English liberty: the tradition of rebellion, America as it could have been, and America as it should be

This young, bastard-born upstart from the West Indies, who detested slavery and upheld aristocratic principles, is in danger of being wiped out of our currency. He also features heavily in today's entry.

Dear friends,

We've just finished the long haul from Texas, relocating to a small township outside of Philadelphia, that once great city and first capital of these United States. Here in our new home, the hour grows late, everyone else is fast asleep for the moment, and my restless mind turns to the recent incidents in Charleston and Washington DC, the story of this nation's founding, and where to go from here.

I've always subscribed to an idea that vexes my friends on both the traditionalist and progressivist poles of the political spectrum (that is, those who believe the American Revolution was a mistake, and those who believe it didn't go far enough): that our declaration of independence from mother England, whatever path it ultimately put us on, wasn't meant to be a clean break from the rest of western civilization, a radical experiment in democracy, or the earth-shattering new beginning that we, and apparently people of other nations, have convinced ourselves it was. No, I've understood it to merely be another chapter in the story of English government; part of a tradition that extends back to the Anglo-Saxon age of our mother country's history. 

The "Saxon Myth"

Those of you who are enthusiasts of early American history know that mine is hardly an original idea: indeed, most of the Founding Fathers believed it to one degree or another. In short, it's the belief that the Saxons of early medieval England (prior to the Norman Conquest of 1066) were a fiercely independent people that jealously guarded their liberties. Their tribal leaders regularly convened at the Witenagemot, which secured the common law of the realm, elected their kings, and even deposed them as needed. Even after the Conquest, the Saxon tradition ultimately prevailed by bringing King John to heel in 1215, forcing him to sign Magna Carta. And, of course, the witenagemot of old formed the foundation for its spiritual successor in the Norman age: Parliament.

Is this a rather rose-tinted mythological view of Saxon history? Probably, but no worse than any other nation. Is it an oversimplification of English history? Certainly. Does it fit a narrative of Anglo-Saxon racial supremacy? It can, but that's beyond the scope of my post and my intention here. What matters is that the founders of the United States believed it, and that key characteristics of their revolution fit with past events in English history. This yearning for independence by looking into our tribal past can easily be understood if you consider how popular Vikings have been in the past few years. Aside from the obvious, namely the History Channel series Vikings and movies such as The 13th Warrior and Pathfinder, fantasy variants of the Vikings have been a hit in video games such as Skyrim and The Witcher 3. Don't forget the Norse mythology latent in Thor (my favorite of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films). 

Festivals like Burning Man and shows like Vikings are, more or less, the modern incarnation of the "Saxon myth".

Likewise, many of the founders saw themselves as part of a continuum reaching back to proud, free-roaming Saxon settlers, whose rights have been continually trampled upon by foreign kings from William the Conqueror/the Bastard to George III (George III's family, the House of Hanover, and most of the princesses they preferred to intermarry with, were Germans). Thomas Jefferson, for one, didn't even stop at merely studying Saxon history in the hope of better understanding English common law; he even learned the ancient Anglo-Saxon language and proposed it as part of the standard curriculum at the University of Virginia, on par with the Greek and Latin tongues that laid the cornerstone of the west. Jefferson also went so far as to propose that Saxon heroes Hengest and Horsa, forefathers of the Anglo-Saxon people and legendary founders of the Kingdom of Kent, appear on the reverse of the Great Seal.

A tradition of rebellion

I make no claims to the validity of the Saxon myth in all its points, but the American Revolution certainly couldn't have happened without concrete precedents going back to the High Middle Ages. On its 800th anniversary this year, I wouldn't dare fail to mention the significance of Magna Carta. It's a document no one who mentions it has actually read, and it didn't even work the first time it was issued, other than as a hit list for King John to conveniently refer to when hunting down rebels the moment the barons had their guard down. Most of Magna Carta's clauses deal with issues between the king and the barons that have no relevance today, such as forest rights. The Charter's authors, though, did take the time to set down a few everlasting principles which give it lasting relevance to our own time. First, it established the liberty of the English church:

"First, We have granted to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for Us and our Heirs for ever, that the Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable".

Not surprising, since the archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton (whose other lasting legacy was in creating the chapter-and-verse numbering system used in the Bible today), was one of the leaders of the rebellion. He, and other rebel leaders, were concerned about the king's increasing control over the Church, especially in the appointments for bishops. Not long before, John's father, Henry II, appointed his own chancellor, Thomas Becket, as archbishop of Canterbury, in the hope of reining the Church in to his will. King Henry VIII notably ran roughshod over this first clause throughout his reign to little protest. Saint Thomas More, the pre-eminent lawyer and statesman of his day,  and John Aske (a leader of the rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace) both cited Magna Carta's protection of the English church when put on trial for treason. Both were executed. Later English thinkers interpreted this clause exactly the opposite way; where More and Aske saw it as a guarantee against the Protestant Reformation, Edward Coke argued it protected the Church of England from the interference of Rome and the pope.

"For a trivial offence, a free man shall be fined only in proportion to the degree of his offence, and for a serious offence correspondingly, but not so heavily as to deprive him of his livelihood. In the same way, a merchant shall be spared his merchandise, and a villein the implements of his husbandry, if they fall upon the mercy of a royal court."

Fleecing criminals was (and still is, though unjustly) a tried-and-true way of generating extra revenue for officers of the law. The abuses of excessive fines and bail were no less a problem in medieval England, and the common law continually tried to protect citizens from it, right up to the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution ("Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed"). That clause itself was lifted from England's own 1689 Bill of Rights, whereby Parliament forbade excessive bails and fines "as their ancestors in like cases have usually done", nearly verbatim.

