€mm\\ flniufi'sttg Jibiarg BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henrg W. Sage 1891 AasiSQ.. 3qJj/>19^ DATE DUE -«*t^ ■fflbb jBu-i H9G^t ii JM—t ~tji' t s=i-' -m^ "»;V4nM ~8- ^ ^ m a-L WijS^ TO92 M' GAYLORO PRINTED INU.S.A. 3oi DA 209.f45R';2"""""' """^ ^*"'"?iiHiii?Li-ilV™I'. ''^'°^^ '^'s consecration 3 1924 027 920 911 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027920911 THOMAS OF LONDON HIS CONSECRATION. aonDon: C. J. CLAY and SONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVEBSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE. CKIaBgoto: 26S, ARGYLE STREET. damfitiligc: DEISHTON, BELL, AND CO. fLtipjis: F. A. BROCKHAUS. i^tttr gotlt: MACMILLAN AND CO. Camftritrge ©isitorifal Cssiapst* ^o, VII. THOMAS OF LONDON BEFORE HIS CONSECRATION. LEWIS B. RADFORD, M.A. LATE SCHOLAK OP ST JOHN'S COLLEQE, CAMBRIDGE ; SECOND MASTEK OP WABEINGTON GEAMMAR SCHOOL. PRINCE CONSORT DISSERTATION, 1894. ©ambriljge : AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1894 [All Rights reserved.'] c ffiamiirilse : PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT TKE DNIVERSITY PBESS. EXTRACT FEOM THE REGULATIONS FOR THE PRINCE CONSORT PRIZE. " There shall be established in the University a prize, called the ' Prince Consort Prize,' to be awarded for dissertations involving original historical research." "The prize shall be open to members of the University who, at the time when their dissertations are sent in, have been admitted to a degree, and are of not more than four years' standing from admission to their first degree." "Those dissertations which the adjudicators declare to be deserving of publication shall be published by the University, singly or in combi- nation, in an uniform series, at the expense of the fund, under such conditions as the Syndics of the University Press shall from time to time determine." INTRODUCTION. An attempt has been made in this Essay to present in detail and in order all the valuable infor- mation extant as to the life and work of Thomas of London up to his consecration. It is a period of his career which has not received as thorough a treat- ment as it deserves at the hands of the modern historian. The archbishop has robbed the chancellor of his due. The interest taken in the life of Thomas has centred naturally in the conflict between the primate and the king, and the story of his earlier services in Church and state has been sketched in brief outline, except where the contemporary bio- graphers expatiate on a signal instance of his grandeur, or else it has been viewed too exclusively in the light of a sympathy or antipathy arising from a prior estimate of his subsequent position. It is only sixteen years since the late Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford in his controversy with Mr Froude appealed in the pages of the Contem- porary Review for justice to the chancellor, and claimed a fuller investigation for his chancellorship. Much has been done since then in that direction, by Miss Norgate, for instance, in her England under the VIU INTRODUCTION. Angevin Kings, in which the figure of Thomas the chancellor stands out boldly in the historical fore- ground of Henry II.'s reign. But no monograph has yet appeared in response to Prof. Freeman's appeal. A second call has now come from the sister University in the list of optional subjects for the Prince Consort Dissertation of 1894 ; and this Essay is an answer to the call. It is an attempt to rescue the earlier half of the career of Thomas of London from its position of secondary importance and give it a chance of speaking for itself. It is difficult to be original in places where much of the ground has been covered so often already, but the attempt has been made, and, it is hoped, not without success. The subject-matter has been in- creased by the addition, from various sources, of fresh facts which are not found collected together in any existing account of Thomas' life. They will no doubt be recognised as they occur, e.g., in the details of Thomas' education, his ecclesiastical services as clerk to Theobald, and his judicial and financial •work as chancellor. There was an obvious opening for originality in the method of arrangement, and it has been utilised, especially in the history of Thomas' chancellorship. This epoch in his life seemed to fall most conveniently under the different heads of military and diplomatic affairs abroad and judicial and financial administration at home, the question of his ecclesiastical policy coming last as an appro- priate introduction to the climax, — his promotion to the primacy. This arrangement of course has its defects. The line cannot always be drawn sharply. INTRODUCTION. IX Facts which fall primarily under one head have to be reconsidered under another from a different standpoint. The case of Battle Abbey, for instance, serves to illustrate both the position of the chancellor in the Curia Regis and his views of ecclesiastical privilege. Similarly the scutage of 1159 finds an appropriate place in more than one section. Its constitutional importance has to be noticed inciden- tally under the reforms of Thomas' chancellorship ; but it reappears for discussion along with the earlier scutage of 1156 under the head of ecclesiastical affairs, because its chief importance in his career is its bearing on his attitude towards the Church and her possessions. Still on the whole this arrangement seemed to give the clearest view of the chancellor's work. It now remains to acknowledge with gratitude the help that I have received in writing this Essay. My thanks are due to Bishop Stubbs and Mrs J. R. Green, and above all to Miss Norgate, for assistance in following out the question of perdona granted at the Exchequer; and to the librarian of the Owens College, Manchester, for the generous permission to consult or borrow works of importance from the College library, which is especially valuable from the fact that it contains the historical collection of the late Professor Freeman. Warkington, June, 1894. WORKS CONSULTED. I. ORIGINAL AUTHORITIES. («) (6) Biographies. William of Canterbury, vol. i. John of Salisbury ] Alan of Tewkesbury ]-, vol. ii. Edward Grim j WilUam Fitzstephen] Herbert of Bosham J ' Auctor Anonymus I. Auctor Anonymus II. Lansdowne MS. 2nd fragment Quadrilogus Thomas Saga Erkibyskups, vols, i, ii 65, ed. M. Eirfkr Magniisson. Gamier de Pont S. Maxence, ed. Hippeau, Paris, 1859. vol. iv! " Materials for history of Archbishop Thomas > Becket," Rolls Series, No. 67, ed. Canon Robertson. Rolls Series, No. Letters (Materials, vols, v, vi, vii). Thomas, archbishop, Epp. 223, 224, 250. Theobald, archbishop, Epp. 7, 8. John of Salisbury, Epp. 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 194, 252, 263. Gilbert Foliot, Epp. 10, 15, 225. Amulf, bishop of Lisieux, Epp. 1, 12. Anonymous friend of Thomas, Ep. 339. Clergy of the Church of England, Ep. 205. [Other letters of John of Salisbury are quoted from Dr Giles' edition of his works.] Xll WORKS CONSULTED. (c) Chronicles, records, and litercury works. Gervase : Acta Pontificum Cantuariensium. Chronicon. Ralph de Diceto : Abbreviationes Chronicorum. Imagines Historiarum. William of Newburgh. Robert de Monte : Chronicon Normanniae. John of Hexham. William of Malmesbury : Historiae Xovellae. Chronicle of Battle Abbey (Latin text, ed. Anglia Christiana Society, 1846 ; also Materials vol. iv, and Wilkins, Concilia, vol. i). Engl, translation by Mr Lower, 1851. Annals of Winchester. Historia Pontificalis (Pertz, Hist. German. Men. vol. xx). Pipe RoUs ; 2, 3, 4 Henry II. (ed. Hunter). 5, 6, 7, 8 Henry II. (ed. Pipe Rolls Society). Charters of Stephen, Henry 11. (ed. Stubbs). Dialogus de Scaccario (ed. Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 168-248). John of Salisbury : Polycraticus and Metalogicus (ed. Giles). II. MODERN AUTHORITIES. Lord Lyttelton, Henry II. vols, i, ii (ed. 1767). Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors. Wilkins, Concilia. Foss, Judges of England. Madox, History of the Exchequer. Ducange, Glossary of Mediaeval Latin. Thierry, Norman Conquest, vol. ii (trans, by Hazlitt, Bohn's series, ed. 1885). R. Hurrell Eroude's Remains, vol. iv. Canon Robertson, " Becket, a biography." Dean Milman, Latin Christianity, voL iii (ed. 1854). WORKS CONSULTED. XIU Dean Hook, Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. ii (ed. 1862). Hallam, History of the Middle Ages. Stubbs : Lectures on Mediaeval and Modern History. Constitutional History, vol. i. Select Charters. Early Plantagenets. J. A. Froude, " Life and Times of Thomas Becket " (Nineteenth Century, 1877 ; reprinted with modifi- cations in his Short Studies on Great Subjects, vol. iv). Freeman : Norman Conquest, vol. v. Historical Essays, 1st series. "Life and Times of Thomas Becket" (a reply to Froude, in Contemporary Re- view, 1878). Lingard, History of England, vol. ii (6th ed. 1855). J. R. Green, History of England, vol. i. Mrs J. R. Green, Henry the Second. Miss Norgate, England under the Angevin kings. Introduction to the Pipe Bolls. Father Morris, Life of S. Thomas Becket (2nd ed. 1885). Lord Tennyson, " Becket." Miss Lambert, " The real Thomas Becket " (Nineteenth Century, 1893). CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Thomas of London, 1118-1143 .... 1-26 CHAPTER II. The Servant of Theobald, 1143-U54 . . . 27-56 CHAPTER III. Thomas the Chancellor 57-75 CHAPTER IV. Foreign Affairs 76-95 CHAPTER V. Judicial Administration and General Reform . 96-122 CHAPTER VI. Financial Administi'ation 123-152 XVI CONTENTS. CHAPTEE VII. PAGE The Chancellor and the Church .... 153-184 Note A. Meaning of the word peremiptorim . 184-187 Note B. The Chancellor and the Battle Abbey Case 187-190 CHAPTER VIII. The Primacy 191-221 Note C. The election at London (Thomas Saga) 222-224 CHAPTER IX. Character of Thomas of London .... 225-239 Note D. "The real Thomas Becket" . . 240-243 APPENDIX. The Biographers of Thomas ... . 244-259 CHAPTER I. THOMAS OF LONDON. The uncertainty which attaches to so many His birth, incidents in the early life of " Thomas a Becket " — to give him for once his traditional name — has left room for conjecture at the very outset as to his birth and parentage. The place of his birth, it is true, is known for certain. He was a native of London', where his parents had been resident for some time. Our information goes still further. He was born in the parish of S. Mary Cole-church^ in the northern part of Cheapside, in a house which has now given place to the Mercers' Chapel. In that same church he was baptized after evensong on the day of his birth, the 21st of December, the ^ Job. S. ii. 302 : Thomas Loudonieusis wchia iudigeua. Will. C. 1. 3 : ex Londoniarum oivibus oriundus. Grim, ii. 358, men- tions a great fire on Thomas' birthday which began at his father's bouse and destroyed a large part of the city. Grim of course interprets it as symbolical of the influence of the archbishop in days to come. 2 Dugdale, Mcmasticon, vi. 646 (ed. 1846). R. 1 2 THOMAS OF LONDON. festival of S. Thomas, — a coincidence which c mined his baptismal name'. These minor d^ have every appearance of certainty, but the some doubt about the year. According to He of Bosham^ Thomas was in his forty-fourth ye the time of his consecration in June 1162. would give 1118 as the year of his birth. Ge places his consecration in his fortieth year ; bu evidence of Herbert, the confidential friend o archbishop, is more likely to be correct". His name. The first real difficulty is suggested by surname which tradition has attached to the si " Thomas " of his baptism. His father's name, true, is given by more than one authority as ' bert surnamed Becket*." But it is very dou 1 Auot. Anon. i. iv. 4. Dean Hook {Archbps. of Cante ii. 356) refers to a grant of Henry IV. licensing a brotherhi S. Katharine in connexion with S. Mary Cole-church, "b( Thomas Becket and S. Edmund the archbishop were ba therein" (Newoourt, Repertorimn, i. 448). 2 Herb. iii. 189. ' Benedict of Peterborough supplies corroborative proof i date 1118. He says (ii. 19) that Thomas was in his 53rd y the time of his death in 1170. As his birthday fell on De and he died on Deo. 29, it was his 52nd year that was com in 1170. He was therefore born in 1118. * Grim, ii. 356. Auct. Anon. ii. iv. 81 : Gillebertus cogn Beket. The name is also spelt Becohet, Beketh. Thierry (. Gonqu. ii. 53), who makes him a Saxon by birth but rich ei to associate with the Normans resident in London, thinks th real name was perhaps Bek, and that Beket was a fa diminutive by which he was known to his Norman friend neighbours, just as Bekie was the Saxon diminutive cum ballad usage. But Robertson points out that Becket was it Norman surname occurring in the Rotuli Scacearii Normanm THOMAS OF LONDON. 3 whether that surname was usually borne by the son. In the twelfth century, at any rate in the earlier half of that century, surnames appear to have been still personal, not hereditary ; and the evidence is on the whole against the contemporary application of the surname Becket to the young Londoner. Roger Hoveden, it is true, in mentioning the appoint- ment of Thomas to the archdeaconry of Canterbury, styles him "Thomas Beket." And Edward Grim\ in describing the tragic scene within the cathedral, tells how the infuriated knights, clamouring for their victim, raised the cry, "Where is Thomas Beketh, traitor to his king and country?" But the arch- bishop was within hearing, and the surname may have been used contemptuously as a taunting re- minder of his origin'. As a matter of fact he seems generally to have been known and described at the outset of his career as "Thomas of London'," and then, after the successive steps of his promotion, as " Thomas the archdeacon," " Thomas the chancellor," and finally " Thomas the archbishop." After his canonisation he naturally became " S. Thomas of 1180, e.g. Manzer de Becket. The original word beck was "a remnant of Teutonic vocabulary" surviving in Normandy, e.g. the famous abbey of Bee. And the diminutive bequet or becket occurs frequently in Norman charters with the meaning of a little brook. (Robertson, Becket, a biography, p. 13.) 1 Grim, ii. 435. ° Hook, ii. 356, is of opinion that the designation "Thomas the archbishop," "if it superseded, did not suppress the other appellative Becket." ' e.g. Gervase {a.d. 1154): dedit arohiepiscopus Cantuariensis archidiaconatum cuidam clerico suo Thomae de Londonia. 1—2 4 THOMAS OF LONDON. Canterbury," and such he remained for more than three centuries and a half. It was not until after the Reformation apparently that the name " Thomas a Becket^" forced its way into the prominence which it held, until a comparatively recent date, to the exclusion of all other designations. His It is round th^ parentage of Thomas that con- \i)tLir troversy thickens. The two points at issue are nation- (1) their nationality and (2) their social position. The former seems however by this time established beyond a doubt. The evidence at our disposal is quite sufficient to prove that the parents of Thomas, though Londoners by residence, were Normans by birth. It is true that M. Thierry in his history of the Norman Conquest, like Lord Lyttleton in his life of Henry II., has taken the opposite line. He has described Thomas as a Saxon of Saxons, and has allowed this assumption to colour his view of / more than one phase in Thomas' career. Lyttleton dwells upon his promotion to the Chancellorship as the first instance since the Conquest of the elevation of an Englishman to high oflSce, and has a warm word of praise for the generous and impartial policy which it betokened on the part of a semi-foreign / king. Thierry, starting from the same standpoint, accounts for the opposition of the "Anglo-Norman" bishops and barons, both at the election of Thomas to the primacy and throughout the conflict between 1 The original authorities know nothing of the prefix 4 or a', as it is variously spelt. Eobertson considers it a remnant of "vulgar colloquial usage." Hook retains it "as a distinction conventionally conferred " upon a popular hero of English history. THOMAS OF LONDON. 5 the king and the archbishop, on the ground of Norman prejudice against a prelate of English origin, — and this in spite of a remark of John of Salisbury which might have been intended to anti- cipate and refute any such theory^ The Saxon descent of Thomas was never more than au assumption, and it has given way, on a more critical study of the evidence, to the certainty of his Norman origin. The very names of both parents point to that conclusion, and it is placed beyond doubt by two explicit statements in the original authorities. One of the anonymous biographers says that they were among the Normans who were attracted to London after the Conquest by the advantages which it offered as a commercial centre. Gilbert, he adds, was a native of Rouen, his wife Roesa (Rose) a native of Caen^ The other state- ment is an incidental allusion made by Fitzstephen in his account of Thomas' introduction to Theobald. He attributes the young man's promotion partly to ' Job. S. Ep. 193 (ed. Giles), noted by Eobertson in the intro- duction to his biography of Beoket : qui persequuntur in hao causa Cantuariensem episcopum, non hoc persequuntur quod Thomas est, quod natione Loudoniensis...sed quod annunciat populo Dei scelera eorum. 2 Auot. Anon. n. iv. 81. Other authorities give her name as Matilda (Grim, ii. 356) or Mahalt (Fitzst. iii. 14) or Machilde (Auot. Anon. i. iv. 3), evidently different forms of the same word. Eobertson, p. 15, by way of reconciling the discrepancy, ingeni- ously suggests that perhaps the grandparents of Thomas bore the names Gilbert and Eoesa, and were the first of the family to settle in London, bringing with them a son Gilbert born in Normandy, whose wife was called Matilda. Thomas, it should be noted, had a sister named Eoesa (Eobertson, App. xxx. p. 253). 6 THOMAS OF LONDON. his father's previous acquaintance with the arch- bishop. In birth and rank, as Gilbert reminded Theobald, they had begun life upon the same foot- ing, both of them Norman in descent, and both born in the same neighbourhood, near a place called Thierceville^. The mistaken idea that Thomas was of English extraction seems to have arisen from the fact that he was " the first Englishman, in the sense of a native of England of whichever race," who rose to the primacy after the Conquest". It is true that "in all but actual descent he was a thorough English- man," but it is precisely his Norman descent which points the moral of his career for the student of English national character. In fact the most im- portant point to notice in this connexion is simply this — to quote once more Dr. Freeman's eloquent summing up of the whole question — that, "Norman by descent, English by birth and feeling, proud of England as his native land, of London as his native city, — trained by travel and study in other lands, but never losing his love for his native soil, — trusted by the Angevin king, beloved by the English people, — Thomas of London is the very embodiment of that blending together of Normans and English on English ground which was the great work of the twelfth century, and of which we feel the blessings in the nineteenth'." ' Pitzst. iii. 15. Gilebertus cum domino archipraesule de propinquitate et genere loquebatur; ut ille ortu Normannus, et circa Tierrici villam, de equestri ordine, natu viciuus. 2 Freeman, Contemporary Review, 1878, vol. 31, p. 835. 3 Contemp. Rev. vol. 82, p. 499. THOMAS OF LONDON. 7 Fitzstephen's allusion to the knightly rank of (2) their . . . social Gilbert and Theobald raises the question of Gilbert's position. social position. It is a remark not easily reconciled with the testimony of other authorities. The anony- mous biographer quoted above says that Gilbert's antecedents, like those of his wife, were respectable but belonged to the bourgeoisie'. And this state- ment seems to tally better with Thomas' own admissions towards the close of his life. In his reply to the famous letter of remonstrance in 1166 " from the bishops and clergy of his province, charging him amongst other things with ingratitude to the king who, as they declared, had been the maker of his fortunes', he admits that his origin was com- ^ paratively humble, — " non sum revera atavis editus regibus " — , but he reminds them that even before -- his introduction to the king he had held his own, and won an honourable name among all, of what- ever rank, with whom he came into contact^. In his letter to Gilbert Foliot bishop of London — the prime mover of this remonstrance — he is more specific in his language. Far from evading the reference to his parents, he frankly describes their position. They were, he says, citizens of London - living peaceably in the midst of their fellow-citizens. ' Auct. Anon. ii. iv. 81 : honestam sed ex burgensibus originem duxit. ibid., uxorem...geuere burgensium non disparem. •- Epist. 205 (v. 410). ' Epist. 223 (v. 499). The archbishop then proceeds to make capital out of the charge by drawing a bold parallel between his own rise and the elevation of the shepherd David to the throne of Israel, the fisherman Peter to the supremacy of the Church ! 8 THOMAS OF LONDON. and " not exactly citizens of the lowest class either'." This admission however need not be pressed to mean simply a denial of poverty, as though Thomas were unable to say anything further to their credit. The words may also be translated " by no means of the lowest class," but the shade of meaning makes only a very slight difference. It is more important to notice that the apologetic tone of the language is probably due in part to the fact that Thomas here, like his biographers' elsewhere, is contrasting his parents' position in life with his own subsequent eminence or comparing their status as members of the citizen-class with the status of the classes above them, the nobility. It is possible that Gilbert may have belonged to a collateral branch of a knightly family in Normandy; but it seems certain that he was engaged in commerce' in London before the birth of Thomas, and with more than ordinary success, for there is every indication that he was a man of means. Fitzstephen says that he was a citizen of the middle class who had held the office ' Epist. 224 (v. 515) : quod si ad generis mei radieem et progenitores meos intenderis, civea fuerunt Londonienses in medio concivium suomm habitantes sine querela, nee omnino infimi. The contrast suggested in the text above is Bobertson's idea (Becket, a hiography, p. 15). ^ e. g. Joh. S. ii. 302 : parentum mediocrium proles illustris. Will. C. 1. 3 : majores radice sua ramos ezpandit. ' Auct. Anon. ii. iv. 81 : in commerciorum exeroitio vir in- dustrius, domum propriam pro vitae genere satis honorifice rexit. The same author describes him as one of the Normans who chose to settle in London, eo quod mercimoniis aptior et refertior erat quae frequentare consueverant. THOMAS OF LONDON. 9 of sheriff of London', not actually engaged in trade, but living in good style on an income of his own^ And this testimony to Gilbert's wealth is confirmed ' by incidental allusions to his hospitality, which barons and ecclesiastics did not disdain to accept. It is scarcely necessary to justify the rejection oiThe the story of Thomas eastern origin, — the legend ugend. which makes Gilbert a crusader and his wife a Saracen princess. The very picturesqueness of its ^ Fitzst. iii. 14: uatus ex legitimo matrimonio et honestis parentibuB, patre Gileberto qui et viceoomes aliquando Londoniae fait, matre Mahalt, civibus Londoniae mediastinis neque foener- antibus neque officiose negotiantibus, sed de reditibus suis houori- fioe viventibus. Tbe charter of Henry I. placed London on a level with the shires, giving it a sheriff and justiciar of its own, with the privilege of electing them itself. But in the Pipe Roll of 31 Henry I. we find four sheriffs (vicecomites) accounting jointly for the ferm of London, and the citizens are mentioned as paying 100 marks for the privilege of electing one sheriff of their own. Apparently they had been deprived of the chartered right of election bestowed earlier in the reign (Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 406 ; Select Charters, pp. 107, 108). ^ Freeman (Contemp. Rev. vol. 31, p. 836, note) accepts Fitzstephen's statement that G-ilbert was not engaged in trade, in preference to the evidence of Auot. Anon. ii. But the facta of the case may perhaps be satisfied by supposing that Gilbert had retired from trade after making his fortune, and was living on the proceeds of property thus acquired. Froude (Nineteenth Century, 1877), following Auot. Anon. ii. , assumed that " few Normans were to be found as yet in the English towns condescending to trade," and used the assumption apparently as an argument in favour of Gilbert's Saxon origin. In the reprint of this series of articles in his Short Studies on Great Subjects (vol. iv. p. 21), he omits the sentence quoted above, follows Fitzstephen, and adds a note questioning the authority of Auct. Anon. ii. and ending with the casual remark that the Saracen extraction of Thomas is "a legend doubtless, but the Norman origin is unproved also." 10 THOMAS OF LONDON. details has an air of suspicion, — the crusader's vow of penitence, his capture in the Holy Land, the conquest and conversion of the Emir's daughter, her resolution to follow the prisoner whose escape she had planned, her lonely voyage with the magic password "London," the strange recognition in a London street, the solemn conclave of six bishops bent on satisfying the conscience of the orthodox Gilbert, the solution of the difficulty by the baptism of the fair heathen, her marriage, her husband's speedy departure for conscience sake to the Holy Land, and, last scene of all, his happy return to find his infant son growing in beauty and wisdom. The story has had firm believers, it is true, among historians of note until far into the present century. Thierry has fitted it into his sketch of the origin of his Saxon hero, though he is not certain whether Gilbert assumed the cross to fulfil a vow of penance or to carve out a fortune in the Christian kingdom of Palestine'. In the latter case, Thierry remarks, the Saxon adventurer was " less fortunate in Pales- tine than the squires and Serjeants of Normandy had been in England." The tradition furnished a fine 1 Thierry, Norman Conquest, iv. 53. Sir James Mackintosh, admitting the possibility of the tale, though not quite convinced of its truth, makes Gilbert a. pioneer of foreign trade; others describe him as a pilgrim, others a gentleman travelling for love of knowledge and adventure. One writer mentioned by Bobert- son — J. G. Nichols — goes so far as to place Thomas' birth at Acre, because the knights of Acre, the order of S. Thomas, took him for their patron saint. But Eobertson points out that the order was founded in commemoration, not of Thomas' birth, but of the capture of Acre in 1190. THOMAS OF LONDON. 11 theme for the ballad poet', and evidently found appreciative listeners and readers. But there is one conclusive argument against its acceptance. It never appears in the contemporary authorities for the life of Thomas. Tt only occurs as an interpolation in a later copy of Grim's life of Thomas printed in the first composite life, the Quadrilogus bearing the date 1495, and as part of the chronicle assigned to John of Brompton". There can be little doubt, if any, that the story is a later fiction, the outcome of popular imagination, which loved to east a halo of Christian chivalry and Saracen splendour round the birth of its hero-saint. It is not the only legend that has to be rejected in connexion with Thomas. The process of legendary accretion began early in the cycle of contemporary biographers. His life had scarcely ended before its beginning had assumed a miraculous appearance. Stories are told of wonder- ful visions that immediately preceded or followed his birth, — strange omens of his future greatness, which must have sorely bewildered his simple-minded mother, if they ever happened at all. Their credi- bility is very slight, and their historical value as illustrations of mediaeval life still slighter. But they certainly reveal in those early biographers an appetite for the miraculous which would never have 1 An interesting specimen is given in full from Jamieson's Popular Ballads in Appendix iv. to Thierry's Norm. Gonqu. vol. ii. p. 398 : "In London was young Beichan born." " Eobertson, Introduction to Grim, vol. ii. p. xlvii. The story is printed in an appendix to Grim, ii. 451, and in Brompton (Twys- den, col. 1052 foil.). 12 THOMAS OF LONDON. Educa- tion : (1) home training. allowed the story of Matilda's eastern birth to pass unnoticed if it had been cuiTent in their day'. Thomas' education began with a careful training at home as he grew from infancy to boyhood. He had a devout and pious mother, as keenly alive to the responsibility of his nurture as she was to the call of charity"; and from her lips came his first lessons in godliness, as he often told his friend John of Salisbury in after days. She taught him diligently to fear God, and, next to his Saviour, to trust the blessed Virgin Mary'. His devotion was not un- rewarded, if we may believe his biographers in the matter of dreams and visions. Herbert of Bosham describes a vision of the Virgin Mary vouchsafed to Thomas in his boyhood. The lad lay fever-ridden on his sick bed, when a woman's form, " divinely fair and most divinely tall," stood by his side, and handed to him two golden keys with a promise of his restoration to health. " These are the keys of paradise," so spake the heavenly visitant, " of which thou shalt have charge hereafter." Herbert says that he heard the story from the lips of Thomas himself*. The fault of retrospective fiction, conscious ' Milman has worked out this argument from the silence of the early biographers in a forcible passage in his Latin Christianity, iii. 444, 445. ' Auct. Anon. i. (iv. 7) tells how the mother weighed her infant son from time to time against bread, meat, clothes, and money, all of which she then distributed to the poor. 3 Joh. S. ii. 302. Auct. Anon. i. ibid. ^ Herb. iii. 162. Whatever credit this story deserves, the quaint audacity of the legend in Hermann Corner's Chronicle (a work dating early in the fifteenth century) out-miracles miracle. THOMAS OF LONDON. 