The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Henry Plantagenet, King of England.
Prince Henry, son of Henry II.
Richard de Luci, Chief Justiciary of England.
Earl of Leicester.
Earl of Cornwall.
De Broc, an apostate monk become knight.
Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.
John of Salisbury, priest and friend of Becket.
Herbert of Bosham, priest and friend of Becket.
Alexander Llewellen, a Welshman, his cross-bearer.
William Fitz-Stephen, a retainer of Becket.
Henry of Blois, brother of King Stephen, and Bishop of Winchester.
Roger de Pont l'Evêque, Archbishop of York.
Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford, and afterwards of London.
John of Oxford, a priest and Secretary of Henry II.
Reginald Fitz-Urse, William de Tracy, Richard Brito, Hugh de Moreville, knights in the King's household.
Edward Grim, a Cambridge clerk.
The Prior of Merton.

FRENCH.

Louis, King of France.
The Archbishop of Rouen
The Archbishop of Sens.
The Bishop of Lisieux.
Guarine, Abbot of Pontigny.

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ITALIAN.

Pope Alexander III.
Cardinal William of Pavia.
Cardinal Otho.

WOMEN.

The Empress Matilda, mother of Henry II.
Queen Eleanor, wife of Henry II.
Idonea de Lisle, a nun.
Monks, Courtiers, Soldiers, Minstrels, Attendants, etc.

[_]

Speakers' names have been abbreviated in this text. The abbreviations used for major characters are as follows:

For Bec. read Thomas À Becket
For K. Hen. read Henry Plantagenet
For John of Sal. read John of Salisbury
For Leic. read Earl of Leicester
For Corn. read Earl of Cornwall
For Empress read The Empress Mathilda
For Ido. read Idonea de Lisle
For Q. Elea. read Queen Eleanor

171

ACT I.

Scene I.—The Western Entrance to Westminster Abbey.

Leicester and Cornwall, John of Salisbury, Herbert of Bosham. Beyond is a crowd waiting outside the Abbey, within which the monks of St. Augustine's at Canterbury have just made election of Thomas à Becket to the Primacy.
Her.
Augustine's chair! The greatest that which England
Can yield her greatest—save a happy death.
Thomas can stand the trial. Praise to God!
The man I love stands honoured.

John of Sal.
England's honoured!
Thomas is English wholly—Saxon half;
A scion of that ancient, healthful stock
Which fell on Hastings' field; first English-born
Who for five reigns hath swayed Augustine's staff.
King Harold, have thy joy!

172

Leic.
Our king is wise;
King Henry, of that name the first, espoused
A daughter of the Saxon line, Matilda,
That English blood with Norman mixed thenceforth
Might comfort English hearts. King Henry's grandson
Walks in his grandsire's steps.

Corn.
With better luck,
Pray God! than Beauclerk's—the Investitures;—
Anselm, the primate, fought that battle hard,
Stretching from exile a lean, threatening arm,
And won it more than half. At Bec he lies,
Or England ne'er had slept. I think he sleeps not;
I think that in his grave the stern old monk,
Who looked so meek and mild, keeps vigil still,
Muttering of simony and sins of princes.
The king did well to choose a citizen's son:
'Tis that which makes this brutish city loud;
Yet safer far had been a humbler choice—
Becket hath Norman blood.

Leic.
What matters that?
Norman and Saxon daily blend in England:
The king is neither. Sir, he's Angevine:
His faithfullest subjects we; not less we know him
Of alien race, an alien emperor
Who counts our England one 'mid subject realms,
And seldom sees her face. Remember, Cornwall,
That, when that earlier Henry sware, new-crowned,
To grant this land once more the laws of Alfred,
Not Saxon churl alone desired the boon,
But Norman knight no less. Forget not this:
Matilda—how unlike her empress-daughter!—
Was saint with either race, and won her lord
To hold his parliaments. The king and she

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Walked side by side when Alfred's bones were moved
From Newminster to Hyde.

Corn.
'Tis true; this Becket
Shares not the scandal of that foreign brood
Which swarms through all the realm's great offices;
Preys on our lands. A Norman was his sire;
Some say his mother was an Asian princess,
Who loved that father chained in Holy Land,
Loosed him, and with him fled.

Leic.
Likelier I deem it
She cut her flaxen Saxon tresses short,
And followed him to Syria, garbed a page,
With cross upon her shoulder, and a heart
Made strong by maiden love.

John of Sal.
Brave legends both!
They mean that Becket's great. Whate'er hath greatness
Kindles some glittering legend round its way
Through the gross ether of the popular mind.
Becket's a man!

Corn.
A merchant's son—not noble!

John of Sal.
Patriarch is he of nobles, not their son—
The nobles 'mid the shepherds of Christ's flock:
Let that suffice.

Leic.
Whate'er his race, 'twas merit
Raised Becket's head. But three months chancellor,
He scourged those boors of Flanders from the realm;
Shook down the bandits' towers above the builders:
So plainly his desert shone forth, that Envy
Bit her own tongue reviling him. Great knights
Flocked to his standard; sons of nobles stood
His pages in the splendour of his halls.
His ways were royal: when he crossed the seas

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To vindicate 'gainst France our England's name,
Six ships of his own building with him sailed,
And sixteen hundred warriors ate his bread;
The chivalry of Aquitaine and Anjou,
Of Scotland, Brittany, yea, England's self,
Stared at the steel-mailed cleric.

Her.
Sir, a deacon—
A deacon only, not a priest.

Leic.
Once more
I see that French knight, Engelramme de Trie,
Upon the red field rolling—

[Gilbert Foliot, attended by John of Oxford, issues from the Abbey.
Corn.
Hush! here's Gilbert—
I hate that sallow face and inward eye—
And, with him, John of Oxford, courtier-priest,
That, round and ready, slips and slides through all things,
And ever upward works. Leicester, come hence!
To Rouen next: we'll bring the king the tidings.

[Cornwall and Leicester depart.
Gil.
A cure miraculous, John, the king has worked;
Touches a soldier, and a bishop rises!
The hand that cures the evil gives the staff!

John of Oxf.
My lord, the staff is given; the evil, long,
Transferred not cured, shall plague the heart of England.

Gil.
I note in yonder man a strength resistless;
A strength for ill. In washing of the dirt
From off the Church, he'll wash the Church to nothing.
I preached against her sins: there were who said
I bit them hard; he'll rend away the rags

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With shreds of flesh adhering. Next, he'll loose
The spiritual body from the secular clutch;—
Let princes look to that.

John of Oxf.
Becket lacks patience;
Victory half won, he'll dash himself to death.

Gil.
There's in him strength to wrest from death itself
Victory stone-cold. I go: abide and watch!

[Gilbert passes on.
1st Man-at-arms.

If they deceive the great, they
deceive not the simple. Gilbert is twice Roger's
height, and but half his bulk; yet it is envy, not
his fasts, that wasteth him. Though he is mortified,
yet he is sycophant. If the king bade him eat a
babe new baptized, he would eat it for its soul's
sake, and say grace.

2nd Man-at-arms.

To hear them talk—the nobles
and the priests—each finding a reason for the promotion
of Thomas! I know the reason, for I was
there. When our king and the French king were
last at war, the longer each looked at his brother
the uglier he thought him. Then was devised this
counsel—to marry together their two children, our
Prince Henry, then five years old, and their Princess
Marguerite, three only. Thomas, being lord chancellor,
was sent to Paris to fetch home the bride.
There stood I that day, and gave glory to God.

1st Man-at-arms.

What saw you?

2nd Man-at-arms.

Of his own household there were
two hundred—clerics and knights—chanting hymns.
Then followed his hounds—ten couples. Next came
eight waggons with five horses each, and each bearing
eight casks of wine. After them followed lesser
waggons: the first bare the chancellor's wardrobe,

176

the second his pantry, the third his kitchen, the
fourth the furniture for his chapel; the fifth his
books, his gold plate, and infinite silver crowns.
Under every waggon there walked an English
mastiff, bound. Then followed twelve sumpterhorses.
The esquires bare the shields, and the
falconers the hawks on their fists; after them came
those that held the banners; and last, my lord on
a milk-white horse. Princesses gazed from the
windows, and nuns peered through their grates:
and they of France muttered as he passed, ‘If this
be England's chancellor, what is her king?’ Thomas
gave gifts to all—to the princes, and the clergy, and
the knights, and to the poor more than to the rich—
to one a palfrey, and to one a gold brooch, and to
one a jewel. When he feasted the beggars, he bade
them take with them the gilded spoons, and the
goblets; and the dish of eels which my lord supped
on that night cost a hundred marks! God honoured
him because he loved the poor; and I knew he would
be exalted!

[They pass on.

Scene II.—A House in London.

Becket, Herbert of Bosham.
Bec.
A heavy weight, good Herbert, and a sudden!

Her.
My lord, it came from heaven; what need we more?
Who sent the weight will send the strength. That bard
Whose Trojan legend was the old world's Bible
Clothed his best Greek with armour from the gods,
And o'er the field it bore him like a wind.

177

What meant that armour? Duty! O my lord,
The airy gauds that deck us, these depress us:
The divine burthen and the weight from God
Uplift us and sustain.

Bec.
Herbert! my Herbert!
High visions, mine in youth, upbraid me now:
I dreamed of sanctities redeemed from shame;
Abuses crushed; all sacred offices
Reserved for spotless hands. Again I see them;
I see God's realm so bright each English home
Sharing that glory basks amid its peace;
I see the clear flame on the poor man's hearth
From God's own altar lit; the angelic childhood;
The chaste, strong youth; the reverence of white hairs:—
'Tis this Religion means. O Herbert! Herbert!
We must secure her this! Her rights, the lowest
Shall in my hand be safe. I will not suffer
The pettiest stone in castle, grange, or mill,
The humblest clod of English earth, one time
A fief of my great mother, Canterbury,
To rest a caitiff's booty. Herbert, Herbert,
Had I foreseen, with what a vigilant care
Had I built up my soul! The fall from greatness
Had tried me less severely. Many a time
I said, ‘From follies of these courts and camps
Reverse will scourge me homeward to my God;
He'll ne'er forego me till I grow to Christian!’
Lo! greatness comes, not judgment.

Her.
It may be
That God hath sent you both in one. Fear nought!
At Paris first, and after at Bologna,
You learned the Church's lore.

Bec.
I can be this,

178

The watch-dog keeping safe his master's door
Though knowing but little of the stores within:
I'll do my best to learn. Give we, each day,
Six hours to sacred studies! Ah! you smile;
You note once more the boaster. Friend, 'tis true,
Our penitence itself doth need repentance;
Our humbleness hath in it blots of pride.
Hark to that truant's song! We celibates
Are strangely captured by this love of children
Nature's revenge—say, rather, compensation.
The king will take him hence: God's will be done!
I lose my pupil, and become your pupil;
A humble one; no more.
High saint of God, or doctor of the Church,
'Twere late for that; yet something still remains:
I ever wished to live an honest man,
Honest to all, and most to Christ, my Master.
Help me to be His servant true!

Her.
I promise.

Bec.
Henceforth I cast all worldly pomps aside:
The king must find some worthier chancellor:
It irks me thus to slight his gifts; yet John
Who journeys with the prince must bear to France
This realm's Great Seal.

Her.
Bid John to teach his charge,
He'll need it when a king, humility.
When first I saw the prince 'twas on his birthday:
Songs rang, and banners waved: the child was glad
And tossed his head in triumph. Thus I warned him:
‘Child, walk less proudly! He who fashioned man
Fashioned yon worm; and when the man lies dead
The worm consumes his flesh!’ ‘My flesh,’ he cried

179

With flashing eyes, ‘My flesh—the King of England's!—
I'd treat them thus! ’and thrice on the green turf
Down stamped his little crimson boot. He comes!

How clear his voice!

[Prince Henry enters.
Bec.
The swallow, little prince,
Can twitter though he sings not: so can you
That, like the swallow, with you waft the spring,

P. Hen.
Better his twitter than the organ's growl:
Vespers are done; that's well!

Bec.
They say, my child,
Those Canterbury monks have made me primate;
I little like the charge.

P. Hen.
Why take it then?
I spurned this day a shoe though wrought in pearl,
Because it galled me; ay, and left some red
Upon the maker's cheek! The chancellor's gown
Was gayer thrice than that. You have changed for worse!

Bec.
High place hath many foes.

P. Hen.
When father dies
I shall be king: that day I'll find and slay them!

Bec.
Child, love you not your father?

P. Hen.
Lo! you frown
I love my father, but I love you better:
Not oft he speaks to me, nor then with smiles:
He knows no pretty tales of birds and beasts;
He never lays his hand upon my head;
Hard are his questions; ere the answer comes
He sits in thought, or leaves me.

Bec.
Little prince,
It may be when the cloud is on his brow
His thought is for his son! Know you not, Henry,
A father's heart is with his babes? For them

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He toils all day; for them keeps watch by night;
Risks oft his soul itself. See you this letter?
It bids me send you home. We part at sunrise.

P. Hen.
I will not go! I'll stay with you in London!—
Hark, hark, the light hoofs dancing in the court:
Long-maned, large-eyed, a white star on his front:
They said he was so gentle I could ride him:
I answered I would ride him mild or wild.

Father, farewell!

[Rushes out followed by Herbert.
Bec.
Farewell, light heart! Man's life
Loses its speciousness: remains but Duty.
(After a long pause)
Herbert, and John—how wise is each; how true!
How few have friends like these: yet something tells me
That neither will be near me when I die.

Scene III.—Palace at Rouen.

King Henry, Queen Eleanor, the Bishop of Lisieux, Cornwall, Reginald Fitz-Urse, Courtiers, Minstrels, Attendants.
K. Hen.
Three victories in three realms had pleased me less!
This day my ten years' purpose stands fulfilled:
Those monks have given consent! Thomas Archbishop—
That hand which holds the seal wielding the staff,—
The feud of Crown and Church past for ever.
My chancellor made primate, Henry of Blois
Shall bend from his stiff back!

181

Q. Elea.
Have joy, good husband!
The gift of faith is yours!

K. Hen.
You trust in none;
I, trusting few, trust Thomas; I have proved him.
Those sins my youth had not the grace to shun
At least it scorned to vindicate. Who chid them?
Nor knight, nor bishop; he and he alone!
You slight your one true friend.

Q. Elea.
Hear that, fair ladies!
A spouse unfaithfuller—

K. Hen.
Henceforth I rule!
None shares with me my realm. My Lord of Lisieux,
Should not a king be king?

Lis.
May it please your Highness,
'Tis known I never walked with them that err
From duty to their king. Yet kings, forgive me,
Armed with that twofold power your Highness boasts,
Shall need a sage's prudence.

K. Hen.
Have no fear!
That twofold sway my own, the world shall wonder
Less at its greatness than the temperance meek
Wherewith I wield its functions.

Lis.
Sire, 'tis thus
Your Church shall serve you best. The garden dial
No doubt is appanage of the garden's lord;
Yet he who wills to plant it at incline
And he who scans it by the torch he carries
Know not the hour o' the day.

K. Hen.
My kingdom's bishops
Shall keep full power to mulct ill clerks; and Rome,
Albeit reduced, retain her vantage-place—
The loftiest tassel on the Church's cap.

Q. Elea.
What cap is that? In Guienne some would answer,

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‘A fool's cap on a palsy-stricken head— —’
O, 'tis a beauteous and a beaming land!
I ever hated Paris! There that monk,
Bernard, held sway; but in my sunny South,
Strong as the North in arms and wiser thrice,
'Twas banquet still, and song. ‘Mysteries’ and ‘plays’
Alternate graced our halls. Gay Troubadours!
Amid our ‘Courts of Love’ I judged the prize—
They sware my song was best!

K. Hen.
Rise, Southern sea,
And drown for aye that sun-burnt land of ‘Oc!’
An oak-wood of the North were worth it all!
Your Troubadours have but one song among them,
And that's the grasshopper's! Their garrulous land
Scorns kings as much as priests! Your grandfather
In spleen forsook it, lived in Spain, cave-roofed,
The knightly armour hid by hermit weeds,
And, worn by penance, died.

Q. Elea.
A priestly legend!
He revelled to the last and died in sleep:
Heaven grant us all such end! I tell you, Henry,
My land's a land of mind yet more than mirth:
There are who whisper there that marriage vows,
Like vows monastic, mean but cleric gain;—
Poor Petronilla! Rodolf loved her well:
What marred that love? A dotard Pope, preferring
To theirs the claim of Rodolf's beldam wife
Espoused in ignorant youth!

K. Hen.
You fought their fight;
And thirteen hundred boors were burnt, they say,
In Vitry's church, when Vitry fell.

Q. Elea.
Which error
We cancelled fighting in the Holy Land.

183

O, what a clime! What flowers, what fruits, what odours!
What stars, clear-imaged in those Asian streams
Whose coldest ripple wafts an amorous tune:
That land hath but one blot—Jerusalem!
A city like a nightmare, legend-choked;
Black den of Saints!

K. Hen.
Your ‘Amazons’ and you,
Whose quaint apparel wonder-struck the world,
Ended, ere long, I think, that high crusade.

Q. Elea.
When captains shape their march to please a lady,
The shame is theirs, not hers. 'Twas frolic all,
And so in frolic died.

K. Hen.
A frolic! woman!
My earliest dream was of some great crusade;
That work shall yet be mine, my last, my chief:
Ay, but I'll build my empire first! That done,
My brave and loyal sons shall share my toils,
Or guard my realms at home.

Q. Elea.
How chill 'tis grown!
Swift Southern springs, that with a flame of flowers
In one day light the earth, how unlike you
This tardy Norman May! See those poor monkeys!
Despite their coats of scarlet and of gold
They shake from ear to tail. Fitz-Urse, some music!

Fitz-Urse.
Madam, there stands a Trouvère!

Q. Elea.
Let him sing.
Minstrel, what poems make you?

Trou.
Please your Highness,
The proud old pagan poets made their songs;
We Trouvères find, not make them, deeming earth
God's poem, beauty-stored.

Q. Elea.
Then find me one.

184

(Trouvère
sings.)

I make not songs, but only find;
Love following still the circling sun
His carol casts on every wind,
And other singer is there none.

I follow Love, though far he flies;
I sing his song, at random found
Like plume some bird of Paradise
Drops, passing, on our dusky bound.

In some, methinks, at times there glows
The passion of some heavenlier sphere:
These too I sing; but sweetest those
I dare not sing, and faintly hear.

Q. Elea.
That's psalm, not song! Sing me some love-song old,
Of Grecian gods and nymphs.

Trou.
On Grecian hills
Traditionary melodies survive
Pagan, yet touched in part by tenderer feeling:
I know one—‘Phœbus and the Doe.’

Q. Elea.
Sing that.

(Trouvère
sings.)

Phœbus paced the wooded mountains;

These stanzas are in part taken from a Romaic poem, one of the ‘Robber songs’ sung for centuries by the bandits, more properly called ‘outlaws,’ on the mountains of Greece. The mingling of Greek mythology with a sentiment tenderer than that which commonly belonged to the poetry engendered by that mythology in Pagan times, is interesting.

Kindled dawn, and met a doe;
‘Child, what ails thee that thou rovest
O'er my bright hills sad and slow?

‘That upon thy left side only
Thou thy noontide sleep dost take;
That thy foot the fountain troubles
Ever ere thy thirst thou slake?’

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Answered thus the weeping creature:
‘Once beside me raced a fawn;
Seest her, O thou God all-seeing!
O'er thy hills, in wood or lawn?

‘On my left side sleep I only,
For 'tis there my anguish stirs;
And my foot the fountain troubles,
Lest it yield me shape like hers.’

—Then the Sun-God marvelled, musing,
‘When my foolish Daphne died,
Rooted 'mid Peneian laurels,
Scarce one little hour I sighed.’

Q. Elea.
A love-song that! An icicle it is
Added to winter! Phœbus was a fool
Else had he captured Daphne ere she rooted;
Your doe a fool to weep for gladness past.
What says King Henry?

De Tracy
(entering).
May it please your Highness,
Four priests are come, sent by my lord the primate,
With letters and a casket.

K. Hen.
Bid them enter.
Thomas has sent some offering!

[John of Salisbury enters, followed by three abbots.
Q. Elea.
(to one of her ladies).
Lo, their saint!
Large fame is his, and long I craved to see him:
Princely he is, but lacks the princely pride;
Rather some prince's phantom, gaunt and wan;
Methinks that moon which maddens him looks through him!
Saint he is none! his countenance is not humble.

[John of Salisbury presents a letter to the king.

186

K. Hen.
The casket first! Belike a crown im perial!

Q. Elea.
Not so! A diamond necklace; and for me!

[She tears open the casket, out of which rolls the Great Seal of England.
John of Sal.
This missive, sovereign liege, humbly sets forth
Those forceful, yet unwelcome counter-duties,
The exigence whereof compelled my lord—

K. Hen.

To hurl at England's head England's Great Seal!
At last I know him! Traitor!

[He tears up the letter, and flings it on the fire.

Burn unread,
Foul web of lies! Thou too, England's Great Seal,
Once type of justice and of law, this day
Spurned from the traitor's clutch that long defiled thee!
Dishonour's badge! poor clod of kneaded vileness!
I crush thee 'neath my feet!

[He tramples on the Great Seal.

John of Sal.
May it please your Highness—

K. Hen.
Hence, lest I strike thee and thy fellows dead!
O sharp-toothed worm! this heart it was that nursed thee;
Lo, thou hast gnawed thy passage to the day!
Base churl, thou show'st at last thine English breed
And king-defying fierceness. Vengeance! Vengeance!
'Twas with a smile he said our love was past:
He'll find my hate begun. Cornwall! Fitz-Urse!
This night to England: stay the consecration!
Say that my will is changed.

187

Scene IV.—London; House of the Chief Justiciary.

Richard de Luci, Cornwall.
Corn.
It was untoward, my lord, though done in duty:
The king is much in wrath.

De Luci.
His choice made wroth
Augustine's monks: they love no seculars,
Yet, hating Roger more, and Gilbert more,
Though jealous for a right so oft impugned
Elected Thomas. Thomas sought not greatness:
But late I stood beside him and the king
At Falaise, in a window which o'erlooks
The pleasant Norman plains: the king turned sharp,
And caught him by the arm, and spake, ‘Get hence!
Old Theobald is dead: fill thou his seat:’
The chancellor smiled, and, lifting his gay sleeve,
Replied, ‘A saintly man your Highness seats
Upon Augustine's chair;’ then added, sad,
‘Forbid it, heaven! One month, and love, long tried,
Would change to new-born hatred: royal needs
Prey on Church rights!’ On me King Henry looked—
‘Richard, if on my bier I lay, stone-cold,
Say, wouldst thou throne my son?’ I answered ‘Yea;’
Then he, ‘Thus throne my friend at Canterbury!’

