lings of modern learning devote their stipendiary celibacy to malign the memory of those whose bounty fats them? I need not multiply examples. Its "counterfeit presentment" still lingers among us, even under the cold utilitarian system of modern enlightenment; triumphing, through the unerring instinct of humanity, over the jealous policy which doles out a niggard bounty to posterity, only by permissive legislation! Yet, like the

vital element that warms our sphere, one day to wrap it in destruction, the accumulations of her charity have ever been a source of danger to the Church. The fiery fury of tyrants and innovators had sunk to harmlessness in their mouldering dust, but for the ecclesiastical plunder with which they bribed men to sustain their novelties; but spoil once made the basis of a new system in Church and state, selfishness became enlisted to endless generations to uphold it. St. Thomas beheld with piercing eye the distant approach of this danger to the Church of England; and he met it like a champion of the faith and a guardian of the poor. Large possessions of his diocess had been usurped, amid the turmoil of former reigns, by powerful nobles; and retained through intimidation or supineness of his predecessors. To redress the flagrant wrong, he put forth his accustomed energy; took immediate possession of what belonged to the see by unquestionable and notorious right; and commenced a course of litigation for that to which the title was less clear. A vindication of these proceedings, if necessary before an American audience, might be drawn from the reluctant concession of one of his most malignant traducers. "Now that he might the more effectually attend his archiepiscopal charge," says Fuller, "he resigned his chancellorship, whereat the king was not a little offended. It added to his anger, that his patience was daily pressed with the importunate petitions of people complaining that Becket injured them. Though, generally, he did but recover to his Church such possessions as, by their covetousness, and his predecessors connivance had formerly been detained from it."*

*Church Hist. of Britain, xii cent. book iii, § 58.

I have preferred to anticipate another topic, rather than mar the entireness of the foregoing extract. The resignation of the chancellorship, to which it adverts, was the act which first estranged the affections of the king. It measurably dissolved that union between Church and state, so dear to every tyrant, royal or republican. It announced his personal secession from the councils of his master, and gave anxious omen that the warning of his reply, when first nominated to the primacy, was no vain flourish of integrity. Yet many may, perhaps, be of opinion that the step was injudicious, and that St. Thomas would have done more wisely by retaining his sovereign's ear, and averting by address the dangers which he saw approaching, than by meeting them boldly in front. His decision, however, at least incontestibly proves the sincerity with which he adopted the ascetic life with the mitre, his devotedness to the duties of his station, and his trust in God rather than human policy.

Henceforward the tide of his earthly fortune ceased to flow; yet, like his Master, robed in the brightness of eternal light on Thabor, he was permitted once more to put on his glory before his brethren, ere he commenced the painful journey of humiliations and afflictions, through which he was to enter into his rest. A council is convened at Tours, to extinguish the schism of Octavian. The dignified clergy of the Catholic world are in attendance. The archbishop of Canterbury goes to pay his homage to the legitimate successor of Peter. His fame precedes him, and, with unexampled enthusiasm, magistrates, people, clergy,—the very archbishops and cardinals, go forth to meet and conduct him in triumph to the foot of the papal throne.

From the labors of this celebrated council, where the title of the ruling pontiff was solemnly recognized, and various canons enacted for the redress of the very evils the primate was endeavoring to correct, he returned to England, where the "murky storm of royal vengeance was silently mustering its fury.

I have already alluded to the enmity excited by his vigorous recuperation of the

property of the Church. The monarch had personal motives for sympathy with the malecontents; for the primate's earnest interposition had already constrained him to permit the election of bishops for Hereford and Worcester, which he had kept vacant for the sake of prolonged enjoyment of the diocesan revenues; and thus announced continued opposition to an abuse, to which the British sovereigns have ever been prone, robbery of religion and the poor, under the specious pretext of preserving the unoccupied temporalities.

Another ground of quarrel was the archbishop's excommunication of a nobleman who claimed the patronage of a certain church; but, in imitation of the royal usurpations above referred to, had left its altar too long unsupplied, and forcibly ejected the primate's nominee. Upon this transaction, Henry advanced a claim that no officer or tenant in chief of the crown should be excommunicated, without previous notice to himself. A practice which would have effectually subjected, in many important cases, the spiritual to the temporal arm.