"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land."

It may surprise those of us who live in the U.S, the UK, and other lands formerly influenced by the British Empire that people who are charged with serious crimes even in developed non-common law countries like France aren't necessarily entitled to a jury trial, or even expect one.

The most lasting legacy of Magna Carta, though, other than legitimizing the idea of a "just rebellion" in the first place, is probably the very act of setting laws, which were formerly unspoken but understood to all, to parchment. For this reason, Americans celebrate the signing of Magna Carta even more than the British themselves. In no other country on earth is there such a dedication to the Protestant doctrine of sola Scriptura, the teaching of doctrine by the written words of the Bible alone. It's no coincidence that Americans also venerate their founding documents with a nearly equal fervor, and even the most liberal and irreligious among us quote the Constitution as though it were a sacred text. You'll even find that the monument at Runnymede, where King John set his seal to the Charter, was erected not by any English organization, but by the American Bar Association! It's fitting that a surviving copy of Magna Carta can be found, preserved behind glass, very near the Declaration of Independence and Constitution at the National Archives in Washington DC.

America as it could have been

Up to now, I've probably sounded more like a neo-conservative talking head, or perhaps a Whiggish historian, than the Modern Medievalist you've come to know and love. Fear not, for here's the twist: the error of our founding generation was not in taking up arms against the king, for English history is replete with instances of armed rebellion both for good and ill: the Barons' Wars, the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, the Pilgrimage of Grace, the English Civil War, the so-called "Glorious Revolution", and the Jacobite uprisings, to name a few. The problem is that, in the absence of a king or anyone willing and able to step up to the plate, the founders had to create a new order from wholecloth. And, without men of equal vision to succeed them in future generations, the republic was bound to be torn apart by lesser minds and disintegrate into something wholly unrecognizable from what they had first established.

The victors of the American Revolutionary War were at an awkward place in 1783, following the evacuation of the last British troops from Manhattan. "What now?" was surely the question on everyone's minds. If history had played out on these shores as it did throughout most of Europe, the officers of the Continental Army would have proclaimed General Washington as king. I'm sure that if Washington were even remotely interested in ruling; in "picking up the Ring", as Isildur did in Tolkien's saga; the reign of George I would have been widely accepted throughout the colonies. Instead, he was content to play the part of the classsical Roman hero, Cincinnatus, resigning all his power once the war was done and returning to his farm. In Washington's absence, lesser men quibbled and quarreled over a fractious young republic until he was called back to service to be the figurehead of the Constitutional Convention (and, of course, first President under the new government).

Even before the evacuation of the British, a few of Washington's closest officers in the Army, including Henry Knox and Alexander Hamilton, announced the formation of a brotherhood to foster maintain the ties of fellowship between officers of the Continental Army well after they would hang up their sabers. In a nod to that icon of Roman virtue (and not a little to their own commander-in-chief), it was dubbed the Society of the Cincinnati. General Washington was naturally President-General of the Society for life; a feat he earned well before becoming President of the United States. The Society's founding principles were these:

"An incessant attention to preserve inviolate those exalted rights and liberties of human nature, for which they have fought and bled, and without which the high rank of a rational being is a curse instead of a blessing.

"An unalterable determination to promote and cherish, between the respective States, that union and national honor so essentially necessary to their happiness, and the future dignity of the American empire.

"To render permanent the cordial affection subsisting among the officers. This spirit will dictate brotherly kindness in all things, and particularly extend to the most substantial acts of beneficence, according to the ability of the Society, towards those officers and their families who unfortunately may be under the necessity of receiving it."

Rules of membership were exclusive: not only did one have to be a commissioned officer, he also had to serve in the Continental Army or Navy for at least three years, or until death for a posthumous membership. Most patriots who had taken up arms against the British were enlisted soldiers or officers of the various state and regional militia, and thus were never eligible. In short, a Cincinnatus was a gentleman, not just any rabblerouser with a musket.

An officer did not, however, have to be American. In addition to the thirteen society branches for each colony, a fourteenth was established for the Kingdom of France. As soon as our compatriots in King Louis XVI's army and navy heard word of the Society, they flooded Washington's mailing address with applications for membership, treating it like a highly coveted order of chivalry; they called it l'Ordre de Cincinnatus; with Washington as its grandmaster. The Society's badge of membership, a golden eagle suspended from a ribbon of blue and white, was to forever commemorate the friendship of these two nations: blue for the Continental Army, white for royal France. While American members modestly refrained from wearing their eagles anywhere save Independence Day, official Cincinnati meetings, or the occasional portrait, King Louis authorized the Cincinnati eagle as one of only two foreign decorations allowed at the court of Versailles (the other being the medieval Order of the Golden Fleece). The golden eagles were proudly worn by the French and other foreign notables on their court uniforms alongside badges such as the cross of the chivalric Order of Saint Louis... and were likewise collected as trophies off the corpses of aristocrats by the mob during the Reign of Terror a few years later.

The most controversial aspect of the Society in America by far was its method of continuation: membership was to be passed down to the eldest heir by primogeniture. No original member of the Society could be represented by any more than one descendant at a time. If the member died without issue, his claim could be passed on to a younger brother or that brother's eldest son, and so on. This one clause fueled America's first tinfoil hat conspiracy craze. Newspapers across the thirteen states decried the Cincinnati as a new aristocracy. Despite numbering among the men who fought for independence with blood, gratitude for the officers' service was in short supply. The Rhode Island state legislature went so far as to ban any Society members from holding public office. 