Corn.
The king is changed. 'Tis true he loved this Becket;
But more he trusted Becket's love for him
And for his royal pupil, young Prince Henry.
My lord, King Stephen, pressed by rivals, bowed
The sceptre to the crosier. Not so Henry!

188

He, in the purple born, from his great mother
The Empress Maude, inherited by right
Both Normandy and Maine, and from his sire
Touraine and Anjou. Next, with Eleanor
He wedded Poitou, Limousin, Auvergne
Saintonge, and Perigord, and Angoumois
And Guienne's vine-clad plains. King Stephen died:
England was his, and with it Europe's coasts
From Scottish shores to mountains of Navarre:
Shall this man be the beadsman of the Pope?
Creedsman suffices!

De Broc
(entering abruptly).
God preserve your lordship!

De Luci.
Sir, you are welcome. Becket for the primate—

Corn.
So, so! you fetch me back: I had slipped my tether:
The king will have his Royal Customs rule,
Not Saxon laws, priest-hatched. His chancellor primate
He deemed his right secure; that dream is past:
Becket is chancellor no more.

De Luci.
That's ill!
I ever marked an inner man in Thomas
That stirred within the outer. Such men burst
Their bond or soon or late.

Corn.
The king misdoubts him,
And, till his will be signified, forbids
The consecration rite.

De Luci.
The election's made;
And, being made in form, no law annuls it.

De Broc.
Then take him like a dog and hang him up!

189

That done, I find just reason.

De Luci.
Sir, you stand
In presence of this realm's Justiciary,
Who knows alike to vindicate old laws
And pluck from fraud its mask of loyal zeal.
You came unbidden; waste not time on us
If tasks are yours elsewhere.

De Broc.
One task is mine—
To slay the man I hate; and I will slay him!

[Departs.
De Luci.
The air grows healthier now De Broc has left us:
That man's a forest-beast no art can tame.
Three times my hand with iron mace of law
Hath spurned him to his den. His history doubtless
You know not, late returned from Aquitaine.
In youth his bad heart was a nest of adders,
Envenomed purposes and blind at war:
A monk, on false pretence he broke his vows,
And roamed a-preying on the race of man.
Idonea next he met—

Corn.
Idonea?

De Luci.
Her—
The sweetest blossom lit by English skies,
The tenderest of de Lisle's old stem. He met her,
And loved her with the malice of that love
Whose instinct is a craving less to enjoy
Than kill the saintly grace it yet admires;
Likewise the upstart loved her wealthy lands.
A prince had vainly woed her! From her childhood
The orphan in her brother lived; he died:
Like some young widow moonlight-pale, three years,
Daily she decked his grave.

Corn.
He could not win her?

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De Luci.
She lived a royal ward. De Broc with bribes
Won certain near the king, Fitz-Urse, De Tracy,
To speed his wooing of the virgin-heiress.
Large nets he spread. Once, well-night trapped, she sought
The friend of her dead mother, Becket's sister,
His dearest upon earth. That great man's name
Since then protects Idonea; for which cause,
Poisoned beside by sin's insane suspicions,
De Broc has vowed revenge. Enough of this:
The king chose ill in Thomas.

Corn.
Whom would you choose?

De Luci.
Not York! no worldly bishop! Poor sick world,
Methinks thy leech, the Church, hath caught thy fever!

Corn.
There's Gilbert!

De Luci.
Fanatic of old, and late
With courtier over-slimed. Sleekness like his
Sophisticates, not lulls, the fight before us,
Makes slippery too the athlete's wrestling-floor.
I note in every country at this hour
A warfare 'twixt the men of mind and might,
The crosier and the sword; these two are kingdoms
In every kingdom front to front opposed,
Yet needing each the other.

Corn.
Up, good sword,
And strike the crosier down!

De Luci.
Cornwall, that cry
Hath in it more of courtier than of statesman:
The crosier down, justice were driven from earth
And chaos come again.

Corn.
Winton last week

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Ordained a serf of mine! That serf is free!
Grant us the presentations at the least!
Shear we the shepherds; shear who will the sheep.
Sir, we attend the king at heavy charge:
Nobles must live! I say the Church is proud;
Clamours for freedom.

De Luci.
I was ne'er of those
Who deem church freedom but a maniac's knife
Threatening that maniac's throat. Be hers her freedom:
Let kings reduce her pride. King Stephen's brother,
Henry of Winton, loves both Church and State,
Plots not with bishops, fawns not upon kings,
But higher sits than either, seeking nought.
Legate he was; hath stood too near to popes
And monarchs both, to find a god in either:
Whichever wrongs the other he withstands:
I love that bishop well; if rich, he's bounteous;
Rides with a prince's retinue;—what then?
The people love him better for his pride,
Birth's honest pride, how different from the pride
Of upstart intellect, or of spiritual spleen!
Compared with these 'tis innocent; 'tis child-like;
'Tis but a loftier terrace whence to bend
More humbly to the humble.

Corn.
Winton primate,
All had gone well!

De Luci.
Save to the scaffold's height
King Henry ne'er had raised King Stephen's brother.

192

Scene V.—The Western Entrance to the Cathedral of Canterbury.

A multitude of clerics and others stand around watching the advance of Becket, preceded by a procession of nobles, abbots, and bishops. John of Salisbury and Herbert of Bosham converse alone.
John of Sal.
Since came to him this greatness he is sad;
He fears the election was not wholly free.

Her.
He fears far more than that.
When Canterbury's towers looked on us first
O'er the great woodlands, thus he spake: ‘Last night
By me there stood a Venerable Form
And gave me talents ten;’ then added low,
‘See that thou sift my faults with flail and fan:
I count thee traitor else.’ I made my vow
That hour. It shall be kept.

John of Sal.
They pass the gate:
Thomas walks last, and by his side the prince,
Holding his hand full fast. That child well loves him;
A word 'gainst Becket, and his face heaven-bright
Clouds with his father's frown!

A French Priest
(addressing an English Priest).
What twain are those that entered late and stand
Within the western portals? Name him first,
That tall ascetic form with presence kingly,
Kingly in kingships of some spiritual sphere,

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And fearless port self-stayed, and dominant eye?

English Priest.
That's John of Salisbury, Becket's counsellor chief,
Wisest, men say, in England.

French Priest.
Who is he
Close by, that gazes through those portals, he
With countenance vision-dazed, low stature, form
Slight as a maid's and modest? Such a one
Could he but slip unmarked through gates of heaven,
Might undetected walk 'mid virgin choirs
'Twixt Agatha and Agnes.

English Priest.
That is Herbert,
Becket's chief friend. But lo, my lord himself!

[The procession advances to the high altar, before which sits Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winton. The monks of St. Augustine's Monastery stand in a semicircle around him. The bishops take their seats in two rows below him, in front of the altar; the abbots sit, and the nobles stand behind them.
Leic.
(apart to De Luci).
My lord of Winton consecrates the primate;
The king will like not that.

De Luci.
It shall bestead him.
My lord of York made claim, and Hereford,
And some Welsh bishop, oldest in the land,
Who butts against Pelagius in his dreams
And thinks him living yet. I spake with Winton:
Becket he loves—except when others praise him;—
And this day will in grave discourse exhort
To walk in modesty of virtue, taming
Man's pride of flesh, and please our lord the king.

194

The B. of Roch.
(addressing the Bishop of Winton).
Most reverend lord, through me the Church presents,
For consecration to a bishop's order,
The archiepiscopal degree, and throne
Primatial of the total realm of England,
Thomas, a presbyter of life approved.

Henry of Win.
Was this election free?

Prior of St. Aug.
My lord, 'twas free.

Henry of Win.
It resteth with the bishops of the province
To ratify the election, or annul.
What sentence make my lords?

Gil.
My lord, our voices
Unanimous approve—the loudest mine.

Henry of Win.
My lords, this work, we trust, is work of God;
Not less, where things of heaven commix with earthly,
A creeping wariness perforce hath place
'Mid duties more sublime. This hour mine eye
Rests on a youth who to the heart of England
That most in innocency seeth God,
Presenteth ever comfort of her hope
And to this Church good auspice. Here he stands
To answer for his father. Royal sir,
This man, elect to Canterbury's chair,
Hath long time lived the realm's high chancellor;
Dispensed her offices; held in his hand
Her treasury's golden key. A man so trusted
Hath enemies. For that cause we demand
That Thomas to the Church be given absolved
From every claim foregone, just or unjust,
Derived from functions past; henceforth for aye

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A free man, with a spirit's freedom ranging
Among the things of God.

P. Hen.
My Lord of Winton,
And you, my lords, England's great prelacy
In apostolic synod this day met,
Though young, I stand commissioned by my sire,
And, acting in his name, and by his will,
Concede that just demand.

Henry of Win.
Son, read the oath.

Becket
(reads the oath of a bishop aloud, and ends).
May God so help me, and His holy Gospels!

Henry of Win.
Son, it behoves a bishop of Christ's Church
To make confession of her faith and morals:
Believest thou one God in Persons Three,
The Incarnation of the Second Person,
And, through His death, redemption?

Bec.
I believe.

Henry of Win.
Wilt thou bear witness to the sacred Scriptures
And sage traditions of past times?

Bec.
I will.

Henry of Win.
Wilt thou to Peter, and that kingly line
Long-linked with his, which wields the keys of heaven,
Be liegeful and of constant heart?

Bec.
I will.

Henry of Win.
Wilt thou in chastity and lowness live,
With spirit averse to worldly greed?

Bec.
I will.

Henry of Win.
Wilt thou be gracious to the poor of Christ?

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Bec.
I will.

Henry of Win.
God give thee increase of thy faith,
And good resolve, to blessedness eternal!

[The assistant bishops conduct Becket to a side chapel. After a short time they lead him back, wearing sandals, the pectoral cross, the stole, tunicle, dalmatic, and maniple. Passing the altar of St. Benedict, he kneels and prays. The Litanies are then sung, the bishops and other assistants kneeling, while Becket lies on his face before the high altar. The Litanies ended, he kneels while the assistant bishops, solemnly opening the Book of the Gospels, rest it upon his neck and shoulders. After this they lay their hands on his head, saying, ‘Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,’ while the Veni Creator Spiritus is sung. The Bishop of Winton then, first slowly making the sign of the cross over Becket's head, anoints it with the holy chrism, while two choirs, one at the high altar, and one in the chapel of St. Benedict, sing alternately the verses of the Antiphon, Sicut unguentum in capite.
Henry of Win.
Eternal King, and Kingly Priest on high,
Whose virtue makes the worlds for ever young,
Send forth upon the head of this Thy priest
Thy heavenly grace. In stillness let it creep
Down to the utmost parts invisible
Of spirit and of soul. Sustain in him
True faith, true love. Make beautiful his feet
And wingèd on Thy mountain-tops, forth speeding

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Thy herald with Thy Gospel for mankind:
Be his to preach it, not by craft of men
But demonstration of Thy Spirit divine,
In word and work. Grant him in right and might
To wield Thy keys; and what he binds on earth
Bind Thou in heaven. Thy blessing send on them
That bless him, and Thy ban on them that curse:
Let him not put the evil for the good,
Darkness for light. Fear he the face of none.
Be Thou his strength, that mightily he rule
Thy Church in this Thy realm, and save Thy people.

[The Bishop of Winton then blesses the pastoral staff and the ring, and delivers them to Becket, as well as the Book of the Gospels, closed, and finally gives him the kiss of peace, which last the assistant bishops likewise reverently bestow.
De Luci
(apart to Leicester).
My lord will preach. Draw near!

Leic.
Some eight years since
Our coronation feast at Westminster
Showed us a pomp more rich. That day the prelates
In divers-coloured silks so shone that still,
Move where they might past gloomiest arch or aisle,
They wove a varying rainbow such as braids
The dark skirts of a cloud.

De Luci.
And cloud and storm
That lovely light portended. 'Twas the queen
Who changed our graver splendours of the West
That day to plumage of the Eastern Church:
She loves the loud and bright. The Grecian rites
In that schismatic seat of Constantine
Had charmed her wild and wandering eye.

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Leic.
Lo there!

Henry of Win.
(placing the mitre on Becket's head).
The helmet of salvation gird the head
Of God's high warrior! from its horns forth shine
The glories twinned of either Testament!
Auspicious beam they as from Moses' face
That light of God. Be they His people's strength,
And terrible to those who hate the truth.

Her.
(to John of Salisbury, still near the western entrance).
I catch no word.

John of Sal.
The man who takes his stand
Hard by a torrent hears no sound beside:
Beyond that gate a torrent people streams—

Her.
Streams like the world, and all its blind confusions;
Within, behold the vision of God's peace!
Between these twain we stand.

John of Sal.
The rite's complete:
The primate kneels for blessing.

Her.
Ha! What means it?
A Consecrator blesses from his chair;
And none is loyal more to forms than Winton.
Why stands he thus with hands to heaven upheld,
His white head shining like a sun new-risen
Through wintry mist dim seen?

John of Sal.
At last he speaks!

Her.
Not loud:—and yet we hear him, oh how clearly!

Henry of Win.
This day the Spirit Prophetic on me falls,
Nor rests with me to speak or to forbear.
My will it was to preach of peace, and lo!
I see in heaven a sword;—
Son, take God's blessing in a choice of woes:

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Betwixt an earthly and a heavenly king,
Elect of God, this day election make!

Her.
See, see! The primate clasps his hands, and lifts them—
Heavenward he looks!

John of Sal.
He speaks.

Bec.
My choice is made.

[There is a pause. The assistant bishops then lead Becket to the archiepiscopal throne, the two choirs singing the Te Deum in alternate verses.

ACT II.

Scene I.—The Castle of Northampton.

King Henry, Queen Eleanor, Richard de Luci, Cornwall, Fitz-Urse, the Bishop of Lisieux, Leicester.
K. Hen.
If e'er I truly loved a man 'twas that man;
Nor any loved me better. Many a time,
In years gone by, I marked him on me bend
An eye that, up and down, took measure full—
Sole man was he that looked me full in face—
Of my hid soul, yet ended with a smile,
As though, beyond the ill, it kenned some good
I knew not of myself.
The greater crime that knowing me he mocks me!
A thousand times that man hath heard me swear
That alien none or priest shall share my kingdom.
I'll wear it like the armour on my back;

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I'll wield it as a man wields his own members;
I'll walk, its living soul!

De Luci.
Thomas is honest.

K. Hen.
He has me there: the crafty and the keen,
These I outrun.

De Luci.
And not, I think, ambitious.

K. Hen.
He was ambitious till the height was gained:
No step remaining for his climbing foot,
He kneels him down a saint!

Fitz-Urse.
A saint is Becket
That makes his feast with sinners. What a race!
There's one at Exeter that, charged with crime,
Dropped poison in the accuser's cup.

Corn.
And Gilbert
Who scorns to hide the failings of his cloth
Reports some priest at Winchester well known,
Who, leagued with robbers, left his church-door wide:—
They stole the chalice.

Q. Elea.
These be Becket's clients,
Secure from civil courts! Who loves the sin
Will screen the sinner.

K. Hen.
Ay, good queen; you hate him!
Your tongue is sharp against him many a year;
Sharpest, men whisper, since that May long past,
When, young in face, and chancellor not bishop,
He with the pageant of his greatness filled
The broad eye of the world; and certain ladies
Whose gamesome graces lit your court made vow
One night to put his gravity to proof,
And found that they had stained their fame, not his,
Their glamour and their glitter still to him
But gleam of swarming gnats! That night your spy

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Found him on bare boards sleeping:

Q. Elea.
John of Oxford
Reports your favourite's gratitude. At feast
He descants on your Highness thus—‘This puppet,
Who sans my aid at Rome in Stephen's time
Had lacked his realm, and twice since then had lost it,
This feather dancing on a nation's crown,
This bubble winking on the Church's cup,
Presumes himself my king!’ How answers Henry?
'Tis thus—‘The violet of humility
Not oft 'mid regal virtues finds a place:
In the heath garland of Plantagenet
Be mine to wear it first!’

John of Oxf.
(entering with a profound obeisance).
May it please your Highness,
A noisy challenge soon will beat your gates:
Southward ten miles from this the primate halts;
There learned he that the royal grooms had filled
That mansion pre-ordained to house his greatness
By providence of his friends;—incensed, he rides
To Canterbury at morn.

K. Hen.
Pernicious upstart!
Whom, groping in the dirt, this hand upraised
And lodged on high to be my shame and plague;
Vile hypocrite wearing religion's mask
And signing with his cross rebellion's way;
To Canterbury let him! He shall wake,
His pride's debauch exhaled, in heavier bonds
Than Odo wore the Conqueror's prelate brother.—
Speak out thy thought, good John!

John of Oxf.
Please it your Highness,
If I might counsel, give the fool his way.
Throughout all England, save alone this city,

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Mailed by your peers and splendid with your court,
That man's a king; a pope at Canterbury:
Once here, he's in your power.

K. Hen.
There's much in that.

John of Oxf.
Yield him his house; a street, if he demands it:
A thunder-shower ere long shall drench his plumes:
Methinks I see his knights and chaplains flying—

Q. Eleanor.
Let them not fly to me! No skirt of mine
Shall fence the pigmies!

John of Oxf.
For the Royal Customs,
Name not their name at first: that blow comes last:
I glance at this to guard you from his wiles.
He swears that with a triple fraud his feet
Were snared that day when, sore against his will,
At Clarendon he bowed before them. First—

K. Hen.
Be brief, good John!

John of Oxf.
Tax first, my lord, the primate
With unparticipated crimes; his only;
His special forfeit, his unshared offence;
Then shall his bishops leave him. One thing more:
See that he 'scape not! nail him to this isle!
If once he stand on Christendom's broad ground
With feet unchained, the might of Christendom
Will rise into his arm. Who wields that might
Hurls the three-bolted thunder from the clouds
And rules the orb of earth.

De Tracy
(entering).
My liege, two priests,
Sent by my lord the primate.

K. Hen.

Bid them enter.

[Herbert of Bosham and Llewellen enter.

Sirs, ere ye speak, the boon ye claim is yours:
A humbler company hath filled, I hear,

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The primate's house. Return, and let him know
Their boldness is rebuked.

[He turns away. Herbert and Llewellen bow low and depart.

And now to business.
My lords, there hath been question here and there
Of benefices, and the right to fill them;
We find the Church o'er-fleshed with lands and tithes;
She staggers 'neath their weight. To stay that evil
We will that presentations from this hour
Be deemed his appanage who holds the fief.

Nobles and Courtiers.
Our swords shall guard it! Henry and our right!

K. Hen.
My Lord Justiciary alone is silent.

De Luci.
My liege, the Royal Customs were our theme:
I deem the royal claim doubtful in part;
More doubtful yet this claim to presentations:
The law must solve that knot. The law declared,
Nor swayed by spiritual threat or civil
I will enforce that law.

K. Hen.
My lords, farewell!
[All depart, except John of Oxford.
Come hither, John! I know it now: alone
He rules his realm whose hand, unquestioned, turns
That inmost, central wheel which turns all others.
Lisieux himself this day was mine but half—
Henceforth all bishops must be my creation.

John of Oxf.
A nomination from the royal lips
Meets but a coy resistance.

K. Hen.
That's sophistic:
The power that's indirect is incomplete.
Those monks who ratified my choice of Becket,
Had you been named, not he, had spurned my choice.

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We want new laws. The king must make his prelates;
The chapters—say their delegates rather—met
Not in their minsters but his royal chapel,
Must ratify his choice.

John of Oxf.
That time will come;
But they the deed who fear not, fear the shame
And will not sin i' the sun. Leave all to me.
Break, where you can, the courage of those bishops;
Divide them, each from each; keep vacant long
The sees. At last your stiffest will consent
To that which haply, urged this day, might shake
Its gloss from Lisieux's silk. When comes that hour
Your Highness shall not miss it.

K. Hen.
Look to that!

[King Henry departs.
John of Oxf.
(alone).
Yes, yes! 'Tis I must look to that, and all things:
The rest but talk: what's done is done by me!
What marvel? Blind they are, these kings and nobles;
While those who see—the cleric race—are mad,
And differ but in manner of their madness.
First, there's the Church's champion, like this Becket,
Who wins from her small thanks; he might have had
My aid; he spurned it. Comes the prelate next
Who softly struts, a spiritual king,
In miniver and gold like Winton's Henry;
Then he that, all too proud for pomps extern,
Grows thin with feeding on his self-conceit
And sours with glances at his neighbour's gain;

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He who out-fasts the Church's fasts; out-watches
Her vigils; never coveted her thrones
Till wholesomer men possessed them. Gilbert, Gilbert!
A saint wert thou! What hindered thee from running?
Let Satan answer that! The king is mine;
That flame-eyed queen he hates will drive him on
With none to guide him. I am scarce ambitious;
But I was born beneath a politic star,
Was trained to walk in labyrinthine ways,
And needs must use my natural faculties.
The game!—'tis that I love! O Gilbert, Gilbert!
Save that that faith ascetic once thy boast,
Though dead by day, yet, spectre of itself,
Still leans by night a nightmare o'er thy bed,
How fair a game were thine!

Scene II.—Northampton; Becket's House.

Becket sitting on a low bed in his pontificals. A large number of bishops enter.
1st Bishop.
Most reverend father, primate of all England,
We grieve to learn your Grace is ill—

Bec.
That's past;
Brother, time presses: 'tis to-day the feast
Of good King Edward's relics late translated;
I pray you to be plain.

2nd Bishop.
My lord, we bishops
Are fed on common food, breathe common air;
Rumours we hear which reach not that high clime
Wherein your Grace abides. Beware, my lord,

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For as a cliff eternal sits this king;
In vain the billows beat its base.

Bec.
The Church
Was once the rock; nations the waves. Who next?

3rd Bishop.
My lord, our duty is to speak the truth:
Destruction stands against us, face to face:
The king has sworn to vindicate—nay more,
To change henceforth to laws, his Royal Customs.

Bec.
'Tis so.

4th Bishop.
His barons and his knights are with him:
He, like the Conqueror, lifts an iron hand;
They, like an iron breast-plate on his breast,
Have vowed them to the vengeance of his will.

Bec.
'Tis so.