13 or unconscious, which the incredulous reader will no doubt see here at work, is shifted therefore in this case from the adoring biographer to the archbishop in person. It is said that the fond parents had destined (2) Merton, their boy for the service of the Church'. At any rate his school life began under the shelter of a religious foundation. His father placed him at the age of ten under the care of the Augustinian canons of Merton in Surrey'^. Their prior Robert appears more than once at a later stage in Thomas' career under circumstances which cast a pleasing light on these Merton schooldays. He was private confessor to Thomas, and bore testimony as such to the personal purity of the chancellor'. He attached himself to the archbishop from the day of his conse- It is reprinted by Robertaon (Materials, ii. 297), and is worth reproducing ae a specimen of hagiography run riot. Thomas had chosen the better part, but at the new year when every one of his schoolfellows had received a gift from friend or lady-love, Thomas had none. He betook himself to prayer, and asked for a visible token of his lady's favour to display to his schoolmates. It was laid upon the shrine in answer to his prayer, with a prophetic command to use it when he became a priest. It was a casket containing a set of ecclesiastical ornaments! Herbert's story is sobriety itself in comparison with this later flight of imagination. The story is related in Thomas Saga (i. 23, 25), where the incident is placed at a parlement d'amour during his student days at Paris. 1 Auct. Anon. ii. iv. 82. " Fitzst. iii. 14. This house was founded in 1115 by Gilbert Norman, sheriff of Surrey. In 1121 Henry I. gave it a charter and granted the manor of Merton towards the erection of a church in honour of the Virgin Mary. (Manning and Bray, History of Surrey.) 3 Fitzst. iii. 21. 14 THOMAS OF LONDON. cration as his chaplain and inseparable companion'; and he was one of the two faithful friends who, when the monks of Canterbury fled on that cruel December day, stood along with Fitzstephen by the archbishop's side to the last and saw him die in his own cathedral*. On the other hand, Fitzstephen tells us, it was at the suggestion of Thomas the chancellor that King Henry II. visited and befriended the monks of Merton'. These allusions point irre- sistibly to a welcome trait in the character of Thomas; they seem to prove at least his grateful recognition of past kindness. His old master had evidently won a firm hold on his respect and grati- tude ; and on the other hand there must have been something attractive in the lad, which did not lose its charm amid all the perplexing changes of his career, to keep the old prior close by his side to the very end. There is an interesting story attaching to this episode in the life of Thomas. It is recorded by one of the soberest of his biographers*, and may 1 FitzBt. iii. 147 : capellanus et comes inseparabilis. It was Eobert who disclosed to the wondering monks the fresh proof of the murdered archbishop's hidden sanctity — the haircloth worn next to his skin under the monastic garb. ' Fitzst. iii. 139. Edward Grim was the other. 2 Fitzst. iii. 23 : cancellarii consiUo dominus rex canonicalem ecclesiam Meritonae, ubi morantes Deum merentur, in gratiam et familiaritatem recepit. Henry completed the building and en- dowed the place at his own cost, and once at least, if not dftener (aliquando...celebrabat...visitabat), spent the close of Holy Week there in prayer and watching with his monastic friends, and visited the poor neighbouring churches to pray in secret, a mediaeval Saul among the prophets. ■■ Fitzst. iii. 14. THOMAS OF LONDON. 15 well be genuine. Gilbert came to see him at Merton. The lad made his appearance, and the father bent low in humble obeisance to his son. The prior remonstrated on this reversal of the due order of things, but his objection was met by a quiet rejoinder from Gilbert : " I know what I am doing : that boy will be great in the sight of his God." From Merton the lad was removed to the schools (3) Lon- of London', which had no mean reputation. Fitz- stephen gives a welcome glimpse of these institu- tions in the prefatory account of London with which his life of Thomas opensl There were three schools, he says, attached to the leading churches in the city, and famous for their privileges and ancient dignity, though the list was sometimes extended to include other schools as a concession to the personal merits of an eminent teacher. On the ecclesiastical festivals which were observed as holidays, the magistrates ^ Fitzst. iii. 14 : annis igitur infantiae, pueritiae et pubertatis simpliciter domi paternae et in scholis urbis decursis, Thomas adulescens factus stnduit Parisius. Grim, ii. 359: literarum primordiis puer traditur imbuendis. quibus decursis ad artes missus multa in brevi comprehendisse memoratur. Freeman (Contemp. Review, vol. 32, p. 120, note) takes 'literarum pri- mordia' to cover both Merton and London, and refers 'artes' to Thomas' studies at Paris. ' Fitzst. iii. 4, 5: In Londonia tres priucipales ecolesiae scholae celebres habent de privilegio et antiqua dignitate. Ple- rumque tamen favore personah alicujus notorum secundum philosophiam plures ibi scholae admittuntur. Diebus festis ad eoolesias festivas magistri conventus celebrant. Hook {Archbps. ii. 609) takes magistri to mean the magistrates who visited and feasted the schools, but it may mean the masters who brought the schools to the place of meeting. 16 THOMAS OF LONDON. visited these schools. The scholars gave proof of their training in logic and rhetoric by syllogistic disputations and declamatory speeches; and the boys of different schools met in friendly rivalry on the familiar ground of verse composition or examination in the " principles of grammar and the rules of ' preterites and supines." Free play was given to wit and humour; jest and epigram flowed unchecked; and masters and boys, great men and small, had to run the gauntlet of fun and sarcasm. It is a scene worth recalling, if only as the germ of two later institutions, speech day at school and degree day at the university. Fitzstephen's account of their re- creations is startling enough. One illustration must sufBce. On Shrove Tuesday each boy brought a fighting cock of his own to his master; the school resolved itself into a cockpit ; and the whole morning was devoted to the spectacle of boys and masters intent on the death or glory of their crested favour- ites. " Nous avons chang^ tout cela." After dinner the youths of London crowded to the suburban fields to play football. Students took sides according to their respective studies, city-officials according to their respective offices ; and the game waxed fast and furious in the sight of the city fathers who rode out to see the fun and wish themselves at school again'. Richer de It was about this time apparently that Thomas lAtgle. uiaxie the acquaintance of a wealthy nobleman, Richer de I'Aigle, who frequently stayed at Gilbert's house. There was nothing abnormal in this intimacy 1 Fitzst. iii. 9. THOMAS OF LONDON. 17 between the baron and the citizen ; for the citizens of London ranked on a level with the minor barons^ Thomas, during his temporary absence from school, often accompanied his noble friend to the chase with hounds and falcons, and either developed or acquired that liking for sport which he indulged so freely in his chancellor days. On one occasion it nearly cost Thomas his life. He fell from his horse in taking a short cut across a narrow foot-bridge over a mill- stream which Richer had passed in safety, and was- only rescued from a terrible death by the unexpected stoppage of the mill-wheel '. Thomas spent part of ^ Hook, Anhbps ii. 359, u. and 611, n. Fitzst. iii. 4: habita- tores aliarum urbium cives, hujus barones diouutur. Cp. the language which WiUiam of Malmeabury puts into the mouth of Henry bishop of Winchester at the Council of Winchester in 1141 : Londonienses, qui sunt quasi optimates, pro magnitudine civitatis, in Anglia, nunciis nostris oonvenimus. It is noteworthy that the French biographer Gamier calls Thomas' parents " baruns de la cit." ^ Auct. Anon. i. iv. 6 : cum per dimidium annum a scholis vacaret. (1) It might mean during the holidays, but they would scarcely last half the year. (2) "At the end of the half-year" would not be exactly a translation of "per dimidium annum." (3) Freeman takes it to mean that Thomas was away from school for half a year at some particular time and so was thrown more into Bicher's way. ' Auct. Anon. i. iv. 6. The story is given in Thomas Saga on the authority of prior Eobert of Cretel (Cricklade), who wrote a, life of Thomas in Latin (Thomas Saga, i. 32). The Saga repre- sents Thomas as attached to Richer at the close of his education in the capacity of secretary ; ' ' Thomas becomes his notary and in his fellowship cometh for the first time into the king's court amid courtly manners." According to Grim's version of the above accident (ii. 360) Thomas had plunged into the stream to save his hawk from drowning, and was carried away by the current. E. 2 18 THOMAS OF LONDON. his time, it seems, in town with his father and part in the country with his friend the baron'. Richer's home was Pevensey Castle in Sussex, and perhaps it was this early introduction to the pleasures and pursuits of a country life which had something to do with the interest that Thomas afterwards took in the archiepiscopal manors in Sussex, particularly in the one at West Tarring, where the site of his menagerie and his hrewhouse are still pointed out, and tradition still preserves the memory of Thomas the archbishop in the capacity of landlords (4) Paris, Thomas had not yet completed his education. From the schools of London he passed to the Uni- versity of Paris. His biographer simply states the fact of his residence there as a student'. Modem Freeman {Contemp. Rev. vol. 32, pp. 116, 117) identifying the anonymous biographer with Eoger of Pontigny, and regarding this version of the story as perhaps originating with Thomas' own reminiscences, traces the growth of the miraculous element in the hands of Grim, who made the acquaintance of Thomas only a few days before his death, and would naturally view his early days through an atmosphere of the marvellous. Auct. Anon. i. iv. 6 : homo qui molendinum curabat, nihil penitus de his quae agebantur sciens, aquam subito a rota exclusit. But Grim (ii. 360) says: stetit rota nee se movit semel. In the earlier version the miller happens to stop the wheel at the right moment ; in the later the wheel stops of itself. "The providential delivery becomes a miraculous one." There is no wilful falsification; it is simply the natural, unconscious tendency of the hagiographer's mind. 1 Grim, ii. 360. " Hook, Archbps ii. 339, 360, refers to the Sussex Archaeological Journal and Warter's Appendicia et Pertinentia for a full account of West Tarring and Sussex traditions relating to archbishop Thomas. 5 Fitzst. iii. 14. Thomas adnleseens factus studuit Parisiis. THOMAS OF LONDON. 19 historians have found a reason for the fact in his anxiety to get rid of the obnoxious English accent which recalled his Saxon origin' ; but this seems merely a gratuitous assumption which falls to the ground along with the theory of his English descent, by which indeed it was probably suggested. Very little is known of Thomas' student days in Paris. The Icelandic Saga is the only life that dwells upon ' this stage of his career. From that source (i. 22, 23) we learn that he composed " praises of our Lady both for private reading and for proses in the church," and wrote meditations on the Psalms. Two sacred compositions were attributed to him by general opinion — Imperatrix gloriosa and Hodiernae lux diei. But this information, even if credible, is un- satisfactory. It only goes a little way, and that in a doubtful direction. The name of one fellow-student has been preserved in a mediaeval chronicle. Everlin, • Thierry, Norm. Gonqu. ii. 54, and Lord Campbell in his Lives of tlie GJiancellors. Thierry makes Thomas utilise his Parisian aocomplishments (to which the historian gives a very modern look) for the purpose of insinuating himself into the familiar friendship of a wealthy baron (evidently Richer de I'Aigle), whose stud and pack he is permitted to use in the pursuit of "amusements forbidden to every Englishman who was not either the servant or the associate of a man of foreign origin." Milman (Latin Christianity, iii. 446), though absolutely free from the faUacy of the Saxon origin, seems to imply the same linguistic motive. "His accomplishments were completed by a short residence in Paris, the best school for the language spoken by the Norman nobility." It may have been that, but it was consider- ably more than that, to judge from the picture drawn by Joh. S. Metalogicus, bk ii. Cp. Stubbs, Mediaeval and Modem History, p. 138. 2—2 20 THOMAS OF LONDON. abbot of S. Laurence, Liege (1161—1183) dedicated an altar to S. Thomas in memory of their affection- ate intercourse when they were students together at Paris'. It is said that Ludolf, who became arch- bishop of Magdeburg in 1194, was once a pupil of Thomas at Paris, where he spent twenty years'. But it is hard to picture Thomas at his age playing "guide, philosopher and friend," or seated in the master's chair ; his stay in Paris was short, and ended before he reached man's estate. It is just possible that Thomas, like John of Salisbury, eked out his allowance from home by taking private pupils at Paris; but perhaps the chronicler made a mistake, and should have said that Ludolf and Thomas were fellow-students'. It would be tempting to hazard a similar conjecture with regard to John of Salisbury, whose twelve years of student life at Paris, so vividly sketched in the second book of his Metalogicus, began in 1136 and must have coincided with Thomas' briefer residence at the same seat of learning. But ^ there seems no trace of any intercourse between the ' Hist. Mon. S. Laur. Leodensia (Materials, iv. 260, 261) : ex amore quern erga eum (Everlinus) habuerat cum seoum studeret Parisiis. ° Botlionia Chrou. Brnnsvioensinm {ib. iv. 261): ...Parys, dar wart he sunte Thomas van Kantelber soholer, unde was dar twintich jare. ' Eobertson {Materials, iv. 261 n.) mentions another name, Conrad bishop of Wurzburg (murdered in 1202), who is described in an old MS. (in the Pontes Rerum Germanicarum of Bohmer) as " oontemporaneus et corabursalis beati Thomae de Kandelberg in studio Parysiis." But, as Eobertson points out, the statement is a historical error. Conrad was not bom till after 1153 — the year of his mother's marriage. THOMAS OF LONDON. 21 two friends until they met in the service of arch- bishop Theobald, whose secretary John became on his return to England in 1150. As with fellow- students, so with masters. The names of the par- ticular doctors whose lectures Thomas attended are not recorded. Of all the brilliant roll of eminent teachers that Paris boasted at this time*, not one can be specified with certainty as responsible for any part of Thomas' education. But there is one name that provokes conjecture. Robert of Melun, "who was invited back by Henry II. to his native England at the suggestion of Thomas the chancellor', and consecrated bishop of Hereford by Thomas the archbishop', had "taught dialectic and the sacred page for more than forty years at Paris*," where John of Salisbury had figured among his pupils. Thomas' student days at Paris must have fallen somewhere within that period ; and Robert's promo- tion to an English see is perhaps a second instance of a grateful tribute from a former pupil to his old ' Joh. S. Metalogicus, bk ii. Stubbs, ihid. pp. 138, 139. " Fitzst. iii. 24 : canoellario Thoma suggerente pauperes Angligenas raorantes in Galliis quos fama oelebrabat bonos, vel monaohum in religione vel magistrum in studio, rex revocabat et tales in regno suo plantabat personas, ut magistrum Bobertum de Meliduno, in episcopali ecclesia Herefordiae. ' Herb. iii. 260 : Bobertum de Meliduno, et saecularium et sacrarum litterarum in scholis magistrum praeolarum...cuius et ille saoerdoB magnus, de quo proxime sermo, prius consecratus, in scholis discipulus fuerat. This would be decisive if it referred to Thomas, but the 'sacerdos' seems to be Boger (mentioned by Herbert on pp. 258, 259), newly consecrated by Thomas to the see of Worcester. •. ■» Fitzst. iii. 60. 22 THOMAS OF LONDON. master. Robert of Merton and Robert of Melun may be parallels in more than name. The order of events at this point is by no means clear. Thomas' mother died when he was twenty- one ; but it is not certain whether her death occurred before he went to Paris or during his residence there or after his return. It has been suggested' that perhaps he was recalled from Pevensey by the sad news, and then decided, instead of returning to Pevensey, to complete his education in the schools of Paris. But this is after all mere conjecture. The scanty notices in the biographers point rather to his mother's decease as coming after his studies at Paris had begun. One anonymous writer says distinctly that it was his mother who had insisted upon the necessity of a thorough education, and that after her death his enthusiasm for learning sub8ided^ But 1 Hook, Archbps ii. 361. Hook is inclined to regard Thomas' choice of Paris as dne, partly to a disinclination for merely theological studies which kept him away from Oxford (then rising in reputation as a theological school), but mainly to the social attractions which Paris offered in addition to the more solid benefits of dialectic, rhetoric, grammar, and divinity. Prof. Froude in his Short Studies (iv. 22) omits the Oxford career with which he credited Thomas in the original essay in the Nineteenth Century for 1877, and which drew down the scathing criticism of Freeman in the Contemp. Review for 1878 (vol. 32, pp. 118, 119). There is certainly not an atom of original authority for the statement, though Lingard (vol. ii. p. 56, 6th ed.) inserts it after the London schools (which Froude still ignores) and before the Parisian studies of Thomas. 2 Auct. Anon. i. iv. 8: cum autem Thomas annum aetatis vieesimum primum implevisset, mater, quae sola ut erudiretur instabat, defuncta est, et ex inde circa stndia Thomas se remissius coepit habere. THOMAS OF LONDON. 23 there was another cause which might of itself have cut his stay in Paris short. His father had sustained loss after loss through fires in the city^; and his diminished purse, if it did not necessitate his son's speedy return from Paris, seems at least to have made immediate work of some kind compulsory for Thomas on the completion of his studies. His Osiem twenty-second year was spent without definite em- "ftmif* of ployment'' ; but at last, tired of his lonely mother- London. less home, he entered the service of Osbern Huit- ^ deniers, a kinsman of his, a man of property and high standing in oflScial circles as well as in citizen society'. For three years Thomas was busily em- ' Grim, ii. 359, places these losses before the mother's death. Parentes frequentibus incendiis ceterisque iufaustis incursibus rerum non mediocriter atteuuati, minorem nosountur in instru- endo filio diligentiam adliibuisse...Sed et filii desolationem gemi- navit interitus genetriois... Pater quippe seunerat neo ad filii sumptus suffioere poterat substantia quae remansit. Grim then goes on to mention Bicher and his kindness to Thomas, and lastly the mill-stream incident. But this is evidently out of its place here, for Auct. Anon. i. iv. 7 describes the mother's joy over her rescued son. It must have happened in her lifetime. Grim's chronology is badly involved, to judge from the more business-like arrangement of the facts in other biographers. ^ Will. C. i. 3 : matre defuncta, sibi patrique relictus, quem incendia orebra civitatis attenuabant, vigesimum secundum an- num quem jam agebat otio impendit, et tandem civi vice tabellionis adhaesit. ' Auct. Anon. i. iv. 8: paternam igitar domum quasi vacuam et desolatam sublata matre fastidiens, ad quemdam Lundrensem cognatum suum, qui non solum inter concives verum etiam apud ouriales grandis erat nominis et honoris, se oontulit ; apud quem ferme per triennium consistens...etc. Robertson calls bim a merchant; but Freeman doubts the 24 THOMAS OF LONDON. ployed in keeping Master Eightpenny's books'. That is one account, but there is a serious discrepancy among the original authorities on this point. Fitz- stephen omits the name of Osbem, and simply says that Thomas on his return from Paris began to enter into the responsibilities of municipal government as clerk and accountant to the sheriffs of London''. John of Salisbury, whose life of Thomas only pro- fesses to be a brief summary of his career, throws no light upon the difficulty. He merely states that Thomas passed from the scholastic to the official world, and threw Myself heart and soul into the round of business and pleasure with a vigour that outstripped all competitors, his only fault being an overweening passion for popularity'. Various at- tempts have been made to reconcile the discrepant details. Osbem, it is suggested, may have been a accuracy of the title. "No words are used of him which neces- sarily imply trade; and it is most important for a full under- standing of the true position of the London 'barons '...to grasp the fact that many citizens were not traders and that many citizens were Normans " {Gontemp. Review, vol. 32, p. 121). ' Grim, ii. 361 (the only Latin biography which gives the name): 'Osbernus Ootonummi eognomine.' The MS. reading was Octonumini; but the correct reading was suggested by Gamier's French life, which in one MS. describes Osbem as "dit Deniers'' and in another " wit Deniers " (i. e. huit deniers). Grim speaks of Thomas as employed "in breviaudis sumpti- bus reditibusque" of Osbem, who was "vir insignis in civitate et multarum possessionum." 2 Fitzst. iii. 14 : reversus in partem receptus est sollicitudinis reipublicae Londoniensis et vieecomitum clericus et rationalis effectus. s Joh. S. ii. 303 : liberalium vero discipUnamm scholas egre- diens ad curiarum se transtulit occupationes. THOMAS OF LONDON. 25 sheriff himself^ or clerk to the sheriffs*; in either case the two accounts will coincide, and the sphere of Thomas' work will have been one and the same. Pn the other hand, the two employments may have been quite distinct. Thomas may have passed from the desk in Master Eightpenny's office to the service of the municipal authorities'. But the main point to notice in any case is the importance of this stage in Thomas' career. It was his first introduction to ' Freeman, Cont. Rev. vol. 32, p. 121. '' Hook, Archbps ii. 362. ' Robertson, Becket, a, biography. Both Robertson and Hook lay stress upon the political importance of the business that passed through the sherififs' office. Froude, in his Short Studies (iv. 23), omits Thomas' employment under the sheriffs, and dismisses him vaguely on his return from Paris to a place "in a house of business in the city," apparently taking Osbern for a merchant and ignoring Fitzstephen's statement altogether. His whole treatment in fact of Thomas' early career is scrappy, eked out with a picture of the startling things that were happen- ing during his youth and may have come to his hearing. The sketch is apparently drawn from one or two biographers to the exclusion of the rest. In places he seems to have followed Grim's unmethodical arrangement. He has now omitted the remarkable statement {made originally in the Nineteenth Century for 1877) that Thomas "was left ill provided for to the care of his father's friends " by the death of both parents when he was still young, and was taken up by one of these friends. Richer de I'Aigle, and sent to school at Merton Abbey and then to Oxford. But he still replaces Gilbert by Richer de I'Aigle. " Gil- bert," he says, "survived his wife for several years, but appears to have left his son to the care of others, as he is mentioned no longer in connexion with him." He then proceeds to mention Rieher's fancy for Thomas. But the idea that Gilbert neglected his son's welfare is surely contradicted beyond a doubt by Fitz- stephen's testimony to Gilbert's share in the introduction of Thomas to archbishop Theobald (Fitzst. iii. 15). 26 THOMAS OF LONDON. questions of national interest. The citissens, of London played no mean part in the contest for the crown between Stephen and Matilda. It was an education in itself to live at such a historical crisis, still more to occupy a position however subordinate in the service of men who were situated at the very centre of the conflict, and had a share in the making of their country's history. Such was the situation of the sheriffs of London whose service Thomas had entered '. It was an epoch in his life. To the intellectual training of the schools, and the social advantages of the baron's acquaintance, Thomas now added what was the coping stone of his education, a practical experience of the world of politics. 1 Thomas entered the Bervice of Osbern (according to Will. C. i.. 3) at the close of his twenty-second year, i.e. at the end of 1140, if his birth is placed, as seems most probable, in 1118. It is possible then, even if Osbem's office was distinct from that of the sheriffs, that Thomas was already in the employ of the municipal authorities at the time of the famous ecclesiastical synod of Winchester in April 1141 (described in detail by William of Malmesbury, Hist. Novellae) at which Henry bishop of Win- chester presided as papal legate, —when Matilda was elected queen of England by the English clergy, — when further decision was postponed to await the arrival of the Londoners who had been summoned by the legate's nuncios, — and when the Londoners, on their introduction to the Synod, describing themselves as a deputation — missos a communione quam vocant Londoniarum — boldly requested the release of their lord the king. Loudon, it seems, was already recognised in Stephen's reign as a eommunio, though it did not gain the legal status of a perpetual corporation before the reign of Eichard I. (Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 107, 117.) CHAPTER II. THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. From the close of his political apprenticeship in the sheriffs' office to the day of his consecration, the life of Thomas of London falls into two clearly marked periods, the earlier of the two spent in the service of Theobald archbishop of Canterbury, the latter in the service of king Henry II. Hitherto a close spectator, Thomas now became an actor in the busy scene, first as the faithful minister of the Church, then as the equally faithful minister of the Crown. The transition from the sheriflfs' office to the archbishop's household was not so violent a change as at first sight it seems to us with our modern ideas of the division of labour between church and state. In those days the ecclesiastic was often merged in the statesman and sometimes in the soldier. Especially^ was this the case in England during the reign of Stephen. Two causes contributed to throw the secular and political influence of the day into the hands of the Church. It had a practical 28 THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. monopoly of talent; and it was the one stable and constant element in the midst of a kingdom given over to anarchy. Theobald archbishop of Canterbury and Henry bishop of Winchester were the two greatest* powers in the country. Combined they were masters of the political situation; and the compromise which ended the battle for the crown in 1153 was the immediate result of their co- operation. It was not therefore an absolute change of life, a clean break with the past, for Thomas to cross from the service of the city magistrates to the service of the archbishop. New ties of friendship, new associations were formed ; new traditions and ideals inherited, new duties undertaken ; but there was one phase of his new position which recalled the old, and that was the diplomatic work of his new master, the primate's constant intervention in the struggle for the crown. The political crisis was still the same, except that it was viewed and approached from a different standpoint. Thomas was now to thread this " mazy labyrinth of events," as William of Malmesbury calls it, from the ecclesiastical side. Introduc- Thomas had spent something like three years in the municipal service when his promotion came. The exact circumstances of his introduction to the primate's court are not clearly known. Fitzstepheu attributes it to two brothers of Boulogne, Archdeacon Baldwin and Master Eustace, who were frequent guests at Gilbert's house on their visits to London and at the same time friends of the archbishop. It was at their joint instance that Theobald found Thomas a place in his household, though their in- tion to Theobald. THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. 29 fluence was apparently backed by a request from Gilbert himself, who laid great stress on the resem- blance, if not the connexion, between his own ante- cedents and those of Theobald, like himself a Norman by birth and a native of the neighbourhood of Thiersy in Normandy \ A very different account is given by one of the anonymous biographers. This writer says that a certain official of Theobald's household, who used to stay with Gilbert when transacting his master's business in London, and had watched with interest the fulfilment of Thomas' early promise, urged him to come to the archbishop's palace. Thomas hesitated. He was not sure of the reception that might await an uninvited candidate for the primate's patronage ; but at last he yielded to the man's arguments, and was introduced by him to the archbishop himself, with whom he found favour at first sights It is not easy to harmonise the two ^ Fitzst. iii. 15 : per duos fratres Boloniensea, Baldewinum archidiaeonum et magistrum Eustachium, hospites plerumque patris ejus et familiares aroMepisoopi, in ipsius notitiam intro- ductus: et eo familiarius, quod praefatus Gilebertus oum domino archipraesule de propinquitate et genere loquebatur ; ut Die ortu Normannus et circa Tierrici villam, de equestri ordine, natu vicinus. Horum, inquam, et patris introductu, archiepisoopus sui gregis scripsit Thomam. 'Loquebatur' may refer to conversa- tions which took place during the early acquaintance of Theobald and Thomas, or it may refer to a reminder from Gilbert on the occasion of his son's recommendation. The words in parenthesis — ' de equestri ordine' — may apply to Gilbert only ; otherwise another point might have been added to the resemblance, " and a member of the same social class, — the knightly order." 2 Auct. Anon. i. iv. 9. Cp. Grim, ii. 361, invitatua a quodam ministro domua Theobaldi. 30 THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. accounts ; but perhaps the key to the solution lies in Fitzstephen's concluding statement that Thomas came to the primate's court at Harrow with a single companion whom he describes as an "armiger" — Kalph of London by name. This man may be the " officialis quidam " of the anonymous biographer, and the "minister domus" of Grim's version. Thomas' original acceptance by Theobald may have been due to the recommendation of the two learned brothers of Boulogne and the reminder of his own father Gilbert, but perhaps his first actual appearance in person at the archbishop's palace was made under the humbler auspices of the household oflScial whose menial duties pointed the sarcasm of Thomas' rivals there. Roger de Pont I'EvSque, we are told, fastened the epithet Baille-hache as a nickname upon Thomas himself. Two of the other biographers deal with Thomas' motive in taking this step. Herbert af-JBosham describes it as a deliberate choice on the part of Thomas. Unable to reconcile his religious professions with the views and practices of his lay masters, he decided to forsake his secular surroundings for a place in the service of some prominent ecclesiastic^ ' Auct. Anon. i. iv. 10 : aliqnotiens palam in oontumelias et improperia erumpebat, ita ut Thomam clericum, Baille-hache plerumque vocitaret : sic enim eognominabatur vir ille cum quo ad curiam venerat. Cp. Grim, ii. 362, clericum cum ascia aive securi ( = the clerk with the hatchet) feceta contumelia crebrius appellavit, cognomento videlicet ilUus, a quo ad curiam archiepiscopi fuerat invitatus. Gamier says, — le clerc Baille-hache plusieurs fois le nomma. 