History of England 1-6

The king may never have used the words attributed to him: ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ The phrase, however, is sufficiently close to something Henry did say. He himself admitted this at a later date. Four of his knights took him at his word. They left Henry’s court in northern France and, riding along separate routes, made their way to the Channel. They met by prearranged agreement at Saltwood Castle in Kent, not far from Canterbury. From there they rode to the cathedral.

Becket was conducting business in an inner chamber and, when they entered, he greeted them calmly enough. Their intentions were not clear, however, perhaps not even to themselves. There are some indications that they planned to arrest him, or to oblige him to leave the country once again. But then the red mist descended. They began to insult and threaten the archbishop; he argued with them and refused to be cowed by their hostile demeanour. He proceeded into the cathedral to hear vespers. The monks wished to bar the doors, but he would not permit it. One of the monks with him at the time, William Fitzstephen, reports that he could have escaped at any moment. Dark passages and winding stairs of stone were all around him; he might have concealed himself in the crypt. But he stayed in the church, and prepared himself for the service.

The four knights burst open the doors and went after him with their weapons. One of them struck Becket on the shoulder with the flat of his sword, saying, ‘Fly! You are a dead man.’ They tried to drag him out of the cathedral, but he forcibly resisted them. He was wounded in the head, and fell to his knees. Another stroke cut off the upper part of his skull. They butchered him where he lay.

In death, Becket was triumphant. The leaders of Christendom were genuinely appalled by the slaughter of an archbishop in his own cathedral; only the murder of the pope would have been comparable. The king knew that the obloquy of the world would now be turned upon him. He retired to his chamber for three days, refusing food and drink. His enemies were, in turn, contemplating a very satisfying revenge. The king of France, Louis VII, declared that ‘the man who commits violence against his mother [the Church] revolts against humanity … Such unprecedented cruelty demands unprecedented retribution. Let the sword of St Peter be unleashed to avenge the martyr of Canterbury’. Becket was already wearing the martyr’s crown, although he was not canonized for three years.

Very quickly there grew up a cult around the site of the killing. Immediately after the death certain members of his household, and perhaps also some of the people of Canterbury, rushed into the cathedral and cut off pieces of their clothes before dipping them in the archbishop’s blood; they anointed their eyes with the precious fluid. It is reported that others also brought vessels to capture the blood as it flowed from the prone body. This was the tactile and instinctive aspect of medieval piety. At a later date the monks of Canterbury developed a thriving trade in the miraculous properties of ‘Becket water’ that contained a tincture of the blood. Small vessels of tin alloy were manufactured on a large scale, each one bearing the inscription (in Latin), ‘All weakness and pain is removed, the healed man eats and drinks, and evil and death pass away’. If this miraculous healing did not take place, it was agreed that the afflicted man or woman lacked sufficient piety. After Becket’s tomb was constructed, and a shrine erected, the pilgrims began to arrive in multitudes. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is devoted to them.

One of those pilgrims was the king himself. In the summer of 1174 Henry, beset by enemies invading from Scotland and from Flanders, made a formal and ritual penance for the death of Becket. He dismounted from his horse a mile (1.6 kilometres) from Canterbury and took off his silken robes; then he walked barefoot to the cathedral, badly lacerating his feet on the way. As soon as he entered the church he prostrated himself, weeping, before the shrine. The bells of the cathedral had been ringing to summon as many spectators as possible for this act of piety. The king was led into the crypt where he stripped off his shirt. The assembled bishops inflicted ‘correction’ on his body with a whip of several lashes; they were no doubt gentle with their royal lord. The king then spent the whole of the next day and night in fervent prayer, taking no nourishment, and finished his pilgrimage by drinking some of the water blessed by Becket’s blood. He had been cleansed. The effect was immediate, and almost miraculous. His Scottish enemies were defeated.