5th Bishop.
My lord, the last were I to flee
This fight: not less the wrestler needs firm ground;
The giant set on quicksands, or on ice,
Becomes the pigmy's laughter, Peter's rock
Was once the strength of each true churchman's battle:
What find we now? A Pope, and anti-pope;
The Emperor with the last; and with the first
England and France. No Pope will war on England;
A sager Henry fights old Beauclerk's wars;—
Beware lest you should rouse a bloodier Rufus.

Bec.
My lords, have you said all? Now, hear me speak.
I might be large to tell you, courtier prelates,
That if the Conqueror's was an iron hand
Not less 'twas just. Oftenest it used aright
Its power usurped. It decked no idiot brow

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With casual mitre; neither lodged in grasp
That, ague-shaken, scarce could clutch its bribe,
The sceptres of the shepherds of Christ's flock.
I might remind you that, if Rufus lived
A bestial life, he died the death of beasts;
That Henry Beauclerk met that day in Anselm
A keener head than his and heavier hand
Albeit a gentler; that his ten years' war
Ended in this—Investitures disowned,
Church discipline restored, Christ's poor protected.
O happy sage! in battles of this world
The cloistral shades of Bec were with him still,
Its holy anthems ever in his ears;
And when the craven prelates round his throne,
Summoned for counsel, counsel dared not give,
Silent they hung their heads; they babbled not
Plain treason, or veiled threat.

Gil.
My lord, your pardon!
We dare not leave the sacred charge of souls
To strive in worldly conflicts.

Bec.

Gilbert! Gilbert!
They that rejoice in heaven o'er sinners saved
Wept for thy fall. Is that the hand which wrote,
‘Apostate is the man who turns his back
Upon St. Peter's chair’? My voice it was
Raised thee from Hereford's see to London's see;
I hoped thee brave and wise. Vantage thou hadst,
Chastening from youth thy spirit and thy flesh,
At Cluny first, and afterwards at Gloucester;—
Then Satan made alliance with the world,
And wrecked thee through thy fame—
Gilbert, some swineherd or some scullion grasps
Thy destined crown in heaven!

Bishops of England!

208

For many truths by you this day enforced,
Hear ye in turn but one. The Church is God's:
Lords, were it ours, then might we traffic with it;
At will make large its functions, or contract;
Serve it or sell; worship or crucify.
I say the Church is God's; for He beheld it,
His Thought, ere time began; counted its bones,
Which in His Book were writ. I say that He
From His own side in water and in blood
Gave birth to it on Calvary, and caught it,
Despite the nails, His Bride, in His own arms:
I say that He, a Spirit of clear heat,
Lives in its frame, and cleanses with pure pain
His sacrificial precinct, but consumes
The chaff with other ardours. Lords, I know you;
What done ye have, and what intend ere yet
Yon sun that rises weeping sets this night;
And therefore with this charge bind I your souls:
If any secular court shall pass its verdict
On me, your lord, or ere that sin be sinned
I bid you flee that court; if secular arm
Attempt me, lay thereon the Church's ban,
Or else against you I appeal to Rome.
To-day the heathen rage: I fear them not:
If fall I must, this hand, ere yet I fall,
Stretched from the bosom of a peaceful gown
Above a troubled king and darkening realm,
Shall send God's sentence forth. My lords, farewell!

[The bishops bow low and depart.

209

Scene III.—A Street in Northampton.

John of Oxford, Fitz-Urse.
Fitz-Urse.
They baited him two days: he's out of breath,
Not out of heart.

John of Oxf.
His mitred brethren first
Quaked for themselves. 'Twas brave to watch them later
When charge on charge was hurled on him alone
And no word uttered which impugned their order;
To mark them whispering first; then glancing round,
Like woodland creatures peering from their holes
When storms are gone. Ere long they basked and swelled
Like birds on late-drenched branches, sunshine-gilt,
And cleared their throats for song.

Fitz-Urse.
The king observed them:
He said, ‘They nought had grudged it had my voice
Vouchsafed them John of Oxford for their primate;
Ay, or yourself, Fitz-Urse!’

John of Oxf.
That's you, not Henry!
The storm they feared rolls back. At noon this day
We reach the Royal Customs.

Scene IV.—The Great Hall of Northampton Castle.

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
210

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.

216

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.

Scene V.—Castle of Northampton.

The King, John of Oxford.
K. Hen.
The lion's loose! I see it in your eye!

John of Oxf.
Sire, he is 'scaped. Last evening was his triumph:
The people, as he issued hence, knelt down,
Craving his blessing. In St. Andrew's convent
He chaunted nones, and vespers first; then dined,
Ranging the poor, the halt, the lame, the dumb,
Around his board in place of friends who fled.
When night descended, he took sanctuary
In the great church:—they strewed his rushy couch
Behind the altar, and with stinted rite
Sang compline low in reverence of his sleep
After his fight with beasts at Ephesus.
Reach he but France, from every turf he treads

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A knight full-armed shall leap, and rage against you.

K. Hen.
Guard all the ports! each castle, fort, and village:
Who favours his escape shall die the death!

ACT III.

Scene I.—Castle of Compiègne.

Louis, King of France, John of Salisbury, Llewellen.
K. Louis.
No need of pleading, sirs: I know the man:
I met him first breasting the tides of war,
And more admired, than joyed to see his banner
That still made way when others tacked and veered
On that large-labouring sea. In peace I found him
A loyal man, and honest, lofty-souled,
And resolute in his purpose. Never father
So loved, methought, a son, as he his king,
Who brave, but erring, plays this day a part
Not knightly, and not Christian. Sirs, he's hot,
And notes, methinks, but half of that great word,
‘Be wroth, yet sin not.’ Send me here your primate!
France loves the noble foe.

John of Sal.
May it please your Highness,
The primate stands resolved to light no flame
Betwixt two kings now happily at one:
He lacks not therefore grateful heart to France,
That great old land which shall not cease from greatness
While faithful to its God. He hastes to Sens.

K. Louis.
I love the man or distant or close by,

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Knowing him injured, and esteeming just.
Tell him no girl-lip in my France hath ever
Trembled more sweetly ere it owned the truth,
Than this old heart for joy when came the news
He trod our shores secure.

Scene II.—The Palace at Sens.

Pope Alexander III. in consistory with the cardinals. Becket, Herbert of Bosham, and other English priests. The Abbot of Pontigny.
Bec.
Most holy father, vicar of our Lord,
And ye the princely senate of the Church,
I have too long your patience taxed: I deemed
That, kings impugning, I was bound in honour
To impugn my proper sin at Clarendon,
And justice do to him who did me wrong.
His ‘Royal Customs,’ new compared with her
Whose years are from of old, have precedents
Which show but late their teeth. Abuse was borne
When tyrants played the kitten, not the tiger.
To make exception law, concede of right
Whate'er old time, enforced or heedless, suffered,
This were to wrest the past by fraudulent gloss
As heretics wrest Scripture.

The Pope.
Justly reasoned—
The Church might trust the king that served the Church
Like Charlemagne: Antiochus, or Herod
Shall have his right;—not more!

Bec.
I grant this also:
O'er-ripe corruption breeds foretold disease:
Church wealth abounds; it brought the hireling first;

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It brings the spoiler now.

Card. Will.
My lord archbishop,
Though young in the episcopate, is wise;—
‘Where lies the carcase, there the eagles flock:’
Noting that truth, his Grace would share Church lands
With nobles and with kings.

Bec.
My lord, not so!
In troubled days like these, if bandit barons
Fierce from the cup, rode forth o'er waste and wild
All unconfronted by the Church's barons
Like them large-landed, and with knights in train,
The landless priest should keep not his own skin.
We must not yield to wrong.

Card. Will.
I understand not:
My lord the archbishop late at Clarendon
Connived, he said—

The Pope.
Brother, forbear that theme!
The primate made the Christian expiation
In sackcloth and in ashes forty days.

Her.
My lord went later to a second council:
Of that he hath not spoken;—bid him speak.

The Pope.
What council?

Bec.
At Northampton it was held:
There, fooled no longer, I denounced those Customs
Whereof last eve I laid the list new-writ
For judgment at your footstool.

The Pope.
I have read them.
Six might be borne, though bad: the rest are impious;
Servile to kings, seditious 'gainst the Church:
Well skilled they all lead up to one—the worst—
They bar appeal to this most Holy See,
My glory which I yield not to another,

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The safety of the meanest of Christ's flock.
That great appeal removed, by secular hands
The arteries of the Church were knotted up,
Yea, and to fragments torn that sacred body
Whose life is in the whole. For this cause, God
Diffused among realms one single Church,
That unity might be its life's true pledge,
A thing too vast to be engorged by any.
That Church enslaved, what next? The Faith must vanish!
For on the Church's witness rests the truth,
And if that Church be stifled in the embrace
Of any fleshly realm—engulfed—absorbed—
Who shall receive her words?

Card. Will.
Yea verily,
From the whale's belly when the prophet speaks
Who hears is quick of ear.

The Pope.
The realm thus sinning
Ere long shall be partaker with the worm;
The blind-worm is its sister, and corruption
Its mother, and the dust its winding-sheet;
For power, earth-born, shall back once more to earth.
O witless kingdoms! scorn ye then that kingdom,
Forth from whose womb ye issued—still your stay,
The sole not born from mortal lust or pride;
The kingdom of one God in Persons Three;
The kingdom of the creed and of the prayer;
The kingdom of commandments just and wise;
The kingdom of the three great Virtues winged
Which gaze on heaven; the eight Beatitudes
Which walk the earth disguised, sowing God's joy;
The Sacraments, those seven great gates of God
Betwixt the worlds of spirit and flesh;—the kingdom
Wherein God's angels wait upon His poor,

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And all men share one good! Enough of this
My son, what saith your England to these Customs?

Bec.
I deem the people sound: gravely they love
Their ancient laws and immemorial freedom.
The nobles, save the noblest, back the king:
Their faith is flawless; but too lax their manners
To love a righteous law.

The Pope.
How stand your clergy?

Bec.
The poor are true, the rich are panic-stricken:
We have corruptions: I had hoped ere long
To have pruned the worst away:—they grow and flourish:
My sin has found me out!

The Pope.
Your sin? What sin?

Bec.
The king, who willed that I should be archbishop,
Was urgent with the Canterbury monks:
They raised no plaint; yet some denied their freedom:
More late I too had doubts. To break my staff
In danger's hour had been a coward's part:
The danger's past; this hour I lodge that staff
In the strong hand of Peter's successor;
Be his to make decision.

[The cardinals converse among themselves.
Card. Will.
Holy Father,
Methinks the island prelate judges well,
Yea, and with prudence of the lands most seasoned:
He speaks more sagely than King Henry's envoy
Whose Latin raised, last eve, a passing smile.
King Henry's wrath once lulled—

The Pope.
It shall not be!
The Church gives honour—this the world should know—

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To those who honour her. This English primate
Who chides himself for lacking angel's heart,
Witnessed a man's heart in the Church's war;
She shall not fail him. Fit he is for rule:
His valour proved it, and his meekness proved it,
Bearing from one that served him just rebuke
As Peter bare from Paul, and, since his time,
Popes many in this chair from humblest teachers.
Brother, resume your charge, and reign once more
Where reigned of old Augustine. For this fight,
Which shall not prove a flying season's sport,
All qualities are yours, save one—discretion.
Your life was long a life of courts, and camps,
And splendours of this world: at Pontigny,
A holier seat, find rest. Its reverend abbot
Will give you welcome.

Abbot of Pon.
Happy house is ours,
Welcoming a confessor!

Bec.
The fast monastic,
The ascetic garb, and labour in the fields
Teach me humility!

The Pope.
You shall not miss it;
Your sacred habit be it mine to send:
It shall be honest serge.

Scene III.—The Palace at Rouen.

Fitz-Urse, William de Tracy, Richard Brito, Hugh de Moreville, courtiers and ladies.
Fitz-Urse.
As good as dead!

De Tracy.
The three-days'-strangled dog
But fouls the air: his bark is heard no more.

224

Brito.
At Sens the Sacred College frowned upon him;
The Pope disfrocked him; forth he fled by night
To mate him with the antipope: to-day
He lies in dungeon bound.

Lady.
Some swear he's mad;
I think he's wedded.

De More.
No; though secularised;—
He keeps a Flemish farm.

Fitz-Urse
(to De Broc, entering).
What news from home?
Some three weeks since you won the king's permission
To drive that traitor's kin from England's shores.

De Broc.
I bide my time. When winter snows fall fast

That vermin brood shall face it.

[Departs.
Courtier.
Month by month
His hate grows stronger.

Fitz-Urse.
Ay, there's cause for that.

Cour.
The ravished Church lands and the heiress 'scaped?

Fitz-Urse.
And cause beside. On some pretence of law
De Broc drave forth Idonea from the house
Of Becket's sister, Becket three months primate:
The maid took sanctuary in Canterbury.
Instant they sued her as a royal ward;
Judgment against her went. The day had come,
And round the minster knights and nobles watched:
The chimes rang out at noon: then from the gate
Becket walked forth, the maiden by his side;—
Ay, but her garb conventual showed the nun!
They frowned, but dared no more. The king was wroth,

225

And yet in part amused. De Broc rushed in
With face storm-black. Henry burst forth in laughter;
The infection spread—we laughed till heaven's broad vault
Laughed back to hear us. Well, De Broc's my friend:—
There's reason good that hate in him should prosper.

Scene IV.—A room in the Abbey of Pontigny.

Becket, Herbert of Bosham, Llewellen, abbot and monks.
Bec.
Praise be to God, and praise to her, His daughter,
This abbey chaste and kind of Pontigny,
That washed the wanderer's weary feet, and found
A country for the exile! Reverend abbot,
I longed for this immersed in secular cares,
I longed for this throned on Augustine's seat,
A still retreat for penitence and prayer,
A quiet cell for books and meditation:
These things are mine.

Abbot.
My lord, your holy joy
To us is both a kindling and a warning:
Our life is hard; you teach us hardest life
Should be the sweetest. Heavenly is our hope;
Your joy reminds us heaven is round us ever,
Had we but faith to feel it. O my lord!
God grant that custom harden not in you
That sense to-day so tender; for, the edge
Of spiritual sensibilities made blunt,
Our spiritual world becomes a leaf frost-curled;

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Not all the songs of angel hosts can charm us;
We starve 'mid manna showers.

Bec.
I have put aside
The canon law, and study lore dogmatic:
It better feeds the soul. I see once more
Paris, that holy city!

Abbot.
Once 'twas holy.

Bec.
My mother, when I went to Paris first,
A slender scholar bound on quest of learning,
Girdling my gown collegiate, wept full sore;
Then laid on me this hest;—both early and late
To love Christ's Mother and the poor of Christ,
That so her prayer in heaven and theirs on earth
Beside me moving as I walked its streets,
Might shield me from its sins.

Abbot.
Men say your mother
Loved the poor well, and still on festivals,
Laying her growing babe in counter-scale,
Heaped up an equal weight of clothes and food,
Which unto them she gave.

Bec.
She trained my sister
To live an angel on the earth. Lo, there!
The red morn widens through the falling snows,
And the storm rocks your towers! What then? The spring
Once more will come and wake that earliest flower
Whose white is purer for its rim of green;
The thrush will sing again.

Her.
Your sycamore,
Large-leaved, once more will roof you as you read
Those psalms that shook the Solomonian Temple,
The Apostolic letters which made glad
The young and foe-girt churches of the Lord,
And, dearer yet, the Gospels whose warm lips

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Still kiss the Saviour's footsteps as He moves
O'er earth.

Bec.
And learn at last to be a Christian!

Monk
(entering).
The Holy Father
Has sent that promised habit to his Grace,
Likewise these letters.

Llew.
By Saint David, good!
The hood is filled with snow! The Pope knows well
Some heads are hot!

Bec.
I kiss this habit's edge;—
Herbert, what say the letters?

Her.
(reading).
‘At one blow
King Henry confiscates the primate's goods,
Farms, manors, castles, rents.’

Bec.
Now God be praised!

Her.
(reading).
‘His name is blotted from the service-books;
Lastly, his friends are banished, kith and kin,
The old, the young, the cleric and the lay,
Widows and babes in arms, four hundred all;
His sister, sickness-worn; the nun Idonea;—
This day they plough the bleak, snow-blinded sea,
Oath-bound to bear their wail beneath the gates
Of him their exile's cause, so named.’

Monk.
Hark! hark!

Another Monk
(rushing in).
A famished English host is wailing round us!
They beat the gates; they swarm into the courts;
They bear with them a woman three hours dead,
Demand my lord the primate.

228

Scene V.—Palace of the Empress Matilda at Rouen.

The Empress, John of Oxford.
John of Oxf.
Chiefly for pride his enemies arraign him:
Great madam, pride not always is a vice:
His pride is pride a son may well be proud of:
He says, ‘The daughter of earth's wisest king
Was greatest when she put her greatness off;
Is greater now, ruling through this strong arm,
Than if, as once, she from her standard shook
Dominion on the winds.’

Empress.
King Henry's daughter
Should know some policy. I have lived, and reigned,
Done much, borne much, and in these later years
Much striven to win that docile heart which makes
Affliction's fruit, experience, profitable.
My end, they say, draws near. My son well knows it,
And yet he comes not nigh.

John of Oxf.
His Highness grieves
He walked not by your counsel touching Becket,
Who, changed from better promise, plots and schemes
Made blind by lust of power, and greed beside
Of gold which perisheth.

Empress.
It may be so:
Much that I know of Thomas I mislike;
But what I know I know through men that hate him.
Such knowledge I distrust.

229

Chamberlain
(entering).
May it please your Highness,
A priest from Pontigny.

[John of Salisbury enters, accompanied by a veiled nun.
Empress.
You are come, I think,
Sir, from that abbey where the primate late
Of England, lives recluse?

John of Sal.
Illustrious lady,
The primate hath not ceased to be the primate.
In Oxford, madam, that religious seat
When learning, tested, mounts the grades of merit,
Men say it graduates. Virtue, like learning,
Boasts its degrees of merit, tried and proved:
Its university is wide as earth:
My lord the primate hath proceeded exile;—
The next degree, who knows?

Empress.
I honour, sir,
Your frank, yet grave accost: I honour, too,
What under that I note, a loving zeal
For him you call your friend. Scant friends to me
Your primates and your prelates proved in England:
My father king, they made their oath to me:
My father dead, they crowned revolted Stephen:
And though the usurper's brother, Henry of Winton,
More late my champion proved—that arm of might
Which waved my banner o'er the English realm—
He wrung from me concessions first; and, last,
Condoned his brother's crime and re-enthroned him.

John of Sal.
Madam, that time erroneous, and unblest—

Empress.
Back to our theme. I never loved your primate:
I deemed him for my son a dangerous friend,

230

Albeit an honest one. His elevation
I strenuously withstood. I saw in Thomas
One that, installed in Canterbury's chair,
Might shake a younger throne. I would your primate
Had let the Royal Customs be, and warred
Against the ill customs of the Church. 'Tis shame
To ordain a clerk in name that lacks a cure,
Whom idleness must needs ensnare in crime;
Scandal—and worse—to screen an erring clerk,
More fearing clamour than the cancer slow
Of inly-wasting sin. Scandal it is
When seven rich benefices load one priest,
Likeliest his soul's damnation.

John of Sal.
Scandals indeed!
And no true friend to Thomas is the man
Who palliates such abuses. For this cause,
Reluctantly he grasped Augustine's staff
Therewith to smite them down. Madam, the men
Who brand them most are those who breed the scandals:
The primate warred on such. The king, to shield them,
Invoked the Royal Customs.

Empress.
Some are old.

John of Sal.
Old by the Norman reckoning, not the Saxon.

Empress.
Sir, sir, I know that cry: my throne it cost me!
Penitent London, with the prodigal's zeal
Had spread to me its arms; rebellion's head
Lay bruised beneath my feet; one common joy
Beamed from the fronts of cleric, noble, serf:
Sir, 'mid this new-born zeal a shout arose—
‘The laws of good King Edward, not the Norman!’

231

I spurned that cry, and scarce escaped with life;—
Return we to those Customs. Some are old.

John of Sal.
Madam, at heart all sin is old as Cain.
What profit, lady, on the Judgment Day,
If kings that erred can say, ‘By lineal right
That sin to me hereditary came,
And I entailed it on my latest heir!’
Save—save your son!

Empress.
The king advised not with me.
How many are those Customs you condemn?

John of Sal.
Madam, sixteen are registered. Lo! one:
‘We suffer not appeal to Peter's chair.’
Madam, Christ said to Peter, ‘Strengthen thou
Thy brethren:’ later, ‘Feed My sheep and lambs.’
Shall England's Church, Augustine's child and Rome's,
Be sundered from his aid?

Empress.
Now, God forbid!

John of Sal.
The next: ‘No bishop shall depart the realm
Without the king's consent.’ Such laws in force,
Church councils are no more.

Empress.
That Custom's novel!

John of Sal.
The next: ‘No baron holding from the Crown,
Whate'er his crime, shall feel the Church's censure
Without the king's approval.’ Madam, Christ
Gave to the Church His keys, and bade her use them,
That virgin thus her precinct might remain,
Her feast unstained. The great exempt, the mean,
Must share their license.

Empress.
Sir, that Custom's old,
Yet should be rarely used, nor shield the sinner:

232

The Church is mistress of her sacraments;
Else were God's temple to a tavern changed,
Or den of thieves.

John of Sal.
The next: ‘When bishoprics
Are vacant, till the king hath willed the election,
Their rents remain with him.’

John of Oxf.
(rising).
May it please your Highness,
Humbly I take my leave.

Empress.
Sir, fare you well!
[John of Oxford departs.
These Customs are in part of recent date;
In part are ancient, and throughout are strained:
My son has erred, enrolling them as laws;
Not thus my father wrought—has erred besides
Requiring from the bishops pledge to keep them:
We kept, till now, rule and exception both;
They housed together in uneasy friendship:
Your primate errs, I think, in nobler sort:
Let him endure the earlier of those Customs,
So they remain unwrit.

John of Sal.
Madam, your words
Are truth and peace.

Empress.
I ever loved truth well;
Alas, not peace! Yet gladly, ere I die
Would I have portion with the peace-makers.

John of Sal.
Madam, speak then those words of peace once more,
But to your son.

Empress.
He listens not to me.

John of Sal.
There is one listening region in his heart:
It hears a whisper low. He loves his children:
There touch him! There I touched him—not in vain.

