From Chancellor to Archbishop
Thomas Becket was born in London around 1120, the son of a family of townspeople rather than nobles. He trained in the household of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, and showed a talent for administration and law. In 1155 King Henry II made him chancellor, one of the most senior officials of the crown. Becket served the king energetically and the two men were close, sharing work and, by most accounts, friendship.
In 1162 Theobald died, and Henry chose Becket as the next archbishop of Canterbury. The king probably expected a loyal ally to lead the English church. Instead, Becket took the new office seriously and began to defend the church’s rights. Contemporary writers describe a sharp change in his way of life, though historians debate how far these accounts reflect real events and how far they were shaped by later admiration.
What the Quarrel Was About
The dispute was not simply personal. It was part of a long struggle over where royal authority ended and church authority began, a question that ran through the whole period of church and state conflict. Henry II was trying to restore order and strengthen royal justice after the unstable years of the previous reign, a project that fits the wider growth of twelfth-century England and its royal administration.
The sharpest issue concerned clergy accused of crimes. Church courts handled such cases and generally imposed lighter penalties than royal courts. Henry wanted clerics found guilty in church courts to be handed over to the king’s justice. Becket resisted, arguing that the church should judge its own members.
In 1164 Henry set out his demands in the Constitutions of Clarendon, a written statement of customs he claimed were traditional. They limited appeals to Rome and gave the crown more say in church matters. Becket first hesitated and then rejected them, and the pope did not fully support the document either. Pressed with legal and financial claims against him, Becket fled to France and spent about six years in exile, supported by the French king and by the pope, though the pope’s backing was cautious.
The Return and the Murder
Negotiations eventually produced a settlement, and Becket returned to England at the start of December 1170. The peace was fragile. While Becket was away, Henry’s eldest son had been crowned by the archbishop of York, a role that belonged by custom to Canterbury. Becket responded by disciplining the bishops involved, and the king heard of it in Normandy.
What Henry said next is uncertain. Later tradition gives him an angry outburst against the clergy who would not rid him of “this turbulent priest,” but the exact words are reported differently by different writers. Four knights, traditionally named as Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy and Richard le Breton, crossed to England and confronted Becket at Canterbury.
On the evening of 29 December 1170 they found him in the cathedral. He was struck down near an altar and died of the wounds. Accounts from monks who were present vary in detail, but all agree on the main fact: an archbishop was killed inside his own church by the king’s men. Whether Henry intended the killing is something historians cannot settle, but he was held responsible in the court of public opinion.
Canonization and Henry’s Penance
News of the murder of Becket caused widespread shock across Europe. Miracles were soon reported at the tomb, and Pope Alexander III declared Becket a saint in 1173, only about three years after his death. This was unusually fast.
Henry denied that he had ordered the killing but accepted blame for the atmosphere that led to it. He negotiated an agreement with the papal envoys, and in 1174 he made a public penance at Canterbury, which included being whipped by the monks according to the traditional accounts. The timing of this gesture coincided with a political crisis for him, a revolt by his sons and some of his barons. The disputed customs about clerics were softened, though the crown kept much of its power over legal matters.
The Shrine
Becket’s remains were placed in the crypt and moved in 1220 to a splendid new shrine behind the high altar in the cathedral’s eastern end. The Canterbury shrine drew visitors from England and the continent for more than three centuries. It was one of the leading destinations for medieval pilgrims, who bought small souvenirs, and pilgrim badges stamped with his image are still found today. Many pilgrims hoped for healing, and stories of cures were collected by the monks. Chaucer’s pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales are traveling to this shrine, a literary reflection of how familiar the journey was.
The cult of the saint spread widely, with churches, altars and images dedicated to him as far away as Italy and Scandinavia. Pilgrimage to his tomb belongs with the wider devotion to holy relics, which gave the cathedral great prestige and income.
The End of the Cult
Becket’s story ended in a second conflict between a king and the church. In 1538 Henry VIII, in the course of his break with Rome, had the shrine dismantled and its treasures taken by the crown, and ordered the saint’s name and images removed from religious use. The details of what happened to the bones are not fully known. Even so, Becket remains one of the best-known figures of the English Middle Ages, remembered as a man who stood up to a king and paid for it.