The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

The nobles are ranged along both sides. At the upper end is the royal throne, beyond which are the king's apartments. At the lower end are seated the bishops and abbots. Becket approaches, attended, and wearing the sacred vestments, under the black
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habit of a canon regular. Entering, he takes the cross from his cross-bearer, and seats himself at the lower end of the hall, Herbert and Fitz-Stephen sitting at his feet.
Courtier
(to Gilbert of London).
Lo, where your primate enters, cross in hand,
As though to chase a host of fiends malignant!

Gil.
The man was born a fool, and fool will die:
At dawn this day he said Saint Stephen's mass,
‘Sederunt principes,’ invoking next
Saint Edward, king and saint.

Henry of Win.
(to Roger of York).
The primate's face
Hath in it light, yet storm. The crisis comes:
This day he'll shake the world.

[The king enters, and takes his seat on the throne.
K. Hen.
What means yon cross?
Am I a Pagan, that the Holy Sign
Must guard a vassal of my throne against me?

Bec.
It guards the faith of Christ; and well He knows
Whose eyes adorable pierce flesh and spirit
The cross of Christ was never needfuller yet
Than in this hall, and now.

[The king leaves his throne suddenly, and returns to his apartments, followed by the bishops, except Winton.
Cour.
What's this? My lords, I say that in your midst
There sits a traitor proven!

Baron.
A manifest traitor!

[Shouts of ‘Treason!’ fill the hall; the tramp of armed men is heard in the court and the
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passages adjoining the hall, and men in armour are seen at the doors.
Fitz-Steph.
(in a low voice to Becket).
Father, have ready in your hand the Sentence:
The storm will break upon you.

Royal Marshal.
Silence, sir!

[Herbert raises his eyes on Becket, and then tùrns them to the crucifix at the end of the hall, on which Becket at once fixes his own.
Baron
(entering, addressing Becket).
My lord, the king demands if you acknowledge
That sentence of the court on Friday last
Which charged upon your head those moneys lodged
While you were chancellor, in the Chancery,
And claimed them at your hands?

Bec.
You have reached your goal,
Sir, by well-meted stages. Thursday last
Mine enemies, seeking pretence to slay me,
Placed at one side the question of the Customs
And urged but personal pleas. First, John the Marshal—
He, not long since, had sued me for a farm
In mine own court; next, to the king's appealing,
Plucked from his vest a book of ribald songs,
On that, and not the Gospels, making oath.
Sirs, was this law or mockery of all law?
Not less your parliament, as you know, amerced me;
And I submitted. Next they brought in charge
The one time rents of Berkhampstead and Eye:
I spent them on those castles' just repairs
As all men knew;—not less the parliament
Fined me three hundred pounds; and I submitted,
My Lord of Gloucester for that sum my bail.

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The king demanded next a thousand marks,
A loan long past: he knows I spent that gold
And thrice as much, mine own, upon his wars.
Then came his last demand—revenues stored
In Chancery long since and rents of abbeys,
Full thirty thousand marks. That claim set forth,
My Lord of Winton raised those aged hands
Which poured on me the unction, and appealed;
‘Ho! ye that saw and heard, witness this day!
His see was given to him absolved, and free
From all pretence of obligations past,
By lips of the king's son!’ My lords, that hour
My knights fell from me, and my clerics fled;
And of my bishops one now near me cried,
‘Would thou wert Thomas only, not archbishop!’
But with me God remained.

Baron.
My lord, your answer!

Bec.
Sir, in good time: I make my answer thus.
I pay no more false debts. Lords, to my king
I stand by nature bound, bound by my homage,
Bound by my oath, and bound not less by love:
I know his virtues and his princely heart;
Remember well his benefits of old:
My king I honour—honouring more my God.
My lords, they lie who brand mine honest fame
With fealty halved; with doubly-linked allegiance
He serves his king who serves him for God's sake;
But who serves thus must serve his God o'er all.
I served him thus, and serve.

Corn.
You serve the king
Who stirred these wars? Who spurned the Royal Customs?

Bec.
The Customs, ay, the Customs! We have reached

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At last—'twas time—the inmost of this plot
Till now so deftly veiled and ambushed; ‘Customs!’
O specious word, how plausibly abused!
In Catholic ears that word is venerable,
To Catholic souls custom is law itself,
Law that its own foot hears not, dumbly treading
A holy path smoothed by traditions old.
I war not, sirs, on ways traditionary;
The Church of Christ herself is a tradition;
Ay, but 'tis God's tradition, not of men!
Sir, these your Customs are God's Laws reversed,
Traditions making void the Word of God,
Old innovations from the first withstood,
The rights of Holy Church, the poor man's portion,
Sold, and for nought, to aliens. Customs! Customs!
Custom was that which to the lord o' the soil
Yielded the virgin one day wedded! Customs!
A century they have lived; but he ne'er lived
The man that knew their number or their scope,
Where found, by whom begotten, or how named:
Like malefactors, long they hid in holes;
They walked in mystery like the noontide pest;
In the air they danced; they hung on breath of princes,
Largest when princes' lives were most unclean,
And visible most when rankest was the mist.
Sirs, I defy your Customs; they are nought;—
I turn from them to our old English laws,
The Confessor's, and those who went before him,
The charters old, and sacred oaths of kings:
I clasp the Tables twain of Sinai;
On them I lay my palms, my breast, my forehead,
And on the altars dyed by martyrs' blood,
Making to God appeal.

