University of Virginia Library

Scene VIII.—Vezelay.

Becket, John of Salisbury, Herbert of Bosham, Abbot of Pontigny.
Bec.
My patience less hath served him than disserved:
He stands upon the imminent verge of schism,
Transacts, conspires, with that revolted prelate
Who, with the Emperor and his antipope,
Stands third in Satan's court. Lo, here his letter
This hour arrived in cypher from Cologne!

[He reads.
John of Sal.
(reading it).
‘Pope Alexander, and his cardinals false,
Who prop that traitor Thomas, from this hour
Shall boast mine aid no more.’ What say ye, sirs?

Her.
A legate's powers are yours.

Bec.
I heeded seldom
My personal wrongs; but thus to trade with sin,
In huckstering sort to barter Christian honour,
Or simulate the crime he dares not act—
I say 'tis foul, 'tis foul!

Her.
At Clarendon
A second council meets. The bishops there
Must swear—so wills their lord—to eschew henceforth
All laws not royal, all appeals to Rome:
Our English Church shall stand with bleeding flank
From Christendom down-cloven.

Bec.
(rising).
One time in me
Passions of earth commixed with zeal divine:
That time should now be past. At Pontigny
Two years I kept my vigil and my fast;
In reverence delved the dark breast of the earth
From which we came, to which we shall return:
My vanities, I trust, are dead.

Abbot.
They are.

Bec.
Then action's time is come. At Soissons late
I watched three nights before three saintly shrines,
Praying for strength. It comes to me this hour.
England no more shall lie a corse: a spirit
Shall lift once more that head blasphemers spurn;
To that dried arm the flesh shall come as flesh
Pure in the child. No more the wail shall rise
From vacant minsters, abbeys sold like farms,
Deserted village churches, Christian babes
Amerced of Christian food. Bring forth the parchments!
From him the crowned transgressor to the least
The Censure falls on all.

Arch. of Sens
(entering).
Your Grace has heard it?—
The English king lies sick.

Bec.
Lies sick—alas!
I war not on the sick.

John of Sal.
The king excepted,
The Censure's naught. The heart of England burns,
And waits that stroke which, troubling not allegiance
In civil things, keeps pure the things of God:
A frost will fall upon that fiery heart,
The chiefest culprit spared.

Bec.
Let fall what may,
I strike not him that's down. My lord archbishop,
You come in time to hear the unrighteous banned
For crimes reiterate and denounced long since.
We sever from the Church the Church's foes,
Henceforth to plot outside her. John of Oxford,
Richard of Ilchester, Thomas Fitz-Bernard,
Joceline of Salisbury bishop, Hugh St. Clare,
De Luci, yokemate in the guilt of others,
Joceline of Ballol, and, of baser sort,
Bandit, not knight, De Broc, one time a monk.
Sirs, write ye down the sentence: be it hung
On all the city gates through France and England;
From all the altars be it sounded forth
With tapers flung to the earth.