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in London it was 100s.; but none of them suited the disposition of the lawless king, who caused the fine to be fixed at 500%. ! Let us remember that this sum is equivalent to 60007. according to the present value of money; that the legal penalty would have been 40s. only; and above all, that no penalty whatever was in◄ curred, since the charge itself was utterly unfounded. The archbishop gave security for the 5007.-The second demand was for 300%., which he had received while warden of Eye and Berkhamstead. The reply was equally convincing, — that more than 3007. had been expended in their repairs; but he added, he would pay it, for mere money should be no ground of quarrel between him and his sovereign. The nobleness, and at the same time the conciliatory tone of the observation, were lost on the tyrant, who proceeded to make a third demand of 500l., which he asserted had been lent to Becket under the walls of Toulouse. The archbishop contended no doubt truly that the money was a gift; but his word could not prevail against the monarch's, and for this sum also the base court compelled him to give security. It might be supposed that royal injustice would now be satisfied; but there was another demand which was made, in the resolution irrecoverably to ruin him. He was required to account for all the monies he had received from the vacant ecclesiastical dignities during his chancellorship, and a balance was struck against him of no less a sum than 44,000 marks! The archbishop stood aghast. money he had no doubt expended in the king's service; but the plea would have availed him as little as the preceding ones. He had another and unanswerable one,

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that before his consecration he had never been questioned for such a pretended balance; that on the contrary, when so consecrated, both prince Henry and the royal justiciary had, at the king's own command, discharged him from all secular demands, and that, so absolved, the church had received him. Monstrous as

was the claim, and little as he was bound to answer it, 'ne offered a large sum by way of composition, but it was contemptuously refused. Nor did he find much support in his brother bishops: all but two had been corrupted by the crown; all but two advised him to resign, the evident tendency of the tyrant's measures. The names of these two prelates, so honourably distinguished from their base associates, ought to be mentioned. The first was Roger of Worcester, who observed that he would not belie his conscience by saying, that the cure of souls might be resigned for the sake of pleasing any mortal man. Henry of Winchester, a prince of the royal house,- a man of equal ability and courage, went further, and declared that such advice was most pernicious; that the rights of the church and the very interests of religion must be overthrown, if the primate set the example of relinquishing his dignity at the pleasure of a king. This day was Saturday; and all that Becket could attain was a delay until Monday, when he promised to answer the royal demand as God should inspire him.*

We have more than once referred to the lessons of instruction which are to be derived from the events recorded; in no instance are they more impressive than in the present. We read of the most monstrous abuses perpetrated by the crown, yet tamely regarded by all the bishops except one, and that one is singled out for vengeance, not merely by the crown, but by his brother prelates. Their animosity towards him furnishes another illustration of the fatal influence of kings over

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* Authorities: Quadrilogus. Stephanides, Vita S. Thomæ. Edwardus, Vita ejusdem. Diceto, Imagines Historiarum, necnon Actus Pontificum. Gervase, Chronicon. Bromton, Chronicon. Baronius, Annales Eccleastici, et Alfordus, Annales Eccles. Angliæ, almost in the places formerly cited. To these must be added Epistolæ S. Thomæ, i. 85. ii. 6. 33. very good notion of these transactions might also be extracted from a collation of Lingard (History, vol. ii. p. 67, &c.), with Turner (History, vol. i. p. 248, &c.), and with Southey (Book of the Church, i. 160, &c.). But Mr. Turner's general narration of this priest's actions is written in a spirit more opposed to that of the ancient authorities, than any thing we have seen, excepting only Townsend's "Accusations.".

