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reports, that "Becket's father and mother were both citizens of the middle class.” *

It was impossible, of course, that so illustrious a saint should come into the world without some precious scraps of ante-natal history. His mother's dreams and visions are recorded with laughable minuteness. The sagacious midwife, when she lifted in her arms the new-born babe, exclaimed, "I have raised from the ground a future archbishop." But she seems to have kept the secret very well. His mother is said to have brought him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. She was wont, it is related, to use

According to Thierry, who cites Brompton, the girl found her way to Becket's house by crying, "Gilbert, Gilbert"; no very likely means, in a city of forty or fifty thousand inhabitants, of finding the dwelling of an individual. In Dr. Giles's account, this part of the anecdote does not appear, and we cannot find it in Twysden's edition of Brompton. The ballads to which we alluded in a former note afford but slight presumption of the truth of the legend on which they are founded. One of them places the scene of Becket's adventure in France, where he falls in love with the king's daughter," Burd Isbel" by name. He is thrown into prison, but is released by the princess, who had stolen the key. She found the captive in sad plight, — "For the mice but and the bald rattons

Had eaten his yellow hair."

But she soon set him to rights; for

"She's gotten him a shaver for his beard,

The story ends, as

A comber till his hair;

Five hundred pound in his pocket,

and marrying him. sufficiently grotesque.

To spend, and nae to spare."

in duty bound, with Isbel's going to seek Beckie, The other ballad is more to the purpose, though The description of the heroine begins thus:

"The Moor he had but ae daughter,

Her name was called Susie Pye."

Her love is dashed with a mercenary touch:

"O have ye any lands,' she said,

'Or castles in your own countrie,

That ye could give to a lady fair,

From prison strong to set you free?'"

Susie Pye, after liberating her lover, and waiting as long as she could, "set her foot on good shipboard," and arrived in London just as Gilbert had taken another bride. But the news of her arrival changed all that. With surprisingly agile affection, he ran down to meet her:-" Of fifteen steps he made but three." The "forenoon bride " was sent home again, and, after kissing Susie's "red rosy lips" and calling her "jewel,”.

"He's ta'en her by the milk-white hand,

And led her to yon fountain-stane;

He's changed her name from Susie Pye,

And he's called her his bonny love, Lady Jane."

him in a very whimsical way, as the measure of her charity to the poor. She would occasionally weigh "the future archbishop," putting into the opposite scale bread, meat, and clothing enough to balance the boy, all of which were given to the poor. The recipients of this eccentric bounty might, with peculiar fitness, address him in the Oriental form of salutation, "May your shadow never be less ! " He spent the years, we are told, of his infancy, childhood, and youth, in the frugality of his father's house, and in frequenting the schools of the city. But it appears that "he was destined from his infancy to the spiritual warfare, and his parents took measures accordingly to give him a liberal education." He was committed to the charge of Prior Robert, to be educated in the religious house of the canons of Merton. An attractive and probably flattering portrait of the youth represents him as "modest and agreeable in speech, tall and elegant in person, easily led by good example, prudent beyond his years, combining the personal beauty of youth with the gravity of a more advanced age." Of his progress in learning we hear little. He seems, however, at a very early period, to have acquired that taste for hawking which he turned to good account in his subsequent career as a courtier. On one occasion, he came near losing his life in attempting to save a drowning falcon, - an opportunity sure to be improved by his biographers for interpolating a miracle.

But the homely instruction of a monastic school was not thought enough for so promising a youth, and when he had grown nearly to man's estate, he was sent to Paris. Here he had every facility for laying the foundation of those courtly accomplishments which were to grace the high station he was destined to occupy. Among these, doubtless, was the use of "French of Paris," the choicest dialect of a Norman court. The schools of Paris were at this time in high repute. The name of Abelard was not forgotten there, and crowds of scholars from every part of Europe flocked to hear the lectures of his pupils and successors. We are not

told whether Becket exhausted all the learning of the trivium and quadrivium. But we may conjecture that the young aspirant found much to study in the manners of the diverse races which came under his notice in that great metropolis. He returned to England when he had nearly attained his majority. The times were stormy; and for a while he was

content with the office of clerk to the sheriffs of London. He may have acquired in this employment much of that knowlledge of business for which he was afterward so eminent. We next find him domesticated with one Osbern, a rich relative of his, in the character of manager of his finances and companion of his sports. His time was divided between this gentleman's country residence, where he had every opportunity to follow his favorite pursuits of hunting and hawking, and his father's house. His studies seem to have been thrown overboard.