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Leic.
(to Cornwall).
My lord, return we;
This matter takes a range beyond our powers:
Behoves us bear the king his Grace's answer.

[They depart.
Bec.
Why sits he not among us? Lo, his throne!
This cross should be its stay. I know the king:
Saints of his stock this hour in heaven befriend him!
But with man's spirit at times a tempter strives
That never loved Christ's cross!

Baron.
Stigand, proud priest,
Was such as you; like his will be your doom!

[The bishops return from the king's apartments with signs of terror.
Roger of York.
Hence! lest we see the proud man's doom. Attendance!

Gil.
(to Becket).
My lord, your pardon! You have placed your bishops
This day between the hammer and the anvil;
At Clarendon your Grace received the Customs;
This day you spurn them.

Bec.
You have heard, my lords,
That partial truth which most envenoms falsehood.
May shame deserved by my sin's expiation!
At Clarendon I sinned—thus much all know;
Few know the limit of that sin, and fewer
The threefold fraud that meshed me in that sin
From which, like weeping Peter, I arose,
To fall, I trust, no more. My lords, that day
There came to me two Templars from the king,
Who sware his Highness inwardly was racked
That, snared by flatterers, he had made demands
Which, for his honour's sake, he could not cancel,
Yet which, if yielded but in phrase by us,
Should vex the Church no further. I refused.

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Came next the papal envoy from Aumone,
With word the Pope, moved by the troublous time,
Willed my submission to the royal will.
This was the second fraud; remains the third.
My lords, the Customs named till then were few;
In evil hour I yielded—pledged the Church,
Alas! to what I knew not. On the instant
The king commanded, ‘Write ye down these Laws:’
And soon, too soon, a parchment pre-ordained
Upon our table lay, a scroll inscribed
With usages sixteen, whereof most part
Were shamefuller than the worst discussed till then.
My lords, too late I read that scroll: I spurned it;
I sware by Him who made the heavens and earth
That never seal of mine should touch that bond,
Not mine, but juggle-changed. My lords, that eve
A truthful servant and a fearless one
Who bears my cross—and taught me too to bear one—
Llewellen is his name, remembered be it!
Probed me and proved with sharp and searching words,
And as the sun my sin before me stood.
My lords, for forty days I kept my fast,
And held me from the offering of the mass,
And sat in sackcloth; till the pope sent word,
‘Arise; be strong, and walk.’ And I arose,
And hither came; and here confession make
That till the cleansèd leper once again
Takes, voluntary, back his leprosy,
I with those Royal Customs stain no more
My soul which Christ hath washed.

[The barons return from the king, and advance to Becket, who retains his seat; at their head Cornwall and Leicester.

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Corn.
My lord, the king commands that on the instant
You render up accounts of moneys lodged
Whilst you were chancellor, in the Chancery;
If not, attend your sentence!

Bec.
Son and earl,
Hear first your father, and the king's. How well
I loved that king, how faithfully I served him,
Is known to you and all. You said, I think,
The king had sent you hither with a sentence;—
Son, by a sentence from the King of Kings,
By virtue of mine office, and that power
It gives me through the laws of Christendom,
I bar you from the uttering of that sentence,
And seal your lips with silence.

Corn.
Speak it thou,
My Lord of Leicester.

Leic.
Nay, my lord, not I.
I dare not touch a priest. The hand, moreover,
Which clasps yon cross, in battle saved my life.

Corn.
(about to return to the king).
Your Grace will here abide—

Bec.
Am I a bondsman?

Corn.
Saint Lazarus! no, my lord.

Bec.
My son, attend!
By how much man's imperishable soul
Exceeds in worth his body, by so much
Beseems you to obey the King of Heaven
Above all earthly lords. Nor law, nor reason,
Nor human precedent, nor faith divine,
Endures that children should condemn their sire.
Wherefore this judgment of a king that errs
I from me cast, and, under God, appeal
To Peter's chair and him who sits thereon,

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Placing beneath his shield my life, mine honour,
And Canterbury's church. My fellow-bishops,
This day the vassals not of God but man,
You too I summon to that high award;
And thus, protected by the Holy See,
I hence depart.

[Becket rises, and, still bearing his cross, moves toward the gates.
De Broc
(from the gates).
He flies! cut down the traitor!

Bec.
(looking back).
Caitiff and coward! How well thou know'st this hand
Is knightly now no more!

[He departs; the barons and courtiers standing still, and none daring to arrest him.

University of Virginia Library

Scene IV.—The Great Hall of Northampton Castle.