2 Herb. iii. 167. THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. 31 We might dismiss this assertion lightly as one of the many instances in which this diffuse biographer has read his own views of Thomas' saintly character as archbishop into the facts of his early career. But it is supported by a remark of John of Salisbury, a fairly impartial witness, judged by the frankness with which he admits the faults and failings of his hero. He credits Thomas already with the resolve tqjead a religious life, and attributes his anxiety to enter Theobald's service to his disapproval of much that he saw in the life and conduct of the secular oflficials^. It is true that a marked change is recorded in his manner of life after his admission to the primate's household. He set himself soberly and resolutely to benefit by the society of those older and wiser men with whom he was thrown into contact". But while we admit the sincerity of this motive, we are not bound to exclude the working of all other motives. The single eye is proverbially rare, and it is at least probable that the young layman, earnest-minded perhaps but certainly am- bitious, and not yet launched upon any permanent calling, was as fully alive to the fact that the surest way to eminence for a commoner lay through the Church as he was to the difiBculty of living a religious life in a secular environment. ' Joh. S. ii. 303 : cum vero in curiis prooerum plurima contra honestatem cleri geri conspiceret, et convictum eorum proposito cui addictus erat pemioioBius adTersari...se ad Theobaldum. . . eontnlit. ^ Grim, ii. 361: ubi, ludia et levitate postposita, seniorum sapientiumque sermonibus ad meliora semper animum infor- mabat. 32 THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. The arch- His footing once gained, Thomas made rapid court. progress in the archbishop's favour^ and soon won his way to the front. The competition was keen, for Theobald had gathered round him the most promising ability of the younger generation. His court was a veritable nursery of talent, "a substitute in England for^the as yet undeveloped universities V a training ground for future bishops and archbishops at home and abroad. Six years had yet to elapse before the arrival of the scholarly John of Salisbury^, the faithful secretary of Theobald, afterwards bishop of Chartres. But Richard — Thomas' successor in the primacy — was already Theobald's chaplain*; and there were three young aspirants to fame, singled out by William of Canterbury for special mention, who made no secret of their ambition. Their names were Thomas of London, Roger of Neustria, and John of Canterbury, afterwards bishop of Poictiers and archbishop of Lyons. The two last-named lost no time in securing the goodwill and cooperation of ^ Grim, ii. 361: consiliis archiepiscopi negotiisqne et cansis publicis et privatis interesse jubetur. ^ Stubbs, Mediaeval and Modern History, pp. 130, 142. ' John went, after his twelve years' study in Paris (1136-1148), to act as secretary or chaplain to Peter, abbot of Celles, and in 1150 was recommended to Theobald by S. Bernard (Stubbs, lb., p. 130). It was apparently late in 1143 or early perhaps in 1144 when Thomas joined the Uttle band of budding scholars and ecclesiastics under Theobald's care. He was born in 1118, and was twenty-two (Will. C. i. 3) at his entrance into the London offices, where he spent the next three years. * Gervase, Chron. (quoted by Hook in his Life of Richard, Archbps ii. 509) : Theobald! capellanus efEectus una cum beato Thoma eidem sedulo ministravit. THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. 33 the favourite, and all three bound themselves by an ingenuous compact to help each other in the quest of preferment. One or other of the three was present at most of the primate's business, and each worked for the rest as well as for himself. But this harmony of purpose was soon broken by the discord of jealousy. The worst offender seems to have been Roger, surnamed 'de Pont I'Ev^que",' whose contemptuous nickname for Thomas has been already noticed. His envy, ill-concealed at the out- set, broke out at last into open opposition. Twice on some pretext or other he procured the dismissal of Thomas from the palace. But on both occasions his triumph was short-lived. Thomas, conscious of his innocence, took refuge with the archbishop's brother Walter, then archdeacon of Canterbury, who was staying in the palace at the time, and, thanks to his intercession, regained to the full the favour of Theobalds '■ Will. 0. i. 4 : qui videntes eum in necessitatibaa ezpediendig prudenter agentem et consiUo providum, cum eo sociale foedns inierunt, condicentes ut in petendis sibi beneficiis ecclesiasticis suSragium snum communicaient. ' Bogeiius (Bogerus) de Ponte-Episcopi is the name given by Anot. Anon. i. iv. 9, and Pitzst. iii. 16; cp. Grim, ii. 362. It is sometimes translated 'Bishop's-bridge,' but Brompton (Twysden, col. 1057) calls him a Neustrian ; op. Will. C. i. 3. Probably Pont I'EvSque in Normandy is meant. ^ Fitzst. iii. 16 is the only authority for this twofold dismissal and reinstatement. Grim, ii. 362, and Auct. Anon. i. iv. 9 speak only in general terms of Soger's jealous opposition. They style Roger ' Cautuariensis archidiaconus,' and Milman follows suit {Lat. Christ, iii. 447). But Fitzstephen distinctly says, 'Walte- rum tunc aTchidiaconum Gantuariae, postea episcopum Roffensem.' B. 3 34 THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. Ecclesiatm tical ser- vices of Thomas. Legal studies at Bologna and Auxerre. It is difficult to estimate exactly the extent or the value of the services which Thomas rendered to Theobald at home and abr<»Bd. The actual evidence at our disposal is only very slight. Thomas is rarely mentioned in the authorities for the reign of Stephen, but the omission is no proof of his inactivity. Judg- ing from the historical importance of those occasions on which Theobald is said to have found his help valuable, it seems quite permissible to infer that in other cases also, where he was not the agent em- ployed in the execution of a task, he was perhaps responsible for the policy adopted. He seems to have been Theobald's right hand, and it is quite possible, for instance, that during Theobald's informal regency^ between the death of Stephen and the arrival of Heniy (Oct. 25 to Dec. 20, 1154) Thomas had a considerable share in the transaction of current affairs of state. It will be convenient to deal first with Thomas' legal studies in Italy and France, though they may not have come first in the actual order of events. Fitzstephen states that Thomas, having obtained the archbishop's permission to go abroad, spent a year at Bologna and some time at Auxerre affcer- ' wards in the study of law". John of Salisbury, It was not until 1147, the date of Walter's promotion to the see of Rochester, that Eoger became archdeacon; whereas this double downfall and restoration evidently came soon after Thomas' in- troduction to the archbishop's circle. ^ Gervase, 1376 (Twysden), describes the peace as kept 'nutu divino et cooperante Theobaldo Cantuariensi arehiepiscopo. ' " Fitzst. iii. 17 : tunc impetrato (? impetrata) a domino suo arehiepiscopo transfretandi licentia, per annum studuit in legibns THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. 35 while omitting all meBtion of time and place, is more definite as to the subject of these studies. They included both the civil and the canon law ; and he regards them as a providential training in judicial and educational work for the future primate '- But this visit to the home of the new jurisprudence was more than a finishing touch to Thomas' own training. It was part of a great legal movement in England which owed its rise to archbishop Theobald. A brief retrospect will make this clear. The^epara- tion of the ecclesiastical from the civil courts of justice at the Conquest had thrown into the hands of the bishops more judicial work than they were able to discharge in person. The demand was met by the subdivision of their dioceses into archdeacon- ries, the archdeacon standing in the same relation to the bishop as the sheriff to the king. "There Bouoniae, postea Autissiodori. This notice, coming as it does between a list of his earlier preferments and the notice of his ordination and appointment as archdeacon, would seem decisive in favour of a later date for his foreign studies. The length of time given may include his stay at both places, or it may apply only to Bologna, leaving the length of his residence at Auxerre to conjecture. Hook {Archbps. ii. 363) makes it a shorter period. ' Joh. S. ii. 304: ut vero in causis perorandis et decidendis et popuUs instruendis facultas a Deo praedestinato pararetur anti- stiti, juri eivili et saoris canonibus operam dedit. Op. Anct. Anon. I. iv. 10 : interim autem quantum licuit juri eivili et sacris canonibus studium adhibuit ut per haec in causis perorandis seu decidendis (i. e. as advocate or as judge) instruetior haberetur et ecclesiasticarum rerum notitiam plenius consequeretur. It is not clear whether ' quantum licuit ' refers to the time and opportunities a,t his disposal, or hints at the prohibition of legal studies in England. 3—2 36 THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. was a vast increase," writes Dr. Stubbs on Canon Law, "in ecclesiastical litigation, great profits and fees to be made out of it ; a craving for canonical jurisprudence and reformed jurisprudence analogous to the development of constitutional machinery; and with it the accompanying evils of ill-trained judges and an ill-understood system of law The archdeacons were worldly, mercenary and unjust ; the law was uncertain and unauthoritative ; the procedure was hurried and irregular^" The twofold need of regular procedure and substantive law seemed to be supplied about the middle of the twelfth century, the one by the revival of Roman jurisprudence, which was now being studied eagerly at ^Bologna and other Italian schools, the other by the codification of the canons which was issued in 11.51 by Gratian, a Benedictine monk of Bologna. A generation elapsed between these two movements in Italy, but they nearly coincided in their influence upon the English Church. It_was Theobald who was responsible for their introducEion. In 1149 he placed Vacarius at Oxford to teach the Roman civil law^ ; and, nothing daunted by the royal opposition ' StnbbB, Mediaval and Modem History : ' Canon Law in England,' pp. 300, 301, closely followed in the sketch in the text above. ^ Job. S. Polycraticus, viii. 22 : tempore regis Stephani a regno jnssae snnt leges Bomanae qnas in Britanniam domus venerabllis patris Tfaeobaldi Britanniamm primatis adsciverat : ne qnis etiam libros retineret edicto regio prohibitum est et Vacario nostro indicium silentium. Theobald's household was the only "inn of court," as Hook remarks, for the lawyers of the new school (Archbps. ii. 337-339). THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. 37 which silenced Vacarius and the conservatism of the Church which suspected and resisted the new learn- ing, he set his heart on the foundation of an Anglican ■ school of canon law as soon as the " Goncordantia discordantium canonum'' of Gratian made its appear- ance. Long before the close of the twelfth century Bologna was the recognised training school for the archidiaconate, which was essentially a legal and judicial office. Archdeacons in praes&iiti and arch- deacons in futuro, English and continental, crowded to its lectures'. Thomas, it is true, was not yet ' archdeacon of Canterbury, but he had already taken a subordinate part in the judicial labours of the archiepiscopal court^ ; and it is more than probable that Theobald had kept Thomas in view long before the promotion of Roger to the see of York threw the archdeaconry open. Viewed in this light, Thomas' legal studies at Bologna and Auxerre acquire a new significance. They look like a definite provision , on the part of the lawyer-archbishop for the reform ' of the judicial work of his see, for the improvement I of TegaT education, and for the growth of the new ecclesiastical jurisprudence on English soil. The date of Thomas' residence at Bologna under ' Stubbs, Med. and Mod. Hist., p. 139 ('Literature and Learn- ing at the Court of Henry II.'), gives a graphic description of their adventures and temptations at Bologna. 2 Grim, ii. 361, immediately after describing his reception by Theobald and his efforts at self-improvement, adds : cogui- taque in brevi vivacitate viri per verba prudentiae...con3iliia archiepiscopi negotiisque et causis publicis et privatis interesse jubetur. This probably refers to the legal and judicial work of the archbishop. 38 THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. the recognised master of canon law is not certain. Gervase places it after the diplomatic mission to Rome which resulted in the transference of the legatine office from Henry of Blois to Theobald'. But the Sate of this mission is another open question. It is not even certain whether Thomas' visit to Bologna preceded or followed the actual publication of Gratian's Decretum in 1151, but it probably falls in close proximity to that important event in the history of ecclesiastical law. Connexum With regard to Thomas' share in the inter- Rojne course between the Church of England and the Papacy during Stephen's reign, the two biographers upon whom we can best rely — John of Salisbury and William Fitzstephen — speak only in vague and general terms. We learn from them nothing beyond the fact that Thomas paid several visits to Rome on ecclesiastical business, and succeeded not only in carrying out Theobald's wishes but also in winning the favour and esteem of the papal courts But ^ Gerrase, Act. Pontif. Cant. a. v. Theobald. Hook [Archbps. ii. 339), apparently converting the "post hoc" of Gervase into a "propter hoc" says: "the study of canon law seemed to be a necessary consequence of the introdnction of the legatine jnrisdic- tion." He might have gone further back: it was the natural ontcome of the separate episcopal iurisdiction which the Church had exercised since the days of the Conqueror. ' Joh. S. ii. 303: quotiens pro expediendis necessitatibus ecclesiasticis apostolorum limina visitaverit, quam felici ezitn quae sibi injuncta fnerant expedient, nequaquam dicta facile est. Cp. the similar language of Gervase {Act. Pontif. Cant.). John adds, by way of apology for this dismissal of the subject, that a detailed account is impracticable in a compendious summary such as his biography of Thomas is intended to give. Fitzst. iii. 16 : THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. 39 from the evidence of one anonymous biographer, from incidental notices in the chronicles of the period, and from the letters of Thomas himself, we are enabled to single out three distinct occasions on which he played an important part. The first of(l)Tfte these was the transference of the legatine commis- legation, sion from Henry of Blois, brother of king Stephen and bishop of Winchester, to Theobald himself. This legatio was a standing difficulty in the way of the primate. The 'legatus apostoHcae sedis,' acting as the representative of the papal jurisdiction, which was at this time accepted de facto, even if not recognised de jure, by the bishops and the king, claimed precedence of the primate of England, and held ecclesiastical courts in England from which the appeal lay not to the primate but to the Pope. A deadlock was almost inevitable unless the legatine i office and the primacy coincided in the same person^; ' intellecta mox ipsius industria, mittebat eum archiepiscopus aliquotiena Eomam pro negotiis ecolesiae Anglorum ; ubi. Domino favente, sapienter se gerens in plurimam summorum pontificum et sanctae ecolesiae Eomanae gratiam receptus est. Evidently Thomas visited more than one of the succession of Popes from 1143 to 1153. ' Joh. S. Epist. 89 (ed. Giles) calls bishop Henry's commission 'primum legationis officium,' i.e. the first in England during Stephen's reign. William of Malmesbury (Hist. Nov. ii. 22) fixes its date: Theobald was consecrated in January, 1139, and Henry was appointed legate early in March that same year. '^ The archbishop of Canterbury was the obvious person to represent the papal authority, to whatever extent it was exercised or acknowledged, in England; but it was part of the Eoman policy to reserve the alternative of appointing a special 'legatus a latere,' such as Winchester in this case, to supersede the 'legatus natus,' as the archbishop might be styled (Hook, Archbps. ii. 341). 40 THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. and the deadlock came. Gervase of Canterbury — our sole authority for Thomas' share in the matter — says that Henry of Blois pushed his rights as legate too far. He daily cited his fellow-bishops and his own archbishop to attend upon him in his capacity of papal legate. Theobald at last refused to submit to such claims and took steps to reverse the position. Aided by the efforts of ' Thomas a clerk of London,' says Gervase, he so managed the matter with Pope Celestine II. (who had succeeded Innocent II., the original source of this particular commission) that Henry was removed from his legatine office and Theobald substituted. Hence arose bitter disputes and appeals on either side. That is Gervase's accounts But his chronology is doubtful. Celes- After the public indignation roused by the conduct of John of Crema, the 'legatus a latere' in England in 1125, William Corbeuil, archbishop of Canterbury, solved the difficulty of exercis- ing the papal jurisdiction without offending the national spirit of the English Church by accepting the formal 'legatio' himself. Theobald now procured the same official recognition, partly to secure his own precedence over the rival archbishop of Tort, partly to thwart the ambition of the scheming prelate of Win- chester. The Winchester annalist under the year 1143 describes the continual disagreement between the legate and the primate briefly but forcibly: iste enim major videri voluit quam archiepi- scopus, ille quam legatus. Winchester's schemes for the exaltation of self and see are given in detail by the writer of the Historia Pontificalii (Pertz, xx. 542) : elaborare coepit ut ei pallium daretur et fieret archiepiscopus occidentalis Angliae, vel ut ei legatio regni concederetur, vel saltem ut ecclesia sua eximeretur a jurisdictione Cantuariensis. The Pope refused his requests. Winchester was not erected into an archbishopric, Heniy was not reappointed papal legate in England, and his see was not eman- cipated from the jurisdiction of Canterbury. 1 Gervase [Act. Pontif. Cant. b. v. Theobald). THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. 41 tine II. was Pope from September 114-3 to March 1144, while the first notice of Theobald's legatio occurs some seven years or more after this date. Henry may have ceased to be legate at the time stated by Gervase; perhaps, if his commission ex- pired with Innocent II., the Pope who granted it, Theobald and Thomas may have prevented its re- newal by Innocent's successors'. But Theobald himself is not styled papal legate by Gervase or Henry of Huntingdon till the year 1151. That is at all events the date assigned to the council sum- moned at London by Theobald as "archbishop of Canterbury and legate of the Apostolic See"," a ' John of Hexham under .^.d. 1144 remarks that Celestine, who was prejudiced against Stephen by his own early Angevin associations, took a dislike to Henry, bishop of Winchester. The same writer notes under a.d. 1145 that Henry fared better in winning the favour of the next Pope, but nevertheless did not continue to hold the office and title of legate. Evidently the commission had lapsed; it is hardly likely that, if it had been withdrawn by a definite act on the part of Celestine, the chronicler would have omitted to mention such an important fact. On the supposition that Thomas was born in 1121 (1122), Celestine's papacy would have been past and gone before Thomas in his twenty-fifth year was introduced to Theobald, i. e. 1146. If we accept the more probable date for his birth, 1118, and so place his introduction to Theobald late in 1143 or early in 1144, it will fall within the limits of Celestine's papacy; but it is scarcely possible that Theobald would have employed Thomas on such a confidential mission so soon after his entrance upon his new service. Inett (Orig. Angl. ii. 203) on the former supposition places Thomas' mission to Home in the papacy of Lucius II. (1144-1145) or Eugenius in. (1445-1153). ' Gervase (Act. Pontif. Cant. s. v. Theobald). Wilkins (Gotic. i. 424) dates the council 1151. Lyttelton, i. 358, notes the fact that Lucius II. sent a cardinal legate into England as an 42 THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. council at which Stephen and his son Eustace were both present, and the discussion was broken by new and unaccustomed appeals, partly no doubt the expression of Winchester's disappointment. (2) Council I The "Second occasion on which Thomas comes out 1148? ' /clearly as the faithful servant of Theobald in his negotiations with the Papacy was the council held at Reims by Eugenius III. in 1148'. The objects of the council, though nominally ecclesiastical, bor- dered closely on the political. One of the questions for settlement was the validity of the election of William, Stephen's nephew, to the see of York, an election which Eugenius had declared void on the ground that it was carried by Stephen's nomination. Stephen rose to the occasion. He met the papal summons to this council with a royal prohibition which kept all the English bishops at home, except three sent by Stephen to explain the absence of the rest. But Theobald went in defiance of his lord the king. With Thomas in attendance, he stole across the Channel at the risk of shipwreck, and earned the warm thanks of his friend the Pope for a journey indication that Theobald was not yet in possession of the legatine office. Stubbs (Comt. Hist. i. 330, note) attributes the commig- sion of Theobald to Eugenius III. "who acted under the advice of S. Bernard and was generally opposed to Stephen," and dates the grant in or before the year 1150. ^ The writer of the Hiitoria Pontificalia (possibly Johu of Salisbury) gives the list of persons present at the Council of Eeims. " Affuerunt etiam bonae memoriae Theobaldus Cantuari- ensis...et qui adhuc supersnnt Thomas Cantnariensis et BogeruB Eboracensis archiepiscopi " (Pertz, xx. 523). Boger was at the time archdeacon of Canterbury (1147-1154). THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. 43^ which, as Eugenius wittily remarked, had been "more of a swim than a sail." We have Thomas' own evidence directly and indirectly for the fact of Theobald's visit to Rome. In a letter written in 1166 to Cardinal Boso (an old acquaintance, as we'' learn from this very letter, whom he had introduced to Theobald), he mentions this incident as a signal ' proof of the loyalty of Canterbury to Rome at all costs'. And Herbert of Bosham says that in his defence before Pope Alexander III. and his cardinals at Sens in 1164, Thomas cited Theobald's fearless escape to Reims in defiance of king Stephen as a justification of his own flight from England in defiance of king Henry". The council adopted the resolution of Eugenius confirming the deposition of William fi'om the see of York and electing Henry ' Epist. 250 (vi. 57, 58) : bis a sede et patria pro fide et obedientia exclusus est, rege Siephano hoc in eo persequente, quod contra prohibitionem ejus vooatus a domino papa Eugeuio ad concilium Bemense venerat, ceteris episcopis domi contra obedientiam remanentibus, exceptis tribus qui de mandato regis veneruut ut aliorum absentiam excusarent. The second occasion was Theobald's refusal to crown Eustace in 1152. In this letter Thomas himself gives the ipsigsima verba of the witticism of Eugenius, — ut verbis ejus utamur, "natando potius quam navi- gando venerat" (vi. 58). It reappears in Herbert's version of Thomas' defence, but shorn of its alliterative vigour, "magis natando quam remigando." ^ Herb. iii. 356 : et ita pater mens hie ob causam fugit tunc sicut et nunc ego. Herbert puts a vivid description into the mouth of Thomas, who, as he calls himself the ' comes individuus ' of Theobald in that adventure, would no doubt give the conference at Sens the full benefit of his recollections. The passage was made stealthily by night, with two or three followers unused to the sea, in a little boat, 'quasi absque nauclero et remigio.' 44 THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. Murdac, abbot of Fountains, in his place. Apparently also it was on this occasion that Theobald and Eugenius began to lay their plans for the accession of Henry of Anjou by way of retaliating upon Stephdn, who had offended the primate by support- ing his brother Henry's appeal to Rome for the renewal of his legatine commission, and had lost the favour of the Pope by upholding the claims of his nephew William to the see of York'. Theobald however paid dearly for his disloyalty. His suffragans were suspended by Eugenius for absenting them- selves from the council ; but Stephen punished the archbishop by confiscating his property and forcing him into temporary exile from England". There is one other notice which perhaps should be referred to this event. It is very probable, though not certain, that the Council of Reims is the occasion described by the anonymous biographer who is identified by some modem authorities with Roger of Pontigny. He says that Theobald had occasion " to visit the Roman Church," aud took with him in his retinue the faithful Thomas, whose services he found so valuable on the journey and in the execution of his plans that he rewarded him on his return with the living of Otford, and afterwards employed him more than once to transact ecclesiastical business at Rome'. 1 Lyttelton, Senry II. (vol. i. p. 320). ' Balph de Diceto, Hiet. Archiep. Cant. (b. v. Theobald), and Abbreviationes Chronicorum (i. 362, Bolls Series). ' Auot. AnoD. I. iv. 10: exstitit causa qua Cantuariensis antistes Theobaldus Bomanam ecolesiam visitare disposnit. THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. 45 One other crisis is recorded in which Thomas (3) Papal comes to the front. He is said to have been tion of Theobald's aerent in procuring the papal veto which Emtacey o ^ o c- IT coronation, forbade the coronation of Stephen's son Eustace. 1152. Gervase gives the following brief account of the incident. Stephen summoned bishops and nobles to an assembly at London, and requested their consent to his son's coronation. The archbishop of Canter- bury was opposed to the project, and on the with- drawal of the bishops, who refused to commit themselves, prudently departed for Canterbury and crossed from Dover to the Continent. Stephen confiscated the temporalities of his see, but Eustace lost the crown which his father coveted for him. The whole of this affair was the work of the subtle foresight of a certain Thomas, a clerk, a Londoner by birth, says Gervase in conclusion', though he does not specify the steps taken by Thomas to procure the desired result. A fuller light however is cast upon the transaction by the Historia Pontificalis, a valuable fragment of ecclesiastical history which may perhaps have come from the pen of John of Salisbury'. From this record we learn that Henry, Bobertson, in a foot-note on this passage, takes it to refer to the Council of Keims. There is one difficulty in the way of this explanation. The writer proceeds : profeotusque est, ut dignum erat, cum honesto et copioso comitatu, assumpto etiam secum Thoma, etc. This is scarcely reconcilable with the pitiful story of the voyage told by Thomas in Herbert, iii. 356. ^ Gervase (Act. Pontif. Cant. s. v. Theobald) : subtilissima providentia et perquisitioue cujusdam Thomae olerici natiohe Londoniensis. 2 Stubbs, preface to B. de Diceto, i. xxiv. (Bolls Series). 46 THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. archbishop of York, now reconciled to Stephen, promised to exert his influence to procure the papal sanction for the coronation of Eustace. This sanction, as the chronicler remarks, was considered indispens- able. The validity of Stephen's title, he adds, had been questioned more than once on the ground that he had won the crown in 1135 by breaking the oath of allegiance to the empress which had been exacted from him by Henry I.'. The case had already been " discussed before the papal court in the days of Innocent II. On that occasion Matilda's claim was represented by Ulger, bishop of Anger, while Stephen's interests were defended by Roger, bishop of Chester, Lupellus, a clerk who had been in the service of William (Theobald's predecessor in the see of Canter- bury, who had consecrated Stephen), both specially despatched by Stephen for the purpose, and Arnulf, afterwards bishop of Lisieux. Innocent cut the matter short. In defiance of the advice of his cardinals and in consequence of a bribe from Stephen, he wrote a letter to the king confirming his title to the crown of England and the duchy of Normandy'''. ' Hist. Pontif. (Pertz, Mon. German. Hist. xx. 542) : Henricns Eboraoensis archiepiseopus, cam Stephano rege Anglorum faciens pacem, promisit se datnrum operam et diligentiam ut apostolicus (i.e. Eugenius, to whom Henry owed his promotion to York) Eustachium filium regis coronaret. Qnod utique fieri non licebat nisi Bomani pontificis Tenia impetrata. Begi enim saepe qnaestio mota fuerat super usnrpatione regni, quod contra sacramentom Henrico regi praestitnm dinoscitur occupasse. Querimoniam imperatriois ad papam Innocentium TJlgerius detuht, etc. ' Hist. Pontif. ib. p. 543: non tulit ulterius contentiones eorum dominus Innocentius, nee sententiam ferre voluit aut THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. 