Perhaps they had good reason to fear the Cincinnati's influence. A sizable portion of all the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, perhaps a third, wore the golden eagle. One could even go so far as to argue that the Cincinnati's charter, made up of a general society governing thirteen state societies (plus France), gave the Founders the inspiration for the federalist system. A few adventuring members hoped to settle the Ohio Territory as a haven for veterans, naming the chief settlement Cincinnati and proposing to parcel out land based on rank in the Army; I forget the exact amounts they discussed, but imagine a lieutenant scoring 50 acres, 200 for a colonel, and a private forest or three for a general officer. As history would have it, none of the conspiracy theorists' fears came to pass. After Washington's death, the office of President-General passed on to Alexander Hamilton. After the fateful duel with Burr, the next President-General, Charles Pinckworth Coteney, lost his bid for the presidency of the United States to James Madison. After Monroe, no Cincinnatus has been elected President since, although the Society actually continues alive and well as this nation's premier hereditary society today.  

A Society of the Cincinnati membership certificate

America as it should be

After writing about half of today's entry, I took some time this morning to go forth into the city of brotherly love to visit Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were drafted and signed. I also took a quick tour through the National Constitution Center down the street, a learning museum more-or-less built for the local kids to go on field trips through and hopefully take a modicum of interest in how the government is supposed to work. I actually rather enjoyed it, in spite of myself and the glaring new exhibit on gay marriage, as though the issue were on par with "of course blacks are 5/5ths of a person". The Center helped me reflect on over two centuries of American political history and come to a conclusion here of what we got right, and what went horribly wrong. I'll start with the latter.

Virtually everyone acknowledges that the fathers at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were deeply divided on the form the new government should take, or even that there was anything wrong with the Articles of Confederation in the first place. To appease all the states into ratifying, they had to make compromises on issues that seem patently absurd today, the representation of slaves in the census being only the most obvious of many.

On June 18, Alexander Hamilton made a counter-proposal to the more famous New Jersey and Virginia plans. His was a system closely mimicking the very authority he and his compatriots just overthrew: the British parliamentary government. For several hours, Hamilton laid out on the floor a plan whereby the upper house, the Senate, would have the greater share of power and hold their offices for life. The President would be elected for life so long as he maintained "good behavior" and have absolute veto power over all proposed laws. The central government would even be responsible for choosing governors for each of the states, all who have strong veto powers like the President's. These authorities would be more like the King, Lords, and Commons in Westminster, just with a slightly bourgeois twist.

It's said that the other delegates listened intently and even applauded Hamilton for the level of care and consideration he gave to the plan... but then quietly tabled it as a wholly unreasonable solution that would never earn the approval of their countrymen back home. In other words, many of the delegates; gentlemen, professionals, veteran officers, and scholars learned in the history of western civilization; silently agreed that in a more ideal world, government would be administered by optimates, a natural elite of the best men, unbeholden to the whims of the mob. There's no shortage of quotes from the Founders on the perils of democracy, such as Madison's in Federalist Papers No. 10: "Hence it is that democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths".

Charles Carroll, the sole Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence and the wealthiest man in the colonies, was perhaps the most aristocratic of all. He, like John Adams and many other founders, defended limiting the vote to men of property because of "the designs of selfish men, who are busy every where striving to throw all power into the hands of the very lowest of the People in order that they may be their masters from the abused confidence which the People has place[d] in them". Such a reasoning appears hopelessly classist and irrelevant in our century, yet was rooted in the examples of history; namely, the fear that America would follow Athens and Rome in voting themselves into bankruptcy for the sake of winning one more election.

I'd hardly sound a call for returning the vote solely to propertied white males, but merely invite you to look at what we now have. Before, it was gauche for a man to whore himself by openly campaigning for office. Perhaps it was just an act that a candidate in those early years would send his underlings out to garner votes while remaining at home or going about his usual business, then make himself out to "reservedly accept" the burden of office in the event of a win. But appearances do matter. Now, we have the very things Washington warned against in his farewell address: politicians driven by the need to win elections and uphold a party line, rather than leaders who can act independently and forge a legacy without heed to the sharks nipping at his heels. When the Democrats are in power, the Republicans rail against populist demagogues destroying the fabric of society. If it's the Republicans in charge, then the Democrats fear being held back by ignorant rednecks. The truth is even worse: that we now enjoy the worst of both worlds all at the same time.

All that said, I had, just barely, a glimmer of hope after my walk through the Constitution Center. After my affirmation of the elitist sentiments of Hamilton, Carroll, and other men of the founders' generation, you might be surprised that I'm also somewhat sympathetic to the opposite view. Especially after the recent massacre in Charleston and the ensuing burnings of black churches as though it were the 1950's all over again, I have a deep admiration, and am even perplexed, by the unending patience and forgiveness of the black communities in the South after continued offenses. It confuses me to this day, for instance, why, after the murderers of Emmett Till in 1955 openly admitted to the deed after their acquittal in an interview, that whole buses full of black Chicagoans didn't roll down to Money, Mississippi and burn the entire town to the ground. If I were a black American, I'd instinctively lean closer to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King: that peace in our time is impossible, that not only the Stars and Bars but even the Stars and Stripes should be torn down, and that there should be no compromise with a government whose houses in Washington are literally built on the backs of black slave labor. Let the entire city be razed to the ground and built anew.

And yet, as I sat through the initial presentation on the Constitution, which was given by a kindly black woman, and thought about how completely we are now able to divorce that founding document from the milieu of those Anglo-descended men who first authored it (after all, how many people today actually describe themselves as English-Americans rather than merely a bland "white"?), I do have to credit the Founders with one thing, at least: that valuing English liberty need not require actually being English.