233

The Primate had renounced the chancellor's place;
The king's wrath burned: two days I strove to slake it,
The Great Seal lying on the ground before him:
None dared to lift it. Thus I spake at last:
‘Pride is the sin of kings: that pride infects
Their babes; drags down on them their parents’ penance.
Your grand-sire had a son—but one—Prince William:
He from his sire had caught the haughty heart,
And oft in childhood sware, “When I am king
These English boors, harnessed like ox or ass,
Shall cleave the ‘Norman's glebe!’” He ne'er was king!
God's sea-waves o'er him closed.’ While thus I spake
The prince ran by; his father's eye pursued him—
That hour his heart was changed.

Empress.
My son has left me.
Sir, there are sorrows greater than my sire's
Then when he wept his son: Henry's will live,
And to his father be as mine to me.
I must not more detain you, sir. Commend me
Unto my lord the primate.

John of Sal.
Royal lady,
This youthful nun—Idonea is her name,
And something of her history may have reached you—
Is missioned with a message to your ear:
The maid is true: may God protect your Highness!

[John of Salisbury bows low, and departs.
Empress.

I pray you lift your veil: that hand, I think,
Derives from ancient lineage, and like light

Shows on your sable garb.

[Idonea lifts her veil.

There's rest in gazing

234

Upon a countenance nor by passions marred,
Nor fretted by perplexities of thought.
You are older than you seem. You have known great grief,
Yet mourned nor husband dead nor lover false:
I deem you orphan.

Ido.
I have lost my parents.

Empress.
And recently, I think?

Ido.
My second mother
Expired but few weeks since. She was of those
Exiled of late—the primate's widowed sister;—
In the great storm she died.

Empress.
That churl De Broc
Outstepped his warrant.

Ido.
'Mid celestial choirs
One note is added to her song on earth—
The sweetest! I have heard it in my dreams,
And walked the long day after as on air.
Not now she sings alone the peace of heaven,
The bliss of saints; she sings their joy not less
Who share on earth the Saviour's crown of thorns.
What other joy like that of sacrifice?
Without it love were nought! In death she lay
A lovely shape that seemed to smile in sleep,
And placid as the snowy fields around.
Her brother raised this crucifix from her breast
And bade me bear it to you. ‘Let her wear it
In death,’ he said, ‘and it will bring her peace;
And, wearing it, let her win back her son,
Who walks in ways of death.’

Empress.
Flatterers, not friends,
Are now my son's advisers. I could wish
That late-born hatred 'twixt him and the primate
Changed to old love.

235

Ido.
O lady, deem it not!
The primate hate your son! How many a time
Have I not heard him praise the king's high heart;
His wit at years when others chase their follies;
His prescient thought; his knowledge won from all,
Drawn in with every breath; his wind-like swiftness,
Now here, now there; persistence iron-nerved,
Pliant at need, but with resilience still
Back-springing to a purpose of that height
Which makes ambition virtue. Shake from him
But two fierce passions which convulse his spirit—
Anger was one, he did not name the other—
No prince there reigns like him.

Empress.
The heart of Thomas
Was ever large; that know I well.

Ido.
Full oft
I have heard him cast the royal horposcope:
‘Let him be England's king, a child of England!
If all the world beside were his for realm
The solid centre's there; his home be England!
Let him sun out its virtues with his love;
Strike off its bonds; unite its rival races;
Restore old usages; replant the poor
In those huge forests now the hunter's spoil;
Be loved at English hearths, from those fair cliffs
England's white girdle, to her mountain thrones;
His name be honoured in her fields and farms,
And minsters gathering, as the parent bird
Gathers its young, the growing cities round them,
Honoured by all her brave, industrious sons,
So Christian-like in manners and in mind,
So grave in deeds, and yet so merry-hearted,
And in their plainness kind.’

Empress.
My son's ambition

236

Hath wider scope than England. Pass that by:
Who hopes so much for him must love him truly.
I hope; but fear. In Thomas he had found
At least an honest friend, and fearless friend,
A counsellor by private aims untainted.

Ido.
A mother's counsel—

Empress.
He revered it once:
That queen of his hath slain his reverence;
That woman with five realms and fifty devils,
Who witched him to her love. She loved him never;
And with her strident voice and angry eyes
Scared from her soon his heart. A faithfuller husband
Had been obsequious less. A wife! a wife!
You on whose brow virginity is throned
Are liker to a wife than Eleanor!
In that obdurate will, and lawless humour,
And shallow heart, despite all marriage bonds
Wifehood's true spirit had been impossible
Even had she loved him well! A married mistress
Let such be called. Prop me this pillow, child,
And put from you that wildered, frightened look.
My father—him I loved the most on earth;—
If wars I moved, if these thin fingers clutched
The sceptre all too tight, 'twas for this cause,
Because his hand had held it!

Ido.
Gracious lady—

Empress.
Come near, and lay your lily cheek near mine,
But touch not mine, or yours will catch its fever.
Fix now your eyes on yonder winding Seine,
Seen 'twixt the crowded city towers. Mark there
How yon unladen barks run down the river:—
So lightly issues forth our youth's emprise
Full-sailed to shores unknown. Mark next how slowly

237

Those barges cargo-burthened mount the stream
With painful toil, and oars that keep not time:—
Thus—youth gone by—fortunes fulfilled oppress us;
The tide against us works.
O what a beaming shape was he in boyhood!
The sun declines, methinks. Where lodge you, child?

Ido.
I know not, madam.

Empress.
Rest in yonder convent:
I built it, and they love me. Ere you sleep
Give me a prayer. Our faith remains; our prayer
Grows cold with age—at least the prayer of princes.
Maid, I have heard your name; seen you ere now,
But know not where. The Pope hath sent me missives,
Praying mine intercession with my son;—
He hath it; but in limits. Child, farewell!

[Idonea kneels, kisses the Empress' hand, and withdraws.

Scene VI.—The Abbey of Pontigny.

Becket, John of Salisbury, Herbert of Bosham.
Bec.
Still, by my soul, I think he may be honest:—
The fraudulent are the weak; the king, we know,
Is strong alike in body and in mind.

John of Sal.
But not, alas! in spirit. ‘Strength to bring forth.’
The lack of faith is oftenest lack of strength,
Of spiritual strength; lack, too, of spiritual courage:
Worldlings are all too craven to believe.
This king lacks faith, and knows not that he lacks it;
At times he's superstitious; never godly:

238

Seeing he sees not, and in blindness thus
Tramples his good. His youth had soaring aims—

Bec.
Still unfulfilled. We must have patience with him!
God gives to man his threescore years and ten,
Then patient stands to see if in those years
His snail-paced creature makes one hour's advance.
I counted patience once man's humblest virtue;
I grow to deem of it as marvellous most
Of all God's attributes. Return to Henry!
His forefathers, like him, when wroth, were mad:
His empire's vaster far than theirs; his pride
Proportionately entempested. I think it—
I hope it, honest error.

Her.
The spirit of Bernard
Hangs on this pure and hallowed air. Your brow
Was furrowed once; to-day it wears no frown:
His Holiness did well to send you hither.

Bec.
Leisure and peace, and communings with God
Above the glebe new-turned, when fresh and sweet
Rises earth's breath, and in the thicket near
The unimpatient bird-song, evening-lulled,
Is soberer than at dawn, must help, I think,
Attuned by daily offices divine,
And faces calm wherein the chaunt lives on
When psalms are o'er—must help to soften hearts
How hard soe'er, and softening them, to brighten.
Here learn we that, except through sin of man,
There's evil none on earth—not pain, not scorn,
Not death! Were Christ her law this earth were heaven.
Lo there! How well they name this stream ‘Serene!’
Serene it wanders from the chestnut forests,

239

Serene it whispers through yon orchard bowers,
Serene it slides along the convent walls:
It counts the hours;—mark, as the sun descends,
How those gold lime-stems burn within its mirror
In colonnade that scorns imperial halls!
This spot is surely holier than men know;
I think some saint died here!

John of Sal.
Yet here, even here,
The battle of all ages lies before us!

Bec.
Well know I that, my friend. This eve I mused
On war, with heart at peace.

Her.
Beneath yon beech
You read a book—

Bec.
Saint Anselm's. Holy souls
This book hath holier made; for me, a sinner,
It serves a humbler part. My lot is war:
But close beside me scoffs a voice malign,
‘Thy youth vain-glorious sought the tented field
From haughty stomach or from angry spleen;
So now; for nought thou rend'st the world asunder.’
In doubt I stand: then comes to me this book,
And saith, ‘Thy cause is Anselm's: who was he?
This was no brawler, and no voice of war:
This was a soul that in the cloistral shade
Had reached the sixth fair decade of his life,
O'erstepped the threshold of the eternal Sabbath;
This was a virgin spirit, one to whom
Man's praise seemed blot and blame; an infant spirit
Whose meekness nothing earthly could perturb;
An angel spirit that, with feet on earth,
Saw still God's face in heaven—
Certes he sought no battles; yet he found them;

240

Long agonies of conflict in old age,
An exiled man, or fronting hostile kings.’
The tempter leaves me; and my strength returns;—
But lo, Guarine, our abbot!

John of Sal.
Slow his step:—

Bec.
I had forgotten; but I know it all:
The king has sworn, unless they drive me hence,
To war on each Cistercian house in England.
Solve we this good man's doubt.

The Abbot
(joining them).
Alas, my lord—

Bec.
My kind and generous friend, we part tomorrow!
God wills it thus, not any earthly king:
We have had our rest. It nerves us for that toil
Which summons us once more.

The Abbot.
Pavia's bishop
And Citeaux's abbot fear—

Bec.
Draw near me, friend:
The morn your predecessor left this abbey,
Lifted, reluctant, to the pastoral charge,
I at Saint Stephen's altar said my mass;
And, offering my thanksgiving there— But no!
When next at Lyons, ask my lord archbishop;
He stood behind a pillar, and heard all.
Brother, farewell. God guard this temple well!
His Spirit be its light till Christ shall come
To judge the world: and if through Satan's fraud,
The wrath of kings, the madness of the people,
It suffer wrong, may He with His own hand
Once more uplift it to a tenfold glory
Which shall not fail or fade. Once more, farewell.

[All depart, except Herbert.
Her.
(alone).
Ten talents lodged in that large honest hand

241

The night before his consecration morn;
And then that Bleeding Hand closed down above them;
And, last, the inquest of those Eyes divine
Cleansing his soul! Our Thomas has not hid
Those talents ten in napkin, or in earth:
Therefore the red rose of that palm nail-pierced
Grows larger daily on his own. That's well!
Peter and Paul shall press that hand in heaven.
How oft he says, ‘My youth had much to expiate.’
How few or make or will the expiation!
It comes to him in measure without stint:
His place in heaven shall be among the crowned,
Not them that break her glebe.

Scene VII.—A bay window in the Palace at Le Mans.

King Henry, John of Oxford.
K. Hen.
I am ill at ease, good John. Some fate malignant
Drags still my fortunes from their starry way
And drowns them in the mist. His kinsfolk's exile
Blackened my name with Christendom's abhorrence;
The traitor's self, cast forth from Pontigny,
Stands stronger than before.
Of all my foes this man alone, this Becket,
Hath marred and dwarfed me in my own esteem;
And for that cause I hate him—and will hate.
It may be I was rash. My mother thinks so,
A politic head that never loved the priests:
She warns me to revolt not 'gainst the Church
Lest God should rouse my sons, in turn revolted,
One day to plague their sire.

242

John of Oxf.
May it please you, sir,
Sickness, a superstitious thing, and death,
Whose coming shadow casts a ghostly semblance
On commonest shapes, perturb her mind, else strong.
Likewise she listens to that nun Idonea.

K. Hen.
My barons in this battle with the Church
Serve me with soul divided. Becket's eye
Went through them at Northampton. Becket's legate:—
Ere long the man will hurl a Censure forth:
My bishops weep and wail to me to spare them
Nor dash them broken 'gainst the canon law:
The Emperor wanes; his antipope wastes daily:
The Pope is waxing, and he knows his power.
I have lit my camp-fires on a frozen flood;—
Methinks, the ice wears thin.

John of Oxf.
Retreat is none.

K. Hen.
I have resolved to send an embassy
To Rome. What say you?

John of Oxf.
Who shall be its head?
His Grace of York, or Gilbert?

K. Hen.
Gilbert! Gilbert!
Gilbert's a knave that slips between two stools:
His youth had soarings: if for each tenth step
He took in sanctity, or seemed to take,
He could have ta'en but one in honest dealing,
The man had reached a sort of crazy saintship:
For greatness of this world courage he lacks.
Nor York, nor Gilbert! Guess again.

John of Oxf.
I cannot.

K. Hen.
You are my choice. Make strong this embassy:
Save weakness every fault is pardonable:
Within this paper are your orders writ:

243

Concession—ay, but making definite still
Those lines which keep our citadel intact,
The essence and the pith of all I strove for.
Be this your chart.

John of Oxf.
Sire, if it please your Highness,
This battle, though a hard one, shall be gained,
Two things conditioned—freedom and a purse.
Cramp not my movements: definite rules and limits
I never loved. This day the skilfullest hand
In tracing such should weave but nets to snare
Your royal purpose, or a rope to choke it.
The serpent's finer wisdom helps us oft
No more than plain simplicity of doves;
The fox's vulgarer craft serves then our need.
Leave terms to me; but grant me wide credentials:
The Pope will claim both pledge and oath; I give them;
Their import others can decide more late
Wiselier than I; your Grace hath wits scholastic:
With such the royal conscience shall consult,
The Censures first recalled.

K. Hen.
I see it, John.

Your counsel's deep.

[A horn is heard.
John of Oxf.
The prince returned from chase!

[Prince Henry rides up with attendants bearing a dead stag, and stops under the window.
P. Hen.
Father, against your will or with your will,
This stag, my first, finds way to my old master.

[Gallops on.
K. Hen.
He's gone! 'Tis for that boy my soul I peril!

244

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

245

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,

246

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.

Scene IX.—A street in Southampton.

The Bishop of London, the Bishop of Salisbury.
B. of Sal.
Becket's awake!
A storm and in our teeth!—
Let us give blow for blow!

Gil.
My lord, we dare not!
That Censure, like a dragon's tongue in the dust,
Hath sucked us insects up! The best is cowed:
Who swaggered three weeks since, to-day walks softly
As one that mourns his mother. Bend we must;
I fling me at his feet.

B. of Sal.
Ill-favoured Fortune
Leaves us no choice. Wait we for better winds.

Scene X.—Abbey of St. Colombe, near Sens.

Becket, Archbishop of Sens, Herbert of Bosham.
Arch. of Sens.
Your king was fierce against you once, my lord;
At last his winter turns to spring.

Bec.
He changes:

247

His mind's conclusion varies with the times:
We have a better augury: his heart
Is good, and only on the good in man
The better can be built. The king, when crowned
At Gloucester, laid his crown upon the altar,
And vowed no more to wear it. Late when sick,
Deeming death near he chose for burial-place
No sepulchre of kings, but some poor church
Where slept a saint of God.

Her.
Meantime o'er England
The breath of God hath blown. The Royal Customs
Find not this hour an adulating tongue.
The bishops, vassals late of servile fear,
Through holier fear have burst that baser bond
And rush across the sea to pledge new faith.
Here comes a friend from Rome;—How stand we there?
If well, then all is well.

John of Sal.
(entering).
My lord, ill news!
The royal Swearer swore his way through all;
Let John of Oxford bear that name for ever!
The cardinals stared, the Holy Father doubted;
His doubts were vain; once more the Swearer swore,
Alternative was none save hollow peace
Or war without a foe.

Bec.
What swore this Swearer?

John of Sal.
He swore that compact with the antipope
Against King Henry charged was false as hell:
One youthful cardinal called him ‘Valiant Swearer;’
The rest sat statue-still.

Bec.
What swore he next?

John of Sal.
He swore the king should grant the Pope's demands

248

How vast soe'er, the Pope appointing legates
To adjudicate our cause. His brother envoys
Banned him as traitor: but they railed in English,
And so he took no harm.

Bec.
The Pope replied,
‘Long since, and unsolicited by man,
My legate I appointed; he hath judged;
Remains but this—to enforce a righteous sentence.’
Replied not thus the Pope?

John of Sal.
Alas, not so!

Bec.
Have they no names? those arbiters—those legates?

John of Sal.
The Cardinal William and the Cardinal Otho.

Bec.
The first, mine enemy declared; the last,
A doubtful friend. Victory in victory's hour,
Dries up, like Jonah's gourd!
This new commission supersedes the old.
How stands the Censure?

John of Sal.
Men in peril of death
Until their case is sifted are absolved.

Bec.
All Wales aflame once more, who walks not perilled?—
The Censure's censured, and my name is made
A laughter to the world.

John of Sal.
This pact is secret;
In name your powers remain.

[An Attendant enters with a letter for Becket.
Bec.
From Rouen's bishop.
(Reads)
‘“Trust not in princes,” wear they mitre or crown!
King Henry maddens with his Roman triumph;
He boasts the names of those who clutched his gold
Extols the Pope; to England hastes; reports

249

Your office cancelled. ’Write, good Herbert, write—

The freedom of speech used by Becket was as great as that tolerated by him. It is thus that he wrote to his envoy at Rome on the appointment of the two legates whose commission virtually suspended his own legatine authority. The translation is that given in Mr. Hurrell Froude's valuable history of Becket's struggle, p. 242: ‘If this be true, then without doubt his lordship the Pope has suffocated and strangled, not only our own person, but himself and every ecclesiastic of both kingdoms; yea, both Churches together, the Gallican and the English. For what will not the kings of the earth dare against the clergy, under cover of this most wretched precedent? And on what can the Church of Rome rely, when it thus deserts and leaves destitute the persons who are making a stand in its cause, and contending for it even unto death.’ In a similar tone is his letter ‘To all the Cardinals’ written on the same occasion. (Ibid. 248-250.)

‘Smooth speeches are not for the wretched, nor guarded words for the bitter in soul. May my bitter thoughts be pardoned, my wretchedness indulged. It is our belief, most holy fathers, that you stand in high places, as God's delegates, to put aside injustice, to cut off presumption, to relieve the sorrowing priesthood, and stop the way against its persecutors; to assist the oppressed and punish the oppressors. . . . Trust then to me, my beloved lords, . . . resume your strength, gird yourselves with the Word of the Most High as with a sword. . . . This is the Royal way, this is the way that leadeth to life, this is the way that you must walk in if ye would follow the footsteps of Jesus Christ and the footsteps of His apostles whose vicars ye are. It is not by craft, it is not by wise schemes that the Church is to be governed, but by justice and by Truth.’

This remarkable freedom of speech neither implied nor was supposed to imply the slightest want of reverence on the part of Becket to the Holy See. Pope. Alexander received it as meekly as Becket himself had received the friendly reproof of his faithful cross-bearer, Llewellen.

There's one at least in Rome whom I can trust,
One near the Pope—in my name write, and thus:
‘Once more Barabbas is released; once more—
No, no; not thus:’ I should not have forgotten;
His realm is Christendom's unmeasured orb,
That which it is, and that which it shall be;
To him earth's kingdoms are but provinces,
Revolted some, within his Master's kingdom.
He must be patient, lest, in raising one,
He spurn its neighbour, tottering. Woe is me!
I am an islander with narrow heart,
And England-rooted eyes. I see my country,
Her laws made null by modern usages,
Her Scriptures by traditions slain of men,
Her poor down-trampled 'neath a bestial hoof;
Yea, scandals worse than these—subverted virtue;
Honour, long-outraged, ceasing from its shame;
The salt o' the earth daily its savour losing,
Self-sentenced to be trodden down by men.
Write thus—they'll guess but little how my heart
Beneath the words lies bleeding—‘Holy Father!
The endurance and the hopes of years are lost;
Henceforth what malefactor fears Church censures?
Who rises o'er the fear of worldly censors?
Sequestrated are seven fair English sees,
Abbeys untold.’ Men bid me to be patient!
Tell them that time makes patience sin; the years
Work for the foe, not us.

An Attendant
(entering).
Two cardinal legates,
But late commissioned from the Holy See,
Desire my lord the primate.

[Cardinal William of Pavia and Cardinal Otho enter.

250

Card. Otho.
Please it your Grace,
In northward progress to King Henry's court
We make delay, zealous once more to see you
And learn your Grace's judgment of this time.

Bec.
My lords, your Eminences both are welcome.

John of Salisbury
(to the Archbishop of Sens.
Was ever change like that? But now his face
Was as a tempest's heart; 'tis now a heaven
Incapable of cloud.

Arch.
The princely nature,
The oppression past, regains its native calm
As by some natural law.

Card. Otho.
My lord archbishop,
A mutinous world uplifts this day its front
Against Christ's Vicar! Save this France and England,
I know not kingdom sound. The antipope,
Propped by the emperor—

Bec.
Name him not! That puppet,
Like frailer favourites of the Imperial fancy,
Shall have his day and pass.

Card. Will.
My lord archbishop,
We, uninspired, and shaped of common clay,
Can judge the present by the past alone,
And deem the Church sore set. Your English king,
Faithful till now, at last—we know it—wavers,
Nay makes his bargain with the antipope:
He was your pupil, through your wisdom wise;
He was your playmate, mirthful at your jest:
Your minstrel, ever singing of your praise;
From height to height he raised you. If he looked
For grateful love, a credulous hope is venial:
He says that you have raised two realms against him,
Flanders, and France.

251

Bec.
Your Eminence may hear
From sources surer than that insect swarm
Which buzzes round the tingling ears of greatness,
From Louis, King of France, that from the first
I counselled him to peace. Lord cardinal,
My sin is this: to stand a living man
Where welcomer were a corpse—
I, not his flatterers, love my king and serve him
Speaking that truth which not to speak to kings,
Who seldom hear it, is the crown of treason;
Traitors are they, not I.

Card. Will.
The king complains
That you reject as new his Royal Customs.

Bec.
I bid him to reject that vice of kings
Which strangles earliest laws by modern Customs:
My lord, that vice is pride; that pride is royal,
But not the royallest royalty—not the lasting;
I bid him but to fling from him that vice,
And reign a great, sane king.

Card. Will.
A text there is
That ‘we are nothing better than our sires:’
Why not, my lord, in general terms engage
That what past prelates to their kings conceded
Therein you'll stint him not? In days like these,
The royal hand a-dipping in your dish,
Some plausible pretence—

Bec.
I ever scorned
Your plausible pretence. My lord, that water
Wherein of old the unjust judge washed his hands
Then when the Just before him stood condemned
With crown of mockery and a reed His sceptre,
Is extant still on this our earth, and streams
Perennial from that fountain-head accursed
By him that day infected, through all lands,

252

The bath of service which would serve two masters,
The font where specious virtue finds again
Her sin original, and to Christ's foe
Is unctuously baptized. Barbaric I—
Child of the northern forest, not of plains
In balms and oil redundant. I long since
Have known this thing and scorned it.