But the most plausible pretext for the rupture now earnestly desired by the king, was the archbishop's refusal to surrender clergymen, accused of crimes against the public, to the cognizance of the secular magistrate; and upon no point have ingenuity and disingenuousness been more assiduously exerted to mislead the public mind. It must be confessed that no one imbued with the habits and political principles of our age and country, could tolerate for a moment the idea of two distinct systems of criminal jurisprudence and judicature, for two orders of persons, members of the same community.

And the address of writers like Hume, Lyttleton, and Mosheim, and the retailers of their prejudices and errors through the countless corrupted channels of English literature and history, has artfully arrayed these modern feelings and opinions against an arrangement which existed in circumstances essentially different from ours. But we should remember that the judicial authority of the Church in temporal matters, which was recommended to the faith

ful, in pagan times, by the apostle of the

Gentiles himself,* had been established and extended throughout Christendom by imperial legislation, from the earliest times after the conversion of Constantine, and confirmed, as part of their irregular polity, by the barbarian invaders of the empire whose free principles constitute the dearest portion of our inheritance-the common law. We should remember that the ecclesiastical tribunals were in especial favor with the people (as we also have retained many of their principles and much of their spirit), because of the superior probity, intelligence and learning of their judges, and the consistency of their decisions, when contrasted with the rude, ignorant, and ferocious barons, who, in the secular courts, applied with tyrannical caprice, the traditional maxims of heterogeneous codes, or rather customs, to the controversies of individuals, or the wrongs, real or pretended, of the state. We should remember that the ludicrous incongruity which would characterize a scheme of "courts Christian" at the present day, when innumerable discordant creeds and systems of discipline and morals would supply candidates for the clerical privilege, did not apply in times when Europe acknowledged but "one Lord, one faith, and one baptism," and the sacred order, united under one visible head, "one fold and one shepherd," was regulated by a code of universal obligation, the work of the most enlightened minds, directed under the most awful sanctions to the most important subjects, and the study of which, from a very early period, was associated with that of the civil or imperial law, which has justly been pronounced the noblest compilation of human wisdom, applied to human affairs. We should remember, too, that the gradual, and doubtless overstrained extension of the "benefit of clergy" operated as a bounty on learning in barbarous times, when every convent was a free school, and the son of the beggar, if stamped with nature's nobility, might aspire to the highest stations attainable by genius and virtue; and we should not forget that if the gentle censures to which ecclesiastical courts were limited

* 1 Cor. vi, 1-6.

by the canons-sweet application to human frailty of that divine forbearance which "desires not the death of a sinner," and which we are daily transfusing into our criminal codes, sometimes disappointed the stern requirements of earthly justice, they did not operate that fearful indulgence to guilt exaggeration tells of; for degradation was part of the sentence for flagrant crimes; and the offender, thenceforward, became amenable to the secular jurisdiction. And if malefactors were sometimes screened from condign punishment, through personal partiality, or "esprit du corps," as I doubt not may have been,-for what institution, human or divine, has not been perverted by the unfaithfulness of earthly agents?—the concession affords no stronger argument against the "courts Christian" of Becket's time, than the exoneration, in our own day, of deliberate and notorious burglary, murder, arson, sacrilege, and libel, by American courts or juries, supplies against that glorious common law to which we cling with hereditary and personal affection. But the sweeping assertions of prejudiced opponents may well be doubted, when we reflect on the general character of the persons who filled those tribunals, their obvious and peculiar interest not to render their privilege odious, and their common concern in the maintenance of law and order, in times when their own persons and possessions had little security amid a community of half-civilized freebooting barons and their serfs.

Still, to our estimate of the primate's conduct on this great argument, we bring a principle paramount all that has been urged. He stood for the vested rights of his order. The conqueror had established "courts Christian" on a legal basis. His successors had severally enlarged the liberties and immunities of the Church; Henry himself at his coronation, having thought proper not merely to ratify his grandfather's charter by oath, but, for greater solemnity to sign and lay it on the altar, Hence, with whatever feelings men may regard the abstract principle of the controversy, the candid must acknowledge that he whom we see described in it, as an overbearing prelate, as

piring to "set his sandalled feet on princes," was but the uncompromising defender of rights entrusted to his keeping against a wilful and perjured aggressor.