One of John Adams's most quoted statements goes, "our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other". A free society based on English common law demands respect for the mores and sentiments whence it came. Why, for instance, does the rest of the western world think Americans are "gun nuts"? On the continent of medieval Europe, the bearing of arms was generally restricted to the elite warrior class, the knighthood. In a society where there is a tremendous gulf in any sense of social responsibility between the upper and lower classes, whether it be the rabble of pre-revolutionary France or the vast number of perpetually drunk young men in Putin's Russia today, an armed populace is more prone to crimes of passion than any meaningful resistance to a tyrannical regime. The English, on the other hand, maintained a tradition of a right, even a duty, of commoners (yeomen) to bear arms all the way back to the Saxon age. In England, the universal militias of yeoman archers were regularly used as a means of securing peace in the realm. Perhaps Henry VIII's one failure to impose his will during his entire reign was in his toothless attempts to restrict the ownership and use of early firelock arms among the commons.

Today, we can see that the right to bear arms in our society is easily abused and in danger of abolition when the social responsibilities that come with ownership (a "well-maintained militia", for one) is neglected. Whether it's the daily black-on-black violence in inner city Philadelphia or shooting sprees by disturbed young white guys in South Carolina or Colorado, both share an ignorance or disrespect for the culture of English liberty whence that right came. And the gun controversy is simply the easiest example for me to draw here; you can fill in the blanks with your own issue of choice.

The Modern Medievalist's solution, therefore, is simple. I come not to advocate re-entry to the UK, fixing the republic by a patented 12-step process that will cost you only ninety-nine installments of $999.99, telling you to vote for Bernie in 2016, or that the world will end in 2017 on the centennial of the Fatima apparitions if county clerks don't stop issuing marriage licenses to gays. Just do this: study the history of our political forebears in England and beyond. Understand the principles behind common law. Debate the meaning of natural law if you must, but at least let's agree that it stands for something more than "don't tell me how to freedom!"

I have to admit that I doubt even doing all the above will be enough to save America from a fate like Greece's or a second revolution. But I do believe that even if the United States must someday cease to exist, future generations can profit by appreciating and implementing the traditions of English liberty tested and proven throughout the centuries.... and it need not take a single Anglo-descended man to achieve it.

The last stop on today's journey: Alexander Hamilton's statue at the Constitution Center, Philadelphia.

An Unlikely Saint: summary/review of John Guy's "Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel", part IV

Part I: the early years

Part II: in Theobald's service

Part III: The King's right hand

Part IV: Primate of England

The news of Theobald's death turned the gears in Henry's mind toward new plots. His idea to nominate Thomas as successor to Canterbury was not a sudden stroke of genius, but the natural conclusion of a master plan to consolidate all power in the Angevin empire under royal rule. Thomas wasn't a bishop, true, but he had knowledge of every aspect of the job from his years in Theobald's service. Furthermore, he had gained the king's trust over seven years as his right hand; Henry went so far as to have his eldest son and heir, also named Henry, fostered at Thomas's house. It took a year for Henry to formally announce the nomination, during which time Canterbury's revenues were sent to the royal coffers. Thomas did not object this time because he knew the see of Canterbury, as well as the chancery, would both be in his hands regardless. He did, however, have his reservations about assuming the office at first. John of Salisbury: "He had by now learned to understand the king's character and the wickedness and rapacity of his officials." We know that Thomas hesitated because his delay caused one of Henry's early schemes to derail. Ever anxious about the fate of his empire after his death, Henry intended for Thomas to quickly assume the primacy and use its ancient privileges to crown his son within his lifetime, thereby guaranteeing a succession without the threat of rival sons rising up to stake their own claims. But, as the bishops would not accept any substitute for the right to crown and anoint a king of England, the entire affair was downgraded into a mere investiture ceremony, with Thomas presiding as the lords and bishops made their oaths. It was a far cry from what Henry had planned, but for now, he had to live with disappointment.

Today's Roman church is led by bishops appointed directly by the pope. In medieval England, the final say over the successor to Saint Augustine was in the monks of Christ Church. Henry sent a number of commissioners to campaign on Thomas's behalf, including Richard de Lucy, Abbot Walter of Battle, and Bishop Hilary of Chichester. The monks' case against: that Thomas was not a monk (all but two of the previous archbishops had been from religious orders) nor even a priest, had sullied his hands in warfare, and, of course, was feared to be a mere puppet of an avaricious king. The commissioners brought them around, however, and at a council in Westminster Abbey, the Christ Church monks unanimously gave their assent to Thomas. Only one man voiced his opposition during the entire proceedings: Gilbert Foliot, bishop of Hereford. At the time, Foliot must have appeared to have the perfect résumé for the primacy: a son of the Norman aristocracy, a prior of Cluny (which he held at only 25 years of age), an abbot of Gloucester, a supporter of the Angevin dynasty since the Anarchy, an orator, even a "strict vegetarian". Foliot probably sought the primacy for himself; he certainly resented seeing it fall into the hands of an extravagant, baseborn whelp ten years his junior. As his character in the film says, in the end, he bowed before the royal will. Thomas Becket would become the next archbishop of Canterbury.

Thomas and his followers set out for their new home, as Guy says, "following the same road that he had first taken as a young man of twenty-four on his way to join Theobald's household." Though he was greeted by crowds along the streets to great ceremony and fanfare, he dismounted and proceeded on foot once he entered the walls. Guy writes, "first impressions matter, and he was eager to create the right one." One June 2, Thomas was ordained a priest by an old patron, Walter of Rochester, but the privilege of consecrating him as archbishop was hotly contested by him, Roger of Pont l'Évêque, and other senior bishops. The honor eventually settled on King Stephen's brother, Henry of Winchester. The following day, Trinity Sunday, the rite of consecration took place.