47 Afterwards his successor Celesfcine, who as Cardinal Guido had headed the opposition to Innocent's decision, reversed it in favour of the empress, and wrote to archbishop Theobald forbidding any change in the succession to the crown, as its transference to Stephen had been duly condemned. His successors on the papal throne, Lucius (1144-1145) and Eugenius (1145-1153), renewed the prohibition. Consequently the archbishop of York was unable to obtain the consent of the Pope to the coronation of Eustace'. causam ia aliud diSerre tempus, sed contra consilium quorumdam cardinalium et maxime Gaidonia presbyteri Sancti Marei, receptis muneribus regis Stephani, ei familiaribus litteris regnum Augliae confirmavit et ducatum Normanniae. Arndt (the editor of tlie Historia Pontificalis in Pertz' collection) prints this passage in itahcs as the conclusion of Ulger's reply to Arnulf. This is surely a mistake. The passage is evidently part of the narrative, a statement from the chronicler's own pen; for he proceeds: Ulgerius vero cum coguitioni causae supersederi videret, verbo oomico utebatur, dicens, "de causa sua querentibus intus de- spondebitur," et adjiciebat, "Petrus enim peregre profectus est, nnmmulariis relicta domo," — a telling sarcasm directed against the venality of Innocent's procedure. ■ Hist. Pontif. ib. p. 543 : postea cum praefatus Guido cardi- nalis promoveretur in papam Celestinum, favore imperatriois soripsit domino Theobaldo Cantuariensi archiepiscopo inhibeus ne qua fieret innovatio in regno Angliae circa coronam, quia res erat litigiosa cujus translatio jure reprobata est. Successores ejus papa Lucius et Eugenius eandem prohibitionem innovaverunt. TJnde oontigit ut praefatus Eboracensis archiepisoopus promo- tionem Eustachii non potuerit impetrare. Arndt prints the passage fiora postea to innovaverunt in italics, apparently attribut- ing it to Ulger, whose jest it follows in the text. But this cannot be right. The passage deals with events that happened years after the trial of the case before Innocent in 1135. Celes- tine II. was Pope from Sept. 1143 to March, 1144. 48 THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. Such is briefly (omittiag the arguments of Arnulf and Ulger before the papal court under Innocent) the account given in the Historia Pontificalia^. Thomas is not mentioned at all. Nor does he mention his own share in the transaction in the letter to Cardinal Boso already quoted in reference to the Council of Reims'. He alludes to Theobald's refusal to crown Eustace — a refusal based on the papal prohibition — but there is not a word of allusion to his own services. The omission may perhaps be 1 The case is diseussed by Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. v. App. DD. p. 857. I hesitate to contradict such an authority as the late Professor Freeman, but he seems to me to have misread the Historia Pontificalis. He quotes this collision between Ulger and Arnulf before Innocent as having taken place at the time when Stephen was trying to procure the papal consent to Eustace's coronation. In other words, be regards the whole passage (pp. 542, 543) as referring to the discussion of the case in 1152. But the date of the trial described on pp. 542, 543 is fixed by the fact that the letters of confirmation despatched to Stephen on the conclusion of the case are assigned by John of Hexham and Bichard of Hexham to the year 1136. All the evidence points to the early date of this trial. Innocent died in 1143, Boger of Chester in 1148 (Bobt. de Monte, a.d. 1148). The whole passage is really a retrospective account of the history of the dispute from Stephen's accession in the time of Innocent to the time of Eogenins, when Henry of Tork, who owed his see to Eugenins (Joh. Hexh. a.d. 1148, Gervase, a.d. 1147), offered his services to Stephen and went to Borne in person to ask Eugenius' consent to Eustace's coronation (Joh. Hexh. a.d. 1152). We therefore know practically nothing of the negotiations of 1152. " Epist. 250 (vi. 57) : alia autem, ut scitis, causa persecutionis qus exstitit quod contra prohibitionem Bomanorum pontificum filium regis Eustachium nolnit coronare. The plural pontificum is explained by the evidence of the Historia Pontificalis. It includes Celestine U., Lucius H., and Eugenius in. THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. 49 explained by the supposition that he is only dealing there with one aspect of the case. Throughout the letter it is Theobald's loyalty to Rome in opposition to Stephen that he is dwelling upon as a precedent for his own resistance as archbishop to the policy of Henry II. He does not mention his own association with Theobald in the adventurous journey to Reims, which is the first instance that he cites in proof of Theobald's devotion to Rome ; yet we know from other sources that he was in attendance upon Theo- bald on that occasion. The omission of his own name is therefore no proof of his inactivity in the matter. The fact however remains that the vague language of Gervase is our only clue to Thomas' action in 1152. He may have been merely respons- ible for the suggestion that the necessity of the papal sanction to the coronation of Eustace opened the way for a decisive check upon Stephen's am- bition. He may only have insisted on referring the question to Rome in view of the prohibition already issued by Celestine II. and renewed by Lucius II. In other words, it may have been his insistence on this point that called forth Henry of York's oflfer to mediate between the king and the Pope. Or he may have done more ; he may have actually gone to Rome on Theobald's behalf to oppose the petition of the rival archbishop. His biographers speak of several visits to the papal court' ; this was perhaps ^ Fitzst. iii. 16 : mittebat eum arohiepisoopus aliquotiens Bomam pro negotiis ecclesiae Anglorum. Joh. S. ii. 303: quotiens apostolorum limina visitaverit, etc. Auct. Anon. i. iv. 10: postea vero (i.e. after the visit to Rome or Reims in company with R. 4 50 THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. one of the occasions which they dismiss en bloc with such disappointing brevity. Lyttelton, taking the visit as a fact, enlarges upon the difficulty of the task w^ich Thomas had accomplished at Rome. Stephen, he remarks, was in ill odour at the papal court, but still there were serious obstacles in the way of Theobald's plan for the succession of Henry of Anjou. On the one hand, Stephen's election had been ratified by the papal see in the person of Innocent II. in 113G ; on the other hand, Henry, coming as he did of a family that had shown scant respect for ecclesiastic authority, scarcely seemed a likely king to tolerate any papal encroachment upon the prerogatives of the English crown. The success therefore of Thomas' negotiations in the face of such difficulties speaks highly for his diplomatic skill'. But the evidence of the Historia Pontificalis proves that the obstacle presented by Innocent's ratification of Stephen's title had already been removed by the action of his successors in prohibiting the permanent transference of the crown to the line of Blois ; and the danger of high-handed policy on the part of the young duke of Anjou was to say the least hypothetical at this stage of affairs. Stephen did everything in his power to reverse the decision of the Roman Curia. Theobald was inflexible, and Roger, archdeacon of Canterbury, Thomas' old rival, was sent to Rome on behalf of the Theobald) aliquotiem eoclesiaeticorum uegotiorum causa eum Romam direxit (Theobaldus), in omnibus ejus industriam merito coUaudandam experiens. 1 Lyttelton, Henry II. vol. ii. pp. 20, 21. THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. 51 king and his partisans to get the papal prohibition withdrawn'. But his efforts were all in vain; and Stephen's persecution of Theobald, as Thomas calls it, was met by a papal sentence of excommunication against the king and an interdict on the whole country, to be carried into execution by all the bishops, which terrified Stephen into reluctant acquiescence ^ The precise share, however, which Thomas had in the confirmation of Henry's claim to the English crown (for that was the practical result of the failure of Stephen's project in 1152) cannot be determined. 1 Thomas himself states the fact in his letter to Boso, Epist. 250 (vi. 58): nonne reoolitis quomodo Ule qui nunc Eboraoensis est Bomam profeotus sit, regis illius et prooerum proeurans negotium, ut, quia Cantuariensem archiepiscopum non poterant flectere, saltern prohibitionis apostolicae solutionem a domino papa Eugenio impetrarent? Thomas does not spare his old opponent, whom he accuses of deliberately fomenting the enmity between Theobald and Stephen, as he afterwards did between Thomas and Henry H. In the preceding sentence he writes, et quosdam eorum qui nos persequuntur ille rex habuit hujus fomitis incen tores. " Epist. 250 (vi. 59): nam et rex Stephanus ab antecessoris nostri perseoutione non destitit antequam....Eugenius, omni ces- sante appellationis obstaculo, in caput ejus anathematis et in terram interdict! sententiam praecepit ab omnibus episcopis auctoritate apostolioa exerceri. Gervase (Act. Pontif. Cant. s. v. Theobald) mentions an interdict against the royal demesnes issued by T heobald during the short exile which followed his visit to Reims in 1148. Hook (Archbps. ii. 343), omitting the interdict of 1152, seems inclined to recognise in the earlier one the hand of Thomas, always so ready to wield the weapon of excom- munication in his own exile. Liugard (x. 46) is not certain whether the second sentence was a new one or only a confirmation of the first ; but the distinction is immaterial. 4—2 52 THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. It was evidently considerable, to judge from the emphasis which Gervase lays upon his intervention. But little more can be said with certainty, except that in this case, as in all his public actions while in the service of Theobald, he fully recognised and insisted upon the recognition of the papal claims in Church and State. Frefer- Preferment in the meantime had been coming ^uraXitiei t^iick and fast from the hands of the grateful arch- ofThomat. bishop, partly as a reward for the services of Thomas at home and abroad, partly as a definite means of providing for his maintenance. He had abeady been admitted into the minor orders of the Church, apparently to facilitate his holding ecclesiastical benefices, the revenues of which went to make his income, while the spiritual duties were performed by a paid substitute. A grave doubt is cast upon the existence of any real spiritual motive by the fact that his promotion to the orders now recognised in the Church of England coincided with his elevation to high ecclesiastical dignity. He was not ordained deacon, it seems, until the archdeaconry of Canter- bury fell vacant' ; and his ordination to the priesthood — the Rubicon of the sacred calling — was postponed 1 Herb. iii. 168 : Theobaldus Thomam, quem prins seeundum formam canonum ad alios inferiores ordines, postea in levitam, simul etiam et eccleaiae suae archilevitam in ilia eancta et hnmili monaohorum congregatione ordinavit. Cp. Fitzst. iii. 17, where the churches of St Mary-le-Strand and Otford and the prebends are mentioned first, then the legal studies at Bologna and Auxerre, and then the writer adds: processu temporis et meritorum ejus, ordinavit enm archiepiscopus diaconum et fecit Cantuariensis ecclesiae archidiaconmn. THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. 53 until it was necessitated by his election to the primacy. The only full account of Thomas' preferments while in the service of Theobald is given by Fitz- stephen. His first benefice^ was the church of St Mary-le-Strand, London — the gift of John, bishop of Worcester. Next came the living of Otford in Kent as a present from Theobald in recognition of his services on that memorable journey to Reims in 1148. Gradually his acquisitions rose in the scale of importance. One prebend at St Paul's, London, fell into his hands, and another at Lincoln. Last of all came the archdeaconry of Canterbury, which ranked next in dignity to the bishoprics and abbacies of the English Church, and was estimated at the monetary value of a hundred pounds a year in the currency of that day. It was a suggestive appointment, indicat- ing as it did the career marked out for its recipient in the mind of his patron. The biographers regard it in that light unmistakably. John of Salisbury describes it as an opportunity of gaining a thorough experience of ecclesiastical administration". William of Canterbury hints that Theobald had an eye to the prospect of his archdeacon succeeding him as arch- bishop'. Whatever his ulterior motive was, Theobald gladly seized the opportunity which helped his ' Fitzst. iii. 17 : primum reditum habnit. The word is sugges- tive. ' Job. S. ii. 304: quo per experientiam rerum facilius dis- pensationis ecolesiasticae usum consequeretur...a praefato arehi- episcopo...archidiaoonus institutus est. 3 Will. C. i. 4: forsau ut tempore sue, gradu suo loooque sue archidiaoonus in archiepisoopum promoveretur. 54 THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. favourite clerk into a post of eminence and at the same time gave the see of Canterbury an archdeacon who knew his canon law. The see of York was left vacant in 1154 by the death of its archbishop, William. Theobald procured the appointment of Roger, then archdeacon of Canterbury, and thus opened the way for the promotion of Thomas, on whom he conferred the vacant archdeaconry and the provostship of Beverley, which Roger had held, along with other pieces of preferment'. In the October of that year the death of Stephen removed the last obstacle to the accession of Henry of Anjou. During the three months that elapsed before his coronation the maintenance of law and order rested with Theo- ^ Auct. Anon. i. iv. 10, 11 : Eboracensi itaque sede vacante Theobaldus...inodis omnibus sategit qualiter archidiacontun snum Bogeriom. . .eidem eedi praeficeret, quatenus per hoc et dignitati ecclesiae Cantoariensi et honori sao et in clerico suo prospiceret et Thomae ad majora viam aperiret. The king's consent was obtained, Eoger was consecrated by Theobald (in his capacity as papal legate, by special request of the chapter of York, according to Walter of Hemingburgh, i. 79, quoted by Freeman, Norm. Gonqu. t. 315 n.), and, absque mora archidiaconatum Cantuarien- sis ecclesiae et praeposituram Beverleiae, quae Bogerius obtinuerat, cum aUis ecclesiis pluribus Thomae assignavit. Foss {Lives of the Jitdges) is uncertain whether the provostship followed or preceded the archdeaconry, but the above quotation seems decisive enough : they were both of them {quae neut. plur.) resigned by Boger and both transferred to Thomas together. The chroniclers are unanimous in dating the appointment 1154 (e. g. Ghron. of Holy- rood, and Melrose; Annals of Winchester, etc.). Thierry {Norm. Conqu. ii. 54) makes Thomas archdeacon already at the time of his negotiations with the Bom an Church on the question of Eustace's coronation, and puts " a few years " between this event and Henry's accession, and "a few years" more between the accession and Thomas' appointment as chancellor! THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. 55 bald, and it is more than probable that Thomas helped his patron in the work of government. But the next recorded fact in the career of the new archdeacon is his appointment as chancellor under the new king' ; and this chapter of his life may fitly close with a subsequent allusion of his own to his worldly position at this date. The bishops and clergy reminded him in their letter of remonstrance in 1166 that his rise in the world had been one series of royal favours from the very outset. Thomas met the charge by pointing simply to the long roll of preferments which were already his before the king gave him the chancellorship. "If you look back," he said in his reply to Foliot'', " to the time at which 1 The Icelandic Saga (i. 47) represents Thomas as acting as the king's chamberlain for some time before his promotion to the chancellorship; but there is no mention whatever of this earlier office in any of the other contemporary authorities. ^ Epist. 224 (v. 515). It was a conclusive reply to his op- ponents' insinuation that he was a nonentity until he was taken up by the king. But it has found a severe critic in the author of Short Studies on Great Subjects (iv. 26). "It is noticeable," says Prof. Froude, "that afterwards, in the heat of the battle in which he earned his saintship, he was so far from looking back with regret on his accumulation of preferments that he paraded them as an evidence of his early consequence." It is hard lines that in repudiating the character of a needy place-hunter, Thomas should have incurred the opposite charge of being an unscrupulous pluralist. As Freeman long ago pointed out in his criticism of Froude's sneer at Thomas' expense (Contemp. Review, vol. 32, p. 124), no expression of regret was called for. Thomas had merely to answer a "misstatement of fact"; and the answer involved a frank avowal of his early pluralities, in which anything like an apology would have been an inappropriate digression from his point. Robertson, in his Becket, a Biography, is much fairer than Froude, but still has a, grievance against Thomas. "The 5G THE SERVANT OF THEOBALD. the king promoted me to his service, the arch- deaconry of Canterbury, the provostship of Beverley, churches in plenty, prebends more than one, and other benefices not a few, then in my possession, prove that I was not so poorly furnished with this world's goods as you say 1 was." circumstance," he remarks, " that he was only a deacon was no hindrance to the accumulation of benefices on him; for in those days a prosperous ecclesiastic would seem to have regarded his parishes merely as sources of income, while he complacently devolved the care of each on some ill-paid priest. Nor, when Becket afterwards appeared as an ecclesiastical reformer, did he make any attempt to remedy this, which to modem apprehensions may perhaps seem the most crying abuse of all." Bobertson's mistake in fact lies in measuring Becket by modem standards, and in ignoring the principle which underlay the system of mediaeval pluralism. The whole question of pluralities has been treated by Freeman in an exhaustive manner which leaves nothing to be said (Gantemp. Review, vol. 32, pp. 126-128). He points out how the older view of a spiritual office, which placed the duties first and regarded the emoluments as a maintenance for the man holding the office while he fulfilled the duties in person, gave way to the feudal idea of a possession in which " the duties were attached to the benefice rather than the benefice to the duties. So that the duties were discharged, it was not necessary that the holder of the benefice should always discharge them in person." Towards the close of the eleventh century the principles of feudalism stamped themselves on Church preferment, and the pluralism so prevalent in the case of temporal benefices seemed to warrant pluralism in ecclesiastical benefices. The baron had his many manors on condition of doing duty to his lord for each, and so the ecclesiastic might have his many livings. "The average conscience of the time," says Freeman in conclusion, "was fully satisfied if the holder of several benefices provided a competent person to do the duties of each. If Thomas did this at Beverley and Otford and wherever else he held preferment, he would not reach the standard either of primitive or of modern moraUty; but he would fully satisfy the morality of his own age." CHAPTER III. THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. The archdeacon of Canterbury now became the His intra- chancellor of England, and Thomas exchanged the fj^ j.^^^ service of the archbishop for the service of the king. The appointment seems to have been mainly the work of Theobald. It is quite possible that Henry had himself recognised the value of Thomas' share in the semi-ecclesiastical, semi-political negotiations to which he owed in part his acceptance as king of England, and was more than ready to find a place in his court for a servant whose ability was enhanced by his evident devotion to the aims of his master. But the biographers lay greater stress on the arch- bishop's share in his favourite's promotion. It was Theobald's recommendation that won Thomas the chancellorship, a recommendation seconded by Henry^ bishop of Winchester*, who had decided to forgive 1 Fitzst. iii. 17: commendatione et obtentu arohiepisoopl et hortatu aotuque nobilis Henrici Wintonieneis episoopi, regis faotus est Thomas cancellarius. 58 THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. and forget, and not only joined his old rival Theobald in welcoming Henry of Anjou, but also lent a hand to lift the young diplomatist who had thwarted his ambition in the past. One of the anonymous bio- grapherl lets us further into the secret workings of the royal favour. Theobald consulted Philip, bishop of Bayeux, and Amulf, bishop of Lisieux, two Nor- man ecclesiastics on whose advice the young king relied at the outset of his reign, and persuaded them, it seems, to support him in urging the claims of Thomas upon the royal notice*. Theobald's The early biographers have not quite done justice to the motives of Theobald in procuring the appointment of Thomas. He seems to have had a double purpose in view, the restoration of law and ^ Auct. Anon. i. iv. 12: adscitis igitur ad se Cantuariensis antistes Philippo Baiocensi et Arnulfo Lexoviensi episoopis, quo- rum oonBiliis rex in primordiie suis innitebatur, coepit de Thomae prudentia, strenuitate, et fidelitate atque morum laudabili et admirabili maneuetudine inferre sermonem, memoratisque epi- scopis secundum voluntatem et suasionem arcbiepiscopi annuenti- buB, Tbonms regiam ingressus curiam cancellarii rtomen officium- que suscepit. It is interesting in tbis connexion to notice the subsequent relations between Amnlf and Tbomas. There is an undated letter from Amulf to the chancellor (Epist. i. in the Materials, v. 1-3) written in the most complimentary terms, warning him at the same time against the dangers of a courtier's life with its scanty opportunities for true friendship, and closing with the request that the chancellor would watch over the interests of a friend of Amulf s and keep Amulf himself in evidence before the king. In 1162 Amulf writes {Epist. 12, v. 20) to congratulate Thomas on his consecration. For a time at least they were good friends, though at a later date Amulf wavered between bis friendship for Thomas and his loyalty to the king, siding generally with the latter. THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. 59 order throughout the countrj', and at the same time the maintenaDce of the privileges of the Church. The reign of Stephen had bequeathed to England a legacy of civil anarchy and ecclesiastical predomi- nance, the latter the natural result of the former; and it was apparently Theobald's aim to ensure the suppression of the disorder without losing the ad- vantages which it had given to the Church. The first claim upon the energies of the new kiag was undoubtedly the substitution of rule for misrule, law for licence, throughout the realm; but Theobald foresaw that a crisis could not long be postponed when the king turned to face the pretensions of the ecclesiastical body within his kingdom. The secular power of the Church had grown rapidly during the turbulence of Stephen's reign. It was strong in territorial resources. A large proportion of the knights' fees were in the hands of ecclesiastical holders; and the frowning castles that rose thick and fast during that reign of anarchy were many of them the strongholds of bishops militant like Henry of Winchester' and Roger of Salisbury, whose nephews Alexander of Lincoln and Roger of Ely were castle-builders as energetic as their uncle. It was strong in organisation. While the body politic was divided against itself, alternating between two sovereigns and torn by rival factions among the barons, the national Church had all the strength of 1 Winchester's castles had to come down at Henry's bidding in 1155. Eobert de Monte, a.d. 1155. Cp. Pipe EoU 2 Henry II. (1155-1156), in prosternendis castellis episcopi Wintoniensis, in Hampshire (Hunter, p. 55). 60 THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. unity, though it was unity purchased by the recog- nition of a foreign court of appeal in the Papacy*. The national assembly had ceased to meet, and civil justice was in abeyance ; but the s)mod8 of the Church were still held, and law was still administered in the episcopal courts. When there was nob even a semblance of authority in the State, there was the reality in the Church. The pretensions of the clergy more than kept pace with their power. Gervase styles Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, on one occasion "Angliae dominus utpote frater regis et apostolicae sedis legatus," and at the Synod of Winchester in 1141 this "lord of all England," presiding as legate, actually claimed for the clergy the right of electing as well as consecrating the occupant of the royal thronel But now the tide seemed to be turning. With a young king at the head of the State determined to be king over all his subjects in fe,ct as well as in name and surrounded by advisers who looked with an evil eye upon the privileges and possessions of the Church, the current seemed to be setting in the opposite direction. The attitude of the court was unmistakable, that of the 1 Freeman considers that the absence of any central au- thority in England was largely responsible for the ready acquies- cence in appeals to Borne. "The pontiff seemed the sublime and dimly seen embodiment of that reign of law which had passed away from our own shores" {ConteTiip. Review, vol. 32, p. 133). " William of Malmesbury, Hist. Nov. iii. 44 : veutilata est hesterno die causa (i.e. the claims of Matilda) secreto coram major! parte cleri Angliae, ad cujns jus potissimnm spectat principem eligere simulque ordinare. THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. 61 king suspicious' ; and Theobald was as anxious about the immediate interests of the Church as he was afraid for her future welfare*. But the Church was not his only care. It was only natural that the contemporary biographers of Thomas, all of them ecclesiastics in position and sympathy, should lay special stress on this side of Theobald's policy, but it was not the whole. The actual sufferings of the people at the hands of lawless barons, and the possibility of their suffering further at the hands of a king of semi-foreign extraction who might be tempted to treat England as a conquered nation and play the part of a conqueror by wreaking an arbitrary revenge upon his new subjects, — these were con- siderations which Theobald kept clearly in view, as we learn from John of Salisbury". He was anxious ^ MUman (Lat. Christ, iii. 447) notes the possibility of an hereditary bias against the Church. His father Geoffrey had been a cruel enemy to more than one ecclesiastic. Cp. Bobertson, Becket, p. 25. ^ Auct. Anon. i. iv. 11: erat in ecelesia regni illius nou modica trepidatio, turn propter suapectam regis aetatem, turn propter coUateralium ejus circa ecclesiasticae libertatis jura notam maUgnitatem. Nee frustra, sicut rei exitus indicavit. Cantuariensis autem antistes, tam de praesenti soUicitns quam de futuro timidus, aliquod remedium malis quae imminere timeban- tur, opponere cogitabat: visumque est ei quod, si Thomam regis posset inserere consiliis, maximam ezinde quietem et pacem Anglicanae ecclesiae posse provenire : sciebat enim eum magnani- mum et prudentem, qui et zelum Dei haberet cum scientia et ecclesiasticam libertatem totis affectibus aemularetur. ' Joh. S. ii. 304 : erat enim ei (Theobaldo) suspeota adoles- centia regis, et juvenum et pravorum hominum, quorum consiliis agi videbatur, insipientiam et malitiam formidabat: et ne instinctu eorum insolentius ageret jure victoris, qui sibi videbatur, etsi 62 THOMAS THK CHANCELLOR. to place near the king a minister who would befriend the people as well as the Church, — who would help Henry to put down anarchy with a strong hand, and at the same time watch all ecclesiastical interests with a protecting eye. Thomas seemed the very man for the work, and Theobald lost no time in putting him forward. The recommendation of the archbishop and his friends and Thomas' own services in the cause of Henry's accession were both strong claims upon the royal favour, and Thomas of London became the king's chancellor. Foliot's A very different light is thrown on this transaction tfte cto- ^y ^^ assertion in a letter written by Gilbert Foliot, ceiUyrsMp bishop of London, to archbishop Thomas in 1166. Foliot accuses him of having bought the chancellor- ship publicly with an eye to the prospect of the primacy*. It is true that promotion to offices of allter esset, populum subegisee, cancellarium procnrabat in curia ordinari, cujus ope et opera novi regis, ne saeviret in ecclesiain, impetuta cohiberet, et consilii sui temperaret malitiam, et repri- meret audaciam officialiam, qui sub obtentu publicae potestatis et praetextu juris tam ecclesiae qiiam provincialium facultates diripere conspiraverant. Will. C. i. 5, is equally emphatic on the subject of the king's encroachment upon the rights, and the courtiers' designs upon the property of the Church, but says nothing of the sufferings of the people, actual and prospective, at which John of Salisbury hints. Cp. with regard to the danger of the Church "the dying admonitions of Theobald to the king," as Milman styles the letter written by John in Theobald's name, probably towards the last days of the archbishop's life: suggerunt vobis filii saecnli hujus nt ecclesiae minuatis anctoritatem ut vobis regia dignitas augeatur (Joh. S. Epigt. 64, ed Giles). 1 E'put. 225 (v. 525) : ad ipsa siquidem recurramus initia, qnis toto orbe nostro, qnis ignorat, quis tam resupinus ut nesciat vos ceita licitatione proposita cancellariam illam dignitatem multis THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. 63 state by purchase was not unknown in those days. While the ordinary offices in the royal household, such as the stewardship, became hereditary, those which tended to develop into ministerial posts of marcarum millibus obtinuisse, et aurae hujuB impulsu in portum ecclesiae Cantaariensis illapsum, ad ejus tandem sic regimen aecessisse? Fronde {Short Studies, iv. 28) thinks it "inconceiv- able that the bishop of London would have thrown such a. charge directly in Becket's teeth unless there had been some foundation for it," and leaves the question, evidently regarding it as settled by this oS-hand remark. The charge is really two-fold, (1) the purchase, (2) the design upon the primacy. The latter is im- probable, but more of this in its proper place. The simple question of the purchase cannot be settled for certain either way, in the absence of the Pipe Eoll of 1 Henry II. , where a transaction so public (certa licitatione proposita, — apparently competition is implied) would certainly have been recorded, if it ever took place. Stubbs {Comt. Hist. vol. i.) gives instances of the sale of offices. In the Pipe Koll of 31 Henry I. (1130-1131) Geoffrey Bufas, afterwards bishop of Durham, is recorded as owing £3000. 