Card. Will.
Lord archbishop,
That freedom which the Pope from you permits
I need not grudge. In turn I too speak plainly:
My lord, through you the Church is ill at ease,
All Christendom perturbed. Resign, my lord!
Taranto, Southern Italy's chief see,
A northern saint its founder, lacks a shepherd,
And spreads to you her arms.

Bec.
Lord cardinal,
The chair of Peter in its own good time
Shall judge these Royal Customs. When that Voice,
At times commixed with baser sounds, sends forth
Authentic and oracular o'er the earth
Its great award, there lives not who shall bend
A humbler forehead to that hest than I.
If that award should free from servile yoke
My country and her Church, then sit who will
In Saint Augustine's chair. If that award
Should throne the ill use, Augustine's chair dishonour,
I ask no see in Italy or France,
By Seine, or Tiber, or the Tyrrhene wave;
I claim a hermit's cell 'mid England's woods,
Or where her wave-worn rocks are desolate most,
Therein to sing my penitential psalms,
Poor vespers of a life ill-spent. Till then
I flee not from my post.

Card. Otho.
My lord archbishop,

253

We honour your great heart and manly speech,
And bid your Grace farewell.

[The cardinals depart, attended by all except John of Salisbury.
Bec.
(after long musing).
Is no one near?

John of Sal.
My lord, I stand beside you.

Bec.
In yonder cloudless heaven the sun still shines;
The birds sing still; the peasant breaks the clod;
Not less a change hath fallen upon the earth—
Fear naught!

John of Sal.
I trust that all may yet go well.

Bec.
I looked for trials—ay, but not from him:—
The good French king will be the next to leave me.
(After a pause)
All shall go well—but in another sort
Than I had hoped till now. My vow is made.

ACT IV.

Scene I.—The Palace of the Empress Matilda at Rouen.

The Empress, Idonea.
Empress.
Speak on, my child. Windsor's old oaks once more
While you discoursed of all your merry staghunts
Above me sighed, and kindlier airs than those
Which now I breathe with pain. Speak thou; I listen.
Had I but had such brother! Yours is dead:
Such loss means this, that he—none else—shall walk

254

Beside you still, when all save him are grey,
In youth unchanged.

Ido.
Not Time itself could change him!
That light which cheers me still from eyes unseen,
That wild sweet smile around imagined lips,
A moment's breathless, magic visitation,
Which falls upon me like a kiss and flies,
Are brighter not with everlasting youth
Than was his spirit. Mind he seemed, all mind!
In childhood, flower and weed and bird and beast
Nature's fair pageant to the eye of others,
To him were that and more. Old Bertram said
There lurked more insight in his pupil's questions
Than in conclusions of the sage self-styled.
He never had grown old!

Empress.
Boyhood might be
Fair as that girlhood poet-sung, and bright
Besides with action, courage, frank defiance
Conquering all ill, nor touched by maiden fear—
Oftenest its autumn chokes its spring. I trust
Your brother's youth was faithful to his boyhood.

Ido.
Faithful! O madam, how much more than faithful!
Vivacities of young intelligence
Were merged, not lost, in kindlings of a soul
Where Thought and Love seemed one. He trod an earth
The Saviour's; yea, and Mary's. All things shone
Beauteous to him, for God shone clear through all:
His longing was to free the Tomb of Christ
Fighting in Holy Land. Death's early challenge
Pleased him as well! ‘Thank God! that Holy Land
Was dear,’ he said;—‘more dear, more near, is Heaven!’

255

Empress
(after a long silence).
At twenty years—had my son died at twenty—
The last great day alone can answer that:
I did my best that time: I did it late
To stay that fatal war 'twixt him and Becket
Which inly wastes him like an atrophy—
Thenceforth you were alone.

Ido.
Not that first month:
Near me that time he seemed—a spiritual nearness
Impossible, I think, to flesh and blood:
Terrestrial life returned. 'Twas then I wept.

Empress.
Peace came at last.

Ido.
'Twas in a church, one even:
The choir had closed their books; but still on high
Rolled on the echoes of their last ‘Amen.’
Something within me sobbed, ‘Amen, so be it.’
I wept no more.

Empress.
Nay, nay, the dead have claims:
I love not those who cheat them of their due.
Child, grief is grief.

Ido.
I clasped it as God's gift,
And 'twixt my bosom and my arms it vanished.
Some wound seemed staunched. My body still was weak:
Wintry the woods: yet in my soul the more
God's happy spring made way. Slowly within me
My childhood's wish returned—to live a nun:
I deemed it first presumption; yea temptation;
It changed to hope. Faint was that hope, and like
The greening verge of some young tree in March,
When all its bulk is dark.

Empress.
With such a brother
Either you ne'er had stooped to earthly love,
Or love in you had lacked its earthlier part:

256

You hoped to be a nun: at last hope conquered.

Ido.
By hindrance helped. I seem to you unwedded:
Yet when the irrevocable vow was breathed
'Twas as a bride I felt—His bride, for Whom
Love grows divine through unreserved Obedience.
My brother too—while we were children both,
In loving, I obeyed him. Some there were
Who mocked me with the name of ‘Little wife.’
I weep him still; yet laugh at mine own tears
Knowing that he I weep is throned in heaven.

Empress.
A more than kingly lot!

Ido.
And yet how great
Is each day's commonest lot when judged aright!
Our convent looks on cottage-sprinkled vales:
Far, far below, now winds the marriage pomp,
The funeral now. O, who could see such things,
Nor help the world with prayer?

Empress.
What see you, child?

Ido.
An Eden, weed-o'ergrown, but still an Eden;
Man's noble life—a fragment, yet how fair!
My father, pilgrim once in southern lands,
Groping 'mid ruins found a statue's foot,
And brought it home. I gazed upon it oft
Until its smiling curves and dimpled grace
Showed me the vanished nymph from foot to brow,
Majestical and sweet. Man's broken life
Shows like that sad, sweet fragment.

Empress.
Life, my child,
In times barbaric is a wilderness:
In cultured times a street, or wrangling mart:
We bear it, for we must. 'Tis best in youth:
The weariness of life perplexes age:
The dust accumulate is worse than anguish:

257

We know not where the stain, but feel all stain.

(Looks at her long and adds)
O'er you some fifteen years may pass like five:
Die then if you are wise.
Ido.
O madam, madam,
God made man's life: it is a holy thing!
What builds us up that life? The Virtues, first;
That sisterhood divine, brighter than stars,
And diverse more than stars, than gems, than blossoms;
Diverse, yet each so wonderful, so fair:
The Virtues are our life in essence; next,
Those household ties which image ties celestial;
Lastly, life's blessed sorrows. These alone
Rehearse the Man of Sorrows; these alone
Fit us for life with Him.

Empress.
To you man's life
Is prospect, child: to me 'tis retrospect:
They that best know it neither love nor hate:
It hath affections, sorrowful things and sweet:
My share was mine, as daughter and as mother:
It hath its duties, stately taskmasters,
Exacting least in age, when, thanks to God,
At last the unselfish heart is forced upon us
Our time for joy gone by. It hath its cares:
It hath its passions—mine was once ambition;
And, lastly, it hath death.

Ido.
And death is peace.

Empress.
Then death and sleep are things, alas, unlike:
Unpeaceful dreams make my nights terrible—
Pale spectres of past days. Last night I seemed
Once more, as one whom midnight dangers scare,
To rush 'mid blinding snows with frozen feet

258

O'er the rough windings of an ice-bound river,
The shout of them that chased me close behind,
The wolf-cry in the woods.

Ido.
That flight from London,
Madam, was yours in sleep.

Empress.
Once more I dreamed:
Once more I fled through false and perjured lands,
Insurgent coasts of rebels vowed to slay me;
I lay within a coffin, on a bier,
With feet close tied. Fierce horsemen galloped past;
At times the traveller or the clown bent o'er me,
And careless said, ‘A corpse.’

Ido.
In such sad seeming
You 'scaped from Bristol.

Empress.
Worse, far worse, remained;
I heard once more the widows' wail at Gloucester;
At Winchester and Worcester once again
Above the crackling of the blazing roofs
I heard the avenging shout that hailed me queen,
And, staying not the bloodshed, shared the sin.
That hour of dream swelled out to centuries;
A year so racked would seem eternity:—
Our penance may prove such.

Ido.
Madam, your strength—

Empress.
A place there is which fits us for that heaven
Where nought unclean can live: else were we hopeless.
How think you of that region?

Ido.
Madam, thus:
That bourne is peace, since therein every will
Is wholly one with His, the Will Supreme;
Is gladness, since deliverance there is sure;
Is sanctity, since punishment alone

259

Of sin remains—sin's every wish extinct—
And yet is pain not less.

Empress.
There should be pain;—
Speak on; speak truth; I ne'er had gifts of fancy:
Truth is our stay in life, and more in death.

Ido.
'Tis pain love-born, and healed by love. On earth
Best Christian joy is joy in tribulations:
In that pure realm our grief hath root in joy:
'Tis pain of love that grieves to see not God.

Empress.
Here too sin hides from us God's face; yet here
Feebly we mourn that loss.

Ido.
So deeply here
Man's spirit is infleshed! Two moments are there
Wherein the soul of man beholds its God;
The first at its creation, and the next
The instant after death.

Empress.
It sees its Judge.

Ido.
And, seeing, is self-judged, and sees no longer:—

Readers of the higher poetry will hardly need to be reminded of a passage in Cardinal Newman's ‘Dream of Gerontius,’ by which, or by Saint Catherine of Genoa's beautiful Treatise on Purgatory, this line was probably suggested.

Yet rests in perfect peace. As some blind child,
Stayed in its mother's bosom, feels its safety,
So in the bosom of the love eterne,
Secure, though sad, it waits the eternal Vision,
The over-bending of that Face divine
Which now—now first—it knows to be its heaven,
That primal thirst of souls at last re-waked,
The creature's yearning for its great Creator.

Empress.
Pray that these pains may help me towards that Vision!
Till these my later years I feared not death:
Death's magnanimity, as death draws nigh,
Subdues that fear. My hope is in the Cross.

260

Whate'er before me lies, the eternal justice
Will send my pain, the eternal love console,
And He who made me prove at last my peace.
I hope so: at my best I think 'tis so.
Farewell! Return at morn; your words, your looks
Have brought me help. Be with me when I die.

Scene II.—Palace of Woodstock.

King Henry, John of Oxford.
K. Hen.
All's well; and then all's ill;—who wars on Becket
Hath January posting hard on May,
And night at ten o' the morn. That man regains
Whate'er we snatch: he's dangerous in retreat.
Three times I conquered; first with rotten aid
Of his own bishops in this realm of England;
At Rome through help from you when hope seemed gone;
Lastly at Montmirail. Now comes the change:
Those new-sent envoys bend their brows above me;
Impeach me with bad faith; aver the Censures
Conditionally only were removed;
Remind me of your oaths at Rome!

John of Oxf.
If humbly
Your Highness sues their leave to wear that crown
Bequest of kings who bowed not to the crosier,
The primate wins. So be it!

K. Hen.
Bequest of kings!
There's none of them that dared what I have dared!
They ruled a realm and shared that realm with priests:
I rule an empire; made and rule an empire

261

Which in the West shall one day pass in girth
That Frederick's in the East. How bind, how fuse it,
If every bishop reigns, a lesser king,
And every baron? To the dust with such!
My empire is an empire ruled by laws,
Not warring wills; but, mark you, royal laws,
The efflux of one royal will forth flowing
Like rivers through the land!

John of Oxf.
There spake a king!
To speed that great design, I, priest myself,
For many a year, not caring who cried ‘shame,’
Have given you help—that help a priest alone
Sagacious through the labyrinth still to scent
The tortuous trail of priestcraft, could have given.
Sir, at this hour you stand in dangers worse
Thrice than your dangers past. A cry goes up
Not from the poor alone. Your barons, vexed
By scutage tax in place of warlike service,
Fair lands flung wide to judges sent on circuit,
Sharp lawyers prying into privilege,
This day more hate you than they love church-lands:
The Pope grows strong, and with his strength his courage;
While Becket, sager for defeats foregone,
Comes hard on victory's goal.

K. Hen.
A synod, John—
At Clarendon I'll call it three months hence.

John of Oxf.
The bishops will be wary. Synods now
Spawn but disputes; the last was ill-attended.
Old Winton, summoned, answered that the canons
Forbad appeal from greater powers to less:
‘And I,’ he said, ‘now old and grey, have had
That greater summons from my Master, God,

262

Whose judgment I await.’

K. Hen.
Within your eye
I see a counsel glimmering. Speak it, John!

John of Oxf.
Your Highness needs some measure stringent, strong,
Some act to astonish foes, and hearten friends;—
Yet, venturing such, before you imminent
There looms an Interdict.

K. Hen.
And that were ruin.

John of Oxf.
Hear now my counsel! Crown your son, Prince Henry!
The boy will be your puppet-king;—the Pope
Must count him king in act. Work then your will
No Interdict strikes him, or his.

K. Hen.
'Twere hard—
To crown a king is Canterbury's right
By law and usage both.

John of Oxf.
That stands provided!
You willed to crown the prince when eight year old:
That day the Pope granted a dispensation,
And bade you choose your bishop. Canterbury
Lacked then, 'tis true, a primate. What of that?
A precedent was made;—the rest be mine.
Send me to Rome: the Curia seeks no triumph
The Pope shall learn that, grieved at errors past
You from your greatness have deposed yourself
To fight in Holy Land.

K. Hen.
The Pope consent!

John of Oxf.
He still may count that dispensation binding
For Popes are scrupulous ofttimes to their loss:
If, pressed by Becket, he should call it back
We act at once upon his earlier mandate,

263

And brand as forged all later. Should he send one
Unless 'tis publicly, in the face of day
Lodged in the bishops' hands, and thus made binding,
Such mandate they may spurn.

K. Hen.
Which fraud exposed,
Becket will launch his bolt.

John of Oxf.
O never, never
That bolt shall Becket launch—

K. Hen.
I keep him barred
From England's shores. Not less that bolt would scorch them.

John of Oxf.
We have reached the inmost kernel of my scheme.
Some six weeks since—so rumour ran—you stood
All day in stormy conference with your bishops:
At eve a stranger, gliding through the dusk,
Lodged in the royal hand an unsigned letter,
On reading which you smiled.

K. Hen.
Its words were these:
‘Better that Becket stood on England's shores
Than roamed the world at will.’

John of Oxf.
I wrote that letter.

K. Hen.
Craftiest of counsellors, I see your drift!
You mean—a dungeon. Henry crowned, the primate,
Or wrathful, or to win his pupil back,
Will hasten to this land.

John of Oxf.
Your Highness then
Hunting in merry Maine! A dungeon—yes—
Worse than a dungeon would be worse for us—
Sir, have no fear! The ship that veers advances:
We have made our losing tack; the good tack next.
[Queen Eleanor enters with her ladies.
The glory and the grace of female beauty,

264

Consummate, and mature, and crowned a Queen!

Q. Elea.
(advancing to the king with a parrot on her wrist).
Lo, here my new-taught mocker! Learn like him!
Speak, painted prophet!—‘Thomas is a fool!’

Scene III.—A wood close to the Abbey of St. Colombe, near Sens.

Herbert of Bosham, alone.
Her.
Since Nature, God's fair daughter, wreathes at times
The Church's fillet o'er her laughing eyes,
And, masked in livery of her graver sister,
Like her would teach us—learn we of her lore!
What means this flower? Men call it Columbine;
A tassel-toy. Yet, pluck, save one, its purples,
And lo, that remnant left puts on the dove!
Blossom to bird is changed! The meaning's plain:
Weed out your joys; cast off redundancies:
Deflower the pomps and shows of secular life;
Then at their core you reach the wingèd greatness!
The passion-flower itself—

John of Sal.
(arriving).
Hail, ancient friend!

Her.
Far-travelled seer, welcome from all the lands!
How speak they of our primate?

John of Sal.
Much, and ill:
The magnates of the State fear and dislike him;
The magnates of the Church admire yet fear;
With instinct from above the poor are with him.

Her.
'Tis ever thus! In Castle Rockingham,
When like a stag at bay old Anselm stood
The Red King glaring at him in lust of blood,

265

What help was his from prelate or from peer?
The council-hall was as a captured city:
The bishops hung their heads. Then from the crowd
An old grey man stepped forth, and knelt, and said,
‘Father, thy children bid thee have no fear:
The poor man's prayer is strong!’

John of Sal.
Not slacker of help
Pope Urban was to Anselm than, this hour,
His successor to Thomas. Herbert, Herbert!
The Church errs never; but her rulers err:
They lack the earth-wisdom of the secular lords.

Her.
The errors of the rulers of the Church
At times more serve her than their happiest prudence.
'Tis true they cause her trials:—what of that?
God sends her strength proportioned to those trials,
And makes her feel that strength is His alone.
Statesmen do penance here on earth for errors;—
A later, sterner Court shall judge their sins:
The Church wears sackcloth here on earth for sins;
The sinless error hurts her not: it breeds
Her pains of growth—no more.

John of Sal.
That slowness frets me!

Her.
Her slowness means her greatness. Statesmen play
Still the short game, because their time is short,
She that endures, the long one. 'Tis her nature,
Her nature, and God's law, not her design:
She cannot mass her total force in front:
Too manifold is it, and too deeply hidden;
Reserves she hath. Some tyrant's luckless craft
Forth drags them; and, his victory all but won,
He finds his war beginning; near life's end
Finds it once more beginning.

266

John of Sal.
Henry's craft
Deceives no more. Faith gravitates t'ward Becket;
But men of faith grow rarer.

Her.
God, O God!
How diverse showed those twain when first they warred,
And how that first diversity hath grown
With fleeting of the years! At Montmirail
That truth o'ershone me like a lightning flash!
Not then, as at Northampton, Becket towered
A terror to his foes. By all forsaken
He made no boast of self. In patient sadness
With neck a little bent and forward head,
Six hours he stood beneath that scourge of tongues:
He spake but this; ‘I swear to serve my king,
Saving the honour of the King of kings:
Who swears to more is Pagan and a slave.’
I saw that God had sent his soul that hour
A soul's supremest trial—Dereliction:
The fountains of the mighty deep of woe
Were broken up: the joy of Faith was dead:
Yet Faith itself lived on. 'Mid storm and darkness
He clung to God as limpet to the rock;—
He's greater than he was: the grace of Orders
Makes increase in his spirit.

John of Sal.
It were time
He sued the Pope once more.

Her.
He never sues him,
Though loyalest of his sons. He trusts in God
And broods not much on counsels for the future.
When late I spake of such, he smiled and said
‘There was an hour beside Saint Denys' tomb:
'Twas then you deemed our fortunes touched their highest:

267

It is not, friend, from thrones of kings or popes
Issues man's hope, but from the martyr's grave.’

John of Sal.
Herbert, the fault is yours—your fault—your folly!
One day you'll wreck us. Yes, the fault is yours!
Should Thomas catch from you—

Her.
No word from me
Hath Thomas heard to fire the martyr's zeal.

John of Sal.
Ever you praise man's life; yet ever muse
How, innocently, man may soonest leave it:
All which the juncture needeth you ignore.
Herbert, see that which is !—you gaze for aye
On pictures in the air.

Her.
Which they see not
Who, dazzled, watch that merriest house on fire
A world in dotage hastening to its doom.

John of Sal.
Am I a worldling?

Her.
Nay, but half, good John;
Worldling with heavenward aim.

John of Sal.
Herbert, you know
As little of the world as of the flesh—
Of each not more, I ween, than of the Devil:
Let the world be.

Her.
Things are there he knows best
Who knows them only slightly, and at distance.
Well, well, the world is fair—this day at least;—
Ay, and the life of man is worth the living!
So deem that bannered choir of youths and maids:
O how the heart springs forth on wings to meet them!
Glad hearts sing there! And yet they'll only learn
In heaven how fair a thing was earthly life!

268

Peasants
(pass near singing).

Hark, the Spring! She calls!
With a thousand voices
'Mid the echoing forest-halls
One great heart rejoices!

Hills where young lambs bound
Whiten o'er with daisies:
Flag-flowers light the lower ground
Where the old steer grazes.

Meadows laugh, flower-gay;
Every breeze that passes
Waves the seed-cloud's gleaming grey
O'er the greener grasses.

O thou Spring! be strong,
Exquisite new-comer!
And the onset baffle long
Of advancing Summer!

John of Sal.
Herbert, farewell! Within I seek the primate:
New treasons rise, which to forestall, the Pope
Sends mandates to my Lords of York and London:
The Swearer saw him late—that means a storm.

[John of Salisbury departs.
Her.
(alone).
John has great virtues—not the chief, like Becket's,
Since worldly men can understand them half—
Yet great ones since they take no stain from praise.
How kind is Providence! To one like me,
Strengthless, a Christian fabler more than Christian,
Flatteries of men, reverence from hostile kings,

269

And all the sleek lubricities of Fortune,
Had proved a flower-decked pitfall. For that cause
Such things pass by our sort.

Scene IV.—The Abbey of St. Colombe.

Becket, alone.
Bec.
Each day more clearly, like two mighty peaks
Of one veiled mountain, shine two truths before me:
My hope is not from England—that I learned
Deserted at Northampton: not from Rome—
Deserted when those legates, later missioned,
Cancelled my two years' work, and from me hurled
A penitent realm, returning. Not from France—
Deserted by her king. That hour, methinks,
I stood within Death's porch. That hour, it may be,
Some inmost ill, my soul's chief Tempter, died.
Twice was the victory from my hand down dashed
When all but won.
Immeasurably Rome helps me—needs she must—
Simply by being—merely by existence;
Help me by act she cannot. She doth well:
To invoke her now were base. But thou, my country,
The on-rolling centuries, whose fateful hands
Shall bind the purple or the death-robe round thee,
Engrain their deep-dyed tissue here, and now!
Thy son I am not less than Christian bishop:
Thy martyr, if God wills it, I would die.
[Llewellen enters.
A legate's powers are mine as yet: I use them.
These be the Papal mandates. Place them, friend,
Within their hands—the hands of York and London;

270

But when the eyes of men are on them set:
Your labour else is vain.

Llew.

It shall be done.