The director of the 1964 film purposefully shot the consecration scene with, if not reverence, then respect in accurately portraying ancient Catholic rites. Every word pronounced by Donald Wolfit's Foliot is uttered with the utmost seriousness, despite his jealousy and loathing of the man he's consecrating. Of course, in history, the prayers were said by Henry of Winchester, as Foliot was given the bishopric of London as a "consolation prize" by Thomas after the election, but not in time to properly assume that see and claim any seniority. The rite may have actually gone more smoothly on the silver screen than in real life, if Foliot is to be believed. In those days, the rite of consecration was spiced with a dash of bibliomancy; after the consecrator prayed over the new bishop with a book of the Gospels laid open upon his head and neck, it would be flipped to a random page and the consecrator would utter aloud whatever he first set his eyes upon. According to Foliot in a later attack, Thomas was initiated into the hierarchy of the Church with an ill omen: "Never shall fruit be born of thee throughout eternity; and it was forthwith cast into the fire." Whether it was a lie born from Foliot's envy, a warning from heaven, or just bad luck, the new archbishop would not let a bad prognostic keep him from turning the king's machinations asunder, for as Guy says of the day Thomas received his pallium from the pope two months hence, "he can only felt he stared God directly in the face." What events transpired that summer of 1162 that transformed Thomas Becket into the man we know today? Was it an outpouring of divine grace given to him by the conferral of holy orders? Or the sudden realization that, with no one directly above him save a distant pontiff, he had become a truly powerful man in his own right? Whatever was the true cause of his conversion, it was sudden and slighting. A few months following the consecration, Thomas resigned the chancellorship. Even though such an office was routinely held by bishops elsewhere in Christendom, Thomas saw a conflict of time and interest. This would have earned Henry's wrath regardless, but especially because Thomas did so without speaking to him about it first; indeed, while Henry wasn't even in England at the time. When he learned the news, the king exclaimed "by God's eyes!" From that day forward, the battle of royal and ecclesiastical wills was on.

An Unlikely Saint: summary/review of John Guy's "Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel", part III

Part I: the early years

Part II: in Theobald's service

Part III: The King's right hand

Theobald briefly assumed power as regent until Henry and Empress Matilda landed from Normandy. Thomas, naturally, was present at the coronation in Westminster Abbey, presided by his master. And, to ensure that Henry would keep the terms of the Treaty and the Church's interests at heart, Theobald nominated Thomas to serve as Henry's chancellor, even sending two bishops from Normandy to make the case. The office of chancellor was usually filled by a bishop, but given his extensive involvement in royal affairs thus far, Thomas's rank in the Church was no obstacle. Henry confirmed the nomination and brought Thomas into his inner circle.

Now, whether Thomas and Henry were quite the bosom buddies they're portrayed as in the Anouilh play/film is up for debate. William fitz Stephen, the new chancellor's clerk, wrote that "never... in the whole epoch of Christian history were two men more of one mind or better friends." However, Guy observes that William gives precious little evidence to back up the assertion, opining instead that William played up the idea of a past friendship to castigate the king even more for his role in the murder; for as Dante showed us, if any sin is greater than murder in the medieval mind, it's betrayal. What we do know from history is that, at least in the first years of his term, Thomas enjoyed the king's unbound trust over the royal treasury. A common-born Londoner in a court where virtually all high offices, both secular and sacred, were held by sons of the landed gentry, Thomas was obliged to outspend his rivals in every way to assert his authority. This is completely counter-intuitive to our modern attitudes toward world leaders. Where we today are enamored with "people's popes" and presidents that pretend to have something in common with the working class, a public official in the Middle Ages that didn't enter a city in grand procession, didn't feed his guests the finest dishes available in the kingdom, or refused to appropriately dress the part, would be seen by his inferiors as weak, stingy, or both. Hospitality, or what would be known in later codes of chivalry as largesse, was a virtue that measured one's worth as a man and a Christian. There's truth to King Henry's line early in the 1964 film, "on gold plate? I am your king, and I eat off silver". Guy mentions how Thomas once served a dish of eels rumored to cost £180, "enough to keep whole families of laborers in comfort for a lifetime." When traveling to Paris on a mission to secure a marriage between Henry's son and King Louis VII's daughter, Thomas rode with over two hundred mounted followers. In Paris, he went through twenty-four changes of clothes, most being worn once or twice before being given away to Louis's courtiers as gifts, or to charity. Free beer was distributed at every village they passed on the way. Villagers are reported to have said, "if this is the chancellor and he travels in such great state, how much greater must the king himself be!"

And if people really did say such things in the streets of France, then the king could not ask for a better servant. But when the barons and bishops at home whispered that Thomas's consumption outdid the king's, it set the stage for the quarrel they would wage in later years. For now, though, Henry never seemed to mind, and was an uncouth sort in any case. Secure in his birthright, he came to court in his riding clothes and served days-old meat at his table. His hands, unlike Thomas's, were weathered as he never wore gloves save for hawking. Standing four inches shorter than Thomas, he even cut a less royal figure, so it's no surprise if visitors confused the chancellor for the king or outright preferred to dine at the chancellor's house. Thomas's popularity may have worked to Henry's advantage in the end, since he never cared for his own. From the beginning of the reign, Henry established himself as a philanderer, an imp (literally, an impious person), and worst of all, an oathbreaker, such as when he violated the terms of the Treaty of Westminster by seizing William's (Stephen's younger son's) castles and lands. This is not to say that Henry had no interest in governing the kingdom. On the contrary, he embarked on a long-term plan to restore the "ancestral customs" of grandfather, Henry I, and his great-grandfather, the Conqueror; some of which were genuine, others which sprang from the young king's imagination. 