13s. id. "pro sigillo. " In the Annals of Margam, a.d. 1122, it is stated that he bought the chancellorship "pro vii. miUibus libris argenti." Evidently the sum in the Pipe Eoll was the remainder of the purchase-money agreed upon in 1122. (Robertson, BenTtet, App. ii. p. 322.) In the same Pipe Eoll John the marshal appears as paying 40 marks for a post in the Curia Regis, and Richard Fitzalured pays 15 marks for the privilege of acting as assessor to Ralph Bassett "ad plaoita regis" in Buckinghamshire, i.e. as an itinerant justice. Bishop Nigel of Ely bought the treasurership for his son for £400 (Hist. Eliensis, in Stuhbs, Const. Hist. i. 384). Under Richard I. William Long- champ, bishop of Ely, bought the chancellorship for £3000, though Reginald the Lombard had ventured to bid as high as £4000 (Stubbs, i. 497). In the 7th year of John's reign, Walter de Grey fined with the king in 5000 marks to have the king's chancery for life and to obtain a charter to that effect (Madox, Hist. Exchequer, p. 43). 64 THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. political importance, like the chancellorship, were not unfrequently sold. No source of revenue was left untried by the Angevin dynasty. Ministers of state fined for their offices in the royal service, just as litigants fined for the administration of royal justice and boroughs for the confirmation of royal grants ; and no discredit was involved in either case. But as a matter of fact there is no proof that the chancellorship was sold to Thomas. Foliot's as- sertion stands unsupported by other evidence. It is true that we have no extant reply fi-om Thomas, but the argument ex silentio can scarcely be pressed to prove that silence in this case meant inability to disprove the charge. It might with equal probability be interpreted as the silence of con- temptuous disregard. On the other hand there are two considerations which detract from the weight of Foliot's accusation. (1) The chancellorship had never yet been a stepping-stone to the primacy. It was the added greatness of the chancellorship in Thomas' hands that made his promotion straight from that office to the primacy possible ; and in this light Foliot's assertion looks like an afterthought. (2) It must be remembered that this isolated charge comes from the pen of an old rival, embittered by his own disappointment and by the high-handed policy of his successful opponent. It occurs in the last of a group of letters that passed between the archbishop and the bishops of his province after his excommunication of his antagonists, and ended in a personal epistolary warfare between Thomas and FoHot, who championed the cause of his fellow- THOMAS THE CHANCELLOB. 65 suffragans. They are essentially party pamphlets, and little reliance can be placed upon their asser- tions unless corroborated by evidence from more dis- passionate sources. The date of Thomas' appointment to the Date of the chancellorship has been variously given from 1154 '^^(" ' to 1158; but anything later than 1155 seems out of the question. Gervase places the appointment "at the very outset of the reign \" There may have been a brief interval between Henry's accession and the promotion of Thomas. The charter of liberties, which has been assigned to the coronation (Dec. 19th, 1154), is attested not by the chancellor but by Richard de Luci the justiciar ; and this may perhaps be an indication that the chancellorship was still vacant, for the chancellor's name was usually appended as a witness to all royal charters^ But it seems certain that Thomas was Henry's first chancellor. More than one name, it is true, has been suggested by modem historians, but no other name occurs in the original authorities ^ Diceto ^ Gervase, Chron. (ool. 1377, Twysden): "statim in initio regni " Theobald obtained the promotion of Thomas " oui anno praeterito dederat archidiaconatum." The date of the archdeaconry was October 1154. 2 Stabbs (Select Charters, p. 135) takes the attestation by Luci as an indication of the date of the charter, which he describes as "probably earlier than the appointment of Thomas as chancellor. " ' Robertson mentions an undated grant to the earl of Arundel (Rymer, Foedera, i. 41), at the close of which occur the following words among the list of witnesses, — Theobaldo arohiepisoopo Oantuariensi N. episcopo de Ely et cancellario. This might be alleged, as Eobertson points out, in favour of a previous tenure of R. 5 66 THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. records the appointment under the year 1154, and there is only one passage in the early biographers that appears to point to a later date than 1155. Herbert of Bosham says that Thomas had served five years at court as chancellor when he was elected archbishop. This would place his appointment in 1157'. But against this statement must be set the evidence of another biographer whose chronology is much more reliable. Fitzstephen distinctly credits Thomas the chancellor with a share in the speedy restoration of law and order which took place within three months after the coronation (December 1154- March 1155)^ The one conclusive authority — ^the Pipe Roll of the first year of Henry's reign — is missing; but the evidence of the next year's Pipe Roll (Michaelmas 1155-1156) is practically decisive in favour of 1155 as the latest possible date. It the chancellorship by Nigel. But Foss {Jtidgeii, i. 166) explains et as a clerical error for T, the initial letter of Thoma. Nigel was recalled to the Exchequer as treasurer by Henry II. at the outset of his reign. The name of Philip, who was chancellor for a time under Stephen, has been put forward as a possible predecessor of Thomas under Henry 11., but it is without evidence. * Herb. iii. 185. Lingard (ii. 55) apparently dates the chancellorship of Thomas from 1156 or 1157. He makes Theo- bald retain "the first place in the councils of his sovereign" for two years, and then procure the promotion of Thomas to the chancellorship; but he quotes no authority in support of this assertion. ° Fitzst. iii. 19: miserationeDei, consilio cancellarii, etcleriet baronum regni qui pacis bonum volebant, intra tres primos menses coronationis regis, .. .Willelmus de Ipra...cum lacrimis emigravit; Flandrenses omnes collectis impedimentis et armis ad mare tendunt. THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. 67 contains the name of no other chancellor than Thomas, and, as the biographer of the "Judges of England" has pointed out, its evidence is largely retrospective'. The notices of the chancellor's exemption from certain charges on his property refer probably to charges due in the first year of the reign, though accounted for in the Roll of the second year. Similarly the payments mentioned as arising out of the pleas held by the chancellor in Essex and Kent were probably imposed in the previous year, as some time would elapse before the sheriffs could collect the money due to the Exchequer. The appointment of Thomas to the chancellorship may be fixed early in 1155 at the latest. It was perhaps made, if a conjecture may be hazarded, at the Council which Henry held at Bermondsey on Christmas Day 1154, within a week of his coro- nation ^ The chancellorship in 1154 was an important The office office, though its importance was potential rather ceijt^^' than actual. The chancellor yielded a formal precedence to the justiciar^ who acted as regent in 1 Foss, Judges, i. 196, 199. ^ Diceto's date (1154) in that case will be just correct. It was at this Council apparently that Henry concerted his plan of campaign with his new ministers. Gervase (col. 1377, Twysden) : in nativitate Domini tenuit rex curiam suam apud Bermundeseiam, ubi cum principibus suis de statu regni et pace reformanda tractans, proposuit animo alienigenas gentes de regno propellere et munitiunoulas pessimas per totam Angliam solo tenns dis- sipare. 3 Fitzst. iii. 17 : cancellarii Angliae dignitas est ut seoundus a rege in regno habeatur. The author of the Dialogus de Scaccario (Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 176) describes the justiciar, "capitaUs 5—2 68 THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. the king's absence, and apparently to three or four other officers of the royal household, the constable, the marshal, the steward and the chamberlain ; but at the^same time he had functions to discharge and opportunities for active influence with the king which lent themselves readily to further develop- ment. It will be convenient here at the outset to sketch in outline the character and duties of this office of state. The full title of its holder was cancellarius regis^, so called in all probability for the sake of distinction from other chancellors of inferior rank who occasionally come upon the scene, e.g. cancellarius reginae', and at a later date the chancellors of cathedral churches. The chancellor was the king's chief chaplain, entrusted with the care of the royal chapel '; and on this account the post of chancellor was always held by an ecclesia.stic. But his ecclesiastical functions ended there. It was " a thoroughly secular office " which " must have left dommi regis jnstioia,'' as being "primus post regem in regno ratione fori." Bishop Stubbs accordingly explains Fitzstephen's 'secundus a rege' as meaning 'next after the justiciar' {Gorut. Hist. i. 604, n.). 1 Madox, Exchequer, p. 41. Stubbs derives cancella/rius from cancelli, the screen behind which the secretarial work of the royal household was done. ' Bernard bishop of S. David's was chancellor to Matilda, the first wife of Henry I., and Godfrey of Bath to the second. (Florence of Worcester, 1115, and Contiuuator Flor. Wore. 1123, Stubbs, 1. c.) 3 Madox (p. 41) notes that the chancellor is called "chef de le chapele le Boy" as late as Edward II.'s reign in an ordinance relating to the royal chapel of Windsor. Fitzst. iii. 18 : ut capeUa regis in ipsius (cancellarii) sit dispositione et cura. THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. 69 its holder very little time for ecclesiastical duties or thoughts." In fact one of its functions was scarcely consistent with the principles of a conscientious churchman'. It was part of the chancellor's work to receive and control the revenues of vacant bishoprics and abbeys", which fell to the Crown now that the ecclesiastical benefice had been assimilated to the feudal grant. The civil functions of the chancellor were many and various. He was briefly, to borrow a modern term, secretary of state for all departments'. As keeper of the royal seal, he supervised all charters that were to be stamped with the great seal, and all writs and orders that were issued at the Curia Regis and at the Exchequer. Like the chief justiciar and the other officers of the • Freeman, Contemp. Review, vol. 32, p. 477. ' Fitzst. iii. 18: ut vacantes archiepieoopatus, episoopatus, abbatiaB, et baronias, cadentes in manu regis, ipse (cancellarius) suseipiat et conservet. Cp. Herb. iii. 180 (on tbe death of Theobald) : rex dissimulat nisi quod arohiepisoopatus, siout et episoopatus et etiam vacantes abbatiae solent, curae oancellarii et custodiae traditur. Lyttelton {Life of Henry II., Appendix on the Chancellorship) concludes from the evidence of the Bolls that the custody of vacant preferments did not fall to the chancellor ex officio but by personal favour of the king, and considers that the king entrusted the care of vacant benefices to whom he pleased. But he gives no reference to the particular BoUs on which his view is based, and quotes no instance of preferment entrusted to the care of any one besides the chancellor. And Fitzetephen and Herbert seem positive enough on the point. ' Cp. William of Canterbury's designation of the chancellor- ship as scribatus (i. 5, and elsewhere). Fitzst. iii. 18: ut altera parte sigilli regii, quod et ad ejus pertinet custodiam, propria signet mandata; ut omnibus regis adsit conciliis, et etiam non vocatus se ingerat; ut omnia sigilliferi regii, clerioi sui, manu signentur, omnia canoellarii consUio disponantur. 70 THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. royal household, he was ex officio a member of both those courts, — a justiciar of the Curia Regis and a baron of the Exchequer. Fitzstephen sums up his introductory sketch of the chancellor's position in the realm with the remark that a chancellor with a good record might die a bishop or an archbishop if he chose. Ivde est quod cancellaria nan emenda eat. It was a precaution against simony. The door which led to such an avenue must open only to the key of merit. In the face of Foliot's assertion that Thomas used a baser key, and certainly in the face of the contemporary evidence as to the possibility of such an entrance, we must discount Fitzstephen's estimate of the sanctity of the office. Perhaps even his testimony to its dignity must be taken with some qualification, as the evidence of a witness who is looking at the chancellorship through the halo of magnificence which the genius of Thomas had thrown around the office. As a matter of fact, its greatness was only incipient in 1154. Various causes contributed to its growth'. Royal charters increased in number and importance. Pleas and cases came thick and fast for trial to the sessions of the royal justices when it was seen how superior they were to the local courts in fairness and efficiency. These changes added to the work of the chancellorship. The office of justiciar in time lost much of its early prestige, and what the justiciar lost the chancellor gained. But the personal element accounted for more than any of the above causes. The ability and influence of one chancellor 1 Madox, Exchequer, p. 43. THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. 71 after another clothed the office with a grandeur not originally its own. They left it greater than they found it, and their successors entered upon a wider range of power won largely by the enterprise of former chancellors in extending their influence beyond the traditional limits of their office. Thomas of London was the first great chancellor. The civil and ecclesiastical duties which fell officially to him as chancellor form but a small part of the work with which he is to be credited during his chancellorship of seven years and a half. He was the responsible agent, if not the author, of Henry's foreign policy, — his lieutenant in time of war, his ambassador in time of peace. He was the con- fidential minister of the Crown at home, the practical head of the executive, the recognised approach to the royal ear, the acknowledged channel of royal favour*. All this was in a sense extra ordinem, — the result of personal influence, not official powers. It was an age of personal government. The larger Curia Kegis — the great council of the Norman kings — consisting of the mass of barons summoned by royal mandate for deliberative and judicial purposes, met only at intervals. The natural result of this was that the current affairs of state came to be transacted immediately by the king and the smaller ^ Cp. Auct. Anon. i. iv. 12 : Thomas vero vices ejus et negotia streune et potestative exsequens nunc princeps militiae loricatus exercitum praeibat, nunc vacans et expeditionibus jura populis dictabat. Solo namque nomine a rege differens regnum uui- versum pro voluntate disponebat, principibus et magistratibus ad ejus nutum subjectis, certissimeque scientibus hoe solummodo regi gratum fore quod Thomas expedite judicasaet. 72 THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. Curia Regis — the few officers in permanent attend- ance on the king. The chancellor, as the royal secretary, had practically unlimited opportunities for exerting his influence with the king ; and when to these opportunities was added a personal friend- ship of the warmest kind, we need not wonder that the power and prestige of the chancellorship rose in the hands of Thomas to such an unprecedented height^. The work of Thomas the chancellor is perhaps hest grouped under the different heads of foreign, civil, and ecclesiastical administration. A clearer view of the man and his work will thus be gained than from any merely chronological arrangement. It will be an additional gain in orderly sequence' to take his ecclesiastical policy last of all — a position required by its obvious connexion with the climax of his career, his elevation to the primacy. But it will not be inappropriate to notice here beforehand the general views which the early biographers take of his relations with the king and with his fellow- courtiers respectively. Relations Fitzstephen waxes enthusiastic on the subject of m loitft "* *^® confidential intimacy between the king and his the king, chancellor, whom he styles, it may be with pardonable exaggeration, the favourite alike of king, clergy, 1 Freeman remarks that "perhaps the greatest witness of all to the height to which the great chancellor had raised the chancellorship is to be found in the fact that the king thought it possible that he could hold both chancellorship and arch- bishopric together." {Contemp. Review, vol. 32, p. 476, cp. pp. 494-496.) THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. 73 barons and peopled When the serious business of the court was done, they would launch out into the wildest freaks of boyish fun. There is an oft-told story of a fight between the two for the chancellor's cape as they rode down a London street on a wintry day, while the shivering beggar for whom the prize was meant and the gay retinue of knights looked on in amazement. It may be only a fragment of court gossip, but it is at least a bit of characteristic gossip which must have had some foundation in the habits of king and chancellor. Often the king would pay an unexpected visit to the chancellor's board, partly out of curiosity to test the reality of its rumoured grandeur, partly from sheer amusement. Sometimes he would ride straight into the hall, sometimes empty a cup and disappear as hastily as he had come, sometimes vault over the table and take a seat beside his favourite. Never were seen two such friends in all Christendom^. Henry's con- fidence knew no limits. Thomas was entrusted with powers that placed him on a level with the king in all but name. His word was law for barons ' Fitzst. iii. 24 : Cancellarins regi, clero, militiae et populo erat acoeptissimus. Pertraetatis seriis, ooUudebant rex et ipse tamquam coaetanei pueruli in aula, in ecclesia, in consessu, in eqnitando. Henry was twenty-one, Thomas thirty-six in 1154; but Thomas was a boy at heart when there was sport to be had. Fitzstephen's account is probably nearer the mark than that of Auct. Anon. i. iv. 12, who makes Henry play while Thomas worked. England never had a harder worker on the throne than Henry of Anjou, scholar, linguist, lawyer, soldier, statesman all in one, — warring in France one week, the next travelling from shire to shire in England, — always on the move, never resting, never tired. = Fitzst. iii. 24, 25. the court. 74 THOMAS THE CHANCELLOR. and magistrates, his favour the one thing needful for suitors at court. Grim styles him "a second Joseph in Egypt'." (2) with There is however another side to the picture. It was not all plain sailing for Thomas. There were serious difficulties to contend with at court, as we learn from the other biographers. The secret envy of his rivals^ had its share in creating opposition now in the royal household as it had before in the palace of the archbishop. But the language of the biographers indicates that it was Thomas' policy rather than his promotion that made his enemies. John of Salisbury credits him with a threefold responsibility, the task of contending daily (1) for the welfare and dignity of his lord the king against the enemies of the Crown, (2) for the needs of Church and people against the king, and (3), last but not least, against "the wild beasts of the court." In pursuance of his own line of action Thomas was harassed by plots and intrigues until, as he tearfully confessed to his archbishop and his other friends, he was often weary of existence, and ready enough to break away from the complications of court life, if he could but withdraw without ' Grim, ii. 363 : novus itaqne erigitur super Aegyptum Joseph, praefioitur universis regni negotiis post regem secundus. ^ Herb. iii. 177 : aulicoriim vermis, per aulam serpens jam sed adhnc latens invidia. ' Joh. S. ii. 305 : nee conditionis nee oneris sui immemor erat, qui quotidie hine pro domini sui regis salute et honore, iude pro necessitate ecolesiae et proYincialium tam contra regem ipsum quam contra inimicos ejus contendere cogebatur et variis artibus Tarios eludere dolos. sed hoc praecipue perurgebat qnod inde- sinenter oportebat eum pngnare ad bestias curiae. THOMAS THE CHANCELLOK. 76 disgrace'. According to the Icelandic Saga (i. 59) it was only Theobald's refusal to allow his resignation and Theobald's entreaty to him to persevere for the sake of the Church that kept Thomas at his post at court. There is not a word of these difficulties in Fitz- stephen's glowing account of his chancellorship, full and detailed as that account is. But the language of John of Salisbury and the anonymous biographer who tells the same tale is too strong to be ignored. It probably relates only to the early days of Thomas' chancellorship, when he was yet feeling his way into the royal favour, and perhaps making his first attempts to check the rapacity of barons and officials ; but it points unmistakably to the fact that Thomas had to work hard and fight hard at the outset for the universal goodwill and gratitude which Grim de- scribes as the reward of his conduct as chancellor'' ' Joh. S. ii. 305 : in primis cancellariae suae auspiciis tot et tantas variarum uecessitatum difficultates sustinuit, tot laboribus attritus est, tot afSlctionibus fere oppressus, tot laqueis in aula expositus a malitia inhabitantium in ea, at eum, sicut archiepiscopo suo et amicis sub lacrimarum testimonio referee solitus erat, saepe in dies singulos taederet vivere, et post vitae aetemae desiderium super omnia optaret ut absque infamiae nota posset a curiae nexibus explicari. Cp. Auct. Anon. i. iv. 12: in primordiis suis tantos aemulatonim assultus pertulit tantaque delatorum laces- situs est protervia...ut a curia recedere disponeret. The writer then proceeds to describe Thomas' rapid rise in the king's estima- tion. Verum rex, fide illius et iudustria oitius oognita, tanta eum dileotione carissimum habuit, ut nemiuem aliquando aeque dilexisse putetur. ' Grim, ii. 365 : tantam quoque gratiam adeptus est a rege et regno universo ut hos solum beatos reputaret opinio qui in ejus oculis complacere et regis consiliario et cancellario obsecundare in aliquo potuissent. CHAPTER IV. FOREIGN AFFAIRS. Henry of The foreign interest of Thomas' chancellorship Anjou and centres in France. Fitzstephen, in his picture of the Louis of . France, chancellor's magnificence at home and abroad, alludes to the generous welcome which Thomas gave to an embassy from the kings of Norway^; and it is probable that he had a share in the reception of more than one of the complimentary embassies which came from the Emperor^, the king of Jerusalem and ' Fitzst. iii. 26. The date of the emhassy is fixed by its mention in the Pipe Roll of 2 Henry II., 1155-1156 (Hunter, pp. 4, 15). Cp. Stubbs, Medimv. and Mod. Hist. pp. 124, 125, on the intercourse between the Churches of Norway and England under Stephen and Henry II. There is also a notice in the Pipe RoU of 3 Henry U. (1156-1157) relating to the reception of an embassy from Sweden (Hnnter, pp. 101, 108). 2 The signature of Thomas is appended to a, letter from Henry U. to the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, which was con- veyed with an oral message by Herbert of Bosham and a royal clerk named William: "De manu beati Jacobi super qua nobis soripsistis, in ore magistri Heriberti et Guilhelmi olerioi nostri verbum posuimus. Teste Thoma oanceUario apud Norhant(onam) ": quoted by Robertson from Badevio's Life of Frederic, i. 7 {Materials, vol. v. addenda, opposite to p. xxvi), and dated by him about 1156. FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 77 the Moorish princes of southern Spain, to pay their respects to the new king of England who was build- ing a second empire in Western Europe. But we have no record of any intervention in foreign affairs on the part of Thomas beyond his share in the relations between England and France. Those re- lations were precarious in the extreme. The position of Louis VII. of France was peculiar. He was the titular head of that conglomeration of small states between the Channel and the Pyrenees, all owning allegiance to him as their feudal lord. But circum- stances had thrown one after another of these fiefs into the hands of Henry of Anjou, until at last he was practically master of the situation. He was duke of Normandy and count of Anjou and Maine by inheritance. By his marriage with Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis, in 1152, the earldom of Poitou and the duchy of Aquitaine, which she in- herited from her father William, were transferred from the French to the English Crown, from the lord to his vassal ; and Louis was left " cribb'd, cabin'd and confined " on the north, the west and the south by the temtories of a powerful prince over whom he had no hold beyond his oath of feudal allegiance. Henry was already a continental sovereign before he became king of England, and during the first eight years of his reign (1154-1162) he was only in England twice, and that merely for a year or more at a time. His foreign dominions required his immediate attention, and Thomas was frequently on duty abroad with him. The first call to action came with the aggression 78 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. Campaign of Geoflfrey, the king's brother, who had laid claim to the provinces of Anjou and Maine under the Geoffrey, 1156. Henry's policy in France. pretext that Henry had only received them on the express condition of resigning them to his younger brother on his own accession to the throne of England. Henry crossed the Channel in January 1156, reduced the strongholds of Chiaon, Mirabeau, and Loudon, which had taken Geofifrey's side, and compelled Geoffrey to resign his claim on the receipt of an annuity by way of compensation. Henry then exacted the homage of all Aquitaine, and prepared to return to England. Thomas' share in this short campaign is mentioned, though not distinctly speci- fied, by Gervase, who describes Henry at the outset as "relying on the valuable help of Thomas his chancellor^" Apparently Thomas was not abroad long, for the evidence of the Pipe Roll of 1155-1156 proves that he was busy with judicial work at home before Michaelmas 1156. Henry spent part of 1157 and 1158 in expeditions against the Welsh, and in a progress through the northern shires of England ; but the August of 1158 saw him once more engaged in the extension of his ' Gervase, Chron. a.d. 1156 (Twysden, col. 1378): Thomae canoellarii sui magno fretua auxilio. Job. S. Epist. 128 (ed. Giles) connects the first soutage of the reign with this campaign: Bcutagium remittere non potest (rex) et a quibusdam exaetionibus abstinere, quoniam fratris gratia male sarta nequidquam coiit, sed ob hoc pemioiosissime scissa est, quod domino regi frater totam haereditatem patemam, nominatim terram cujus el vis major possessionem abstulit, noluit abjurare, qunm tamen mu- nitiones et regi cedere et obsides dare paratus esset, ut terram qnam done patris habuerat recuperaret. FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 79 power on the continent. He had at least three distinct objects to secure. (1) The fortresses of the Vexin, the military frontier between his Norman duchy and the dominions of Louis, were in the hands of the French king, and Henry was bent on their recovery. (2) The death of Geofifrey, whom the citizens of Nantes had accepted as their earl, made Henrj' anxious to secure the earldom for himself. (3) The lordship of Brittany was just now a subject of dispute between two claimants, and Henry was determined to assert his authority in that quarter also. Every gain to Henry in territory or influence was a clear loss to Louis, who could ill brook any addition to the power of a vassal that had already robbed him of his wife and half his dominions. There was one insuperable obstacle to a policy of naked aggression on Henry's part, and that was the feudal relation between the vassal and his suzerain lord which remained "the dominant and authori- tative fact of the political morality of that day'." Open war was the last policy to which Henry or Louis wished to resort. The only alternative for Henry was diplomacy, and in Thomas the chancellor he had a diplomatist who had already won signal triumphs in the sphere of papal negotiations. How far the continental policy of Henry during the years 1158 — 1160 was the fruit of Thomas' influence in the private counsels of his king, we cannot say. In the light of their difiference of opinion before the walls of Toulouse in 1159, when Thomas showed himself as impetuously regardless as Henry was ' Mrs J. E. Green, Henry II. p. 32. 