[Departs.
Bec.
There should have been no need to send those missives—
I must not think it. Once I was unjust.
The Pope sits throned upon the Church's tower;
Sees all: I fight below: my time is short,
And in it much to expiate. I must act.
(After a pause)
I strove for justice, and my Mother's honour;
For these at first. Now know I that God's Truth
Is linked with these as closely as body and soul.

Scene V.—Abbey of St. Colombe.

Archbishop of Sens, Herbert of Bosham.
Arch. of Sens.
Herbert! your legate must be told these rumours:
I trust he'll soon return. Your king is sudden:
The tidings of his march and victory reach us
Like runners matched. That slender, sinewy frame,
That ardent eye, that swift on-striding step,
Yet graceful as a tiger's, foot descending
Silent but sure on the predestinate spot—
From signs like these looks forth the inward man.
Expect grave news ere long. 'Twill task the legate;
Yea, though his greatness patent is to all,
'Twill task it sore.

Her.
So best! 'Twill task to crown it!
My lord, fear naught: I knew him in old days:
I saw that greatness hid, though thick its veil,
In every gesture of his soul and body.

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'Twas at Northampton first it rose to height,
Not when he cried, ‘I spurn your Customs new,’
But when he said, ‘I sinned, and sin no more.’
Nor ends it there: all this was prologue merely:
As o'er the petty pomps of earthly pride
Rises the heroic greatness, so in grade
Loftier, the saintly springs o'er that to heaven,
A Tree of Life whose leaves shall heal sick lands.
I shall not die till Thomas is a Saint;
And then we'll die together. Lo, he comes!

[Becket enters.
Arch. of Sens.
My lord, you have heard those rumours: they are grave.

Bec.
Your Grace is gloomier than your wont, and show
Less than yourself therein. My lord, that bishop
Who crowns, in scorn of great Augustine's right,
An English king, stands excommunicate.
I deem these rumours idle things. The Pope
To bar all danger, issued letters thrice,
First from Anagni, from the Lateran next,
And last from Alba, to our English bishops:
I saw no need for such.

Arch. of Sens.
A whisper stirs
That instruments consenting to that deed,
The sigil of the Fisherman appended,
Were forged by John of Oxford. Others say
He won the Pope's consent long since by fraud;
His fraud exposed, that sanction was withdrawn;
But to those instruments consent withdrawing
The English ports are closed.

Bec.

My lord, fear naught!
Remember Montmirail! There stood I sole
The good French king—nay, Rome itself against me:

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More late the Roman envoys saw the snare:
The King of France—I sought him out at Sens:

The account given by Canon Morris of the interview between Becket and the two kings at Montmirail includes much that is characteristic: ‘Before the conference began, St. Thomas was surrounded by his friends, who, almost unanimously, tried to induce him to make his submission to King Henry absolutely, adding no condition or clause, and leaving all the matter in dispute to the king's generosity. . . . Herbert of Bosham managed to thrust himself in amongst the crowd of great people to whisper a warning to the saint that, if he omitted the clause “saving God's honour” now, he would be sure afterwards to repent it as bitterly as he had done the omission of the former clause in England. There was not time for him to answer by more than a look when they were in the presence of the kings.’ Henry addressed Louis. ‘This speech produced a great effect. Some people called out, “The king humbles himself enough.” The archbishop was silent for a while, when Louis said, in a way which delighted the friends of the King of England, “My Lord Archbishop, do you want to be more than a saint? or better than Peter? Why do you doubt? Peace is at hand.” . . . The majority even of his own followers were led away by the current feeling, and were jealous of losing the restoration to their homes, which had seemed just within their grasp. As they were riding away after the conference the horse of one of them, named Henry de Hoctune, who was riding just before the Archbishop, stumbled, on which the rider called out, loud enough for the saint to hear, “Go on, saving the honour of God, and of holy Church, and of my Order.” Here again the Archbishop, much as he was pained, did not speak.’ The poor never forsook him. ‘As they went, people asked who it was that was going by; and when they heard that it was the Archbishop of Canterbury, they pointed him out to one another, saying “That is the Archbishop who yesterday would not deny God or neglect His honour for the sake of the kings.” Soon after all was changed. King Louis discovered that Henry had deceived him; and one of the Papal envoys, Bernard of Grammont, said to Herbert, “I would rather have my foot cut off than that your lord the Archbishop should have made peace at that conference, as I and all the others advised him.”’

With head bent low in heaviness he sat:
I deemed myself once more an exiled man:
One moment, and he knelt before my feet;
‘You, you alone,’ he cried, ‘that day had eyes;
Blind were we all;—except that youthful prince,
You have not a friend in England.’

(To Llewellen, entering)

Ha, good scout!
How sped you on your way?

Llew.
My errand failed.

Bec.
No fault of yours, good friend!

Llew.
By night I landed,
And sped to London in a beggar's garb:
Day after day, in banquet hall and church,
I strove to reach my Lords of York and London;
They knew the danger near and stood on guard:
At last I sought my Lord of London's house:
Slowly the bishop crossed the court in prayer,
And, reading, cast at times a sidelong glance:
I knelt me down, and raised the Papal missive:
He deemed it some petition; softly took it;—
Ere long he learned the truth.

Bec.
But not in public?

Llew.
The humbleness in his regard grew sour;
Yet wroth he seemed not: ‘From the Pope—a mandate!
Knowing the parchment forged, I read it not:
The Pope's authentic mandate is with us.’
He spake, and tossed it from him, and passed by.
In rushed the prince with mummers, and I 'scaped;
Else had my lot been hard.

Bec.
What next befell?

Llew.
At morn the king was knighted by his father,

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And crowned at stroke of noon.

Bec.
By whom?

Llew.
By one
Who little liked his office, Roger of York.

Bec.
His time will come. That coronation oath
At least bears witness 'gainst the ‘Royal Customs;’
The prince made oath to guard the Church's freedom—
Pray God he guard it better than his sire!

Llew.
That sentence from his oath was razed: the bishops
Who crowned him sware to keep the Royal Customs!

Bec.
(rising suddenly).
The mask is off! Thank God, 'tis off for ever!
(After a pause)
No more of that. Proceed! The prince was crowned.

Llew.
The rest was naught but jubilee and triumph,
Wine-fountains, pealing bells, the bonfires' glare,
The tournament, and charging of the steeds
In the ordered lists. High up, o'er-canopied
By cloth of gold, refulgent sat the queen;
Her ladies round her in a silken haze
Like the moon's halo round the moon, when night
On hills of Wales—

Her.
Let be your hills of Wales;
The feast? You saw it?

Llew.
Ay, in minstrel's garb:
The tables groaned with gold: I scorned the pageant!
The Norman pirates and the Saxon boors
Sat round and fed: I hated them alike
The rival races, one in sin. Alone
We Britons tread our native soil.

Her.
Both kings
Were present?

274

Llew.
There a merry chance befell:
King Henry stood behind his son, and served.
‘Give thanks, young prince,’ my Lord of York brake forth,
‘For ne'er till now—’ ‘Is it strange,’ the boy replied,
If by an earl's son a king's son is served?’
The great hall roared with laughter; high o'er all
His father's voice!

Bec.
How like my youthful pupil!
God bless the child! I am glad he wears the crown!
God grant him grace!

Arch. of Sens.
Grave tidings these, my lord!

Bec.
My lord, you take me back from morn to night.
The coronation's naught; we are hurt elsewhere.
That Oath to keep the Church in liberty,
That baptism vow of England Christian made,
That bridal pledge of England wed to Christ,
That sister link 'twixt her and Christendom,
Whose holy kingdoms weep henceforth her fall;
That oath, that vow, that pledge, that link all-blessèd,
The birthright of the nations ere their birth,
The talisman which 'mid their youthful struggles
Charmed them from fate and saved them from themselves;
Which still for suffering weakness found defence
In the great conscience of Humanity
Impersonate in God's Church and armed and missioned;—
Lo, where that Oath is dashed aside, cast off
Unceremoniously as a shifted robe
Or banquet-trencher changed, or rotted bandage
Foul from a wound and flung into the filth!
This thing no comment bears: too grave it is
For wrath or further speech. I go to England.

275

Scene VI.—A house in Freitval.

Leicester, Cornwall.
Leic.
This meeting of the primate and the kings
Must bring the end. Our king shall make or mar
In measure as the course he takes to-morrow
Be true or false.

Corn.
For years I have not seen
Such health on Henry's brow. That coronation
Which raised the boy to monarch, changed not less
His father to a boy.

Leic.
Cornwall! that deed
Was worse than questionable. Triumphant acts
Consummated at last and on the sudden,
Yea though of sin compact, with omens black,
Are not alone achievement but deliverance
And fire the heart like wine—
A load's removed; and, like a ship upspringing
Then when the o'er-blown mast is hacked away,
The spirit regains its port erect and rushes,
Though maimed, before the storm. Conscience expelled,
Conscience long labouring, and at last expelled,
Is next in strength to conscience crowned a king:—
Which strength this day is Henry's?

Corn.
Which? I care not!
Enough that strength he hath.

Leic.
Strength to waste strength:
He hath sold his great ambitions for a dream!
He might have conquered Scotland ere this hour:
We battle still 'mid marches bleak of Wales
Whose war-cries scare our sleeping babes. There's Ireland!

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He scarce was crowned when Adrian blessed that suit:
Three years ago, Dermod, her woman-stealer,
Knelt to our king. His hands were full of Becket:
He might have conquered Ireland in six months;
Conquered and raised; or else with continent heart
Trampled Ambition's letch and left her bloodless.
He found a baser path: he farmed his feud
To bandit barons: bade them cross the sea
And ravin where they listed.

Corn.
Wary and wise!
These barons soon will sorely need his aid:
Then comes his time!

Leic.
Cornwall! They'll win and keep;
Now cut a prince's throat; now wed a princess:
Our king is vowed and sworn to Law and Order:
They'll brook no law that stands betwixt their greed
And serfs, their prey. Fitz-Stephen laughed of late
While Dermod danced o'er true men foully slain;
They'll laugh more loud when Outlawry not Law,
And clans war-mad, secure to them their lands
Sans need of aid from England. I discern
A deep'ning cancer bred from Ireland's heart
Yet hollowing England's breast.

Corn.
Those Letters Patent,
'Tis true, gave licence large. I scarcely guess—

Leic.
'Twas granted half in hope, and half in fear:
This Becket-war offends the greater nobles:
He dare not trust them: Chester—Arundel—
Frown when they name him: Oxford calls him upstart.
Barons that starve and disaffected priests,
On such alone securely he relies.
His Customs! What were we, princes of England,

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If pledged to recognize as law and right
Casual concessions filched or bought, if tried
In hostile courts, and not before our peers?
Better be collared with the old Saxon ring;
Wear name of Serf and Thrall!

Corn.
In that we holp him:
Northampton's castle—

Leic.
Sir, we have our penance!
Young Harry's crowned! In guerdon of our help
We are ruled by babes! Good father-king, beware
You light a fire that soon will reach your roof!
From this beginning wars on wars shall rise.
The prince is proud; will scorn to reign, a puppet;
Discord will spread: first sons against their sire,
Brother 'gainst brother next will dash in frenzy:
The inveterate habit, hate, will prey within;
The wound, skinned o'er, break out again in blood
A river rushing on from reign to reign,
Till on the far, predestinate field at last
Plantagenet's great race makes shameful end
While some large-fisted boor or blear-eyed knave
Steals the dishonoured crown. If any Fury
Hates Henry's house, she fixed on it her eye
Then when this strife began.

Corn.
I hate this Becket;—
He is the Church's champion.

Leic.
Friend, you err:
I thought with you; but years have taught me better:
Becket was fanatic never though once proud:
Salisbury's old bishop says ‘he's dangerous,
Yet dangerous not as tortuous, but as simple
And passionate for the honour of his charge:
The State, not Church, that charge, he had not failed

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To vindicate her right.’

Corn.
I serve the king;
My thought ends there.

Leic.
Cornwall, I also serve him;—
Would I had served him with less servile service:
Our course hath scarce been knightly, nay, scarce Christian:
Our service hath disserved him to his shame.

Scene VII.—The ‘Traitor's Meadow’ near Freitval.

Llewellen, Fitz-Stephen.
Llew.
These princes and these prelates keep not time:
Each fears to come the first.

Fitz-Ste.
Lo, there our king:
The French king not. That ‘kiss of peace,’ withheld
From Becket, moves his spleen. 'Mid Henry's train
I see that beast, Fitz-Urse.

Llew.
Right opposite
Rides Becket; at his left Earl Theobald,
And Sens' Archbishop at his right.

Fitz-Ste.
The king
Makes speed to meet him, with uncovered head:
And lo, with what a zeal he grasps his hand!
Now they embrace. Was that the kiss of peace?

Llew.
Not so:—the king's horse swerved. Beasts have true instincts.

K. Hen.
The unhappy, sour, and anger-venomed time,
By craft of others clouded and confused,
Hath drifted past us; and once more shines out

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The sky of earlier days. Papal ambitions
Drave in betwixt us, Thomas!

Bec.
Sire, my king,
Those cloudy days at times had better gleams;
Their summer promise, like a witch's gold,
Still left me poorer.

K. Hen.
Nay, not promises!
Forward I ever was to speak my hopes;
Slow to pledge grace.

Bec.
Beneath Montmartre you pledged it:
The French king heard you and my Lord of Sens
And many a French and English knight beside.
I prayed for restitution of those lands
From Canterbury torn. It pleased your Highness
To grant that prayer; yet till this hour that pledge
Lies void as bankrupt's bond.

K. Hen.
This must be looked to.

Bec.
I made another and a weightier suit:
Those benefices dowered for God's high worship
And temporal service of the poor of Christ,
By sacrilegious barons clutched and sold
To trencher priests the Church's scourge and scandal,
For these I made demand. It pleased your Highness
To pledge your word that rapine should surcease:
Sire, for two little months the plague was stayed;
Then burst it forth anew.

K. Hen.
They hid it from me.

Bec.
The vacant abbeys, widowed bishoprics
Glut still the royal coffers.

K. Hen.
Some, I think,
Have gained true shepherds late: the rest shall win them.
I made delay fearing lest rash elections

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Might vex the Church's peace.

Bec.
To me and mine
Return was promised to our native land
Where rest the bones of them who went before us:
Your coasts are closed against us; and my friends—
Of hunger many, more of grief have died
In alien lands, and sleep in nameless graves.

K. Hen.
Now by the Saints of Anjou and of Maine,
England to you is open as this hand,
And hath been since that coronation-day
Which made your pupil king.

Bec.
Your Highness touches
Our latest wrong. The see of Canterbury
Hath privilege sole to crown our English kings:
My Lord of York usurped that dignity
Crowning your son.

K. Hen.
The Conqueror's self was crowned
By York's Archbishop, not by holy Stigand
Primate that day. My grandfather was crowned
By Hereford's bishop.

Bec.
Stigand had not won
From Rome the pallium, and the see was vacant:
Hereford's bishop served in Anselm's place,
An exile then for God. Anselm, returned,
Re-crowned the ill-crowned king.

K. Hen.
By Anjou's Saints,
Your bishops snared me. Let them pay the forfeit!

Bec.
My Lords of York and London are suspended:
May it please your Highness plainly to declare
If you confirm that sentence?

K. Hen.
I confirm it!
'Tis three times ratified. I tell you, Thomas,
I'll have the old times again. The princess scorned

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Unction not yours: ere long your hands shall crown her,
Your hands re-crown my son.

Bec.
Alas! the grief
To win all rights, all but the best, the dearest!
You make no mention of the—

K. Hen.
Name them not!
This day is festal: bring no cloud upon it!

Bec.
O would that I had never heard them named,
Ne'er seen them blazoned—

K. Hen.
Thomas, on English shores
All wrongs shall be made right.

Bec.
A morn there was—
Your Highness then had scarce been three months king—
When, in a window of your Woodstock palace—
The birds were singing 'mid the bowers below—
We read some history of pagan days;
It pierced your heart: you started up: you cried,
‘Thrice better were these pagans than your saints!
They loved their native land! They set their eyes
On one small city, small but yet their mother,
And died in its defence!’

K. Hen.
Again I say it!

Bec.
I answered thus; ‘They knew the State alone:
They played at dim rehearsals, yet were true
To truth then man's. They gazed with tearful eyes
Not on their city only, but that rock,
Its marble mother which above it soared
Crowned with that city's fortress and its fanes:
Beyond their gods lived on the “God Unknown:”
Above base mart and popular shout survived
The majesty of law.’

282

K. Hen.
'Tis true. Thus spake you.

Bec.
But added this:—‘Our God is not unknown:
In omnipresent majesty among us
His Church sits high upon her rock tower-crowned,
Fortress of Law divine and Truth Revealed,
Enthroned o'er every city, realm, and people!
Had we the man-heart of the men of old,
With what a spirit of might invincible
For her should we not die!’

K. Hen.
With tears you spake it.

Bec.
Then judge me justly, O my king, my friend,
Casting far from you, like a sundered chain,
A thought abhorred, an ignominy down-trodden,
The oppression of dead error. Say, shall I,
A Christian bishop, and a subject sworn,
Be pagan more than pagan, doubly false—
False to a heavenly kingdom throned o'er earth,
False to an earthly kingdom raised to heaven,
And ministering there high on the mount of God
'Mid those handmaiden daughters of a King
The kingdoms and the nations of this world,
Who gird the Queen gold-vested? Pagans, sire,
Lived not, though dark, in Babylonian blindness:
The laws of that fair city which they loved
Subjecting each man, raised him and illumed.
We too are citizens of no mean City:
Her laws look forth on us from rite and creed:
In her we venerate Man's Race Redeemed,
Which—cleansed from bestial, and ill spirits expelled—
In unity looks down on us, God's Church,
The Bride of Christ beside the great King throned,
Yea by His sceptre stayed. My king, my friend!
I have done to you no wrong! My many sins

283

Lay otherwhere. Tenfold their compt would rise
If, sane myself, I pandered to your madness.

K. Hen.
Thomas, you lack what only might convert me:
Could you be England's King, her primate I,
Your part I too would play!

Bec.
And O how nobly
And unlike me in fashion you would play it!
How petty my discourse hath been till now:
Sir, see these things as you will one day see them!
Two lots God places in the hand of each:
We choose; and oft we choose the lot least loved.
Least, though the headlong moment's whim or passion
Yields it a moment's crown:
The youth who slays life's hope in random pleasures
Knows not that deep within his heart—far deeper
Than all base cravings—those affections live
Which sanctified his father's home. Years pass:
Sad memories haunt the old man in his house,
Sad shadows strike the never-lighted hearth,
Sad echoes shake the child-untrodden floors:
A great cry issues from his famished heart—
‘I spurned the lot I loved.’

K. Hen.
My youth is past:
It had its errors; yet within my house
Are voices young and sweet.

Bec.
God keep them such!
Far better silence and the lonely halls
Than war-cries round the hearth. God guard your children!
If you have risen against the Church, your mother,
God guard them from revolt against their sire!
I spake not, sir, of errors in your youth:

284

A parable was mine.
The soul's revolt is deadlier than the body's:
Sir, that revolt is pride. In time, beware!
That God who shapes us all to glorious end
Proffered to you a glory beyond glory:
Your heart's chief yearning was a new Crusade:
Spurn not true greatness for a phantom greatness!
Your flatterers are your danger: them you trust:
You fear the Church: to her you owe your all:
From her you gat your crown.

K. Hen.
That word is true:
The Church and Theobald, and you not less,
Propped me at need. What then? A king perforce
Reveres the ancient ways.

Bec.
O never in you
Was tender reverence for the ancient ways!
Another mind is yours, a different will,
An adverse aim;—that aim I deem not base:
There's greatness in it; but your means are ruthless.
You love your children; there's your sum of love;
Yours are the passions which torment our clay,
The intellect and the courage which exalt it,
The clear conception of a state and empire—
Yet seen but from below. To raise that state
You crush all ancient wont, all rights and heights:
Your kingdom you would level to a plain
O'erlooked by one hill only, and, thereon
The royal tent.

K. Hen.
God made my heart ambitious.

Bec.
Then be ambitious with a high ambition!
You scorn the lofty daring. Lions nigh,
You hunt the forest vermin.

K. Hen.
Thomas, Thomas!

285

We kings should tender more our country's peace
Than any personal greatness.

Bec.
Royal sir,
Play not the sophist with yourself or God:
You, you alone have marred your country's peace,
Sapping her faith! Faith is a nation's safety.
Remember, sir, the ‘Battle of the Standard!’
The Scotch king, David, harried all the North:
No king against him marched: 'twas mitred Thurlston:
The freemen of the people round him flocked:
High in a chariot central 'mid that host
Hung the great banners of four English Saints—
Not Saints, Lord King, of Anjou or of Maine—
Cuthbert of Durham, John of Beverley,
Wilfred of Ripon, Peter named of York:
The cry of Albin swept the world before it!
Alone that chariot with its banners stood:
Back fell the astonished clans, and Carlisle's towers
Heard their last wail.

K. Hen.
Barbaric days, my friend!
Turn we to nearer themes. You deem me false,
I know, to friendship old. Impute that fault
To friendship's self. I looked to you for help:
I found my friend my foe.

Bec.
I ne'er deceived you:
I taught you from the first the Church's rights,
Therein through zeal offending your great mother
Who sleeps in God, and moving oft your spleen;
Taught you that nations were not ravening beasts,
Each with its separate spoil and will unquestioned,
But sisters in the bond of Christendom:
I told you pagan nations knew two laws,
Domestic—civil; Christian nations three,

286

Domestic, civil, apostolical;
Man, that begins a family, through grace
Dilating to the family of Christ,
His utmost limit, and his nature's crown;—
Three spheres engird man's life: I said that none
Might wrong the lesser, none affront the greater:
You knew my heart; from first to last you knew it:
You thought the world would change it; for which cause
You willed me primate.

K. Hen.
Ay, and curse that madness!
I spurn alike your parables and sermons:
I rule my land alone! No more of this!
(After a pause)
The tempest swept athwart me;—it is past.
Thomas, we're friends. Ere long we meet in England:
There you shall have your fill of rights restored:
There, 'mid your frowning foes, the kiss of peace,
That knightly and that kingly pledge of love
Which whoso violates thenceforth is base,
Shall seal our meeting. Louis more than once
Besought me to concede it. What remains
Claim from my son.

Bec.
Sire, ere a king's permission
Had made between a bishop and his see
Plain way once more, your coasts still armed against me
As citizens guard their house by night from thieves,
My course was taken and announced:—return
Once more to my great change.

