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;
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
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,
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,
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.
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;
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,
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
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!
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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,
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
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!