80 FOREIGN AFFAIES. cautiously observant of feudal honour, we migbt be inclined to credit Henry rather than Thomas with the authorship of a poHcy which aimed at Ending a technical justification in the sight of the feudal world for every act of aggression, and sought to avoid war wherever peace would suffice for its purpose. But perhaps some allowance must be made for Thomas on that occasion. The sword was already drawn, and the diplomatist lost in the soldier wild with excitement over his first campaign. Thomas in 1158 may have been as keenly alive as Henry was in 1159 to the need of wary walking. But whatever doubt there is as to the chancellor's share in the origination of this policy, there is no doubt that he was the responsible agent in its execution. Thomas Before the close of 1158 a marriage had been Mssador arranged between Louis' infant daughter Margaret 1158. and little Henry, the eldest surviving son of Henry of England, and the Vexin secured as Margaret's dowry ; Henry had quelled the disturbances in Brittany, and added the earldom of Nantes to his dominions. The marriage alliance and Louis' consent to the extension of Henry's influence in the West are distinctly described by one authority or another as the work of Thomas, and the connexion between the two is obvious. Louis had been disarmed, his threatened opposition to Henry's plans in Brittany changed into a formal sanction, and his fortresses on Henry's frontier neutralised, by a successful visit from Henry's ambassador — Thomas the chancellor. Fitzstephen dwells with lingering delight upon FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 81 the magnificence of this embassy. Its splendour was part of its policy. It was Thomas' aim not only to make his own mark upon the French world, but also to leave a still more distinct impression of his master's greatness, and this he succeeded in doing*. The inhabitants of the districts through which he passed took the glory of the chancellor as an indi- cation of the still more wonderful glory of his lord the king. It was a grand sight, Fitzstephen tells us, — a mounted retinue of two hundred members of the chancellor's own household, knights, clerks, at- tendants, budding slips of English and foreign nobility, learning the arts of knighthood under his supervision; hounds and hawks to beguile the journey; eight five-horse cars, with a new-liveried groom to each horse's head, one of them the chancellor's chapel, another his private chamber, another his wardrobe, another his kitchen, two of them laden with iron- bound casks of a bright wholesome beverage like wine in colour but superior in taste, which found great favour with the men of France (now com- monly known as beer) ; twelve sumpter horses, each with a groom at its head and a monkey on its back ; eight coffers to carry the chancellor's gold and silver plate and miscellaneous utensils, chests containing cash for current expenses, and one sumpter horse preceding the rest, laden with the sacred vessels and altar ornaments and books. At the head of the ' Fitzst. iii. 29-33. The double motive which prompted this splendour comes out clearly in the language of Fitzstephen : " ut honoretur persona mittentis in misso et missi sua in se ", — personal vanity and national pride both had their share. R. 6 82 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. whole procession came two and fifty footmen in companies of six or ten, singing as they went in English fashion. Behind the cars came the knights and clerks, riding two by two ; and the chan- cellor with a few personal friends brought up the rear. The magnificence of the chancellor on the way was only equalled by his munificence at the end of his journey. On landing he had sent word of his arrival to the king of France, and had received a reply appoint- ing the time and place of meeting at Paris. Louis, bent on giving his guest a royal welcome, had for- bidden his subjects to sell anything to the chancellor or his agents ; but Thomas was equally bent on keeping up his reputation. He baffled the king's precautions by sending his men in disguise under a false name to buy provisions in the neighbouring markets of Lagny, Corbeil, Pontoise, and S. Denys. His stratagem was successful. When he entered Paris to take up his abode at the Temple, his attendants met him with the news that he would find ready stored there three days' provisions for a thousand men. The extravagance of his table is almost incredible. A hundred pounds sterling for one dish of eels is literally a fabulous price ; and it is hard to avoid a suspicion that the amount was exaggerated as the story passed from mouth to mouth. But Thomas' generosity was not confined to the court and retinue of his royal host. The quondam student of Paris gave practical proof of his interest in the university to which he had once owned allegiance by extending his bounty to the scholars. FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 83 the doctors, and (significant touch of human nature) the hungry creditors of the English students. Thomas had not spent in vain. The embassy was a success, and Thomas returned in triumph, winning fresh laurels on his way home by a less peaceful exploit, the capture and imprisonment of Wido de la Val, a notorious robber-chief, whom he left in chains at Neuf-marchd'. Fitzstephen's graphic narrative however fails just where a trust- worthy guide is most wanted. He throws no light upon the progress of the negotiations. He merely states at the outset that the king had discussed the project of the marriage alliance with the chancellor and other magnates of the realm, and that the chancellor was chosen to conduct the negotiations and accepted the responsibility^ The result he dismisses with the brief statement that Thomas got what he asked at Parish The only biographer who refers to this mission at all is Herbert of Bosham, and he only mentions incidentally the fact that Thomas won from the king of France by a marriage alliance five strongholds on the confines of France and Normandy, which were considered to belong by 1 Fitzst. iii. 29-33. ^ Fitzst. iii. 29: deliberavit quandoque rex Angloium cum cancellario et aliis quibusdam regni sui magnatibus petere a rege Franoornm filiam ejus Margaretam matrimonio copulandam filio suo Henrico. Placuit consilium... Ad tantam petitionem tanto principi faoiendam quis mittendus erat nisi cancellarius? Eligitur, aaseutitur. 2 ibid. 38: legatione sua felioiter functus est; propositum assecutus est ; quod petiit, ei concessum est. 6—2 84 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. right of old to the Norman duchy, — namely, Gisors and four other fortresses'. It is the evidence of the contemporary chroniclers that enables us to piece together the facts of the case. Henry crossed into Normandy in August, 1158, met Louis at the river Epte to discuss the question of peace and this alliance, paid a visit to Louis at Paris, and returned with the infant Margaret. So says the Norman chronicler Robert of Mount S. Michael". But Ralph de Diceto distinctly asserts that it was Thomas who procured the consent to the marriage and went in state to Paris to fetch the little bride-elect'. The language of Fitzstephen and ' Herb. iii. 175 : quam industrie munitiones quinque munitiB- simas, in Franciae et Normanniae sitaa confinio, domino suo regi, ad cujas tamen jus ab antique spectare dignoscebantur, a rege Fraucorum per matrimonium, sine ferro, sine gladio, absque lanoea, absque pugna, in omni regum dileotione et pace revo- caverit, Gizortium scilicet, castrum munitissimum, et alia quattuor. The Icelandic Saga speaks vaguely of some occasion on which "by his wisdom and law-pleading, Thomas brought about a settlement as to what line of landmark had been laid down of old between France and Normandy" (i. 57). The rectifi- cation of the frontier thus attributed to Thomas must be the arrangements made by him with Louis in 1158-1160 as to the possession of the Vexin. ^ Robert de Monte, a.d. 1158 (Twysden, 994): rex mense Angusto transfretavit in Normanniam et locutus est cum rege Francorum Ludovioo super Eptam de pace et de matrimonio contrahendo inter filium sunm Henricum et filiam regis Franco- rum Margaretam, Stubbs, Canstit. Hist. i. 380. ' Pipe Boll, 3 Henry II. p. 83 (ed. Hunter) : in corredio regis Scotiae. FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 127 4 Henry II. (1157-1158) the sheriffs of London are allowed £68. 3s. id. under the general head of payments ^ 40s. for the king's huntsmen and hounds, and 20s. for a palfrey for a certain clerk named Thomas, all three allowances made per cancellarium. In the roll 5 Henry II. (1158-1159) the sheriff of Dorset is allowed £7. 6s. 8d. for money paid away to a certain person per cancellarium, per breve regis, i.e. by order of the chancellor, grounded on the king's writ, in obedience to which the sheriff had paid the money. In the accounts of the sheriff of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, in the Pipe Roll of 4 Henry II. (1157-1158), two persons in succession who were each responsible for 100 marks, apparently the cost of the judicial division of a certain landed estate, and had each paid 50 marks into the treasury, are set down as owing 50 marks (the remainder of their liabilities) secundum breve cancellarii, i.e. in accordance with a writ of the chancellor '. ^ Pipe Roll, 4 Henry II. p. 112 (ed. Hunter) : in soltis. This may perhaps be the technical use of solta (=soluta, sums paid), i.e. restitution of the value of stolen property to the owner. If the sheriff prosecuted, all the goods of the thief were con- fiscated to the Crown; but if the injured person prosecuted, the value of the stolen goods {soUaj was restored to him out of the thiefs chattels, and he also received compensation (persolta or prosolta) for his time and trouble. Dial. Scacc. ii. 10. 2 Pipe Roll, 4 Henry II. p. 140. The first entry is : Willelmus de Buissei reddidit compotum (i.e. gave an account) de o m. argenti pro terra Walteri de Espeo partienda contra Bobertum de Eos. In thesauro l m. argenti. Et debet l m. argenti secun- dum breve cancellarii. The second entry is identical, except the name of the debtor. 128 FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. Perdona. There is one interesting class of notices in the Pipe Rolls which calls for a somewhat fuller treat- ment. It is the constantly recurring group of items under the head of perdona. The perdonum of the Pipe Rolls, though it is the lineal ancestor of our' word pardon, has not exactly the same meaning as its philological descendant. It is strictly the re- mission of a debt. The debt in question might be a judicial fine imposed by the king's justices; or it might be, what it seems more frequently to have been, a financial charge upon the property or person of the king's tenants, baron, prelate, freeholder, or city-gild. The chancellor's name occurs frequently ever}' year in the difierent shires as the recipient of such perdona — remissions of charges which in many cases he shared with the other barons of the Ex- chequer, who were ex officio exempt from the com- munis, assisa (= the general taxation) of their counties, from scutage, from the murdrwm fine, the Danegeld, and various other contributions to the royal revenue*. These perdona were granted usually by king's writ, directed to the barons of the Ex- chequer and tested at the Exchequer by two of the greater oflficials" ; and they appear in the sheriff's 1 Dial. Scacc. i. 8 (Stnbbs, Select Charters, p. 198). 2 Dial. Scacc. i. 6 (Stubbs, ib. p. 188). Cp. Intr. to Pipe Bolls, pp. 49, 50. A specimen writ is given in the DiaUigus: "Bex baronibus de scaccario salutem. Perdono illi vel clamo quietum hunc vel illam de hoc vel de iUo. Teatibus Mis ad scaocarium.'' This is strictly an official writ drawn up in the king's name by order of the barons, praecognita regis voluntate, not an original writ issned by the king himself: but the official vmts were reproductions of an original writ. FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 129 accounts in the Pipe Rolls as a deduction from his liabilities under the heading in perdonis per breve regis, followed by a list of names in the dative case, the recipients of the royal grant of exemption. Only two exceptions to this rule occur in the first four years of the reign. In the Pipe Roll of 2 Henry II. (pp. 9, 23) are two entries in perdonis per breve reginae, — the queen here replacing the king in the exercise of this royal prerogative. But in the fifth year (1158-1159) the chancellor's name begins to appear in connexion with these perdona in a way which at first sight suggests that as his influence increased he was permitted to exercise his own authority in granting the remission of debts due to the king'. In the Pipe Roll of 5 Henry II. (p. 12) there is an entry in perdonis per cancellarium, and in the Roll 7 Henry II. (1160-1161) there are six entries in perdonis praecepto cancellarii to persons in different counties, — in Norfolk and Suffolk (p. 4), Herefordshire (p. 20), Northumberland (p. 24), Staffordshire (p. 41) and Hampshire (pp. 57, 59). These notices certainly look as though the chancellor had been solely responsible for the perdona there recorded. But this impression is not borne out by comparison with other perdona mentioned in those two years. In the Pipe Roll of 5 Henry II. (p. 10) there is an entry in perdonis per breve regis per cancellarium; and in the Roll 7 Henry II. (p. 50) 1 Mrs J. E. Green, Henry tlie Second, p. 80: "There are even entries in the Pipe EoU of pardons issued by him, the first instance of such a right ever used by any one save king or queen." E. 9 130 FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. an entry occurs in perdono per breve regis praecepto ccmcellarii. It is evident that the phrases per com- cellarium and praecepto cancellarii appended in these two last instances to perdona based on a writ of the king cannot be pressed to imply the independent action of the chancellor in the cases cited above where no writ is mentioned. They seem rather to imply a previous warrant of some kind from the king'- The question is somewhat obscure, but, as far as can be inferred from extant records, the method of procedure seems to have been as follows. The writs were issued by the chancellor in the king's name. In the cases therefore where no writ is mentioned, it is probable that no writ was issued at all, but that a verbal order for the perdonum in question was given by the king to the chancellor and transmitted directly by him (per cancellarium) or indirectly through him {praecepto cancellarii) to the barons of the Exchequer as a warrant to them not to claim the debt from the favoured individual In all these cases therefore the chancellor was only the channel of royal favour, the agent by whom 1 Miss Norgate, the writer of England under the Angevin Kings, suggested that possibly the six entries praecepto cancel- larii in Pipe Boll 7 Henry II., compared with the entry per breve regis praecepto cancellarii in Kpe EoU 7 Henry II. p. 50, should be explained by the supposition of a previous writ from the king. In reply to my suggestion that the variation between the entries per cancellarium and per breve regis per cancellarium, which had escaped her notice, should i)erhap8 be explained by a similar supposition, Miss Norgate kindly furnished me with the following information as to the probable procedure in granting perdona, for which she was indebted to Mr Salisbury of the Record Office. FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 131 the royal mandate, written or verbal, was conveyed to the officers of the Exchequer. It is not until the eighth year of the reign, when the chancellor had become the archbishop, that we fiud him granting per dona by a writ of his own, independently of the king. In the Pipe Roll of 8 Henry II. (Michaelmas 1161-1162) occurs the follow- ing entry (p. 64) : in perdono per breve archiepiscopi Waltero filio Warini 1 m. It is scarcely probable that in a record so accurate as the Pipe Roll a writ issued by the chancellor would be described as a writ of the archbishop because he had been made arch- bishop since the issue of the writ. We can hardly suppose therefore that this writ was presented at the Easter session of the Exchequer, when Thomas was still only the king's chancellor. Its presenta- tion at the Exchequer must be assigned to the Michaelmas session of 1162, when the roll for the year was compiled. It may have been issued after Easter, during the brief interval between the conse- cration of Thomas in June and his resignation of the chancellor's seal ; but unless it falls within that short space of time, we are left to the conclusion that it was not until after he had ceased to be chancellor that he was allowed to exercise the royal prerogative of pardon on his own authority ^ ' Hewlett (Chronicle of Stephen and Henry II. vol. iii. preface, p. Ivii) remarks that this entry in the EoU of 8 Henry II. "speaks eloquently of the elevation which precedes a faU." Miss Norgate adds : " In nearly all the EoUs there are plenty of solta and dona per breve or praecepto of the queen and of the justiciars whenever the king is out of the country: but I see only two perdona per breve (other than that of the archbishop above) of any one 9—2 132 FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. The Chan- The chancellor's financial powers were not con- l^^lf fined to his seat at the Exchequer. The regular revenues, contributions twice a year from the sheriffs of the counties did not constitute the whole of the royal revenues. There were other occasional and irregular sources of income which did not fall within the cognisance of the Exchequer, but were entrusted to the control of the chancellor. While he held that ofiSce, Thomas was responsible for the receipt and evidently had a voice and a hand in the expenditure of the revenues that flowed into the royal treasury from vacant sees, abbeys, and baronies. But here we are treading on uncertain ground. It is difiicult to distinguish between his expenditure of his own personal resources, and his share in the expenditure of the resources of the king which passed through his hands; and the demand which the king after- wards made for the accounts of his chancellorship has awakened in the mind of one great modem historian at least a suspicion, which seems to have except the king, and those are of the queen in 2 Henry II. (pp. 9, 23)." Mr Salisbury of the Becord Office suggests that even this pardon per breve archiepiscopi may not mean all that it seems at first sight to mean. If it came between the consecration and the resignation of the chancellorship, it may be only a scribe's blunder for per breve regis praecepto archiepiscopi, i.e. a royal writ issued through the archbishop as chancellor. But in view of all the precautions taken to ensure absolute accuracy in the compilation of the roUs — with the treasurer's clerk writing the great Boll of the Pipe at the treasurer's dictation, and the scriptor cancellariae copying it word for word under the watchful eye of the clericiis caneellarii — it is not likely that such a mistake would have been made or passed over unnoticed. FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 133 been already entertained, if not expressed, by the contemporaries of Thomas, that the two sets of money were not always kept strictly separate. The expenditure of the chancellor, if we may ™« '^'«"'- rely on the testimony of his biographers, must have penditme. been enormous. They are never weary of expatiat- ing on his magnificence and liberality. His house- hold was the centre of court society. His board was always free and open to all who came to the royal council, without distinction of rank or person. The only passport required was an honest exterior. Scarcely a day passed without a visit from earls and barons summoned by personal invitation of the chancellor. The stream of guests overflowed the limits of his table, and the mass of knights crowded out of the benches found the floor of the hall ready strewn every day with fresh straw in winter and fresh rushes in summer, by the kind forethought of their host the chancellor, while the board itself groaned beneath the weight of gold and silver plate and rare and dainty dishes^. This may of course be a picture of the special hospitality extended by Thomas to all comers on the occasion of the three great national councils of the year, when all tenants- in-chielof the king were entitled to present them- selves ^t court. But the ordinary expenses of the chancellor's household were heavy enough. It was 1 Fitzstephen (iii. 20, 21) dwells with enthusiastic delight upon his master's grandeur during the period of his chancellor- ship, taking care at the same time to remark that amid all this luxury the poor were not forgotten: "summe tamen sobrius erat in his, ut de divite mensa dives oolligeretur eleemosyna.'' 134 FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. the recognised school of chivalry for the young scions of noble houses. The magnates of England and sometimes of foreign kingdoms sent their sons to be trained in all the arts and accomplishments of a courtly life under the eye of the chancellor, and to win their spurs in his service. The king himself placed his little son and heir in Thomas' charge, to be educated in the society of the youthful knights who would be his barons if ever he succeeded his father on the throne'. Each of them had his little retinue in keeping with his rank, and all went to swell the lordly train of knights and attendants that was the glory of Thomas the ambassador and Thomas the soldier. His splendour was no less marked when travelling. He had a fleet of six or more ships of his own, and gave free passage to all who wished to cross the channel, and good bounty to his crews on landing. Even the king was not exempt from his persistent generosity. The royal fleet, we are told by the same informant', consisted of a single ship ; and the chancellor presented the king with three goodly vessels fully equipped as his own gift. The magnificence of his embassy to the French court and his services in the French wars have already been described in detail ; but they must not be forgotten in a review of the chancellor's expenditure. The princely grandeur of his retinue, 1 This was Henry, bom in February 1155 (Eobert de Monte, A.D. 1155), nsnally called primogenitus filiu$ regis, aa his elder brother William died in infancy; sometimes described as rex juvenis or junior, sometimes actually (after his coronation in 1170) as Henricus tertius. " Fitzst. iii. 26. FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 135 the largess which he lavished on court and city and university alike at Paris, the contingent of seven hundred knights and soldiers of his own household, the array of mercenaries, horse and foot, fully five thousand all told — all within the space of two years — represent an amount of expenditure which few baro- nial revenues could have sustained. It is difficult to credit Fitzstephen's statement that these expenses all came out of the chancellor's own purse. It is possible that Fitzstephen has in some cases attri- buted to the personal expenditure of the chancellor sums that were really expended by him as a royal official out of the king's revenues. He states, for instance, that when the Norwegian envoys came to England, Thomas sent his own representative to escort them to the king's court and supply all their wants nomine cancellarii^. But in the brief notice of this embassy in the Pipe Rolls the chancellor is not mentioned ; and the phrase per breve regis with which the entry concludes seems rather to imply that the expenditure was authorised by the chan- cellor officially, if at all, not undertaken by him as an act of private hospitality". Again, Fitzstephen puts down the equipment and maintenance of the chancellor's contingent in the war of Toulouse entirely to his private account ; but it is at least possible that Edward Grim is nearer the mark in dividing ' Fitzst. iii. 26. ^ Kpe Boll 2 Henry II. p. 4, in the accounts of the sheriffs of London : et in donis quae Rex misit Begibus de Norwega et in liberaticme nwitiorum Regum, £37. 2«. Bd. per breve Regis. Cp. the accounts of the sheriff of Cambridgeshire (p. 15) : et nuntiis Regum de Norwega, 3s. 136 FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. the cost between the chancellor's private purse and the king's treasury'. Another suggestion has been made with a view to discounting the possibly exaggerated statements of the "bhancellor's expenditure. It has been sug- gested that the extravagant banquets described by Fitzstephen took place in the aula regis and at the king's cost, — that it was the policy of Thomas to attract the nobility to the court and strengthen the hands of the Crown by maintaining the traditions of royal hospitality which Henry seemed inclined to neglect, — that Thomas in other words was merely acting as deputy host, presiding in the name of the king, who was only an occasional visitor at his own royal table where earls and barons met at the great national councils. On this supposition Thomas' private establishment cost him comparatively little, and it was the resources thus economised that he lavished in the interests of his king and country on the embassy to Paris and the campaigns of Tou- louse and Normandy. This idea has been well worked out by the biographer of the archbishops of Ciinterbury in his life of Thomas'. But it seems irreconcilable with the iocidental allusions of con- temporary writers which point to the household of 1 Grim, ii. 364 : larga. nimirum ac liberali manu tarn proprios qtmm regni reditvg profudit in militnm stipendiis et donariis profuturos. This is not qnite clear. It may mean that besides his private expenditure on his own contingent he acted as pay- master-general in collecting and maintaining oat of the royal revenues the great army of mercenaries which the soutage of 1159 enabled Henry to employ. ' Dean Hook, ArehbUhops of Canterbury, ii. 367-369. FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 137 Thomas the chancellor as almost a rival court. Grim notes that his retinue and guest-roll were no less imposing than the king's ; in fact the king, he says, complained more than once that Thomas had emptied the royal board'. Fitzstephen's lan- guage" too seems as distinctly to prove that the grandeur of which he speaks was the hospitality of a separate establishment of the chancellor's own, not the hospitality of the royal hall administered by proxy for a king who " affected to despise almost the decencies of society." It is quite possible however that Thomas had some aim of state policy in view, though the hospi- tality was his own. The magnificence of his embassy to Paris was prompted largely by a desire to impress the French court and people with the gi-eatness of English royalty as seen in the person of its accredited representative. In a similar way the splendid hos- pitality of his establishment at home may have been intended partly to throw a lustre round the precincts of the court and make the royal household a social centre from which the influence of the Crown would tell upon the feudal baronage none the less power- fully because peacefully exerted. Thomas may have been led into this extravagant outlay not so much by the purely selfish motive of personal vanity as by ' Grim, ii. 363 : neo cancellario prorsus quam regi minor eomitatua adhaesit ita ut nonnunquam eorriperetur a rege quod regis hospitium vacuaseet. Cp. the similar language of Auct. Anon. I. iv. 13. 2 Fitzst. iii. 25: aliquotiens ad hospitium canoellarii rex comedebat, tum ludendi causa, turn gratia videndi quae de ejus domo et mensa narrabantur. 138 FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. that " expansive selfishness," as it has been well described, which made him identify himself with the cause to which he was attached by force of circum- stances. If this view is tenable, then the suggestion that Thpmas did not always discriminate in his expenditure between his private income and the royal revenues which passed through his hands loses something of the discredit which it involves. It would still amount, plainly speaking, to a charge of misappropriation, but not of personal aggrandise- ment. Thomas may have mixed up some of the king's revenues with his own ; but both alike were spent as much on the glorification of the Crown as on the magnifying of himself and his office. Tiie Chan- gut the facts of the case scarcely require such a cellar i . . -r„ ■, ■ ,. ■' t. income. Supposition. If his expenditure was enormous, his income was also enormous. His official allowance as a resident member of the royal household, which is recorded in the Black Book of the Exchequer^ was perhaps the least part of his total income. It consisted of five shillings a day in the currency of the time, one plain simnel, two spiced simnels, a 1 An important document of Henry II. 's reign, quoted in Madox, Exchequer, p. 43 : haec est constitutio domus regiae, de proonrationibus : cancellarius vs. in die, etc. The same allow- ance was made to the steward (dapifer), the chief butler {magitter pincerna), the chief chamberlain (camerarius), the treasurer, the constable, and the chief marshal (Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 345, note on lAber Niger Scaccarii). It was therefore no sumptuous salary, judging from the minor importance of the officials who received the same allowance. The chancellor, it must be re- membered, was strictly only the secretary of the royal household until Thomas lifted the office to the higher level of a minister of state. FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 139 sextary of clear wine, a sextary of ordinary house- hold wine, one large wax candle, and forty pieces of candle besides. It was evidently intended to meet the necessary current expenses of his household and nothing more. The bulk of the chancellor's income was derived from other sources, ecclesiastical and secular. He still retained the rich archdeaconry of Canterbury and other lucrative preferments bestowed upon him by Theobald, hLs prebends and his canon - ries, and he now held in addition the deanery of Hastings, acquired since his appointment to the chancellorship. Other posts of importance he held by royal grant. The king was as generous to his chancellor as the primate had been to his clerk ; and Thomas was placed in charge of the Tower of London with its military guard, the castle of Eye with its hundred and forty knights, and the castle of Berkhampstead*. The permanent income of the chancellor, it will be seen, must have reached a high figure. But it was apparently augmented still further to meet the chancellor's expenses. There was a rumour afloat in 1160 that the king had 1 Fitzst. iii. 20. Cp. the list of preferments attributed to him by the prior of Leicester (ib. p. 26). The tower of London was, along with Windsor, in the charge of Richard de Luci at the time of the settlement of the Crown in 1153 (Rymer, Foedera, i. 8). Vacant baronies falling into the hands of the Crown, if not granted out again to another lord, were retained by the Crown and farmed like a shire under the title of an honor. Some of these honores were utOised as a source of income for ministers of the Crown (Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 401, note). Thomas cancellaritis appears in the Pipe Rolls 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 Henry II. as responsible for the ferm due to the king from Berkhaonpstead. 140 FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. granted the revenues of three vacant sees to swell the income of his favourite minister'. It was a source of grave anxiety to Archbishop Theobald and his faithful secretary John of Salisbury, who were hoping far the chancellor's influence in securing the speedy appointment of their candidate to the vacant see of Exeter. It may have been true, it may have been false; but it is at least an indication that Henry and Thomas between them took care that the chancellor's income kept pace with his ex- penditure. The The disparity therefore between his income and from** ^^ expenditure proves less on inspection than it secular oh- seems at first sight, even if it does not vanish 1162. ' altogether. But the suspicion of maladministration rests partly on another ground, the subsequent demand which the king made in 1164 for the accounts of his stewardship in the matter of vacant sees and baronies. Its date falls beyond the limits of this essay, but its retrospective bearing on the chancellorship of Thomas is too important to leave it out of consideration. The facts are as follows. After his election as archbishop at London and before his consecration, Thomas was released from all secular obligations, at the earnest request of Henry bishop of Winchester', by Richard de Luci ' Joh. S. Ep. 9 (v. 14) : fama est apud nos qnod trium vacantium episcopatuum reditus ad liberationem vestram vobis dominuB rex concesserit. 2 Auct. Anon. i. iv. 17. Bishop Henry's speech to "the young king": dominns, ait, caneellarius, eleotus noster, multo jam tempore in domo regis patris vestri et in omni regno sum- mum obtinnit locum, habuitque in dispositione sua regnum, nee FINANCIAL ADMINISTEATION. 