K. Hen.
A festive nation
Shall meet you landing there.

Bec.
The first, De Broc!

287

He graces, ten long years, Saltwood, my manor,
And swears that ere this throat has swallowed down
Two English loaves, his knife shall wind around it!
Your pardon, sire; your wandering eye denotes
Your thoughts elsewhere.

K. Hen.
I sought a man I trust:
Would I could send my Lords of Sens and Rouen
To adorn your glad return! I need them both:
Not less a worthy guide shall grace your way,
My friend—a scholar noted—John of Oxford.

Bec.
I know him; and I trust him not. Whoe'er
Your Highness wills is free to share my journey.
I see what I foresaw, and see the end.

K. Hen.
Farewell, my lord: we meet ere long in England!

Bec.
Farewell! I think we shall not meet in England,
And therefore bless you, sire, in France, and now.

K. Hen.
Not meet?

Bec.
I go to England, sire, to die.

K. Hen.
Am I a traitor, Thomas?

Bec.
(after a pause).
Sire, not so.

ACT V.

Scene I.—Gilors.

John of Oxford, and a priest.
John of Oxf.
This to my Lord of London. Make good haste!
Ride day and night! This to my Lord of York:
From every town and hamlet send the tidings

288

That peace is made, and Becket reconciled,
The Pope contented well, the realm of France
Unanimous in joy.

Priest.
It shall be done.

John of Oxf.
Return at once. All letters for the king
Bring straight to me: I am his secretary.
The journey's costly: take my purse. Good speed!

Scene II.—Wytsand, on the Coast of Boulogne.

Becket, John of Salisbury, Herbert of Bosham, attendants.
Bec.
(standing apart from the rest).
I have tried all ways beside: remains but this.
(After a long pause)
The night comes swiftly like a hunted man
Who cloaks his sin; the sea grows black beneath it;
There's not a crest that thunders on these sands
But sounds some seaman's knell.
The wan spume racing o'er the death-hued waters
This way and that way writhes a bickering lip:
As many winds as waves o'er-rush the deep,
Warring like fiends whose life is hate. Alas!
For him, the ship-boy on the drowning deck!
He never knew the weariness of life,
The sickness of the heart, the sin, the sorrow—
Not thus I hoped to face my native land.
What means this sinking strange? Till now my worst
Was when I saw my sister in her shroud.
Death, when it comes, will not be dread as this:
Death is the least of that which lies before me.
This is mine hour of darkness, and ill powers

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Usurp upon my manlier faculties,
Which in the void within me faint and fail,
Like stones that loosen in some high-built arch
Then when the keystone crumbles—
I cannot stamp my foot upon the earth:
Where art thou, Power Divine, my hope till now?
To what obscure and unimagined bourne
Beyond the infinitudes of measureless distance
Hast thou withdrawn thyself? This, this remains;
Seeing no more God's glory on my path
To tread it still as blindfold innocence
Walks 'twixt the burning shares.

John of Sal.
(joining Becket).
Beware, my lord! I know King Henry's eye:
Go not to England. He would have you there,
The man who drave you thence.

Bec.
Our ends are diverse;
Not less my way may lie with his.

John of Sal.
How far?

Bec.
It may be to my church of Canterbury;
It may be to the northern transept there;
It may be to that site I honoured ever,
The altar of Saint Benedict. Thus far
Our paths may blend—then part.

John of Sal.
Go not to England!
I mingled with the sailors of yon ship:
Their captain signed to me: then, with both hands
Laid on my shoulders, and wide, staring eyes,
Thus whispered:—‘Lost! undone! Seek ye your deaths?
All men may land in England—none return.’

Bec.
Behold, I give you warning in good time
Lest anger one day pass the bounds of truth:
King Henry never schemed to shed my blood

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Dungeons low-vaulted, and a lifelong chain;—
That was the royal dream. Return, my friend.
[John of Salisbury departs.
Thank God, that cloud above my spirit lightens!
Danger, when near, hath still a trumpet's sound:
It may be that I have not lived in vain;
Let me stand once within the young king's presence,
Yea though the traitors should besiege him round,
Close as the birds yon rock—

Arch. of Sens
(arriving).
My lord, God save you!

Bec.
One kind act more; you come to say fare-well.
My brother, and my lord, four years rush back
And choke my heart! We are both too old for weeping:
I am a shade that fleets. May centuries bless
That house so long my home!

Arch.
The see of Sens
Has had you for her guest; our fair cathedral
And yours are sisters: be the omen blest!
Perhaps in future ages men may say,
‘Thomas of Canterbury, Sens' poor William—
These men, so far apart in gifts of grace,
Were one in mutual love.’

Bec.
My lord, in heaven
Not earth alone, that love shall be remembered.
Bear back my homage to your good French king,
That great and joyous Christian gentleman,
Who keeps his youth in age. Firmly he walks
The royal road—faith, hope, and charity,
To throne more royal and a lordlier kingdom.
Pray him to live with Henry from this hour
In peace.

Arch.
The king will ask of your intent.

291

Bec.
Tell him we play at heads. God rules o'er all.
Farewell!

Arch.
Good friend, and gracious lord, farewell!

[The Archbishop of Sens departs, attended.
Her. of Bos.
(arriving).
As good to go to heaven by sea as land!
Sail we, my lord, this evening?

Bec.
Herbert, Herbert!
Before thou hast trod in England forty days
All that thou hast right gladly wouldst thou give
To stand where now we stand. What sable shape
Is that which sits on yonder rock, alone,
Nor heeds the wild sea-spray?

Her.
My lord, Idonea;
She too makes way to England, and desires
Humbly your Grace's audience.

Bec.
Lead her hither.
[Herbert departs.
Herbert and John—both gone—how few are like them!
They helped me on rough ways. In Herbert still,
So holy and so infant-like his soul,
I found a mountain-spring of Christian love
Upbursting through the rock of fixed resolve,
A spring of healing strength; in John, a mind
That, keener than diplomatists of kings,
Was crafty only 'gainst the wiles of craft,
And, stored with this world's wisdom, scorned to use it
Except for heavenly aims.
The end draws nigh. Nor John nor Herbert sees it.
[His attendants approach with Idonea.
Earth's tenderest spirit and bravest! Welcome, child!
Soft plant in bitter blast! Adieu, my friends;

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This maid hath tidings for my private ear.
[The attendants depart.
My message reached you then, my child, at Rouen?
But what is this? Is that the countenance turned
So long to yon dark West?

Ido.
Love reigns o'er all!—
My father, who but you should hear the tale?
I had forsaken that fair Norman home
To seek my English convent, and those shores
Denied me long. The first night of my journey
There came to me a vision. All alone
I roamed, methought, some forest lion-thronged
And dinned all night by breakers of great seas,
Booming far off. In fear I raised my head:
T'ward me there moved two Forms, female in garb,
In stature and in aspect more than human;
The loftier wore a veil.

Bec.
You knew the other?

Ido.
The Empress! In that face, so sad of old,
Was sadness more unlike that former sadness
Than earthly joy could seem. Within it, lived
A peace to earth unknown, and, with that peace,
The hope serene of one whose heaven is sure.
She placed within my hand a shining robe,
And spake:—‘For him whom most thou lov'st on earth:’—
It was a shroud.

Bec.
A shroud?

Ido.
And other none
Than that which, 'mid the snows of Pontigny,
Enswathed your sister, as in death she lay
Amid the waxlight sheen. It bore that cross
I traced in sanguine silk before the burial.
This is, my lord, men say, your day of triumph,

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Christ's foes subjected and His rights restored;
Doubtless long years of greatness lie before you:
Perhaps for that cause she, an Empress once,
Knowing that triumph is our chief of dangers,
Sent you that holy warning.

Bec.
I accept it.
Spake not that other?

Ido.
Suddenly a glory
Forth burst that lit huge trunk and gloomiest cave:
That queenlier Presence had upraised her veil.

Bec.
You knew her face?

Ido.
And learned what man shall be
When risen to incorrupt. It was your sister!

Bec.
Great God! I guessed it.

Ido.
In her hand she held
A crown whose radiance quenched the heavenly signs;
The star-crown of the elect who bore the Cross.
With act benign she placed it in my hand,
And spake:—‘For him thou lov'st the most on earth.’
It was her being spake—her total being—
Body and spirit, not her lips alone.
I heard: I saw. That vision by degrees
Ceased from before me;—long the light remained:
A cloudless sun was rising, pale and dim,
In that great glory lost.

Bec.
My daughter, tell me—

Ido.
This storm is nothing; nor a world in storm!
The rage of nations, and the wrath of kings!
God sits above the roaring water-floods:
He in our petty tumults hath His peace,
And we our peace in His. Man's life is good;
Death better far.

Bec.
Was this a dream or vision?

Ido.
A vision and from God. The man who dreams

294

Makes question none if dream it be or real:
But when he wakes, well knows he that he dreams not:
Thus knew I that I dreamed not.

Bec.
Dream and vision
Are both God's heralds oft—

Ido.
To make us strong
In duteous tasks, not lull the soul, or soften.
That vision past, tenfold in me there burned
The craving once again to tread our England,
Where fiercest is the battle for the Faith.
Thither this night I sail.

Bec.
In three days I.
Ere then a perilous task must be discharged:
The Pope hath passed the sentence of suspension
On two schismatic bishops, London and York.
See you these parchments with the leaded seals?
They must be lodged within the offenders' hands—
Chiefly the hands of York—and lodged moreover
While witnesses are by. Llewellen failed
But late with missives charged of milder sort:
If this time he succeeds, and yet is captured,
Send tidings in his place.

Ido.
Llewellen's known;
Was late in England; all your friends are known.
Those prelates both are now, I think, in London:
On Sunday morning this poor hand of mine
Shall lodge that sentence, ay, and hold it fast,
Within the hand of York.

Bec.
The danger's great:
The habit of a nun might lull suspicion:
Not less, the deed accomplished—

Ido.
Can they find
Dungeon so deep that God will not be there,

295

And those twain memories which beside me move,
My soul's defence, a mother's and a brother's?
Or death? One fears to live, for life is sin:
One fears not death. Your sister 'mid the snows
Upon this bosom died: she feared not death;
While breath remained she thanked her God, and praised Him.
The Empress on this bosom died; death near,
She was most humbly sad, most sweetly fearful;
But, closer as it drew, her hope rose high,
And all was peace at last.

Bec.
Then go, my child.
You claim a great prize—meet it is you find it.
May He who made, protect you! May His saints,
Fair-flowering and full-fruited in His beam,
Sustain you with their prayers; His angel host
In puissance waft you to your earthly bourne,
In splendour to your heavenly. Earth, I think,
Hath many a destined work for that small hand;—
Sigh not as yet for heaven!

Ido.
I will not, father:
I wait His time.

Bec.
The wind has changed to south:
The sea grows smoother, and a crimson light
Shines on the sobbing sands. Beyond the cliff
The sun sets red. This is the mandate, child;
Farewell, and pray for me!

[Idonea kneels, kisses his hand, and departs.
Her.
(returning with the rest).
Bad rumours thicken—

Bec.
In three days hence I tread my native shores.

Llew.
With what intent?

Bec.
To stamp this foot of mine
Upon the bosom of a waiting grave,

296

And wake a slumbering realm.

Llew.
May it please your Grace—

Bec.
My friends, seven years of exile are enough:
If into that fair church I served of old
I may not entrance make, a living man,
Let them who loved me o'er its threshold lift
And lay my body dead.

Scene III.—Sea-shore at Dover.

The Archbishop of York, the Bishops of London and of Salisbury.
Gil.
The boors at Sandwich as his ship drew near
Noting the great cross archiepiscopal,
Met him breast high in the waves.

Joce. of Sal.
The women hailed him
The orphan's father, and the widow's judge:
From Sandwich to the gates of Canterbury
The concourse, as he passed them, knelt, and sang
‘Blessed the man who cometh in God's name!’

Gil.
De Broc and our retainers, as he landed,
Drew near, their armour hidden 'neath their vests,
Protesting with fierce brows against our wrong:
Becket thus answered: ‘With your king's consent—
Two hundred men together heard him speak it—
The Pope suspends those bishops for their sin.’
If Henry yields, all's lost.

Roger.
The king's consent!
'Twas he who bade us crown the prince his son!

Gil.
The game is played, and lost. The cards were with us—
A king magnanimous, and an angry queen
Foe of our foe; an emperor whose sword

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Warred on the crosier; and an antipope;
The barons with us, and the people cowed.
These things were for us; what was there against us?
One man—one man alone; not trained in schools;
No canonist; with scant ascetic fame;
A man once worldly warred on by the world:
My lords, this man, subduing his own heats,
And learning how to wait, hath to himself
Well-nigh subdued the realm. No course remains
This day, except to yield.

Joce.
We had these helps;
But policy had none.

Roger.
My lord, we had one:
A day ere Becket landed all was marred.
I at Saint Paul's had sung that morn the mass:
The king was standing with his courtiers round him;
Then drew to me a nun in black, and knelt:
She raised, in humble sort, a scroll. I took it.
She closed my hand in both of hers, and cried,
‘A mandate from the Pope with his command
To read the same aloud.’ The papal seal—
The Fisherman's—witnessed that scroll authentic:
Perforce I read it. 'Twas my own suspension!

Joce.
The nun?

Roger.
Through folly of the king she 'scaped:
The boy but laughed; then sent her to her convent,
Therein to plot and pray.

Joce.
Her name?

Be Broc
(who has just ridden up).
Idonea!
The accursèd veil hid not the hand! I knew it.
I knew it, and remembered well that day
When, as she passed me, by the primate's side
Issuing from Canterbury's sanctuary,

298

I said, ‘That small white hand shall dig his grave!’
From John of Oxford this! he landed late
At Sandwich with the traitor.

Roger.
Sir, I thank you.
(Reads)
‘The king has given consent to those suspensions,
And stands impledged to fill the vacant sees.
Wring, from this darkness, dawn! At once—unbidden—
In over-measure crown his six years' suit.
Send him six canons from each vacant see:
Let these elect the bishop he shall choose,
In his own chapel, yea, in his own presence;
The royal heart will then be wholly yours:
Make speed across the seas.’

Gil.
At once—we must:
I much misdoubt this youthful king.

De Broc.
Attend:
Where'er the traitor moves I hem him round
With horsemen fierce and free. Without a guard
He dares not move. Now mark! A guard's an army!
A larger army is that rabble-rout
Which dogs his steps. Scare the young king with rumours;
Wake up his spleen; tell him the primate's sworn
To abase a prince ill crowned.

Gil.
The prince, thus warned,
When Becket reaches London must repel him.
His heart will sink; the people's zeal will slack,
And wild tales rush abroad.

De Broc.
The self-same rumours
Shall fire the father-king.

Roger.
A sager counsel—

299

De Broc.
Sage heads and keen of England, and of France
That think ye see so far, I tell you this,
Within the hollow heart of all your sageness
A blind worm works! Farewell! Ere long you'll cry,
‘The strong hand of De Broc was worth us all.’

[He gallops away. The rest, except Gilbert of London, walk rapidly towards the harbour.
Gil.
(alone).
Somewhere—I know not when—I know not how—
I took, methinks, one step—one little step—
A hair's breadth only from the righteous way.
Where will this end? I know not. This I know,
A man there is I hate; his name is Becket.

Scene IV.—The Great Hall of the Palace of Bur, near Bayeux.

In parts of the hall tables are spread; in other parts the guests converse. At the higher end stand two thrones, on one of which Queen Eleanor sits. Cornwall, Leicester, the Bishop of Lisieux, De Tracy, De Moreville, Brito, courtiers, ladies, guests, and minstrels.
Q. Elea.
Be merry, lords; we keep our birthday feast:
Share ye the royal joy!

Cours.
God save the Queen!

Corn.
(to Leicester).
Five weeks that splendour strengthened on his brow;
Revolted feudatories made submission;

300

Flanders and France were leagued with him in love:
Then once again that inward grief returned;
New nightmares vexed his bed.

Q. Elea.
Set forth a dance!

Leic.
(to Cornwall).
Sir, the heart hardening maketh soft the brain:
He is not what he was. Of old, when wrath
Hurled forth its fiercest flame, his mind not less
Rushed up keen-edged within it and above it
A spear's length higher;—higher rose his will:
To-day his angers drag aside his purpose
Which oftenest finds its end in accident:
He hath done his own soul wrong.

Corn.
Greatness goes from him.

[The king enters with John of Oxford; they converse apart in a window.
John of Oxf.
He's hot, the goal in sight; his native airs
Dissolve that frosty caution exile taught him:
He said, ‘My lords of Rouen and of Sens
Save for that king had brought me home in honour:’
He plots; but plots not war. Leicester, I note,
Whispers: his zeal takes cold.

K. Hen.
What meant those letters?

John of Oxf.
His knave that blabbed his secret knew not that:
One was for Scotland's king, and four, he thought,
For princes rebel late in Wales; the rest
For earls in England malcontent.

K. Hen.
He dares not.

John of Oxf.
Doubtless he dares not; and that popular zeal
Which hailed him landing, was but madness old:
He plays a deeper game than treason.

301

K. Hen.
Ha!

John of Oxf.
The realm invaded, or those earls in arms,
He blows the Church's trumpet,—marches to London;
Commends himself deliverer of the king;
Recovers straight his pupil's childish love,
Or mildly, else, inthralls him.

Q. Elea.
Flavel, sing!
I dance no more.

Lis.
(to Leicester).
Her Highness is not pleased:
The man she hates hath triumphed. Year by year
She urged his Highness 'gainst my lord the primate;
Of late she whets him with more complicate craft:
She knows that all she likes the king dislikes,
And feigns a laughing, new-born zeal for Becket,
To sting the royal wrath.

K. Hen.
(to John of Oxford).
He never should have trod those English shores.

John of Oxf.
As freeman, never;—said I not as much?
The young king's council should have found those letters;
And dealt him traitor's doom. Please it your Highness,
'Tis not too late. My Lord Justiciary
Stands by the council's side.

K. Hen.
I dare not, John;
His death, though death by chance, would wrong my heart—
Imprisonment itself requires pretext.
There are that watch us: mingle with the crowd.

[John of Oxford departs.
Q. Elea.

What does our gracious liege so long in exile?

302

We languish in his absence, like poor vines
Here in this sunless North. He plots, no doubt,
With John of Oxford 'gainst our first of men,
My lord the primate. Once I loathed that man:—
'Twas folly! What if he contemns all women,
Man-like he fought his battle, and hath won:
The man that wins should wear! I ever cry,
‘Let him win all!’

[The king approaches and sits on a chair not far from the queen's throne.

Welcome, good king and husband!
I praise your friend! From England forth he fled
A debtor and a bankrupt. He returns
A Legate, trampling down your royal bishops;
I say, let him have all!

K. Hen.
Our queen is mirthful.

Q. Elea.
When Becket rose, a man was England's king:
Finding such charge too onerous for such manhood
He slipped his burthen, and a boy sits throned;
Wears a straw crown. Becket is king in substance;
Why not in name? Though secular kings—when saints—
Have spurned that siren, Power, he need not fear her:
Yon bird grows sleek on weeds poison to us,
So doth mine earlier favourite Punchinello,
And Becket, meekly wearing crowns of earth,
Shall merit heaven's the more.

K. Hen.
Our queen goes mad!

Q. Elea.
My southern realm remains. That sunnier half
Outweighs the whole;—and yet not thus you deemed,
Husband, that time when, Stephen dead, you sued

303

Your wife's good aid. I made you King of England!
My strong Provencal fleet o'erawed that day
Your English barons; barred them from allies:
That hour the work was mine; the jest was yours:
You thought it laughter-worth. My turn comes next!
Ye that have goblets, brim them! Mark this cup:
It flames with Albi's wine.

[Queen Eleanor rises and stands on the highest step of the throne with a golden cup in her right hand.
Leic.
(to Lisieux).
Behold her, Lisieux!
That smile is baleful as a winter beam
Streaking some coast wreck-gorged;—her hair and eyes
Send forth a glare half sunshine and half lightning—

Q. Elea.
A health, my lords! the London merchant's son,
Once England's primate—henceforth King of England!

K. Hen.
(leaping to his feet and half drawing his sword).
Woman, be silent!

Fitz-Urse
(entering).
May it please your Highness,
My lords of York, London, and Salisbury
Are come from England, charged with news not good:
My lord of London, worn, and somewhat faint,
Rests by the gate.

K. Hen.
Command them to the presence.

[The Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Salisbury enter, followed by Gilbert of London, low bent and leaning on John of Oxford.

304

Scene V.—The porch of Canterbury Cathedral.

Herbert of Bosham, John of Salisbury; near them attendants, waiting the arrival of Becket.
Her.
Here stood we on his consecration feast:
The long years dragged: to-day they seem but weeks,
A dove-flight of white weeks through vernal air.

John of Sal.
Herbert, you jar me with your ceaseless triumphs
And hope 'gainst hope. You are like a gold leaf dropped
From groves immortal of the Church triumphant
To mock the rough wave of our Church in storm:
I pray you, chafe at times! The floods are out!
I say the floods are out! This way and that
They come a-sweeping.

Her.
Wheresoe'er they sweep
The eye of God pursues them, and controls:
That which they are to Him, that only are they:
The rest is pictured storm.

John of Sal.
How sped your journey?

Her.
From first to last De Broc with wrong assailed us;
But on us, like a passionate south wind, blew
The greetings of the loyal and the just.
We rode two days. London's old tower in sight,
We met the citizens; for miles forth streamed they
To meet their citizen—for so they hailed him.
The poor came first; then merchants and their wives;
Next, clad in gold, the mayor and aldermen;
And, lastly, priests intoning Benedictus
Scarce heard amid the pealing of the bells.
On London Bridge the houses at each side

305

That topped with their quaint gables every arch,
Hung tapestries forth, their roofs o'erswarmed with gazers;
The ships were purpled o'er with flags that waving
Painted the crystal bosom of the Thames—
More swayed by popular ecstasies, it seemed,
Than shiftings of the wind.

John of Sal.
How looked our Thomas?

Her.
Passing, he gave the blessing with still smile.
One time he laughed: 'twas when a crazy beldam
Cried from the crowd, ‘Beware the knife, archbishop!’
Sighed once—'twas when he passed his parents' door
Flower-garlanded; the gayest in Cheapside.

John of Sal.
Where lodged he?

Her.
At my Lord of Winton's palace.
At eve he paced the gardens, by his side
Saint Albans' abbot, Simon. I was near:
I marked him draw the right hand of the abbot
Within his robe;—then heard, ‘My friend, my friend,
Things are not what they seem!’