If Theobald banked on his former protégé keeping the Church's interests at heart, he was most probably disappointed, since Thomas showed himself a king's man. The play touches on one of these instances, when Thomas, at Henry's behest, levied a tax on church landowners to pay for the military campaign in France in lieu of providing knights. The wealthier bishops and abbots found themselves paying six times as much in dona ("gifts") as they did before. And Thomas's incursions against the Church were not strictly financial, either. Guy devotes several pages to a case Thomas judged in the Exchequer alongside lords Robert de Beaumont and Richard de Lucy. In 1157, a long-lasting feud between Battle Abbey and the diocese of Chichester came to a head. Walter, abbot of Battle, had aspired to the bishopric of London, but the local bishop, Hilary, refused to give a recommendation. Instead, Hilary chose to assert "supervision over the morals and discipline of the abbey", which the monks resisted all the way until Walter was excommunicated. Fortunately for the monks, they had friends in high places that they could count on to reverse the decision. Battle Abbey drew its name from its founding, built over the site of the Battle of Hastings as William the Conqueror's atonement for the blood spilt for the English throne. The abbey, therefore, was sponsored by and intimately associated with the Norman kings; it even had charters in pristine condition which proved their royal exemption from local diocesan authority. The charters were not denounced as forgeries until nearly a century later, so in Becket's time, the issue at hand was strictly on whether a king had any authority to declare a religious community exempt from a bishop's rule in the first place. When Hilary pleaded his case before the judges, he not only defended his rights to all the souls within the boundary of his see, but went so far as to assert the bishops' autonomy from all powers save for the successor of Peter in Rome. The king, who was present at the hearing, smarted: "Very true... a bishop may not be deposed, but see (and at this he gave a violent shove with his hands), with a really good push, he could be thrown out!" Once Henry's blood was up, there was no stopping him from imposing his will. According to the abbey's chronicler, Thomas sided with the king: "You have forgotten your allegiance to the king, to whom you have, we know, taken an oath of fealty. You should therefore be prudent." In the end, for affronting the king's majesty, Hilary was forced to drop all charges and offer surrender before the entire court, much to Theobald's shame.

The ruins of Battle Abbey. The high altar is supposed to have been built over the very spot where King Harold was slain with an arrow in his eye.

The summer following the Battle case, Henry and Thomas turned their attentions westward with a mind to pacify the insolent Welsh, where Dwain of Gwynedd's men were raiding English settlers. Thomas served as capably a general as he did a treasurer and judge. Despite being formally forbidden from bearing arms by virtue of his ordination as a deacon, he personally took to the field in both Wales and later in France, often leading his men at the vanguard of the force and no doubt slaying the enemy by his own hand. In one instance, during the French campaign to reconquer territory that belonged to Eleanor of Aquitaine (Henry's wife), Thomas was left with the unenviable task of defending the fortress of Cahors while Henry retreated with the tattered remains of his army back to Normandy. All the barons had "excused themselves" from the command, but again, the London merchant's son allowed himself no such leeway. Not content with merely holding the fort, he sallied forth at the head of his men and stormed three nearby castles at great personal risk, without adequate protection in the rear, but nonetheless pushing the French to the far side of the Garonne.

Can we conclude from all this, then, that Thomas the chancellor plunged a dagger into the Church's bosom in exchange for a life of warmongering and carousing with the king? Not entirely, it seems, for even in those years, there were times when Thomas felt the need to draw a line. For instance, one of Henry's favorite ways of boosting his income was by allowing the seats of bishoprics and abbeys to go vacant for years since he was entitled to collect their revenues until a successor was found. Perhaps Thomas's experience at Canterbury illuminated him to the Church's need for good shepherds, so he used his influence to fill vacancies with haste where he could, often with worthy candidates from Theobald's inner circle of former clerks. In one case, Henry attempted to appoint a baron's illegitimate, illiterate son to the bishopric of Exeter as a favor to the father. Somehow, Thomas managed to subvert the king's will and have Theobald's favored candidate, Bartholomew, appointed instead. Another instance that pricked the chancellor's conscience was Henry's plan to have King Stephen's daughter, Mary of Blois, married off to a cousin he trusted, thereby nipping any chance at a future insurrection in the bud. The trouble was that Mary was not only an avowed nun, but abbess of Romsey. The arrangement was enough for Thomas to call "profane" and "abominable", but though he put his relationship with Henry at risk to block the marriage, his influence wasn't enough, and Mary was dragged out of the nunnery for reasons of state.

Thomas's occasional pangs of conscience at this stage in his life weren't enough to answer Theobald's summons when the archbishop was on his deathbed. To the king, he wrote, " since the evils of these days deny us your bodily presence, you would at least allow our archdeacon to return to us... He ought to have come even without our summons and would have been convicted of disobedience before the eyes of God and men did not your needs excuse him." But Thomas, for reasons unknown, never came, and in 1161, Theobald surrendered his ghost to God and left his see at Canterbury for the ravenous king to determine his successor.

An Unlikely Saint: summary/review of John Guy's "Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel", part II

In part I, we explored young Thomas Becket's origins in London up to his appointment in Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury's household staff as a clerk. Now we'll look at his first ventures into the world of royal and ecclesiastical politics.

