*

affected to be the champion. There were many other reasons which procured him countenance and protection in foreign countries. Philip, earl of Flanders, and Lewis, king of France,† jealous of the rising greatness of Henry, were well pleased to give him disturbance in his government; and forgetting that this was the common cause of princes, they affected to pity extremely the condition of the exiled primate; and the latter even honored him with a visit at Soissons, in which city he had invited him to fix his residence. The pope, whose interests were more immediately concerned in supporting him, gave a cold reception to a magnificent embassy which Henry sent to accuse him; while Becket himself, who had come to Sens in order to justify his cause before the sovereign pontiff, was received with the greatest marks of distinction. The king in revenge, sequestered the revenues of Canterbury; and by a conduct which might be esteemed arbitrary, had there been at that time any regular check on royal authority, he banished all the primate's relations and domestics, to the number of four hundred, whom he obliged to swear, before their departure, that they would instantly join their patron. But this policy, by which Henry endeavored to reduce Becket sooner to necessity, lost its effect; the pope, when they arrived beyond sea, absolved them from their oath, and distributed them among the convents in France and Flanders; a residence was assigned to Becket himself in the convent of Pontigny, where he lived for some years in great magnificence, partly from a pension granted him on the revenues of that abbey, partly from remit tances made him by the French monarch.

[1165.] The more to ingratiate himself with the pope, Becket resigned into his hands the see of Canterbury, to which, he affirmed, he had been uncanonically elected, by the authority of the royal mandate; and Alexander, in his turn, besides investing him anew with that dignity, pretended to abrogate by a bull, the sentence which the great council of England had passed against him. Henry, after attempting in vain to procure a conference with the pope, who departed soon after for Rome, whither the prosperous state of his affairs now invited him, made provisions against the consequences of that breach which impended between his kingdom and the apostolic He issued orders to his justiciaries, inhibiting, under

see.

* Epist. St. Thom. p. 35.
Hist. Quad. p. 76.

+ Epist. St. Thom. p. 36, 37,

severe penalties, all appeals to the pope or archbishop; ferbidding any one to receive any mandates from them, or apply in any case to their authority; declaring it treasonable to bring from either of them an interdict upon the kingdom, and punishable in secular clergymen, by the loss of their eyes and by castration, in regulars by amputation of their feet, and in laics with death; and menacing with sequestration and banishment the persons themselves, as well as their kindred, who should pay obedience to any such interdict; and he further obliged all his subjects to swear to the observance of those orders.* These were edicts of the utmost importance, affected the lives and properties of all the subjects, and even changed, for the time, the national religion, by breaking off all communication with Rome; yet were they enacted by the sole authority of the king, and were derived entirely from his will and pleasure.

The spiritual powers, which, in the primitive church, were, in a great measure, dependent on the civil, had, by a gradual progress, reached an equality and independence; and though the limits of the two jurisdictions were difficult to ascertain or define, it was not impossible but, by moderation on both sides, government might still have been conducted in that imperfect and irregular manner which attends all human institutions But as the ignorance of the age encouraged the ecclesiastics daily to extend their privileges, and even to advance maxims totally incompatible with civil government,t Henry had thought it high time to put an end to their pretensions, and formally, in a public council, to fix those powers which belonged to the magistrate, and which he was for the future determined to maintain. In this attempt he was led to reestablish customs which, though ancient, were beginning to be abolished by a contrary practice, and which were still more strongly opposed by the prevailing opinions and sentiments of the age. Principle, therefore, stood on the one side, power on the other; and if the English had been actuated by conscience more than by present interest, the controversy must soon, by the general defection of Henry's subjects, have been decided against him. Becket, in order to forward this event, filled all places with xclamations against the violence which he had suffered. He

*Hist. Quad. p. 88, 167. Hoveden, p. 496. M. Paris, p. 73. + Quis dubitet," says Becket to the king, "sacerdotes Christi gum et principum omniumque fidelium patres et magistros censeri.' ist. St. Thom. p. 97, 148.

H

compared himself to Christ, who had been condemned by a lay tribunal,* and who was crucified anew in the present oppressions under which his church labored: he took it for granted, as a point incontestable, that his cause was the cause of God:† he assumed the character of champion for the patrimony of the divinity: he pretended to be the spiritual father of the king and all the people of England: he even told Henry that kings reign solely by the authority of the church, $ and though he had thus torn off the veil more openly on the one side than that prince had on the other, he seemed still, from the general favor borne him by the ecclesiastics, to have all the advantage in the argument. The king, that he might employ the weapons of temporal power remaining in his hands, suspended the payment of Peter's pence; he made advances towards an alliance with the emperor Frederic Barbarossa, who was at that time engaged in violent wars with Pope Alexander; he discovered some intentions of acknowledging Pascal III., the present antipope, who was protected by that emperor; and by these expedients he endeavored to terrify the enterprising though prudent pontiff from proceeding to extremities against him.