141 the justiciar, the king's little son Henry and a number of the barons in the name of the king, who was then absent in Normandy. About the simple fact of this release there is no doubt. It was mentioned in the king's letter to the Pope re- questing the transmission of the pallium for the duly consecrated archbishop*. It is the meaning and extent of the release that is uncertain. Two years later this quittance was challenged at 'J?"^*' °f the Council of Northampton in October 1164. Our tm, 1164. information as to the facts of this trial comes direct at first hand. Two of Thomas' biographers, Fitz- steplien and Herbert of Bosham, were present at the council in attendance on the archbishop, and they have both recorded the proceedings in full, though not always in agreement on points of detail'. Fitz- stephen mentions three distinct attacks made upon the archbishop. (1) Thomas was first required to account for £300 received by him as warden of the " honours " of Eye and Berkhampstead. He refused to recognize the charge as a formal indictment : he had been cited to defend himself against John the marshal, and had received no notice of any further aliquid in tempore suo in regno actitatum est nisi ad suum arbitrium; unde eum liberum et absolutum ab omni nexu et ministerio curiali, ab omni etiam querela et oalunmia, omnique penitus occasione ecclesiae Dei et nobis tradi postnlamus, quatenus ab hac bora et deinceps emancipatus et expeditus quae Dei sunt libere exsequatur. Cp. Grim, ii. 367. Fitzst. iii. 36. 1 Auct. Anon. ii. iv. 105. 2 Fitzst. iii. 53 foil. Herb. iii. 298 foil. Ealph de Diceto (afterwards dean of London) was also present at tbe council (Fitzst. iii. 59), and collateral information of some value is given in bis Imagines Historiarum, a.d. 1164. 142 FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. proceedings. But he made an informal reply to the king's demands. The money had been spent, with a great deal more, on the repair of the Tower of London^ and the two castles in question I This, he said, was plain enough for eyes to see. The king however refused to acknowledge the fact, and claimed a judicial verdict ; and the archbishop, unwilling to quarrel with the king on a matter of money, con- sented to pay what was demanded of him, and found lay sureties for the sum. But heavier charges were in reserve. (2) The next day the kiug claimed by messenger two separate sums of 500 marks each, the one lent to Thomas by the king for the expedition of Toulouse, the other borrowed by Thomas from a Jewish money-lender on the king's security. Herbert of Bosham (who mentions one sum only of £500, claimed by the king in repayment of a loan) gives the archbishop's reply'. He admitted the receipt of the money, but described it as a gift, not a loan, and reproached the king in person with meanness in 1 Fitzst. iii. 19 dwells with admiration on the rapidity with which the repairs were effected under the chancellor's orders between Easter and Whitsuntide, though the place was almost a ruin at the outset. The accounts of the sheriffs of London in the Pipe Boll of 2 Henry n. (p. 3) contain an item of £6. 15s. lOd. ad munitionem turris, which perhaps should be referred to these repairs. ^ The Pipe EoUs speak for the sums expended by Thomas on Berkhampstead : e.g. Pipe Boll 2 Henry II. p. 21 : in operatione casteUi 63». et in restauratione manorii £13. lis. Pipe Boll 4 Henry II. p. 152 : in reficiendis domibua regis £10. Cp. similar entries in Pipe Boll 5 Henry II. p. 7, 6 Henry II. p. 12, and 7 Henry H. p. 68. ' Herb. iii. 298. FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 143 recalling his own present as a debt. Thomas how- ever could not prove the gift, and the Curia Regis — bishops and barons alike — gave a verdict in favour of the king. The primate's property, they alleged, had been confiscated by the verdict of the previous day in the case of John the marshal ; but five of his friends came forward as sureties for the payment of the sum claimed. (3) Last came the most crushing blow of all, a comprehensive demand for the accounts of all the revenues received by the chancellor from the vacant archbishopric, bishoprics, abbeys, baronies and honours which had been entrusted to his charged The total was estimated at 30,000 marks. The archbishop declared that the king had received more than once an account of these revenues, which had been spent, he said, on the king's business''. But his main defence M'as the fact that he had been released publicly in the king's name from all secular obligations at the time of his election to the primacy. He reminded the king of this fact in his own reply before the court, and it was also pleaded on his behalf by Henry bishop of Winchester, whose testimony was supported by the other bishops in a bodyl We are not here concerned with the sequel — the king's angry persistence and the archbishop's ' Fitzst. iii. 54. Herb. iii. 299. Auct. Anon. i. iv. 49 says £30,000, quae tempore cauoellariae de peounia regia minus caute expendisse a guibiisdam deferebatur. 2 Auct. Anon. i. iv. 49. Will. C. i. 38. * Herb. iii. 300. Aoeording to Fitzstephen, iii. 63, Thomas had to appeal forcibly to their recollection in order to confute the obstinacy of the king, who persisted in ignoring the fact of the release. 14)4 FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. appeal to Rome in anticipation of the verdict of the king and the Curia Regis. The two points to be considered now are (1) the validity of the arch- bishop's plea and (2) the justice of the king's claim ; in otherwords, (1) the question whether the release from secular obligations in 1162 covered all pecuniary liabilities and precluded any future enquiry into those liabilities, and (2) the question whether there was any ground for the charge of maladministration which was implied in this demand for the accounts of the chancellorship. Meaning n\ ^ ig evident that Thomas and his friends of this ^ ' . quittance, on their part regarded the quittance of 1162 as a full and sufficient bar against all pecuniary claims, precluding all enquiry into the financial side of the chancellor's administration. According to one biographer, Edward Grim, that was the avowed intention of the bishop of Winchester in asking for the formal release in question; and the king's ministers interpreted it at the time in the same light as the bishop'. John of Salisbury, in a letter written to Baldwin, archdeacon of Exeter, two years after the Council of Northampton, brings it forward as a conclusive answer to an imaginaiy opponent. Some might assert, he says, that Thomas, conscious 1 Grim, ii. 367 (the bishop's speech): "oancellarius ut primus patriae thesamros regis et reditns regni in manu habnit, et ut diversa poscebant negotia tractavit. Vermn ne cni in posterum pateat exaetioni vel oalumniae qaasi qui pro libera magis volun- tate quam regni coromodo dissipaverit bona domini sui, liberum eum et absolutum ab omni reclamatione suseipimus." Ad quern ministri regis, "ex ore," inquinnt, "regis liberum eum clamamus ab omni calumnia et exactione nunc et in omne tempns." FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 145 of his defalcations and doubtful of his own dexterity, had fallen back upon " an imprudent and impudent subterfuge " which amounted to a tacit confession of his guilt and a justification of his opponents' pro- cedure'. In reply to this charge John simply repeats the fact of this quittance of 1162 — a fact none the less certain because the king had ignored it at Northampton". But that was not the view taken by everybody. Gilbert Foliot's famous letter of remonstrance in 1166 throws a different light on the question. Speaking of this very trial of 1164, he regrets that Thomas had allowed his mistaken zeal to drive him into defiance of the jurisdiction of the king's court. The king, he says, was only acting within his rights in asking for a legal settlement of a financial claim'. There was no danger to Thomas 1 Joh. S. Ep. 263 (vi. 96): sed fortasse dicet aliquis,...m peouniaria (causa) eonventus, in jure sibi oonsoius iniquitatis et de praestigiis suis diffisus, subterfugio imprudenti et impudenti suam quodam modo, immo plane, professus est injustitiam et partem justificavit adversam. It is not clear whether the subter- fuge in question was the plea of quittance or the appeal to Borne against the foregone conclusion of the case. Probably it was the latter. ^ Joh. S. Ep. 263 (vi. 97): quod certum erat revocabatur in dubium, ut oomicum illud fere in omnium volveretur animis, " Quod scio, nesoio." Quis enim nesciebat quod rex canoellarium suum ob omui administratione et obligatione liberum reddidit ad regimen Cantuariensis ecclesiae ? 3 Foliot, Ep. 225 (v. 535): utinam.,.cum a vobis debita quaedam reposceret dominus noster rex, cum de summa pecuniae quam in manu vestra ex caducis quibusdam excrevisse memora- bat, quod jus dictaret id sibi solum peteret exhiberi, ad decli- nandum regalis curiae judicium tunc se vester minime zelus erexisset. R. 10 146 FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. involved in the trial. Then referring to this disputed quittance of 1162 he remarks: "The king wished you to be transferred from the court to the govern- ment of the Church ; and by that very fact released you, as* the majority consider, from the obligations of his service. If there was no reference to debts, if promotion did not carry with it any release from such debts, then the diflSculty could have been met almost entirely by a formal plea to the effect that the money had been spent on the king's business; and if there was any item that could not be included in the account, then the king's claim, which was prompted by irritation rather than by deliberate avarice, might have been satisfied quietly, and this legal enquiry might have come to a peaceful and honourable conclusion without such a storm as this\" Foliot expressed this view of the situation on more than one occasion. At the conference of Henry II. with the cardinals and prelates at Argentan in November 1167, as we learn from a friend of Thomas who described the meeting in a letter to the archbishop, Foliot stated the case at issue from the 1 Foliot, Ep. 225 (v. 535) : ad regimen ecclesiae vos a curia transferri yoluit, et ab ipsius nexibus hoc ipso tob (ut plures opinantur) absolvit : quod si ad debita miuime referendum est, ut eveetus loco sic absolvatur a debito, poterat negotium per ex- ceptionem in rem versum plnrimum expediri, et siquid compoto nequivisset includi, irate magis repetenti sua quam avide de reliqno poterat satisdari, et civilis haec causa absque hoc rerum turbine pace poterat honestissima terminari. FoUot complains that Thomas had chosen instead to create a sensation by standing upon his dignity as archbishop of Canterbury and denouncing the trial of a primate by the king's court as an unprecedented act of coercion. FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 147 same point of view that he had already taken in his letter of remonstrance quoted above. He related how the king at Northampton had demanded 44000 marks in all on account of revenues entrusted to the chancellor's control, and how Thomas had replied that in the first place he was not involved in debt to the king at the time of his elevation to the primacy, and, secondly, even if he had been so implicated, he was absolved by the very fact of his promotion. " At this point," says Thomas' informant, " the bishop of London ridiculed you, remarking that you believed that debts were remitted on promotion like sins in baptism'." Foliot was not the only man who doubted the validity of this plea of quittance. Kalph de Diceto, who was present at the trial in 1164, says there were many persons who thought that an account might justly be exacted from the archbishop notwithstand- ing the fact of this quittance, which, he says, Thomas was unable to trace back to the king's consent". There is besides an expression in Herbert of Bosham's story of the trial which has been interpreted as a proof that the idea of pleading this quittance as a bar to the king's action only came to the bishop of Winchester as a second thought — an expedient that suggested itself after, if not in consequence of, the discussion of the crisis with the rest of the bishops'. The question is further complicated by ' Ep. 339 (vi. 271) : et ibi derisit Yos Londoniensis, dioens vos credere quod, sieut in baptismo remittuntur pecoata, ita et in promotione relaxantur debits. " Balph de Diceto, a.d. 1164 (537 Twysden). ' Herb. iii. 300: verumtameu oonvooatis pontifioibus, post 10—2 148 FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. the fact that the king, who, by mentioning the release in his despatch to the Pope, sanctioned it afterwards, whether he had previously authorised it or not, evidently expected Thomas to retain the chancellbrship. It is not easy therefore to understand in what light the king regarded this quittance. Thomas on his part may have meditated or foreseen a speedy resignation of the chancellorship, in which case the quittance might stand him in good stead as a defence against vexatious charges. But from the king's point of view — the prospect of having the chancellorship and the primacy united in the hands of the same minister — this release, if it referred to financial obligations, could only mean a remission of liabilities which would at once begin to reaccumulate. It is difficult from that point of view to avoid the su.spicion that Thomas and his friends strained the meaning of this formal release. Foliot and the Curia Regis clearly denied its validity as a bar against subsequent enquiry into the financial trans- actions of Thomas' chancellorship. Yet it could not be regarded by the king as a release from secular duties, for he was counting all the while on the continuance of Thomas' services as chancellor, and Thomas did continue to act as chancellor for some little time after his consecration. It was evidently deliberationem mnltain quid respondendum agendumve ad haec... Henrious tune Wintoniensis episcopus, qui quidem arohipraesuli favit Bed propter metum occnltns, tandem recordatus est quod in electione arcbipraesulis, tunc Cautuariensis archidiaconi et regis cancellarii, ab omnibus curiae nexibus Anglicanae ecclesiae redditus fuerit absolutus. Bobertson, Becket, Appendix xvii. p. 337. FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 149 something that was considered a necessary precaution in the interests of the primacy and the Church. Fitzstephen compares it to the custom of requiring an abbot to renounce all claims on the obedience of any monk who had been elected abbot of another monastery, before the abbot-elect could enter upon his new responsibilities ^ It could scarcely be a mere recognition of the fact that in case of a conflict of interests the ecclesiastical duty of the primate must take precedence of the secular duty of the chancellor. Fitzstephen's parallel would seem to imply an absolute transference from the service of the king to the service of the Church ; and if it were only certain that Thomas and his friend the bishop of Winchester had the immediate resignation of the chancellorship in view, the release would be perfectly intelligible on their side. It would be an obvious precaution against retrospective charges of malad- ministration ; and it would involve in their intention both a quittance of all financial claims and a release from all secular duties. It is just this absence of evidence as to the intentions of Thomas and his friends and the expectations of the justiciar and the other consenting parties with regard to the tenure or resignation of the chancellorship that makes it ^ Fitzst. iii. 54 : Cantaariensi ecclesiae redditus faerat liber a cancellaria et omni regis saeculari querela; cum quaelibet etiam abbatia vacans monachum aliennm abbatem eibi electum reeipere nolit, nisi immunem ab omni obedientia abbatis ejus sibi dimis- sum. This may be a comment of Fitzstephen's own upon the advice given to Thomas at Northampton by his friends the bishops ; or it may be part of their advice, a suggestion that he should rely upon this plea of quittance. 150 FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. impossible to pronounce with certainty upon the meaning attached to this formal release. It is possible that it was given without any specification of its precise bearing ; but it is hardly probable that it was re'quested without some definite idea of what was wanted. The language of the contemporary biographers — though perhaps somewhat coloured by the turn which events had taken at Northampton — is too emphatic for us to accept with regard to Thomas and his fi-iends the statement of a modem biographer that it is " doubtful whether the release was understood as an acquittance of all pecuniary claims until such an interpretation was devised by way of meeting claims actually made'." (2) Granting however — what is by no means certain — that the king was justified in denying the financial bearing of this release, was in other words strictly within his rights in claiming the accounts of the chancellorship, as Foliot and others thought he was, a further question still remains to be discussed. Was he justified by the character of Thomas' ad- ministration in persisting in his demand ? What weight are we to attach to the charge of misappro- priation which his claim implied? The balance of probability inclines in favour of the integrity of Thomas. The Council of Northampton was intended fi-om the beginning to strike a deadly blow at the archbishop. He was cited as a common offender, greeted on his arrival with studied insult, and assailed with a series of charges of which he had received no previous notice, — all evidently part of a ' Eobertson, Becket, App. xvii. p. 337. FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 151 concerted plan for his humiliation. The fact that the demand for the accounts of his chancellorship was issued now for the first time, two years after his resignation of the office, looks suspicious at the outset. It bears the mark of personal enmity. It has the appearance of a demand that would never have been made if the mutual relations of king and archbishop had never been disturbed, or if there had been other means at the king's disposal of crushing the archbishop. This suspicion is confirmed by Thomas' own reply. He asserted in the first place that the king had seen his accounts, and, it must be supposed, approved of them ; secondly, that he had himself expended private means of his own on royal business and thereby incurred serious debts ^ If we may take Thomas at his word (and there is no reason why we should not), there was no ground for the insinuation that he had played the unjust steward during his tenure of the chancellorship. It has been suggested on the other hand that the evident anxiety of the bishop of Winchester to obtain the quittance in 1162 lends some colour to the idea that " no very strict account was kept of the king's moneys spent by the chancellor in the king's service and those expended by the chancellor him- self." At first sight this supposition seems to fall in with the fact that the bishop of Winchester's first advice to Thomas on receipt of the king's demand at Northampton was to compound with the king, and a sum of 2000 marks was actually offered to the king ' Fitzst. iii. 63. Will. C. i. 38. 3 Milman, Latin Christianity, iii. 451. 152 FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. and refused by him'. But a compromise is not always tantamount to a confession of guilt. It is just as probable that the bishop's advice was prompted by the conviction that Thomas' assertion of innocence would be of no avail against an infuriated king and a court that would take its cue from the king, whereas a partial concession might stave off the dreaded blow. The question resolves itself into a balancing of probabilities ; and the scale is turned in favour of Thomas by the fact that the charge of pecuniary maladministration, which John of Salisbury declares to have been false, was after- wards di'opped*. 1 Fitzst. iii. 54. = Joh. S. Ep. 263 (written in 1166 to Baldwin archdeacon of Exeter), vi. 103 : the only question, he says, now at issue between the king and the archbishop is the dispute between the civil and the ecclesiastical jurisdictions: et de causa pecuniaria (quae tunc quidem simuldbatur et in veritate nulla erat) nee mentio est. This was only two years after the crisis at Northampton. CHAPTER VIT. THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. As ambassador, soldier, justiciar and minister of The state, Thomas had surpassed all expectation, and kis ap- more than iustified his promotion to the king's i'"'!''!"*"* •' '^ _ ° mainly service. But it was not to win such laurels as these ecclesiasti- that he was brought within reach of the chancellor- °" ' ship. The intentions of his patron Theobald were obvious to the early biographers. Thomas was to serve two masters, the king and the archbishop, and maintain the balance between the conflicting claims of the Crown and the Church in favour of the latter. He was placed at the king's side as an ecclesiastic and for ecclesiastical purposes. Theobald had " dis- cerned with prophetic sagacity his archdeacon's lofty and devoted churchmanship\" By his negotiations with the Papal court Thomas had thwarted both Stephen and Henry of Blois and strengthened the hands of the archbishop against an ambitious prelate and an unstable king. And when on the accession of Henry the Second the Church was threatened with ' Milman, Latin Christianity, iii, 448. 154 THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. Its ful- filment ; testimony of the bio- graphers. the loss of material wealth and the loss of privilege, it was to the influence of Thomas that Theobald looked to stem the threatening tide of reaction, and even perhaps to extend the jurisdiction of the Church by securing for the canon law a wider sphere of application. When however we turn to the bio- graphers of Thomas to ascertain how far he fulfilled the archbishop's expectations, we are met by serious discrepancies. As a rule they confine themselves to general statements more or less difficult to reconcile. William of Canterbury and John of Salisbury are both explicit enough in asserting that Thomas was frequently engaged on behalf of the Church in conflict with the king and the "wild beasts of the court," apparently a term of contempt for the anti-clerical party among the barons\ But William puts in a saving clause. He admits that Thomas' opposition to the king was kept within limits by his own feeling of respect and his dread of the royal anger. This qualification is borne out by one of the anonymous biographers, whose version puts Thomas in a some- what dubious light. He says that the king had already made up his mind to assert his power as he afterwards asserted it; but in the meantime the Church remained in peace and safety under the 1 Joh. S. ii. 305. Will. C. i. 5: memor eonditionis suae et oneris sibi impositl contra bestias curiae pugnavit portans eoolesiae necessitates, et, quatenus regia severitas et reverentia permisit, contra regem ipsum contendens tamquam quodam futurorum praeaagio sub paois tempore dimicabat in acie. Freeman traces the term 'bestias curiae ' to an expression applied by Boethius to his enemies at the court of Theodorie, but wrongly attributes its use to John of Salisbury alone. THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. 155 protection of Thomas, who kept king and court alike in check by a cautious opposition, partly concealed in order to preclude suspicion of his real intentions^. Elsewhere, in his account of Thomas' promotion to the primacy, he remarks that the king quite expected to find him a compliant archbishop, as he had deliberately adopted an attitude of severity towards all ecclesiastical persons and claims, in order to divert suspicion from himself and keep in closer touch with the royal temper which he had learned to know so well''. A second anonymous writer, by entering upon an elaborate apology for what he describes as the forced acquiescence of the chancellor, bears witness, all the more striking because reluctantly given, to the fact that Thomas was considered at the time responsible for much of the king's anti-ecclesi- astical policy'. Lastly, the objections to Thomas' elevation to the primacy, so frankly stated by his most devoted biographers, reveal a strong feeling in certain ecclesiastical circles that Thomas was no friend to the claims and interests of the Church*. ' Auct. Anon. i. iv. 12: ipao...caute et quasi ex ocoulto, ne suspicion! pateret, frustraute. ^ Auct. Anon. i. iv. 14: Thomas namque ex industria circa personas et res ecelesiasticas quasi severissimum se exhibebat, ut tali occasione omnem a se suspicionis notam excuteret, et regis voluntati, quam intime noverat, meUus sub hao palliations con- veniret. The Saga (i. 47) attributes this design to Theobald ! ' Auct. Anon. ii. iv. 87. ^ Herb. iii. 183. Auct. Anon. ii. iv. 85. Cp. John of Salis- bury's letter to the archdeacon of Exeter in 1166 {Ep. 263, vi. 101), in which he contrasts ironically the popularity of the chancellor with the enmity roused by his stricter conduct as archbishop. Certe dum magnificus erat nugator in curia, dum 156 THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. To say the least, the chancellor had not distinguished himself as an ecclesiastic in the opinion of his fellow- churchmen. The facts to be considered in estimating the chancellor's relation to the Church fall under four heads : (1) his share in the financial oppression of the Church, (2) his disposal of church preferment, (3) his attitude towards the claims of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, (4) his personal relations with the veteran archbishop of Canterbury. (1) Finan- The chief ecclesiastical grievance in the earlier "l^/^""' part of the reign was the exaction of scutage from (a) The the lands of the Church in 1159 to provide Henry and the with funds for the war of Toulouse. Gervase calls it scutage. ^^ unprecedented exaction^, but it was not the first legis contemptor videbatur et cleri, dum scurriles cum potentiori- bus sectabatur ineptias, maguus habebatur, clarus erat et acceptus omnibus, et solus dignissimus summo pontificio ab universis conclamabatur et singulis. At first sight this seems a flat contradiction of the statement in his life of Thomas (ii. 305) that Thomas -was obliged incessantly "pugnare ad bestias curiae." Freeman has attempted to reconcile the discrepancy (Gontemp, Review, vol. 32, p. 481). "There is no real contradiction," he says. " John of Salisbury speaking with different objects in the two passages not unnaturally gave each a different tone and colour. But there is no contradiction as to fact. Thomas led the life of a layman; he did not stand up for ecclesiastical claims as he afterwards did; he may have seemed to be a despiser of the canon law and the clergy ; and yet he may (which is what John of Salisbury really says that he did) have withstood acts of oppression whether directed against churchmen or laymen. The beasts of the court had to be vrithstood on behalf of both— pro necessitate ecclesiae et provincialium.'' ' Gervase, Chron. a.d. 1159 (col. 1381, Twysden): iuauditam census exactionem. THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. 157 instance of scutage. The Eed Book of the Exchequer contains a notice of a scutage levied in 1156, the second year of Henry's reign, which the compiler of that record describes as the first of all the scutages. It was assessed at the rate of 20 shillings on each knight's fee, and was confined to the lands of those prelates who held in capite of the Crown. Theobald opposed its exaction, as we infer from a remark in one of John of Salisbury's letters ; and it is not certain whether his lands were compelled to pay the tax\ This first scutage was a new form of taxation ; but the novelty consisted apparently in the new basis of rating, the knight's fee (scutum) being taken as the unit of calculation instead of the old hide of landl The more famous scutage of 1159 was some- thing very different. It was more comprehensive, extending as it did to all tenants by knight-service, 1 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 577. Job. S. Ep. 128 (Giles, vol. i. p. 178), writing to William bishop of Norwich, says that a message has come from the king promising to grant certain requests that had been made by Theobald, but declining to remit the scutage. In omnibus enim consiliis domini archiepiscopi adquiescet et honori et utilitati eeolesiae tota mentis intentione studiosus invigilabit. Verum scutagium remittere non potest et a quibusdam exactionibus abstiuere, quoniam fratris gratia male sarta nequid- quam coiit. This allnsion fixes the date of the scutage. It was levied for the war against Geoffrey in 1156. The compiler of the Liber Ruber Scaccarii (Alexander Swerford) says it was raised for the Welsh war: pro exercitu Walliae super prelates tantum qui ad militaria servicia tenentur assisum. But the Welsh campaign was in 1157-1158. Stubbs (Const. Hist. i. 454) thinks that this scutage was perhaps suggested by the chancellor ; but the original authorities are silent on this question. 2 Stubbs, Const. Hiit. i. 581, 582. 158 THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. whereas the earlier scutage was only levied on the fees in possession of bishops and abbots ^ It was assessed at a heavier rate, two marks on each fee. But the real innovation consisted in the fact that it was levied as a commutation for personal military service. Such is the meaning attached to the term scutagium from this date onwards. The only persons exempt from the charge were the barons of the Exchequer". The clergy seem to have objected to the exaction on the ground that they were not liable to military service; but this objection was ignored. The lands of the Church were considered as held by the same feudal tenure as those of the secular barons, and no distinction was made between the two classes in levying this scutage. It was the second exaction that roused the indignation of the Church*. The blow was resented by the clergy all the more keenly because it was believed to come from the hand of the chancellor, himself an officer of the Church. Years afterwards the charge was flung in the teeth of Thomas the 1 Notices of the scutage of 1156 occur in plenty in the Pipe Roll of 2 Henry II., e. g. the sheriff of Hampshire accounts for £49. 10«. de Bcutagio militum episcopi Wintoniensis, and £16. 13s. id. de soutagio militum abbatis de Hida (p. 56, Hunter). " Dial. Scacc. i. 9 : ab hoc (scutagio) quieti sunt ad scaccarium residentes. ' Miss Norgate (England imder the Angevin Kings, i. 433), speaking of the scutage of 1156, remarks that "at the moment no resentment seems to have been provoked by the measure; its ultimate tendency was not foreseen, the sum actually demanded was not great, and the innovation was condoned on the ground of the king's lawful need and in the belief that it was only an isolated demand." THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. 