But he was at length fortunate enough to attract the notice of two clerical guests at his father's house, who insisted on introducing him at the court of Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. Here Thomas at last found himself in a congenial atmosphere. This court formed the head-quarters of the learned men of the day, most of whom were of the ecclesiastical order. Becket, feeling his inferiority to many of the scholars about him, devoted himself with great assiduity to his studies, and especially to the canon and civil law, the most useful sciences to a candidate for secular or ecclesi

astical preferment. The court of Canterbury rivalled in splendor, and surpassed in refinement, that of the monarch. The young Londoner was here quite at home. He seems to have been endowed by nature with a graceful and winning address, which his experience abroad had probably perfected. This happy gift, set off as it was by untiring diligence and stanch fidelity, soon attracted the notice and won the favor of the primate. The only obstacle to the progress of Becket was the enmity of Roger Dupont, who held a high place in Theobald's esteem. This hostility, the cause of which does not clearly appear, twice caused his disgrace. He had, however, secured a friend in Archdeacon Walter, Theobald's brother; and by his intercession recovered his position. Desirous of perfecting himself in his studies, he now obtained leave of his patron to travel, and studied civil law for a year at Bologna, its fountain-head, and at Auxerre in Burgundy. He had already received several preferments from the archbishop. A mission to Rome having become necessary, on an affair of great importance and delicacy, Theobald, in whose favor Becket was now firmly established, and who had discerned his rare talents for diplomacy, determined to intrust him with the business. He discharged this commission with uncommon skill and success; and

by the proficiency which he showed at this time, and on other occasions, in the arts of negotiation, gained the goodwill of the pontiff and his court. His old enemy, Roger, having been promoted to the see of York, the primate conferred on Becket, now about thirty-three years old, the archdeaconry of Canterbury, an office of considerable income, and next in dignity to the bishoprics and abbacies. The list of benefices already enjoyed by him was increased by new preferments, which the ambitious ecclesiastic seems to have accepted without scruple.

But now a higher dignity awaited him. The death of Stephen, in the year 1154, was followed by the undisputed accession of Henry the Second. The state of England at this time was lamentable in the extreme. A long civil war had desolated the country, and almost brutalized its inhabitants. Bands of foreign mercenaries had deprived many of the native English of their estates, and turned towns and villages into encampments. Turbulent barons, strong in the castles which bristled over the land, led a predatory and lawless life. The spirit of order had been almost extinguished by twenty years of riot and rapine.† Nobles and prelates, during the contest for the throne, had become familiar with perjury and rebellion. The only hope of the exhausted, bleeding people was in their young prince, who had already given promise of a glorious future. By his marriage with Eleonore of Guienne, the repudiated queen of Louis the Seventh of France, he had acquired her large domains, and by an act of perjury he had deprived his younger brother of his rich patrimony. From Flanders to the Pyrenees, over more than two thirds of France, his sway was firmly established. Well might the French king tremble, when he received the homage of this dangerous vassal for these immense fiefs. The people had begun to sigh for a strong government, and they had reason to expect it from the young prince.

Every thing, however, depended on Henry's choice of ministers. The clergy were deeply interested in the matter,

* Dr. Giles cites Fitzstephen as his authority, but omits to translate aliquotiens. The original is, "Mittebat eum aliquotiens Romam pro negotiis ecclesie Anglorum." The imperfect, too, is significant, and leads one to infer that he was more than once despatched upon such an embassy

Dr. Giles calls it a ten years' war. But he appears to rely on Fitzste phen for the description, who uses the word ricennalis. Stephen usurped the throne in 1135.

for they had much to fear from the vigorous and vehement spirit of the king, if not controlled by suitable advisers. Accordingly, Archbishop Theobald, and Henry, Bishop of Winchester, the king-maker of his day, a busy and timeserving, but very able, prelate, with the aid of Arnulf, Bishop of Lisieux, a dexterous manager, formed the project of elevating Thomas à Becket to the place of chancellor, hoping that his agreeable manners and distinguished parts would enable him to eurb, if not to govern, a monarch so well fitted to relish the one and appreciate the other. Becket seems to have been introduced at court very soon after the coronation, and though the custody of the great seal was not immediately committed to him, it is probable, and in fact his contemporaries assure us, that the speedy reformation which was effected in the state of the country was in no small measure owing to his counsels. The mercenaries were compelled to disgorge their prey, and quit the soil of England.* The baronial castles were dismantled, and the crown regained its supremacy. Robbery and beggary were succeeded by honest and gainful industry, and, in the words of Fitzstephen, the realm of England was renewed like an opening spring. The inauguration of Becket as chancellor took place in the year 1155, when he was about thirty-eight years old, and the king about twenty-two. The chancellorship was in those days always held by an ecclesiastic, and was regarded as a stepping-stone to a bishopric or archbishopric. Becket seems at once to have gained an almost absolute influence over the young monarch, which fully justified the expectations of his friends. He was now in his prime.

"His countenance was mild and beautiful; he was full of stature" (six feet two inches in height, according to another account); "with a nose elevated and slightly aquiline; in his senses and physical perceptions he was most acute; his language was refined and eloquent, his intellect subtle, and his mind cast in a noble mould. His conduct, amiable towards all men, ex

*Fitzstephen says,"Willielmus de Ipra, violentus incubator Cantiæ, cum lacrymis emigravit"; that is, "William of Ypres, the violent Kent squatter, left the country with tears."

Fitzstephen's words are,

166

Regnum Anglia, tanquam ver novum, renovatur"; which Dr. Giles renders," England seemed to enjoy a second spring." He must have forgotten the words with which Virgil opens the subject of his first Georgic,

"Vere novo, gelidus canis quum montibus humor
Liquitur," etc.

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