ecclesiastical affairs. So much were they swayed by court fear or favour, that they did not hesitate to sacrifice their church, their conscience, their religion, to please a tyrant. On contemplating this insulting mockery of justice exhibited at Northampton, every honest mind must be filled with indignation. We behold a succession of charges, utterly unfounded, yet so vexatious and harassing; we see them answered so convincingly, that if one spark of justice, or of honesty, or of courage had slumbered in the breasts of the nobles and prelates, the accused must have been triumphantly and instantly acquitted; we see him condemned in opposition to the clearest evidence, in violation of the laws themselves, condemned, not by the nobles only, but with even greater readiness by the prelates. If this were the justice to be expected from the royal courts, well might Becket wish to remove the clergy from their jurisdiction. The fact is notorious, that whenever the crown was a party to a suit, justice was not to be expected; that no judge was honest or courageous enough to brave the royal displeasure for the sake of right. Our chroniclers, our rolls of parliament, all our ancient records are filled with complaints that justice was not to be had in the tribunals of the king. It was, probably, this truth which made the primate so hostile to the innovations of Henry: he saw that the judicial fountain was polluted; and he wished to divert the impure stream from the church. In this respect his efforts demand our applause. Had the ecclesiastical tribunals been what they ought to have been, had their chastisements on clerical delinquents been sufficiently severe, that applause would have been unmixed, unqualified, unlimited. From the preceding specimen of Henry's justice nobody will give him credit for very honourable motives in his attempts to reform the judicial system of the church. All that he wanted was, by diverting ecclesiastical causes into his own courts, to derive an increase of revenue from fines. That he

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cared not for the merits of any particular case is proved by his conduct in other instances than this. Omitting all disputes between him and his subjects, in which he was sure to gain his cause, we may observe that in suits between subject and subject he was ever ready to interfere where any thing was to be gained. From one of the parties who brought a suit of any importance into his court, he was almost sure to exact a bribe; he is known to have received overtures from both, and to have withheld his decision until he knew which of the two would offer the most; and we need scarcely say that in his code right was always on the side of him that brought the heaviest purse. it been observed, "Of all the abuses which deformed the Anglo-Norman government, none was so flagitious as the sale of judicial redress. The king, we are often told, is the fountain of justice; but in those ages it was a fountain which gold only could unseal. From the sale of that justice which any citizen has a right to expect, it was an easy transition to withhold or deny it. Fines were received for the king's help against the adverse suitor; that is, for perversion of justice or for delay." With such a fact before us, need we wonder that our ancestors were eager to have all their suits decided in the ecclesiastical courts? They have never been charged with such corruption: their defect

and a serious one it is lay in the inadequacy of their penalties, and consequently in their offering incentives to crime. But even this defect was a thousand times less intolerable than those which disgraced the secular courts. A compromise between the two powers was what the interests of the nation required; but unfortunately, when Becket appeared disposed to surrender the more obnoxious points, the king would hear of no conciliatory proposal. On him, therefore, must rest the almost undivided iniquity of those transactions. He, and in a still greater degree the base prelates, who so readily became his instruments, must be regarded with

execrations so long as honesty and truth are revered

by men.

At this crisis the menaces of the king were not hidden 1165. from the archbishop; the former having distinctly asserted that the same kingdom could not contain them. Having discovered that Becket would not resign, did he wish him to fly? This is unlikely: he well knew with what favour the fugitive would be received by the pope and the French king, and how seriously the three might annoy him. We are, moreover, distinctly informed that the primate's life was menaced, and that it was in imminent peril. From the whole tenor of Henry's conduct, and from several expressions of the contemporary biographers, there can, we think, be no doubt that his resignation or his blood could alone satisfy the monarch; and that he was expected to make his choice. On a former occasion he had given way to fear; now he rose superior to the feeling. He began to act with great firmness and dignity. Seeing himself abandoned by his noble friends, by his knights, by the bishops, who always regulate their smiles or favours by those of the monarch, he sent out his servants into the highways and hedges to collect the lame and the blind, the hungry and the naked, round his table; with such guests he should, he observed, more easily obtain the victory than with those who had so basely deserted him in the hour of need. He felt that he was suffering in a just cause; and this feeling not only ennobled but sanctified all that he did. On the morning of the Monday the courtier bishops again repaired to him, to preach a base submission and to threaten. Having reproached them for their want alike of principle, and of respect to him their spiritual head, he solemnly declared, that even should his body be burnt he would not submit; he would not forsake the flock confided to his charge. Lest we should be ac

* Madox, History of the Exchequer, chap. 10. Hume, Hist. Eng. App. 11. Hallam, State of Europe during the Middle Ages, vol. ii, chap. 8.

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