The occasion for the king's assault upon the Church was taken from insulting language, used by a canon of Bedford, to the royal justiciary, in open court. Henry demanded his indictment for this offence before the spiritual tribunal; and, policy concurring with the claims of justice, a punishment was inflicted of no ordinary seve rity. But it comported not with the king's designs to be so easily appeased. He swore his accustomed terrible oath, "by the eyes of God," that the judges had favored the offender; and summoning the bishops to Westminster, required their consent, that whensoever thenceforward a clergyman should be degraded for a public crime, in a spiritual court, he should immediately be delivered for punishment to the lay tribunals. To a demand so subversive of the rights guaranteed at his coronation, as well as of the first principles of justice, which forbids a second trial and punishment for the same offence, the bishops, of course, returned a decided negative; and Henry, whose very application to them was an acknowledgment of the legality of the existing system, instantly attempted to annul it, through a more comprehensive surrender; addressing to them the captious question, "whether they would swear to observe the ancient customs of the realm ?" Few, perhaps, but persons professionally familiar with the binding authority of precedent, in the unwritten polity of the northern nations, will appreciate the artful turn thus given to the dispute, and the effect of this new requirement to place the English hierarchy in the attitude of factious insubordination to the fundamental laws of the land, unless they would put themselves at the uncontrolled discretion of the king. But the primate answered him, with equal address, that he would do so, "saving his order;" a qualification which, as it was invariably admitted in the oath of fealty, at the coronation of a monarch, was equally appropriate in a promise to observe the

customs.

Henry saw himself foiled; and having put the question successively to the other prelates, who with the disgraceful exception of the bishop of Chichester, returned the same response, denounced them furiously, as a band of conspirators against him, and rushed from the apartment. On the following day, the archbishop was divested of the wardenship of the castles of Eye and Birkhamstead.

Nothing could exceed the consternation of the bishops, when they witnessed the rage of the king, and learned his departure from London. All the terrors of persecution, exile, confiscation, imprisonment, death, seemed gathering around them; and, as usual, policy began to whisper terms of conciliation and compromise. They hastened after him to make their peace. The bishop of London, who had recently been in disgrace, availed himself industriously of the occasion, to reinstate himself in his master's favor, by gaining over others to his will. But their own timidity and selfishness had predisposed them to grasp at every overture, and the undaunted primate soon saw himself alone. To subdue his opposition the monarch spared neither threats nor flattery. His brother prelates plied him with every suggestion of consideration for the safety of the Church, and gratitude for the king's previous unbounded favor. They charged upon his obstinacy all the evils of the coming persecution; they inveighed against the pride, which exalted his single judgment over that of all his brethren. They cited the temporising policy of St. Peter, with the Judaising Christians, and that of St. Paul, when he circumcised Timothy, to justify a momentary concession (which they insisted involved no principle), to obviate the otherwise inevitable desolation of the house of God. They even produced a pretended letter from the Pope, advising acquiescence, in the present distracted condition of the Church, rather than to aggravate it by illtimed resistance to the king; who, they assured him, cherished no ulterior designs against religion, but merely sought to vindicate his royal dignity, which he had considered impaired by their mistrust and op

position. Less convinced than overpowered, unchanged in opinion, but distrusting his own convictions in opposition to those of men he had esteemed for wisdom and sanctity, Becket at last gave way, followed the sovereign to the luxurious bowers of Woodstock, and agreed to make the promise, omitting the obnoxious reservation. Henry received him graciously, and immediately gave orders for a general council of the realm at Clarendon.