John of Sal.
Saw he his pupil?

Her.
At ten next morning Joceline of Louvaine
Sent by that pupil rudely sought the primate:
The boy-king bade him back to Canterbury!
‘Shall I not barely see the royal face?’
Thus answered he—no more. If ever grief
Cast shadow on man's face, I saw it then.
He sat till noon had struck; then bade to horse.

John of Sal.
Your homeward way was hardest?

Her.
Hardest thrice;
The news had gone abroad, and many shunned us;
Aggression hourly wore a fiercer front;
More contumelious brows were on us bent:

306

Here lay the bridge a ruin; shafts assailed us;
The dyke was cut; the road in water drowned:
We heard, one time, the spleenful horn of knaves
That hunted in his Grace's woods: as yet
They dared no more. The Council sought De Luci:
The strong man thus made answer to their suit;
‘I am this kingdom's High Justiciary,
And not your faction's hangman. Four years since
I deemed the Legate wrought 'gainst England's laws,
And acted on that thought. The Legate banned me:

Richard de Luci ‘founded the Abbey of Lesnes in Kent, in honour of the martyr [Becket], and became a canon there after his resignation’ (Professor Stubbs's ‘Constitutional History,’ vol. i. p. 469).

I deemed his censures dealt “errante clave”
And put them from my mind. Now ye wrong him:
I run not with your pack.’

John of Sal.
Brave man and true!
How few know friend from foe! Now hear my tale:
Go where I might, except among the poor,
'Twas all one massed conspiracy of error,
Close-woven, and labyrinthed, millions in one;
Conspiracy, and yet unconscious half;
For, though, far down, there worked one plastic mind,
The surface seemed fortuitous concurrence,
One man the hook supplying, one the eye,
Here the false maxim, there the fact suborned,
This the mad hope, and that the grudge forgotten.
The lawyer wrote the falsehood in the dust
Of mouldering scrolls; with sighs the Court-priest owned it;
The minstrel tossed it gaily from his strings;
The witling lisped it, and the soldier mouthed it.
These lies are thick as dust in March—

Her.
Which galls us,
Yet clothes the expectant harvest fields with gold.

John of Sal.

I tell you, Herbert, that the coasts are guarded:

307

The forts of Rochester and Bletchinglee
Frown, soldier-crammed: the castles near the shore
Bristle with arms. Spies walk among the people:
De Broc spurs madly o'er the flat sea-sands,
Wine-flushed, or wan with watching; I saw him fling
A mailèd hand far back, and cry, ‘So long
As honest steel can carve a wholesome dish
No priest shall bid me starve.’

(After a pause)

Herbert! see truth!
One hope alone remains. My Lord of Winton
Though sick, arrives ere sunset, litter-borne:
That kingly countenance would o'er-awe the fiercest
Without his pastoral staff and fifty knights.
Ha! mark yon dust? We are saved!

Her.
That dust, good John,
Is more illusive than my dreams and visions
So oft your sport. Our hope is otherwhere.
The primate bade that old man house at home
A white head, England's pride. Hark, hark, a hymn!
Saint Stephen's feast comes soon. The good choir-master
Rehearses some sweet anthem in his praise.
There's not a saint in heaven dearer to Thomas!

THE HYMN.

Princes sat, and spake against me;
Sinners held me in their net:
Thou, O Lord, wilt save Thy servant
For on Thee his heart is set.
Strong is he whose strength Thou art:
Plain his speech, and strong his heart.

A man in a mask
(coming up rapidly).
A troop of horse makes way through the south gate:

308

Richard de Humet sent them—he who left
The king at Bayeux late.

THE HYMN.

Gathered on a thousand foreheads
Dark and darker grew the frown,
Broadening like the pine-wood's shadow
While the wintry sun goes down;
On the saint that darkness fell—
At last they spake; it was his knell.

As a maid her face uplifteth,
Brightening with an inward light,
When the voice of her beloved
Calls her from a neighbouring height,
Stephen raised his face on high,
And saw his Saviour in the sky.

A man
(disguised as a cripple, detaching himself from the crowd and joining them).
Flee while ye may!—the primate helped me once:
Unless he 'scape to-night, he sees not Tuesday.

[Rejoins the revellers.

THE HYMN.

Dimmed a moment was that vision;
O'er him burst the stony shower:
Stephen with his arms extended
For his murderers prayed that hour:
To his prayer Saint Paul was given;
The martyr slept: he woke in heaven.

[Becket approaches at the head of a procession.
Her.
Lo, the procession comes!

309

John of Sal.
The primate walks
As one that died, and rose, and dies no more.

Her.
I note in him one strength the world detects not:
The Church for others hath seven sacraments;
For him she keeps an eighth—the poor of Christ!
Lo there! As often as he gives them alms
He lay on them his hands.

John of Sal.
As one that loves them?

Her.
As one that, touching them, draws strength from God;
Wins more than he bestows. He stops; he stands;—
The exile gazes on his church again:
He kneels with arms outstretched, like holy Andrew
When venerating from afar his cross!
[As Becket enters the cathedral Herbert goes up to him.
Now die if thus God wills! I never spake
That word before. In thee Christ's Church hath conquered.
Now die whene'er God wills. We die together.

[Becket looks at him fixedly, and passes on.

Scene VI.—A Street in Canterbury.

Citizens.
1st Cit.
We are trapped and fooled. Death to the plotters! Haste!

2nd Cit.
And which be they?

1st Cit.
Who knows?

3rd Cit.
A saint is Thomas!
None questions that our primate is a saint;
We'd fight for him and gladly, were he sound:

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But sanctity, some think, hath crazed his brain;—
He comes not forth, as once.

4th Cit.
A knight from London
Saw all, and wept to tell it. Nine long hours
The primate, girt with French and Flemish hordes,
Besieged the young king's gates. Richard de Luci
Past hope arriving, quenched the flames just lit:
The rebels fled by night.

2nd Cit.
The father-king
Will rage at this.

4th Cit.
He'll rage that two months since,
When Thomas wept before the royal feet,
He suffered his return. Good John of Oxford
Pledged faith that hour for Canterbury's sons,
Whom as his own he loves.

1st Cit.
Who told you that?

4th Cit.
The same old knight, kinsman of John of Oxford;
And John, he said, saw all.

An old Knight
(riding up).
God save you, sirs!
Conspirators are ye fat and well-liking!
Which lies the loudest?

Several Cits.
Nay, sir, true men we.

Old Knight.
Sirs, ye are Saxons; Saxons speak no truth;
Else, wherefore hid they long like thieves in caverns
To keep their treasons warm? What beast are you
That with your foul hand stain my horse's neck
Which shone like glass?—Let none deceive you, friends!
They'll leave you later to the royal wrath
Which, roused by wrong, burned late three towns in Maine.
Beware of full-fed priests and haughty bishops!

311

The Conqueror sent you bishops staid and sage,
Most part from Normandy. They spake not English;
So vexed you not with sermons. What, my friends,
A man may go to heaven, yet hear not sermons!
That chime's my dinner bell! God save you, sirs,
And purge your primate's pride! A saint I deem him;
No doubt there's healing latent in his bones;
De Broc hath sworn to boil the proud flesh off them
To make the relics sooner serviceable.
Be wary, sirs; the knife is at your throat!

[Rides away.

Scene VII.—A room in the Archiepiscopal Palace at Canterbury.

The Prior of Merton, Llewellen.
Llew.
Three bishops had arrived the day before me
At Bayeux while the king and queen held feast:
They instanced with such art the primate's rage,
Compassionated so well the kingdom's wrongs,
Some drew their swords; the king looked round and cried,
‘Your counsel, lords?’ They answered, ‘We are priests:
Your captains and your peers shall best advise you.’
Leicester spake first;—'twas parable, not counsel.
Malvoisin next—a babbler. Bohun thus:
‘I know not what can deal with knaves revolted
But wicker-rope or sword.’ Then with dropped eyes,
Gilbert of London, rising, both his hands
Clasped on his breast, spake softly thus: ‘My lords,
Behoves us in this crisis to be meek

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Lest we too much inflame the primate's zeal,
Who, like a king, an army at his back,
In vengeance sweeps from shore to shore of England
To abase a king ill-crowned.’

Prior.
What answered Henry?

Llew.
There fell on him that frenzy of his race
Which threats the world with doom. I know not all—
The men that saw it saw as in a trance
And what they saw divulge not save in part.
The fire-cloud of that wrath burned out at last:
The Ill Spirits left him. On the rush-strewn floor
There sat he glaring maniac-like, the straws
Now kneading and now gnawing. That too passed:
The king was standing in their midst: his eye
Slowly he turned from each to each; then spake
With pointed finger, and with serpent hiss:
‘Slaves, slaves, not barons hath my kingdom bred,
Slaves that in silence stand, and eye their king
Mocked by a low-born knave!’

Prior.
None answered? Ha!

Llew.
No man. From that mute hall four knights forth strode—
Fitz-Urse, De Tracy, Moreville, Richard Brito.
At twelve last night they entered Saltwood gates:
De Broc attended them.

Prior.
The end draws nigh.

Scene VIII.—A room in the Archiepiscopal Palace at Canterbury.

John of Salisbury, Herbert of Bosham.
Her.
At Pontigny—the day before he left it—
Within the chapel of the protomartyr,

313

His mass, the earliest in that church, just said,
He knelt in prayer. The words were:—‘Thomas, Thomas!’
‘Who art Thou, Lord?’ he answered. Then the voice,
‘Thomas, I am thy Brother, and thy Lord:
My Church shall in thy blood be glorified,
And thou in Me.’

John of Sal.
That voice was but his thought!

Her.
The abbot then of Pontigny, just chosen
Lyon's archbishop, came to say farewell:
He stood behind a pillar and heard all.
From him I learned it. Thomas kept it secret.
Thank God! What comes to him shall come to us:—
There's naught to fear.

John of Sal.
Herbert, I love my friend;
But 'twas his triumph, not his death, I looked for:
For him I scarce should fear to die; and yet
I love not death. Ere comes that hour, there's much
To learn, to read, to do, and to repent.
—The solid earth shivers as ship in storm:
The ground is earthquake-shaken: shadows vast
Far flung, and whence we know not, o'er it sweep:
Fiercely the lightnings glare—

Her.
Meantime God's Church
Nor hastes, nor halts, nor frets, nor is amazed.

John of Sal.
What doth she then?

Her.
A smile upon her lips,
She stands with eyes close fixed upon her Lord,
Nay, on His sacred vestment's lowest hem,
To see where next He moves.

John of Sal.
Herbert, I wronged you:
A mystic, feeding on faith's inmost lore—

314

A dreamer, scanning mysteries in flowers—
I guessed not of your strength.

Scene IX.—Archiepiscopal Palace at Canterbury.

Edward Grim, Llewellen, monks.
1st Monk.
Saint Stephen's festival! Another Christmas!
Easter's our sunrise; Pentecost is noon:
But Christmas is the aurora, pure and white;
God's feast it is of innocence and snow,
The Maid and Babe, angels and simple shepherds;
'Tis Mary's week in winter, sweet as May:—

Llew.
What stranger's yon?

2nd Monk.
They call him Edward Grim;
Poor scholar late at Cambridge: long he yearned
To see the primate.

Llew.
Ill he timed his visit:
None wants him here.

Grim
(in a low voice to a monk).
Proceed, my friend, I pray you.

3rd Monk
(to Grim).
On Christmas night he sang the midnight mass—
Our Benedictine rite. At noon he preached,
‘Peace upon earth,’ his text. ‘We have not here
Abiding city, but we look for one;’
Thus he began: ‘Is this at war with peace?
Nay, this alone is peace: bereft of all things,
Then most our God is ours; and God is peace.’
Next spake he of the saints of Canterbury:
‘Ye have a Martyr likewise, Saint Elphege,
And God may give you, friends, ere long another.’
On all sides sobs burst forth, and wail was heard,

315

‘Father, desert us not;’—one little moment
With them he wept; and then in strength resumed:
Like some great anthem was that sermon's close,
The whole church glowing with seraphic joy.

4th Monk.
The man is changed.

3rd Monk.
Seldom he speaks; his smile
Is like that smile upon a dead man's face,
A mystery of sweetness.

Llew.
Lo, he comes!

Bec.
(entering with Herbert).
Herbert, my friend beloved, depart this night;
Consign these letters to the good French king:
And you, my chaplain, Richard, speed to Norwich;
In my name bid its bishop to absolve
All who in ignorance erred.

Her.
No power shall move me!
My lord, once only pardon disobedience!
We two have shared great dangers: let us share,
If so God wills, the last!

Bec.
I have had from you,
Herbert, great love! I claim this hour a greater:
Shake not my heart with any earthly passion:
More late we say farewell. Bertram, next morn
Seek out that aged priest we met at Wortham,
That kind old man who serves another's charge:
This deed confers upon him Penshurst's church;
Let it be his ere noon. My brave Llewellen,
To Rome, and bear these letters to the Pope!
That bitter word you spake at Clarendon
To him one moment Satan's blinded thrall,
Saved him when all but lost. Except for you
I had up-towered this day in Europe's face
Robed in the total greatness of my country—
Within, a soul undone! At dawn we keep

316

The feast of him who, sole of the apostles,
Died not for Christ. Perchance he loved Him most!
Perchance, so great a thing is love, that death,
The martyr's death, could add not to its greatness.
The Church boasts next her Holy Innocents,
Martyrs through grace, though not their own intention:
What saint makes beautiful the third day hence?

A Monk.
It lacks as yet its crown.

Bec.
We give it then
To Saint Elphege, martyr of Canterbury
Then when the Dane devastated the land:
His anthem I must hear once more. Farewell!
[He moves away, but stops for a moment before a window.
How fair, how still, that snowy world! The earth
Lies like a white rose under eyes of God—
May it send up a sweetness!

Scene X.—Canterbury Cathedral—the north transept.

John of Salisbury and a monk.
Monk.
Within his chamber we had sung our nocturns:
The office finished, for an hour or more
He stood beside the casement open flung
Despite the flying flakes. I heard him murmur,
‘They deck one day with gems the martyr's shrine—
Tears, tears fall seldom on a churchman's grave:
Is that a loss? Ah me!’ Again I heard him:
‘Herbert, my tenderest friend, and John, my wisest,
Both, both for me have lost their earthly all:

317

These must live on, bereft.’ More late he asked
If Sandwich might be reached ere break of day:
We answered, ‘Yea—two hours ere dawn.’ Once more
He stood forth-gazing through the winter night;
Then spake aloud, ‘Whate'er God hath in store,
Thomas will wait it patient in his church:
He leaves that church no more.’

John of Sal.
The last chance lost!

Monk.
At yonder altar of Saint Benedict
He said his mass; then in the chapter-house
Conversed with two old monks of things divine:
Next for his confessor he sent, and made
Confession with his humble wont, but briefly;
Last, sat with us an hour, and held discourse
Full gladsomely. I never marked till then
How joyous was his eye. An old monk cried,
‘Thank God, my lord, you make good cheer!’ He answered,
‘Who goeth to his Master should be glad.’

John of Sal.
His Master! Ay, his Master! Still as such
He thought of God; he loved Him;—in himself
Saw nothing great or wise—simply a servant.
Ere yet his earliest troubles had begun
I heard him say, ‘A bishop should protect
That holy thing, God's Church, to him committed,
Not only from the world but from himself,
Loving, not hers, but her, with reverent love,
A servant's love that, gazing, fears to touch her:
As Mary in the guardian Patriarch's house
Such should she be in his.’

Monk.
We little knew him!
We chose him; but with scanty love or trust.

318

John of Sal.
He hated rapine; warred on sacrilege—
Trod down abuses; then an outcast lived,
Outcast and exile. Had he reigned ten years
His name had been for aye ‘the Great Reformer.’
—Peace, peace! O God, we make our tale of him
As men that praise the dead!

Monk.
We who have stalls are summoned. Lo, they come.

[The monks of St. Augustine's enter the Cathedral; they advance to the chapel of the Chapter, joined by John of Salisbury and all the other Benedictines, and immediately begin vespers. During the singing of the psalms, a cry bursts out in the streets, accompanied by a rush of soldiers against the southern gates. The monks continue the sacred rite. A few minutes later a procession enters from the cloister, Becket walking last, preceded by his cross-bearer. Having reached a spot in the north transept, midway between the altar of the Blessed Virgin and that of St. Benedict, he stands still.
Bec.
Those who are monks must take their place at vespers:
Make haste, and join the Chapter. Ye are late.

[His attendants obey him; none remaining with Becket except the Prior of Merton, Fitz-Stephen, and Edward Grim. A few monks stand close within the western gates of the Cathedral. A rush of feet is heard outside, and cries of ‘Open the gates—save us!’

319

Monk.
Keep barred the gates—the soldiers once among us—

Fitz-Ste.
(coming up).
The primate bids you fling the portals wide:
He says a church must not be made a castle:
‘Let all my people in.’

[Fitz-Stephen returns. The gates are opened; a terrified crowd rushes in; solidiers pursue them; but on entering the Cathedral are overawed and kneel. Vespers proceed.

THE ANTHEM.

Behold a great High Priest with rays
Of martyrdom's red sunset crowned;
None other like him in the days
Wherein he trod the earth was found.
The swords of men unholy met
Above that just one and he bled:
But God, the God he served, hath set
A wreath unfading on his head.

Bec.
A martyr's anthem!

Fitz-Ste.
Yea; our great Elphege.

Bec.
Thank God! I wished to hear his praise once more.

Prior.
The church grows dark as night.

Fitz-Ste.
A deed more dark—

[The soldiers rise from their knees and stand round the gates.
Prior.
My lord archbishop, seek the sanctuary!

Bec.
My place is here;—farewell, my friends!

Prior.
In the cloister
I hear an armed tread: a postern's there;
Not many know it. Who be those four knights,

320

In sable mailed and fiercely onward striding
With vizors down?

[Fitz-Urse, De Tracy, Brito, and De Moreville enter.
Fitz-Ste.
I know their guide—him only:
De Broc it is—De Broc!

Bec.
Seek out, my friends,
That chapel where they sing—ye cannot see it—
Their rite completed, bid them chaunt Te Deum.

[The Prior and Fitz-Stephen depart; the poor scholar, Edward Grim, alone remains with Becket. The four knights arrive, but at first do not see the primate, who is screened by a pillar.
Fitz-Urse.
Where is the traitor?

Bec.
(advancing, and standing opposite the altar of St. Benedict).
Here I stand; no traitor,
But priest of God, and primate of this land.

Fitz-Urse
(after looking at him long).
God help thee, priest! At once absolve those bishops!

Bec.
The Church of God suspends them for their sin;
The king approved that sentence; thrice approved:
Two hundred heard him: you were of their number.

Fitz-Urse.
Never.

Bec.
I saw you, and God saw you there.

Fitz-Urse.
Remove those censures.

Bec.
You have had your answer.
Reginald, Reginald! Alas! light man,
That giv'st thine all for naught! If yet thou canst,
Repent and live!

Fitz-Urse.
He threatens—lo, he threatens!
Our lives he threatens, and reviles the king!
He'll place the realm beneath an interdict;—

321

Traitor! thine hour is come!

[He draws his sword, the rest close around Becket.
Bec.
Ye that would slay the shepherd, spare the sheep!
If not, I bind you with the Church's sentence:
That which ye do, do here.

Fitz-Urse.
In death itself
This man must dominate! Strike him down and slay him!

Bec.
(crossing his hands over his breast, and bending forward).
My spirit I commend to God Most High,
The prayers of Mary mother of my Lord,
And those two martyrs of the Church of God,
Saints Denys and Elphege.

[William de Tracy draws his sword, and aims a blow at Becket. Edward Grim intercepts it with his arm, which is nearly severed. The sword descends, notwithstanding, on the head of Becket.
Bec.
I yield Thee thanks, my Maker and my God!
Receive my soul.

[He falls forward on his knees. The second blow is struck by Fitz-Urse, and the third by Brito.
Bec.
For the great name of Jesus, and that Church
Cleansed by His saving blood, with joy I die.

[He falls forward on his face and dies.
De More.
O black and dreadful day! Earth reels beneath us!

Fitz-Urse.
The traitor's dead! He'll rise no more: rush forth!
And ever make your cry, ‘King's men are we!’

[They rush forth waving their swords and shouting ‘King's men!’

University of Virginia Library

ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

ENGLISH.

FRENCH.

ITALIAN.

WOMEN.

ACT I.

Scene I.—The Western Entrance to Westminster Abbey.

Scene II.—A House in London.

Scene III.—Palace at Rouen.

Scene IV.—London; House of the Chief Justiciary.

Scene V.—The Western Entrance to the Cathedral of Canterbury.

ACT II.

Scene I.—The Castle of Northampton.

Scene II.—Northampton; Becket's House.

Scene III.—A Street in Northampton.

Scene IV.—The Great Hall of Northampton Castle.

Scene V.—Castle of Northampton.

ACT III.

Scene I.—Castle of Compiègne.

Scene II.—The Palace at Sens.

Scene III.—The Palace at Rouen.

Scene IV.—A room in the Abbey of Pontigny.

Scene V.—Palace of the Empress Matilda at Rouen.

Scene VI.—The Abbey of Pontigny.

Scene VII.—A bay window in the Palace at Le Mans.

Scene VIII.—Vezelay.

Scene IX.—A street in Southampton.

Scene X.—Abbey of St. Colombe, near Sens.

ACT IV.

Scene I.—The Palace of the Empress Matilda at Rouen.

Scene II.—Palace of Woodstock.

Scene III.—A wood close to the Abbey of St. Colombe, near Sens.

Scene IV.—The Abbey of St. Colombe.

Scene V.—Abbey of St. Colombe.

Scene VI.—A house in Freitval.

Scene VII.—The ‘Traitor's Meadow’ near Freitval.

ACT V.

Scene I.—Gilors.

Scene II.—Wytsand, on the Coast of Boulogne.

Scene III.—Sea-shore at Dover.

Scene IV.—The Great Hall of the Palace of Bur, near Bayeux.

Scene V.—The porch of Canterbury Cathedral.

THE HYMN.

THE HYMN.

THE HYMN.

Scene VI.—A Street in Canterbury.

Scene VII.—A room in the Archiepiscopal Palace at Canterbury.

Scene VIII.—A room in the Archiepiscopal Palace at Canterbury.

Scene IX.—Archiepiscopal Palace at Canterbury.

Scene X.—Canterbury Cathedral—the north transept.

THE ANTHEM.