Thomas Becket

Thomas Becket was a very famous and important person.

Thomas lived in England in the 12thcentury.

He had an argument with the king and something very bad

happened to him.

Thomas was born in Cheapside, London on

21st December, which was the feast of

St, Thomas the Apostle, in 1118.

His father was called Gilbert and his mother

was called Matilda. They were both of Norman ancestry

Thomas’s father had a rich friend who liked Thomas’s sister. He often invited Thomas to his castle. When Thomas

went there he learned to ride a horse, hunt animals, behave like a gentleman

and how to joust.

When Thomas was 10 he went to school. First of all in London and then in France

and Italy. He learned to speak French and Italian

and was very clever.

Thomas did very well at school.

When he came back to

England one of the most important

people in the country called Theobald

asked Thomas to come and work

for him.

Theobald was the Archbishop of Canterbury.

He was in charge of everyone who worked

in the church and all the teachers.

He sent Thomas to do important work in Rome.Theobald told the king

how clever Thomas was.

The king’s name was Henry. He was the second King to be called

Henry so he was called Henry II. When he met Thomas he liked him very much and they became best

friends.

Several months after Theobald died, King Henry made Thomas

Archbishop of Canterbury. Becket was ordained a priest on

2nd June 1162 at Canterbury, and was consecrated as

archbishop by the Bishop of Winchester on the following day.

Thomas was now one of the most important people in the country. He tried to be

good at his job and tell people to do the right thing.

Soon a rift grew between Henry and Becket as the new archbishop resigned

his chancellorship and sought to recover and extend the rights

of the archbishopric. This led to a series of conflicts with the

king, including that over the jurisdiction of secular courts over

English clergymen, which accelerated antipathy between Becket and the

king. 

King Henry may have hoped that Becket would continue to put the royal government first, rather than the church. He wanted people to listen to

him and not to people who worked for the church like the pope or the Archbishop

of Canterbury (who was Thomas).

The famous transformation of Becket into an ascetic

occurred at this time.

The king argued with Thomas.

in 1164 King Henry had The Constitutions of Clarendon passed.  

They were a set of legislative procedures  composed of 16 articles and represent an

attempt to restrict ecclesiastical privileges and curb the power of the Church

courts and the extent of Papal authority in England.

The Constitutions were claimed to restore the judicial customs observed during the reign of Henry I 1100–35), but in reality they were a part of Henry II's larger expansion of royal jurisdiction into the Church and civil law,

which was a defining aspect of his reign.

Henry pursued the fugitive archbishop with a series of edicts, aimed at all his friends and supporters as well as Becket himself; but King Louis VII of France offered Becket protection. He spent nearly two years in

the Cistercian abbey of Pointigny.

Thomas could not agree with King Henry because he thought he was wrong. He left Canterbury and went to stayin France for a while.

In June 1170, the archbishop of York, along with the bishop of London, and the bishop of

Salisbury crowned the heir apparent Henry the Young King at York.

This was a breach of Canterbury's privilege of coronation, and in November 1170 Becket

excommunicated all three. While the three clergymen fled to the king

in Normandy, Becket continued to excommunicate his opponents in the church.

This news also reached Henry.

Thomas came back to England but king Henry was still

very angry with him. One night King Henry got in a

terrible temper. He probably shouted ...

“Will no-one get rid of this

turbulent priest!”

"What miserable drones and traitors

have I nourished and brought up in my

household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-

born cleric?"

... or ...

Four knights,Sir Reginald Fitzurse,Hugh de Moreville,

William de Tracy and Sir Richard Brito heard what the king said. They rode to Canterbury where

Thomas was.

They left their swords under a sycamore tree. They hid their armour

under their cloaks because they knew they

should not fight in a church.

They went into the church and argued with Thomas and told him to

come outside.

The knights informed Becket he was to go to Winchester to give an account of his actions,

but Becket refused their demands to submit to

the king's will 

Thomas stayed praying in the church.The knights went outside picked up their

swords, put on their armour and went back into the church.

Becket, meanwhile, proceeded to the main hall for vespers.

The four knights, wielding drawn swords, caught up with him in a spot near a door to

the monastic cloister, the stairs into the crypt, and the stairs leading up into the

quire of the cathedral, where the monks

were chanting vespers.

There in the church they killed Thomas.It was 29th December, 1170

Several contemporary accounts of what happened next exist. This is a part of the account of Edward Grim, who was himself wounded in the attack:“...The wicked knight leapt suddenly upon him, cutting off the top of the crown which the unction of sacred chrism had dedicated to God. Next he received a second blow on the head, but still he stood firm and immovable. At the third blow he fell on his knees and elbows, offering himself a living sacrifice, and saying in a low voice, 'For the name of Jesus and the protection of the Church, I am ready to embrace death.' But the third knight inflicted a terrible wound as he lay prostrate. By this stroke, the crown of his head was separated from the head in such a way that the blood white with the brain, and the brain no less red from the blood, dyed the floor of the cathedral. The same clerk who had entered with the knights placed his foot on the neck of the holy priest and precious martyr, and, horrible to relate, scattered the brains and blood about the pavements, crying to the others, 'Let us away, knights; this fellow will arise no more.”

The knights knew they had done a terrible thing. They ran away to France .

Everybody who heard what happened was shocked and King Henry felt very sad and sorry

for what he had said. To show everyone how sad and sorry he was, he went to Canterbury Cathedral, took off his fine

clothes, walked barefoot through the streets and was whipped in front of the church.

Following Becket's death, the monks prepared his body for burial. According to some accounts, it was discovered that Becket had worn a hairshirt under

his archbishop's garments—a sign of penance. Soon after, the faithful throughout Europe began

venerating Becket as a martyr, and on 21 February 1173—little more than two years after his death—he

was canonised by Pope Alexander III in St Peter's Church in Segni (near Rome). 

In 1173, Becket's sister Mary was appointed as abbess of Barking Abbey as reparation for

the murder of her brother. On 12 July 1174, in the midst of the Revolt of 1173-74, Henry humbled himself with public penance at

Becket's tomb as well as at the church of St. Dunstan’s, which became one of the most popular 

pilgrimage sites in England.

People came from all over the country to see where Thomas had been killed.

They still go to Canterbury Cathedral today to see where he was killed and to remember

what a good man he was.  

Eve Batten July 2008

On 7 July 1220, in the 50th jubilee year of his death, Becket's remains were relocated from this first tomb to a shrine, in the recently completed Trinity Chapel. It was one of the great symbolic events in the life of the medieval English Church and was attended by King Henry III, the papal legate, the Archbishop of Canterbury and lots of dignitaries, both secular and ecclesiastical.

A new feast day was instituted, commemorating the translation, celebrated each July almost everywhere in England and in many French churches.

This feast was suppressed in 1536 at the Reformation. The shrine stood until it was destroyed in 1538,

during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, on orders from King Henry VIII. 

The king also destroyed Becket's bones and ordered that all mention of his name be obliterated. 

The pavement where the shrine stood is today marked by a lit candle. 

Eve Batten , July 2008, and Maria-Linda Cassese, March 2015