The archbishop, whose penetration had never been deceived in this transaction, now clearly understood the evil intentions of the king, and was only by the most urgent persuasion induced to attend that assembly, firmly resolved, however, to consent to nothing inconsistent with the dictates of his conscience or prejudicial to religion. The appointment of his enemy, John of Oxford, to the presidency of the council, and the menacing tone with which the king commanded the assembled bishops to fulfil their engagements, confirmed his suspicions. Preferring, therefore, the imputation of fickleness, to the violation of duty, he humbly besought the king to excuse his compliance; assuring him that the most mature deliberation had led him to the conclusion, that he could not keep his promise consistently with his obligations to his God. The rage of Henry, at this unexpected recantation, was terrible. He accused him, in the fiercest terms, of adding insult to perfidy; and menaced him with exile or instant death. As he left the room, in a transport of fury, the adjacent apartment was seen filled with armed men, their clothes tucked up as ready for action, and weapons drawn. Again was the primate assailed with argument, invective, prayers, and lamentations. Two noblemen assured him that the king was bent on the last extreme of vengeance. Bishops and mailed knights of the holy temple fell prostrate at his feet, imploring him not to deluge the Church with the blood of her ministers, and his better angel left his side, or rather, like the prince of the apostles, he was permitted to fall, that he might thenceforth distrust forever his own weakness, and rely exclusively on the grace of God. Fearless him

self, but palsied by the fears of others, the ice-bolt shot into his heart by coward tongues, which were soonest to denounce his involuntary recreancy, he once more shrunk from the dread responsibility of his position, deferred to others the dictates of his own clear understanding, and the noble impulses of his own high nature, and took the oath prescribed.

Did he gain peace by his momentary pliancy? Alas! who ever stifled with suggestions of expediency, the instinctive promptings of honor and virtue—that voice of "God within us"-without smarting, even here, under its keen rebuke? Soliciting an adjournment till the following day, that these yet uncertain customs might be clearly defined, he found, when the com mittee for compiling them made their report, his worst forebodings more than realized. He saw legalized that usurpation by the crown, to which I have already alluded, of those vacant episcopal and priorial revenues, which had been destined by the donors for the maintenance of religion and charity; and the elections of the hierarchy subjected to the royal dictation and veto—a principle so subversive of ecclesiastical order, that ourselves have seen it refused, as the bonus for proffered Catholic emancipation, from a more than kingly thraldom of three centuries. He saw the vested jurisdiction of the spiritual courts annulled; the Church disarmed, in the most important cases, of her almost only weapon against innovators in doctrine, subverters of discipline, and spoilers of her property and rights the power to sever offenders from the society of the faithful; and her intercourse with the centre of Catholic unity made dependent on the will of the monarch. Some few of the constitutions of Clarendon were indifferent, as regarded vital principle; but their general tendency was to limit the beneficent influences of religion, or subsidize her to earthly tyranny; and this was admitted by Henry himself, when, after the primate's death, he abrogated all. The archbishop took his final stand. He refused to authenticate them by another act; while the other bishops affixed their seals, in token of their ratification, as commanded

by the king: yet, dissembling for the moment, he pleaded the necessity for deliberation, received a copy and withdrew.

Such were the transactions from which the charges of perjury and breach of faith have been derived against this martyr to principle. Let me, therefore, briefly recapitulate. His promise at Woodstock was void, being given under a delusive statement of the king's intentions. The palpable duress at Clarendon annulled his oath; which, had it even been voluntary, could not have obliged him to obey the famous constitutions there set forth, which certainly were not “ the ancient customs of the realm."

That he never signed that compilation seems probable from many considerations. 1. His name in the enrollment, as recorded in the Epistolæ Sancti Thomæ, cited by Hume, is evidently the work of the engrossing clerk; like those of the parties, in the premises of an ordinary deed; and was inserted, with those of the other notable persons present, according to the customary form of ancient statutes, as appears from that of Merton, the earliest extant.+ 2. The entire silence on the subject of signing, in the quadrilogus, referred to by Dr. Lingard, together with the emphasis laid on his refusal to seal, conveys to my mind directly the reverse of the common opinion.

3. The king undoubtedly considered that the assent of the bishops was to be attested by their sealing; which was the mode, at that period in use, (adopted from the Normans) for authenticating deeds ; and hence his rage when he finally discovered that the primate would not seal. 4. Had this not been the case, Becket's request for delay, that he might have time to examine the collection of customs, previously to sealing, which was granted by the king, would have been frivolous and vexatious.

*Tom. i, page 25, Epist. xxii.

†The critical reader will note that I here follow the classification adopted by the committee for publishing the statutes at large; who, in their magnificent work, a copy of which was presented by the British government to the Baltimore Library, place Magna Charta, (usually considered by the profes sion the earliest of the statutes) among the "char ters of liberties" and not the "statutes." Blackstone's Commentaries, p. 306.