Becket, THOMAS, Archbishop of Canterbury, was born in London in 1118 of Norman parentage, his father being a wealthy merchant. That his mother was a love-lorn Saracen is a pretty but wholly baseless tradition. Educated at Merton Priory and in the London schools, he was trained in knightly exercises at Pevensey Castle, next studied theology at Paris, and then, on his father's failure in business, was clerk for three years in a lawyer's office. About 1142 he entered the household of Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, who sent him to study canonical jurisprudence at Bologna and Auxerre, heaped preferments on him, including the archdeaconry of Canterbury (1154), and employed him in several important missions. At the papal court in 1152 he had promoted the cause of Henry of Anjou against that of Stephen's son, Eustace; in 1155, the year after Henry's accession, he received the office of chancellor, and thus resuscitated the hopes of the English as the first Englishman born, since the Conquest, who had filled any high office. His duties as chancellor were numerous and burdensome, but he discharged them vigorously. So magnificently liberal was he in his hospitality, that Henry himself did not live in a manner more sumptuous. He fought like any knight in the war with Toulouse (1159), and would seem in everything to have regarded himself as a mere layman, though he held deacon's orders. The change, then, was all the more sudden when in 1162 he was created Archbishop of Canterbury, an office which, as it then involved the abbacy of the cathedral monastery, had never but twice before been held by any but a monk or canon-regular. He resigned the chancellorship, threw aside all his old courtly and luxurious habits, turned a rigid ascetic, showed his liberality only in charities, and in short became as zealous a servitor of the church as ever before of king or archbishop. He figured soon as a champion of her rights against all aggressions by the king and his courtiers, several nobles and other laymen being excommunicated for their alienation of church property. Henry II., who, like all the Norman kings, endeavoured to keep the clergy in subordination to the state, in 1164 convoked the nobility and clergy to a council at Clarendon (q.v.), where were adopted the so-called 'Constitutions,' or laws relative to the respective powers of church and state. To these, curtailing clerical immunities, the primate at first declared he would never consent; but afterwards, through the efforts of the nobles, some of the bishops, and, finally, of the pope himself, he was induced to give his unwilling approbation. Henry now began to perceive that Becket's notions and his own were utterly antagonistic, and clearly exhibited his hostility to the prelate, whereupon Becket tried to leave the country. For this offence Henry charged him with breach of allegiance, in a council held at Northampton, confiscated his goods, and sequestered the revenues of his see. A claim was also made on him for not less than 44,000 marks, as the balance due by him to the crown when he ceased to be chancellor. Becket appealed to the pope, and next day leaving Northampton in disguise, escaped to France. He spent two years in retirement at the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny in Burgundy; and then, the pope seeming disposed to take up his cause, he went to Rome, and pleaded personally before his holiness, who reinstated him in the see of Canterbury. Becket now returned to France, and thence he wrote angry letters to the English bishops, threatening them with excommunication. Several efforts were made to reconcile him with Henry, which, however, proved futile; but at length in 1170 an agreement was patched up at Freteval, on the borders of Touraine. The result was that Becket returned to England, entering Canterbury amid the rejoicings of the people, who were unquestionably proud of him, and regarded him—whether wisely or not is another question—as a shield from the oppressions of the nobility. Fresh quarrels soon broke out; excommunications were renewed; and Henry at last exclaimed: 'Of the cowards that eat my bread, is there none will rid me of this turbulent priest?' Four knights—Fitzurse, Tracy, Brito, and Morville—overheard the hasty words; and, quitting Normandy by separate ways, on the evening of 29th December 1170 entered Canterbury cathedral, and slew the archbishop before the altar of St Benedict, in the north transept. Henry was compelled to make heavy concessions to avoid the ban of excommunication. The murderers, having repaired to Rome as penitents, were sent on a pilgrimage to Palestine; and, two years after his death, Becket was canonised, and the anniversary of his death set apart as the yearly festival of St Thomas of Canterbury. In 1220 his bones were raised from the grave in the crypt where they had been hastily buried two days after his murder, and were deposited in a splendid shrine in the Trinity Chapel, which for three centuries continued to be the object of one of the great pilgrimages of Christendom, and which still lives in English literature in connection with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. At the Reformation, Henry VIII. despoiled the shrine, erased Becket's name from the calendar, and ordered his bones to be burnt and scattered to the winds. It is difficult to estimate properly the character of Becket. We do not know what were his ultimate aims, whether, as some suppose, they were patriotic—i.e. English, as opposed to Norman, or, as others believe, purely Ultramontane. At all events, the means he used for the attainment of them was a despotic and irresponsible ecclesiasticism. He admitted nothing done by churchmen to come within the jurisdiction of civil courts, not even murder or theft. Fortunately Henry was as dogged a believer in his own powers and privileges as Becket in those of the church; and by his obstinate good sense, England was kept wholesomely jealous of the pretensions of Rome.
See Dr Giles's Vita et Epistolæ S. Thomæ Cantuariensis; Canon Morris's Life of St Thomas Becket; Canon Robertson's Life of Becket; Dean Stanley's Historical Memorials of Canterbury; Freeman's Historical Essays; Hook's Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury; Froude's articles on Becket in the Nineteenth Century.