the office of a martyr. And the pope thanked God that it pleased him to show such miracles for his holy martyr, at whose tomb by the merits and prayers of this holy martyr our blessed Lord has showed many miracles. The blind have recovered their sight, the dumb their speech, the deaf their hearing, the lame their limbs, and the dead their life. If I should here express all the miracles that it has pleased God to show for this holy saint it should contain a whole volume, therefore at this time, I pass over unto the feast of his translation, where I propose with the grace of God to recite some of them. Then let us pray to this glorious martyr to be our advocate, that by his petition we may come to everlasting bliss. Amen.
The substance of the quarrel is also worth stating without softening, because a modern reader will hear it in a particular way. The dispute at Clarendon turned on what were called criminous clerks: whether a cleric accused of a felony should answer in the king's courts, which could hang or mutilate him, or in the church's, which could not. Becket's own argument was that a man degraded from orders and then punished by the crown was punished twice for one offence, not that clergy should escape punishment. Historians remain divided on both the canonical merits and the practical wisdom of his position, and the Compromise of Avranches in 1172 walked back the most contested clauses. A reader who has lived through a generation of reckoning with institutional cover-up will nonetheless recognize the instinct to keep the judgment of clergy inside the church, and that recognition is not unfair. It is the honest starting point for reading the quarrel, not a reason to stop reading it.
Contemporaries argued about him too. Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London and his fiercest opponent for eight years, charged him in his own lifetime with pride and self-dramatization, so the question of whether the conversion at his consecration was genuine is a twelfth-century question and not a modern invention. What answered it for many at the time was found rather than announced: the hair shirt beneath the vestments, discovered only when the body was prepared.
Almighty God, you gave your servant Thomas Becket boldness to confess the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ before the rulers of this world, and courage to die for this faith: Grant that we may always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us, and to suffer gladly for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Readings for a Martyr
Jeremiah 15:15–21Psalm 34Revelation 7:9–17Luke 12:4–12