159 archbishop by the leader of the ecclesiastical opposi- tion, Gilbert Foliot bishop of London. Foliot told him plainly in the famous remonstrance of 1166 that his election to the primacy was the result of sheer coercion. The Church, he said, had yielded for fear of a worse evil ; she had submitted to his intrusion in order to avoid a repetition of the cruel exaction under which she had already groaned when he robbed her of so many thousand marks for the war of Toulouse'. John of Salisbury is the only one of the chancellor's friends that has dealt with this measure in particular. In a letter written in exile to Bartholomew bishop of Exeter in 1166 he de- scribes the failure of the king's ambitious projects as a retributive judgment on his oppression of the Church, and singles out this scutage as the crowning enormity. He hints that an arbitrary and undue proportion of the tax had fallen upon the Church in comparison with the share paid by the baronage I Then turning to deal with the assertion that it was the work of the chancellor, whose influence was then supreme with the king, he says that the charge was false. The chancellor did not suggest the exaction ; ' Foliot, Ep. 235 (v. 525): stabat regni gladius in manu vestia ille quidem gladius quern in sanctae matris ecclesiae viscera vestra paulo ante manus immerserat, cum ad trajiciendum in Tolosam ezercitum tot ipsam marcarum millibus aporiastis. " Job. S. Ep. 194 (v. 378) : omnibus contra antiquum morem et debitam libertatem indixit ecclesiis at pro arbitrio ejus et satraparum suorum conferrent in oensum, nee permisit ut ecclesiae saltern proceribus coaequarentur in hac eontributione vel magis exactione...nam ecclesiae in deteriori oaloulo verte- bantur. The churchman's indignation is concentrated in the op- probrious title of satrap with which he brands the rapacious sheriff. 160 THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHUBCH. he only sanctioned what he could not prevent^ Yet even John is compelled to admit that Thomas was at least the instrument of this injustice {minister iniquitatis); and he recognises an appropriate Nemesis in the punishment of the archbishop b}' the hand of the very monarch whom the chancellor had obeyed in preference to God. This is an important admis- sion, coming as it does from one who was perhaps the truest, certainly the most candid, of Thomas' friends and his most impartial biographer. It does not stand alone. The view which John takes of the chancellor's conduct is echoed by one anonymous biographer, who explains at great length the diffi- culties of the position in which Thomas was placed, apologising in general terms for his acquiescence on the ground that it was not safe to oppose king and court beyond a certain point. It was the chancellor's place not to argue but obey, and tolerate where he could not praise. He adds that Thomas did some- times feel the zeal of God's house burn within him, and did venture more than once to protest in the name of the Church within the limits allowed by his fear of the king's displeasure^- There is no reason * Joh. S. Ep. 194 (v. 379): uon auctoritatem praestitiBse libidini sed obsecundatiouem neceesitati. 2 Auct. Anon. ii. iv. 87. After recording the newly elected primate's resolve to defend the threatened liberties of the Church, the writer briefly states the crying grievances of the day : (1) the loss of judicial power, — contra ecclesiae leges in disponeudis ecclesi- asticis rebus, ut laicis, plus agebat manus regia quam censura canonioa, (2) the loss of wealth under the royal exactions, per- sonis etiam eoclesiasticis indebitarum exactionum et coueussionum onere multipUci saepius fatigatis. Sed et ejus enormitatis ipse THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. 161 to doubt this statement; the chancellor's remon- strance against the marriage of the abbess Mary in 1160 is an obvious instance in which he proved that he had convictions and the courage to give them vent; and more than one unfortunate cleric owed his escape from the king's vengeance to the timely interposition of the chancellor. But the fact remains that not one of the original authorities says a single word about any protest on the part of the chancellor against this scutage of 1159. Whatever share the chancellor had in the royal (*) The exactions, he can scarcely be acquitted of something deacon like personal extortion as archdeacon in the diocese ""''.^f, of Canterbury. Our authority for the facts is a letter addressed by Theobald to the chancellor himself The old archbishop, just recovering from a dangerous illness, writes to say that he intends to spend his last days in reforming certain abuses which had arisen in his time or by his own fault in the administration of his see, especially the custom of " second aids " imposed by his brother the arch- quia regis ab eo videbatur pendere conxiliwm, suasor et laudator ab aemulis dictus est. Verius autem ipsa per se regis animositas Jiaec usurpabat. The young king, he adds, was carried away by his thirst for power, and his impetuosity was stimulated still further by the flattery of his courtiers. His igitur omnibus obviare cancellario soli tutum non fuerat ; sed neo oensoria ad corrigen- dum personam gerebat, cui manebat necessitas obsequendi, non auctoritas arguendi. Proptereaque cum potestaa esset et hora tenebrarum, prudentius in medio navigaverat, usurpationes magis dissimulam quam suadens, magis smstinens quam laudans. Zelo tamen domus Dei nonuunquam ingemuerat ; interdum etiam talium disBuasor esse praesumpserat, ea tamen quae decuit modestia, ne regis offensam inourreret. R. 11 162 THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. deacon. He has already released the churches from this burden, and forbidden its imposition in future on pain of excommunication, — a resolution which he has confirmed by written instructions of his own'. He is quite sure that Thomas would sooner have his 1 Theobald, Ep. 7 (v. 10) : ...Deo vovimus inter caetera quod couBuetadinem de secundis anxiliis, quam frater noster archidia- conus ecclesiis impoauit, destrueiemus, et ab ea relaxantes ecclesias et liberantes, snb anathemate probibuimus ne ulterius ab aliquo exigantur. Et ue hoc nostrum beneficium aut potius debitum in posterum valeat infirmari, hoc ipsum scripto nostro confirmavimus. The frater is Walter, Theobald's own brother, who was archdeacon of Canterbury until his promotion to the see of Rochester in 1147. Lord Lyttelton takes this letter to be addressed to Henry II. and explains frater noster arehidiaconus as referring to Thomas, and secunda auxilia as the second scutage (1159). Father Morris, though right in interpreting the frater to be the archbishop's brother Walter, makes the same mistake as Lyttelton in explaining the aiixilia as a part of the great scutage, in which, he adds, "there can be little doubt St Thomas cooperated with Henry." Strangely enough, in the very next sentence the learned Jesuit remarks by way of clearing his hero- saint,— "But the archbishop attributes these subsidies to his own brother years before, and he is far from saying that the chancellor was responsible for them." The very fact that Theobald lays the original blame at his brother's door proves that the auxilia cannot refer to the scutage levied twelve years after his brother's promotion from Canterbury to Rochester. The "aids" in question are evidently a provision for the benefit of the archdeacon. The letter, though addressed Thomae cancellario, is an appeal to Thomas as archdeacon of Canterbury; and the exaction which the old man's conscience condemned in what threatened to be the hour of death is clearly something which it was in his power as archbishop to control or abolish with the cooperation of the archdeacon, whose vested interests were at stake. It was a personal matter between the two: tu quoque si nostras praesens vidisses angustias, nostram malles animam liberari quam de peccatis et damnatione nostra pecnniam et divitias infinitas acquirere. THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. 163 old master's conscience set at rest than enrich himself at the cost of his master's honour. For the present therefore he cannot listen to Thomas' de- mand for the exaction of this "aid" without breaking the vow made during his illness and endatoigering the welfare of his own soul ; but he trusts that on his recovery he will be able to provide for Thomas without having recourse to such methods of raising money. The letter ends with a pitiful entreaty for the chancellor's sanction, which shows how strongly the old primate felt the need of this reform. "I pray thee, welcome what I have done, for the whole world would avail me nought, if I had lost my soul." The archdeacon of the twelfth century was a proverbial character. It was an essentially secular office, usually reserved for a deacon as incompatible with the sacred calling of the priesthood, and notorious for its peculiar temptations, which made the eternal welfare of an archdeacon a stock theme for scholastic disputation, — an possit archidiaconus salvus esse?'' The rights of visitation and the 1 Joh. S. Ep. 166 (Giles, i. 260), written to Nioolaus de Sigillo: erat, ut memini, genus hominum, qui in ecclesia Dei archidia- eonorum nomine censentur, quibus vestra disoretio onmem salutis viam querebatur esse praeclusam. Nam, ut dieere oonsuevistis, diligunt munera, sequuntur retributiones, ad injurias proni sunt, calumniis gaudent, peooata populi comedunt et bibunt, quibus vivitur ex rapto, ut non sit hospes ab hospite tutus. Cp. Free- man, Norm. Conqu. v. 497. Stubbs, Med. and Mod. Hist. pp. 139, 301, 303. At the Council of Westminster, October 1163, the archdeacons as a class were accused of lording it over the flock and harassing the laity with false charges of crime, the clergy with undue extortion (Auot. Anon. ii. iv. 96). A flagrant instance of extortion was brought home to an archdeacon and a rural 11—2 164 THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. judicial functions which belonged to the office were utilised to the fall as means of extortion, until the bishop's archdeacon became as unpopular in the diocese as the king's sheriff was in the county. Thomas was preserved from the fate of an ordinary archdeacon by his constant attendance upon his royal master ; but it is quite evident from this letter of Theobald's that he was not beyond reproach. He drew without compunction — with avidity almost, if we may so infer from the archbishop's doubtful and pathetic plea for a little self-sacrifice — the ex- cessive profits that were wrung from the churches of the diocese for the benefit of its archdeacon. (2) Church According to Fitzstephen it was part of the ' chancellor's office to administer the revenues of vacant sees and abbacies, as well as the lay-fiefs, as they reverted to the Crown^ It is certain that Thomas had a large amount of church preferment passing through his hands, either ex officio or by special favour of the king. Out of the fifty-two clerks in his household, we are told, many were engaged solely in the administration of vacant sees and abbeys or his own ecclesiastical benefices". dean at York in 1158 in the king's presence, and he remarked, as he insisted on the punishment of the offending elerios, that the archdeacons and deans extorted more money in a year in the shape of fines from the inhabitants of his reabn than he himself received as revenue (Fitzst. iii. 44). 1 Fitzst. iii. 17 : ut vacantes arohiepiscopatus, episoopatus, abbatias et baronias, cadentes in mann regis, ipse suseipiat et oonservet. ' Fitzst. iii. 29: quinquaginta duos clericos oancellarins in obseqnio suo habebat; quorum plurimi in suo erant eomitatu THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. 165 Here and there we get an occasional glimpse of the way in which Thomas discharged the responsibility which his influence with the king involved. Fitz- stephen — the only biographer who has dealt with the subject of the chancellor's patronage — is em- phatic in his praise of Thomas' conscientious disposal of church preferment. His own demands were modest, as Fitzstephen remarks with artless sim- plicity. He could have had all vacant parochial churches for himself, if he had so pleased. None would venture to refuse, if he chose to ask. But he showed the greatness of his heart by leaving them to poor clergy^ Magnanimiis magna potius re- quirebat. His ambition soared to higher levels, — the provostship of Beverley, for instance (which had plurimi curabant episcopatus, et abbatias vacantea aut ejus pro- prios honores ecclesiasticos. Some of these clerics superintended the revenues of vacant sees and abbeys ; others discharged the spiritual duties attached to the many livings and prebends which the chancellor held. ^ Fitzst. iii. 20. Fitzstephen relates elsewhere (iii. 25, 26) a striking conversation that took place at Eouen between Thomas and Aschetinus prior of Leicester, who found him whiling away the hours of convalescence in a gay courtier's garb over a game of chess, and frankly avowed his dissatisfaction at the sight of such frivolity in a dignitary of the church "already archdeacon of Canterbury, dean of Hastings, provost of Beverley, canon of more than one church, entrusted with the care of the vacant arch- bishopric [procurator etiam archiepiscopatui), and marked out by court gossip as the coming archbishop." Thomas replied that he knew three poor priests in England whose promotion to the primacy he would welcome sooner than his own. The date of this conversation is fixed by the allusion to the vacant see of Canterbury in Thomas' charge. It must have taken place after Theobald's death in April 1161. 166 THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. come with his archdeaconry), and a prebend or two at Hastings' (the gift of the count of Eu), in addition to the secular preferment bestowed upon him by the king. But, pluralist as he was, Thomas did not forget his duty to the Church. It was at the suggestion of the chancellor that the king found honest occupants without delay for vacant sees and abbeys, instead of retaining " the inheritance of the Crucified " for the benefit of his own royal treasury, as he did later in his reign" ; visited, and at his own cost completed and endowed, the abbey church at Merton' ; and infused fresh blood into the Church of England by recalling from France famous English monks and scholars and finding them preferment at home. Robert of Melun was installed as bishop of Hereford*, and William, a monk of S. Martin des ' Fitzst. ili. 20: donationem praebendanim Hastinges a comite Angensi. The prior of Leicester addresses Thomas as decanus Hastingiae (iii. 26). Freeman suggests that he may have been dean mth the nomination of the prebendaries also entrusted to him, Robertson (Becket, p. 30) remarks that Hastings was a royal chapel with a college of secular canons attached (Dugdale, Mcmasticon, vi. 1470). ^ Fitzst. iii. 23 : ut fisco sno patrimonia crucifixi inferrentnr. ' Cp. Ch. I. of this essay for Thomas' connexion with Merton, the scene of his early school-days. The Pipe Bolls of the 2nd and 4th years of Henry II. contain several royal grants or exemptions conferred upon the carumici de Meritona. ' Fitzst. iii. 23. Robert may have been invited to England while Thomas was chancellor, but he was not promoted to the see of Hereford tUl 1163, after it was vacated by Foliot's translation to London. Herbert of Bosham (iii. 260, 303) says that Bobert was both ordained to the priesthood and consecrated by Thomas the archbishop. Cp. Ch. I. of this essay on Robert's possible connexion with Thomas during his student days at Paris. THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. 167 Champs, as abbot of Ramsey*. All this Fitzstephen attributes to the judicious influence of the chancellor. It is also a significant fact that in each of the three The instances which Fitzstephen gives of the chancellor's "J^^^'^f interposition to break the force of the king's dis- court. pleasure, the sufferer reprieved was an ecclesiastic. Nicolas archdeacon of London had incurred the king's anger for some unknown reason. His family- were driven from hearth and home, and his house confiscated by royal command. But Thomas pleaded his cause, and the king yielded to his entreaties. A still more notorious instance occurred in Normandy in July 1160. The kings of England and France had met at Neufmarch^ in conference with the Norman and French clergy, to decide between the claims of the rival popes Octavian and Alexander. Unfortunately first Gilo archdeacon of Rouen, acting on behalf of his uncle Hugh archbishop of Rouen, and after him the bishop of Le Mans, had anticipated the verdict of the conference by giving their allegi- ance at once to the nuncios of Alexander. Henry, infuriated by their independent action, ordered the immediate destruction of the archdeacon's house; but Thomas persuaded him to countermand the order. The bishop's case was more serious. Henry 1 Fitzst. iii. 23. Robert de Monte gives 1161 as the date of William's promotion to Ramsey. One other instance of the chancellor's patronage is preserved in an insertion in the Qiuidri- logus (perhaps due to its compiler, the monk Elias of Evesham), which states that one of the commissioners who fetched the pallium for Thomas after his consecration — Adam abbot of Evesham — owed his abbacy to the chancellor (Robertson's note, Materials, iii. 189). 168 THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. in his rage would not listen to reason, and the chancellor saw that it was useless to attempt to calm his violence at once. The king's marshals had already sacked the prelate's hostelry at Neufmarch^, and tuhied him adrift in disgrace, and other messengers from Henry, armed with a writ that he had brandished in the face of his awe-stricken court, were on their way to Le Mans to raze the bishop's palace to the ground; but the chancellor was equal to the emergency. His only hope was to gain time, and he gave the messengers secret in- structions to spend four days on the journey instead of two. The next day he sent the bishops to intercede with the king for their brother prelate; but they pleaded in vain, and the chancellor himself fared no better. Undaunted by his repulse he went again the following day, and at last the king yielded, but not until he thought that time enough had elapsed for his officers to complete their work. The chancellor did not lose a moment. He despatched a messenger of his own with the king's counter-orders, and warned him, as he valued his master's friendship, to rest neither day nor night till he came to Le Mans. The chancellor's plan had succeeded. His messenger reached Le Mans just in time ; the king's writ had been handed to the city authorities that morning, but the bishop's palace was intact ; and the kingwas honestly grateful afterwards forthe stratagem that had robbed him of his vengeance and saved him in spite of himself from a deed of wild injustice'. ' FitzBt. iii. 26-28. The date of the conference is given by Bobert de Monte, a.d. 1160. THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. 169 One other instance of the chancellor's inter- cession on behalf of his brother clergy remains to be noticed before returning to the question of his patronage. John of Salisbury had for a time in- curred the king's displeasure, and made use of the chancellor's friendship to reinstate himself in Henry's favour. He forwarded to the chancellor letters of recommendation from his master the archbishop of Canterbury and from his friend the Pope, and begged the chancellor to exert his influence, which was the one thing wanted to give them their full weight with the king'- John also wrote to Ernulf, the chancellor's secretary, explaining that he was afraid that without a monitor at his side the busy chan- cellor might not find time to plead a friend's cause, and asking him first to urge the chancellor to lay the case before the king, and then to write as soon as possible and tell him how the king received the letters from the Pope and the archbishop and the plea which he expected the chancellor to put forward on his behalf. We do not know the actual result of the intercession; but these two letters are at least a proof that the chancellor was recognised by his brother clergy as "a friend in deed in time of need ^," upon whose personal sympathy and support they could rely, in cases of individual distress, what- ' Joh. S. ad Thomam regis oanoellarium, Ep. 6 {Materials, v. 8,9). ' Joh. S. ad magistrum Ernulfum, Bp. 5 (Materials, v. 7). This Ernulf remained secretary to Thomas after his consecration, and conveyed the seal to the king, when his master resigned the chancellorship. 170 THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. ever attitude he took up towards the Church as a whole. To return to questions of ecclesiastical administra- tion, John of Salisbury was not always quite so sure of the 'chancellor's principles at the time as Fitz- stephen was when he wrote his biogi-aphy years after- 8ee of wards. The letter which John wrote to Thomas in Theobald's name, asking him to exert his influence in the nomination of a new bishop of Exeter, casts just a shade of suspicion upon the chancellor's integrity in the matter of church revenues. Robert Warelwast bishop of Exeter died in 1160, and the vacant see was not immediately filled. The king had already favoured the suit of Eobert Fitzharding, a local baron, on behalf of an illiterate and inefficient candidate for the see, and had written to archbishop Theobald in the man's interest ; while some persons had even gone so far as to intrude upon the bed- ridden primate on the same errand. The canons of Exeter, however, had rejected the nomination; and Theobald now put forward Bartholomew archdeacon of Exeter — without Bartholomew's knowledge, John of Salisbury is careful to state — as a candidate for the king's approval. John was doubtful of the result. There was a rumour afloat, he writes, that the king had granted the revenues of three vacant bishoprics to swell the chancellor's income'. Still Theobald relied upon his patronage. If he were 1 Joh. S. Ep. 9 (v, 14): fema est apud nos quod trimn vacantium epiBeopatnum reditus ad liberationem vestram vobis dominns rex concesserit. Duoange gires Uberatio=sB,laij. The word occurs frequently with that meaning in the Pipe Bolls. THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. 171 only willing to speak, a word to the king would suffice; his good services to the Church in similar cases at Lincoln, York and elsewhere were signal proofs of his influence. Theobald was hoping for a speedy decision, but almost against hope, it seems ; for John concludes with a warning that if the arch- bishop's petition were to be postponed until the king's arrival in England, he would feel that king and chancellor alike were merely waiting for his death. The aged primate was spared that pang of disappointment, though he did not live to consecrate his friend. We learn from other sources that Bar- tholomew was consecrated bishop of Exeter, just after Theobald's death in April 1161, by Walter bishop of Rochester in accordance with his brother's dying request'- One other incident of the chancellor's ecclesi- S«« of astical administration is recorded in an extant letter from Foliot to the king. The see of London was thrown upon the chancellor's hands by the helpless- ness of its bishop, Richard de Belmeis, who broke down under an attack of paralysis some time before his death in May 11621 Thomas tried to provide for the administration of the see by a stroke of economy which would meet the spiritual require- 1 E. Diceto, i. 304 (ed. Stubbs). Bartholomew after his election went into Normandy to do homage to the king for the temporalities of his see, and returned only to find Theobald dead. 2 E. Diceto, i. 304, 306 (ed. Stubbs). Eobertsou, in a note on p. 16, vol. v., gives 1161 as the date of Eiohard's death, apparently by a slip of the pen, for in a note on p. 23 he mentions that Eichard survived Theobald by ». year. 172 THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. ments of the diocese and at the same time turn its misfortune into a source of profit for the king's treasury. In other words he did his best to serve two masters, and discharge his duty to the king without forgetting his duty to the Church. He asked Gilbert Foliot, then bishop of Hereford, — after- wards,afi bishop of London,hi8 bitterest enemy, though now apparently they were on terms of friendship — to take charge of the disabled see and pay the expenses of the bishop's household out of its revenues, re- serving the rest for the Crown, to be expended at the royal pleasured Whether Foliot suspected the chancellor's in- tentions with regard to the revenues of the see or only dreaded the strain of the responsibilities which its administration would add to the cares of his own diocese of Hereford, is an open question. He wrote to the king and declined the honour in vague terms. It would be a dangerous task, he said, and a grievous burden on his soul, and he implored the king to leave him free to serve God with greater devotion and intercede for him with a heart that would be the purer for its release from such a 1 Foliot to Henry, Ep. 10 (v. 15, 16) : sollicitat me dominus cancellarins nt cnram Londoniensis episcopatus sascipiam et ex parte reditumn episeopatus episeopnm ipsum et domum ejus exMbeam, reliquum vero domino meo regi, prout sibi spiritns Dei suggesserit, erogandum conservem. It is immaterial whether sibi refers grammatically to cancellarius or regi: practically the result is the same. The chancellor was entrusted with the revenues of vacant sees to be administered on behalf of the king ; and the revenues of the see of London would pass through his hands as the king's agent. THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. 173 weight of care^. Eventually Foliot and the bishop of Lincoln with great difficulty induced Hugh dean of London and Nicolas the archdeacon to undertake the responsibility of managing the affairs of their helpless bishop, who was still lingering out his days. Their reluctance was more than justified, for in less than twelve months Foliot had to appeal to the new archbishop of Canterbury on their behalf against the persistence of the late bishop's creditors^. ' Father Morris (S. Thomas Becket, pp. 41, 42) speaks of the see as already vacated by the death of its bishop, and takes the chancellor's proposal to be an offer of the see, refused by Foliot "in consequence of the disgraceful condition annexed to the offer of the translation." This view he supports by taking the words epiacopum ipmm et domum ejus exMbeam to mean "maintain myself and my household as its bishop.'' He after- wards mentions with approval the explanation that Foliot was only asked to administer the see during its vacancy, regarding this as a less reprehensible proposal, amounting merely to a retention of a part of what the king usually confiscated in toto ; and suggests that " S. Thomas, who as we know used his influence with the king to prevent long vacancies, may in this instance have been able to gain nothing more liberal to the church than the compromise here offered." But Foliot's "evident indignation at the offer " and his subsequent translation to the see compelled the learned Jesuit to incline reluctantly in favour of the former view. That view however is untenable, for two reasons: (1) the words episcopum et domum mam fideliter exhibere are used in a subsequent letter in reference to the trusteeship of Hugh and Nicolas. They cannot therefore mean "to maintain oneself as bishop.'' (2) Richard was still aUve when the bishops of Hereford and Lincoln forced the administration of his affairs upon the dean and the archdeacon. The see was therefore not vacant at the time of the chancellor's offer to Foliot. ^ Foliot, Ep. 15 (v. 23, 24), addressed T. Cantuariensi, i.e. Thomas, for the bishop of London, who is mentioned as dead, survived Theobald by a year. 174 THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. (3) EccU- The attitude which Thomas the chancellor took juriidic- up towards the rival claims of royal and ecclesiastical tion. jurisdiction is clearly illustrated by the part which Jie played in the long litigation between the bishop of ChiShester and the abbot of Battle. The trial of 1157 has been already described in outline, and it will be suflScient here to recall Thomas' share in that trial and in the previous stages of the dispute. Early in 1155 the abbot obtained the king's consent to the confirmation of his privileges; but at the instigation of the bishop Theobald remonstrated with the king, and persuaded him to withhold his seal from the abbey charter until the rights of Chichester and Canterbury obtained what he con- sidered due recognition. The abbot lost no time in procuring once more the royal order for the con- firmation of the charter ; and, in spite of an urgent remonstrance from the bishop, the king instructed the chancellor to affix the royal seal to the charter, and required the bishop, the abbot and the chancellor to meet in conference before the archbishop and revise any clauses that needed revision. If they separated without coming to an agreement, the charter was to be kept by the chancellor in the royal chapel until the king should decide what was to be done. The persons interested met at Lambeth. The charter of William I. was read out as the model of all the subsequent charters, which were practically mere confirmations of the original grant; and the clause declaring the abbot's exemption from epi- scopal jurisdiction gave rise to a fierce discussion. Some objected to it as contrary to the principles of THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CHURCH. 175 canon law, others as inconsistent with the rights and dignities of Canterbury. Some loudly asserted that the clause was too sweeping ; others as violently enforced the opposite view^ The bishop required the excision of the clause, as it was not signed by any of his predecessors in the see of Chichester ; and the archbishop supported his demand. The abbot argued calmly on rational grounds, but in vain ; his opponents still clamoured for their point. At last the chancellor ended the dispute abruptly by removing the charter into the royal chapel in compliance with the king's previous instructions. The bishop was happy, for he felt sure that the abbot and his church had lost the royal sanction to their charter. But the abbot persevered, and, once more procuring the king's consent to its confirmation, returned this time in triumph to his abbey with the precious document in his possession. Such briefly is the narrative of the Abbey Chronicle. At the trial of 1157 the bishop of Chichester referred in a tone of complaint to the abbot's conduct at this court of revision in 1155. The clause, he said, which infringed upon the rights of Chichester and Canterbury — the very clause which the conference in accordance with the king's instruc- tions was to revise and modify, if necessary — had after due consideration been pronounced untenable on the ground of its sweeping and arbitrary charac- ter; and yet the abbot, ignoring this authoritative ' Chron. M