[1166.] But the violence of Becket, still more than the nature of the controversy, kept affairs from remaining long in suspense between the parties. That prelate, instigated by revenge, and animated by the present glory attending his situation, pushed matters to a decision, and issued a censure, excommunicating the king's chief ministers by name, and comprehending in general all those who favored or obeyed the constitutions of Clarendon: these constitutions he abrogated and annulled; he absolved all men from the oaths which they had taken to observe them; and he suspended the spiritual thunder over Henry himself only that the prince might avoid the blow by a timely repentance.¶

The situation of Henry was so unhappy, that he could employ no expedient for saving his ministers from this terrible

* Epist. St. Thom. p. 63, 105, 194.

† Epist. St. Thom. p. 29, 30, 31, 226.

Fitz-Steph. p. 46. Epist. St. Thom. p. 52, 148.

Brady's Append. No. 56. Epist. St. Thom. p. 94, 95, 97, 99, 197. Hoveden, p. 497.

¶ Fitz-Steph. p. 56. Hist. Quad. p. 93. M. Paris, p. 74. Beaulieu, Vie de St. Thom. p. 213. Epist. St. Thom. p. 149, 229. Hoveaen, p. 499.

censure, but by appealing to the pope himself, and having recourse to a tribunal whose authority he had himse if attempted to abridge in this very article of appeals, and which he knew was so deeply engaged on the side of his adversary. But even this expedient was not likely to be long effectual. Becket had obtained from the pope a legantine commission over England; and in virtue of that authority, which admitted of no appeal, he summoned the bishops of London, Salisbury, and others to attend him, and ordered, under pain of excommunication, the ecclesiastics, sequestered on his account, to be restored in two months to all their benefices. But John of Oxford, the king's agent with the pope, had the address to procure orders for suspending this sentence; and he gave the pontiff such hopes of a speedy reconcilement between the king and Becket, that two legates, William of Pavia and Otho, were sent to Normandy, where the king then resided, and they endeavored to find expedients for that purpose. But the pretensions of the parties were as yet too opposite to admit of an accommodation: the king required that all the constitutions of Clarendon should be ratified; Becket, that previously to any agreement, he and his adherents should be restored to their possessions; and as the legates had no power to pronounce a definite sentence on either side, the negotiation soon after came to nothing. The cardinal of Pavia also, being much attached to Henry, took care to protract the negotiation; to mitigate the pope by the accounts which he sent of that prince's conduct; and to procure him every possible indulgence from the see of Rome. About this time, the king had also the address to obtain a dispensation for the marriage of his third son, Geoffrey, with the heiress of Brittany; a concession which, considering Henry's demerits towards the church, gave great scandal both to Becket, and to his zealous patron, the king of France.

[1167.] The intricacies of the feudal law had, in that age, rendered the boundaries of power between the prince and his vassals, and between one prince and another, as uncertain as those between the crown and the mitre; and all wars took their origin from disputes, which, had there been any tribunal possessed of power to enforce their decrees, ought to have been decided only before a court of judicature. Henry, in prosecution of some controversies in which he was involved with the count of Auvergne, a vassal of the duchy of Guienne, had invaded the territories of that nobleman; who had recourse to the king of France, his superior lord, for protection, and

thereby kindled a war between the two monarchs. But this war was, as usual, no less feeble in its operations than it was frivolous in its cause and object; and after occasioning some mutual depredations,* and some insurrections among the barons of Poictou and Guienne, was terminated by a peace. The terms of this peace were rather disadvantageous to Henry, and prove that that prince had, by reason of his contest with the church, lost the superiority which he had hitherto maintained over the crown of France; an additional motive to him for accommodating those differences.

The pope and the king began at last to perceive that, in thę present situation of affairs, neither of them could expect a final and decisive victory over the other, and that they had more to fear than to hope from the duration of the controversy. Though the vigor of Henry's government had confirmed his authority in all his dominions, his throne might be shaken by a sentence of excommunication; and if England itself could, by its situation, be more easily guarded against the contagion of superstitious prejudices, his French provinces at least, whose communication was open with the neighboring states, would be much exposed, on that account, to some great revolution or convulsion.† He could not, therefore, reasonably imagine that the pope, while he retained such a check upon him, would formally recognize the constitutions of Clarendon, which both put an end to papal pretensions in England, and would give an example to other states of asserting a like independency.‡ Pope Alexander, on the other hand, being still engaged in dangerous wars with the emperor Frederic, might justly apprehend that Henry, rather than relinquish claims of such importance, would join the party of his enemy; and as the trials hitherto made of the spiritual weapons by Becket had not succeeded to his expectation, and every thing had remained quiet in all the king's dominions, nothing seemed impossible to the capacity and vigilance of so great a monarch. The disposition of minds on both sides, resulting from these circumstances, produced frequent attempts towards an accommodation; but as both parties knew that the essential articles of the dispute could not then be terminated, they entertained a perpetual jealousy of each other, and were anxious not to lose the least advantage in the negotiation. The nuncios, Gratian * Hoveden, p. 517. M. Paris, p. 75. Diceto, p. 547. Gervase, p. 1402, 1403. Robert de Monte. Epist. St. Thom. p. 276.

Epist. St. Thom. p. 230.