stretched him at the foot of the altar, enveloped in the folds of his episcopal robe; while a last and needless stroke was inflicted, by Richard Brito, with such murderous force, that the sword broke in the skull; and then, their task completed, the four murderers, untouched, even unchallenged, mounted their steeds and departed.

It is melancholy to reflect, that so cold-blooded and atrocious a murder, should have received the approbation of writers who term themselves Christian; and that the assassination of an unarmed ecclesiastic within the walls of his own cathedral, by the cowardly hands of four mail-clad men, should actually have been exulted in, as a triumph of civil and religious liberty! Alas! for that worthy cause, if such were its triumphs. But perhaps scarcely a stronger instance of general ignorance of the character of this period can be found, than that which is afforded by the popular view of the contest of Henry and Becket. Of religious liberty neither could be the advocate, for no point of their contest had the slightest reference to it; but of civil liberty, Becket, not Plantagenet, was the champion; and the enthusiasm of the collected multitudes, which made his last journey to London one long triumph, was the grateful expression of popular feeling towards the great advocate of popular rights.

*

* A sufficient reason for the hostility with which most of the popular historians view the memory of Becket, may be found in their having derived their information respecting him, not from contemporary sources, but from those English chronicles, whence nearly every falsification of our early history dates its origin. The time-serving writers, both lay and ecclesiastical, of the eighth Henry's day, could not resist the desire of exhibiting the strife of the regal and spiritual powers, in a manner favourable

The four murderers of Becket, according to Hoveden, immediately proceeded to Knaresborough, where one of their number, Hugh de Morville, possessed a manor. There, what the civil law was inadequate to do,* was in some measure supplied by the ecclesiastics, and yet more by the feeling of the people. They were solemnly excommunicated; and that so often abused sentence pressed on them with all its unmitigated, but in this instance most. wholesome terrors. They were avoided by every one; nor would the meanest perform even the slightest office for them; and they actually preserved their lives from famishing by eating the fragments that had been cast away. At length the sentence of excommunication was reversed; and they proceeded to Rome, to receive, from the lips of pope Alexander, the decision respecting their penance: this was, that they should travel on foot in the garb of penitence to Jerusalem; and thither they went; where, after several years spent in solitude, they died, and were buried outside the door of the Temple t.

When the intelligence reached Plantagenet, the danger of his situation struck him so forcibly, that he rushed from the hall, and remained secluded from company five days. Recovering from the first

to royalty; nor did they, in an age which gave to Fisher and More the doom of traitors, dare to stigmatize the fate of Becket as a murder, lest the eighth Henry should imagine that a blow was aimed at him through the person of the second.

*Dr. Lingard considers that the reason why Henry took no steps against the murderers was, that to have brought them to trial for what was committed in compliance with his wish, would have been ungenerous, while, to have aided their escape, would have identified himself with them. + Vide Hoveden.

shock, he sent a most submissive letter to the pope, disclaiming all connivance with the murderers, and declaring that, when he heard that the archbishop was slain," he sorrowed vehemently." It was not an Innocent, who at this period wielded the thunders of the Vatican; the sovereign pontiff, therefore, after some delay, thought proper to be satisfied with even the pretended sorrow of a Plantagenet, and he merely imposed the easy penance of a large pecuniary donation in aid of the holy war.

But although Henry in this arrangement succeeded so much better than his fears had foreboded, evil fortune, which, in the belief of the cloister, was the vengeance of Heaven for the murder of their great patron, tracked his footsteps even to the grave. His ancient enemy, Louis, (with whom he had never been thoroughly reconciled, although his eldest son had married the daughter of that king,) indignant that the promised coronation of his daughter had been so long postponed, invaded Normandy. Nor did the precipitate assent of Henry to this, which without any apparent reason he had so long refused, reconcile the king of France, who in the meanwhile waited but for a more convenient time to recommence hostilities. This time soon arrived. In 1173, Henry for the last time, although sixteen years were to elapse ere his death, spent his Christmas at Chinon, in the midst of his family, and then, in company with his eldest son, made a progress through his continental dominions. During this journey, an arrangement having been completed with the earl of Savoy for contracting

his eldest daughter Alice with Henry's youngest son John, he proposed that the castles of Chinon and Mirabeau, and the tower of London, should be settled on this his favourite son. To this proposal the eldest son very naturally objected, and he vehemently remonstrated against the injustice of the youngest son being put in possession of the three most important fortresses of Anjou, Normandy, and England; while he, the heir to the crown, the already twice-crowned king,* together with his wife, daughter of the king of France, had not an acre of land they could call their own. To this remonstrance Plantagenet refused to listen, and he haughtily rejected the request of young Henry, that either England, Normandy, or Anjou, might be assigned to him. Indignant at the interests of his youngest brother, a child only eight years of age, being thus unjustly preferred to his, young Henry quitted the castle in which he, together with his father, were sojourning; and from the circumstance of his departure having taken place by night, from its being always termed a flight, and from the remark of Gervase of Canterbury, that it was so secretly ar

* The historian of Leicestershire, in a masterly exposure of Henry's conduct, both toward Becket, and toward his sons, remarks (and he quotes Pere Daniel as his authority), that the reason which induced Henry, in the first instance, to cause his son to be crowned, was not parental affection, but in order to obviate the inconveniences which might arise, had the pope, in supporting Becket, laid the king under interdict. In this case the king's son could have carried on the government until the father might resume it.

+ Hoveden, who seems remarkably bitter against young Henry, remarks that "this was done by counsel of the king of France and the earls and barons of England and Normandy, who hated his father." Without seeking farther for reasons to account for Plantagenet's harshness to young Henry, it seems evident from this, that he was a favourite of the nation; a circumstance quite sufficient to account for the father's hostility.

ranged and carried into effect, that it was scarcely known to the warders, it seems not improbable that it was not merely the escape of a son from his father, but that of a prisoner from his jailer.

The flight of young Henry was followed by that of his mother and his two younger brothers, Richard and Geoffrey; while in the defection of many of his English and Norman barons, Plantagenet at length saw his danger, and he forthwith commenced the most active and vigorous measures. He summoned a large army to the field, among which were twenty thousand mercenaries, of various nations, afterwards known by the general name of Brabanters s; and anxious to call the spiritual power to his aid, he sent a dolorous letter to the pope, in which he quotes scripture with admirable inappropriateness; he also requested his Norman bishops to address a pastoral epistle to his fugitive queen, urging her, on pain of excommunication, to return with her sons to him.* This letter, which was written by Peter of Blois, and which is the 154th in the collection, is very respectful in its style,-it purports to be "from the archbishop of Rouen and his suffra

* The defection of Plantagenet's three sons is, in most of the contemporary chronicles, attributed to the instigation of Elinor. This was very probably the case; and indignation at the attachment of Henry to that new and beautiful mistress,' (so celebrated in ballad lore), and mortification at viewing the unjust treatment of her eldest son, will easily supply reasons for her conduct. That she herself had either received. harsh treatment from Plantagenet, or feared it if she returned, is evident from a passage in the subsequent letter, which assures her, most vainly, of her perfect safety. That she had been already placed under strict surveillance, at least, seems probable from a passage in Gervase, that represents her departing, "having changed her female dress." This writer calls her "an exceedingly wise woman, and of noble race, but inconstant."

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