The first order of business was orders. Thomas, like any man or boy put to the service of the Church at virtually every level, was ordained to one of the four minor orders, so literally, a "clerk". He was likely a lector or acolyte and served in that capacity in the liturgy, and was expected to maintain a tonsure (that is, to shave the upper part of the head as a sign of humility before God), but was not bound to any religious vows or promise of celibacy. Theobald enhanced Thomas's on-the-job training by hiring a tutor in Roman and canon law. Soon enough, Thomas showed promise in the archbishop's court and and was sent to the University of Bologna (the world's oldest university as we know it) for a year to advance his study of law. He threw himself wholeheartedly into his work now, driven by a newfound ambition to make a place for himself in this world, particularly by gaining the archbishop's confidence. This he did, when in 1149 or 1150, Theobald sent Thomas to Rome to secure the title of "papal legate to England" for Canterbury. The position was previously given to Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester and, much to Theobald's consternation, younger brother of King Stephen. Thus, the king's brother held the highest precedence in the English church and frequently hampered Theobald's attempts to enforce the Pope's will. Fortunately, Pope Eugenius had the sense to put an expiration date on Henry's authority as legate. When the time came, despite the fact that Henry raced to Rome himself to seek a renewal, Thomas convinced the Pope to pass his authority on to Theobald instead. Soon after, the archbishop sent Thomas back to Rome with a mission of even greater importance. Stephen was counting on his brother to secure the succession and crown his son, Eustace. But with Theobald now papal legate as well as archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald held an unimpeachable claim over the coronation rite. Thomas's task was to convince Eugenius to issue a formal decree banning anyone from placing a crown on Eustace's head. This he achieved, eroding Stephen's hold over the realm, bolstering the archbishop's, and establishing Thomas as Theobald's right hand in all affairs.

Stephanus Rex... not quite the most flattering portrait.

By 1153, the house of Stephen was crumbling at the foundations. The hated Eustace died of a heart attack while plundering the lands of Bury St Edmunds Abbey (it's said that the monks of Bury rejoiced at Eustace's timely demise). With the future of England uncertain after Stephen's inevitable passing, even his brother, Bishop Henry, eventually saw the light and threw in with Canterbury, regretting his earlier role in aiding Stephen's usurpation. Between an old and broken king on the one hand and a young prince across the channel without the army to take his birthright by force, the realm turned to the archbishop of Canterbury to mediate a truce. Theobald, meanwhile, turned to Thomas Becket, "my first and only counselor". The ensuing six months were as precarious as walking a tightrope under the jaws of two lions, but at last, Theobald and Thomas hammered out the royal rivals' differences in the Treaty of Westminster. Stephen agreed to forbid Eustace's younger brother, William, from taking the throne. In William's place, Stephen adopted Empress Matilda's son, Henry of Anjou, as his own "son and heir" in ceremony, with all the bishops swearing fealty to him in all "saving only the fealty which they owed to the king for as long as he lived". All castles and lands taken during the war would be returned to their original owners on pain of excommunication and interdict. The Anarchy was over.

For Thomas's indispensable service, he was given the archdeaconry of Canterbury. That office's revenues, in addition to sinecures (parish incomes given to absentee officials instead of vicars with actual care of souls) he already received as one of Theobald's favored clerks, meant that Thomas earned more than £100 a year by Guy's estimate; even more than the previous archdeacon, Roger of Pont L'Évêque, now promoted to archbishop of York. The archdeaconry, of course, required Thomas to advance to major orders and forswear marriage and bearing of arms; minor inconveniences in the face of such rich rewards. But even these accomplishments would pale before what was to follow, for within a year of the Treaty, Stephen would die of a bloody flux and the twenty-one year old Henry would assume the throne and impose a new order upon his kingdom.

Part III will cover Thomas's eight year tenure as chancellor of England.

An Unlikely Saint: summary/review of John Guy's "Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel", part I

In the months since my last post, the world, or at least anyone with a degree of cinematic taste, wept for the loss of Peter O'Toole. An eight-time Academy Award nominee, one of the last great film actors of yesteryear, O'Toole's was the only celebrity death that I truly took notice of in... well, as long as I can remember. His second hit, Becket, starring alongside Richard Burton, remains one of my all-time favorites. And so, when I found myself with more free time than usual after the end of classes, I stopped by the public library and checked out Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel, A Nine-hundred-year-old Story, Retold by John Guy. Published just last year, I thank Guy for the refreshingly modest title; no pretensions of earth-shattering, Bible Code proportions of research. Indeed, after 900 years, very little new information has come about the shed light on the life of the "hooly blisful martir", yet the book still taught me a great many things I didn't already know. Guy, like other Becket historians before him, tries to answer those over-persistent questions: "was he really a saint?" "Were his differences with the king really worth getting killed over?" "Did he provoke his own martyrdom?" And now, since today happens to be his feast, the 843rd anniversary of his death at Canterbury Cathedral, I'm rushing to get out this summary of Becket's life and thoughts on Guy's book to share with you.

Part I: The Early Years

The future archbishop was born in London against the backdrop of a great calamity. Those of you who have read or seen the TV adaptation of The Pillars of the Earth will recall the sinking of the White Ship. On the 25th of November, 1120, the English Channel's depths claimed the lives of some three hundred of the realm's highborn, including Prince William, his brother, Richard, and sister, Matilda. King Henry I sired twenty bastards, but only one legitimate son, so when William died, so too did any hope of a peaceful succession. England was torn apart in the ensuing decades by a civil war between Henry I's nephew, Stephen, and his one legitimate daughter, Empress Matilda (or Maud, but yes, Henry had two Matilda's). The usurping nephew won the bid for the throne, but Matilda perhaps had the last laugh as Stephen was forced to pass the kingship to Matilda's son, the future Henry II, after his death. It's this second Henry, portrayed by the thunderous Peter O'Toole not just in Becket, but again in The Lion in Winter, who forms the other great player in this story.

And so, on the 21st of December, either 1118 or 1120, depending on the source, a boy was born to Gilbert and Matilda Becket (the English at this time were as fond of Matilda's as we today are of Aidan's and Liam's), who was given the name Thomas, after the apostle on whose feast it was. He was baptized the same day, at Saint Mary Colechurch. Guy remarks that Matilda wasn't present "since canon (or church) law forbade a newly delivered woman to enter a consecrated church space until she had been ritually purified in a special ceremony some forty days after birth." He's referring, of course, to the "churching of women" that you can still find in the old Rituale Romanum, but I've never heard of the rite being strictly mandatory. Maybe Matilda just had the wind knocked out of her, having given birth the very same day? It's worth some further study. 

The presentation of Christ in the Temple (also called the Purification of the Virgin by some) forms the basis of the ritual of churching of women.

The Beckets lived on Cheapside, which to modern ears would suggest a medieval way of saying "the ghetto" and give lie to the popular folk belief that Thomas belonged to the conquered and dispossessed Saxon majority. The Saxon myth admittedly makes for a good story, and Jean Anouilh, playwright for what would eventually become the 1964 film, acknowledged that he learned of Becket's true origins before the play debuted and retained the script as it was for the sake of the plot. To the contrary, Thomas's parents were both from Normandy, and "Cheapside" simply meant "the marketplace". Gilbert was a textile merchant who provided a comfortable middle-class lifestyle for his family. Thomas's enemies would nonetheless begrudge him for his non-noble origins every chance they got. Guy quotes him as responding in one of these occasions with, "'I prefer... to be a man in whom nobility of mind creates nobility, rather than one in whom nobility of birth degenerates. Perhaps I was born in a humble cottage, but through the aid of divine mercy... I lived very well indeed in my poverty."

A word on the name: "Becket", says Guy, most likely stems from Bec Abbey, situated near the village where Thomas's ancestors hailed. Surnames were not yet in general use, so our established customs did not yet come into play. For example, when Thomas's sister, Agnes, married, she still used the Becket name afterward. Thomas himself never used the name, instead going by "Thomas of London", "Thomas the chancellor", or "Thomas the archbishop" as his career progressed. Anyone who addressed him as "Thomas Becket" meant to incite him by using his lowborn surname, so his hagiographers omit it entirely. At last, the form "Thomas à Becket" is entirely foreign to the 12th century. It may have arisen from a pious imitation of a later medieval writer, Thomas à Kempis, who wrote the massively influential Imitation of Christ.

Bec Abbey, abandoned during the French Revolution, was actually restored by a small community of Olivetan Benedictine monks in 1948, and therefore is an active monastery once again. The tower above is the only surviving medieval portion of the Abbey.

We can thank "Mrs. Becket" for pushing the young Thomas through an education. French was his native tongue, but he was exposed to English early on from the family's servants; more than can be said for the Norman, so-called English kings such as Henry II, who neither spoke nor even cared to learn the language of his subjects. Thomas began formal schooling at an Augustinian priory in Surrey at the age of 10, then returned to London to advance his Latin, composition, and rhetoric at one of the city's grammar schools. Most of these boys would be destined for careers in the Church hierarchy. Thomas doesn't seem to have had any clerical ambitions for himself at this point. He coasted through his studies, neither earning his teachers' ire, nor their praise.

His first taste of the high life came when, as an adolescent, a noble by the name of Richer de l'Aigle, began lodging at the Becket house during business trips to London. It was this Richer that took Thomas out on adventures during school holidays, partaking especially of the pleasures of the hunt. Thomas would become known for his love falconry in particular, easily the most expensive sport of the age. To be seen with a hooded falcon on one's arm was as conspicuous a form of consumption as our Lamborghinis today, and Thomas would someday keep a whole aviary of them. His mother disapproved Thomas's new worldly habits, so before he and Richer grew too close, not to mention that the civil war was escalating and making the country increasingly more dangerous to live in, Thomas was sent away to school in Paris... a safer city, to be sure, but at no time from then to now was Paris every the place to go to find one's virtue.

It seems that Thomas was a bit of a loner during his time in Paris, so we know little of his "college days"; his friends, teachers, whether he enjoyed the usual kegger, and so on. The city housed as motley collection of schools that would eventually form the University of Paris. One of Thomas's most likely tutors was Robert of Melun, a fellow Englishman who numbered among the first to challenge the theory of divine right and defend "active resistance to a tyrant by the ministers of the church". Perhaps his lectures on resistance to kings emboldened Thomas and laid the foundation for his future actions?

Two years into his liberal arts studies and now grown over six feet, Thomas received word that his mother had died. He rushed back to London, never to return. He took what Guy identifies as a "gap year", and according to John of Salisbury, "'indulged in the rakish pleasures of youth and was unduly eager to be noticed'". But his father's fortunes were failing, and eventually, Thomas had to find a job. He had a brief stint as a clerk for one of his relatives, a banker named Osbert Huitdeniers (Eightpence), but the work soon proved to be beneath his talents. It so happened that two brothers who frequently lodged with the Beckets when they were in town, Archdeacon Baldwin and Master Eustace, took note of Thomas's underemployment and referred him to their friend, a certain Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury and primate of all England. The archbishop gave a cursory interview, and to Thomas's surprise, offered him a job as one of Theobald's nine or ten clerks on the spot. It was quite an accomplishment for a college dropout, as the leaders of the English church typically only hired the best and brightest; thus proving once again the value of having friends in high places. The appointment launched Thomas into the world of ecclesiastical and royal politics. Such would be true even in times of peace, but when Thomas entered the archbishop's service in 1145, Theobald's ongoing battles with King Stephen over royal incursions against church property, as well as his role as mediator between king and Pope Eugenius, propelled the primacy to a level of influence never before seen in England.

In part II, I'll write about Thomas's role under Archbishop Theobald and his path to the chancellorship. (Update: part II is up, now here.)