The boldest
fabricator
would
not venture to introduce an entire and complete invention.
not venture to introduce an entire and complete invention.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v11 - Fro to Gre
By the dim light
-for the shutter that had been thrown back had been closed
again, and the only light came from a window in the roof-he
made out three figures standing together at the further end of
the forge, in one of whom, though he tried to conceal himself,
he instantly recognized his visitor of the previous evening.
"You here, my man? " he said. "You left my house two
hours ago. Why are you not on your way home? "
Sylvester, seeing he was discovered, turned his face full round,
and in a voice quietly insolent, replied, "I fell in with some
friends of mine on the road. We had a little business together,
and it is good luck that has brought your honor to us while we
are talking, for the jintlemen here have a word or two they
would like to be saying to ye, colonel, before ye leave them. "
"To me! " said Goring, turning from Sylvester to the two
figures, whose faces were still covered by their cloaks. "If these
gentlemen are what I suppose them to be, I am glad to meet
them, and will hear willingly what they may have to say. "
## p. 6068 (#38) ############################################
6068
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
"Perhaps less willingly than you think, Colonel Goring," said
the taller of the two, who rose and stepped behind him to the
door, which he closed and barred. Goring, looking at him with
some surprise, saw that he was the person whom he had met on
the mountains, and had afterwards seen at the funeral at Der-
reen. The third man rose from a bench on which he had been
leaning, lifted his cap, and said:-
"There is an old proverb, sir, that short accounts make long
friends. There can be no friendship between you and me, but
the account between us is of very old standing. I have returned
to Ireland, only for a short stay; I am about to leave it, never
to come back. A gentleman and a soldier, like yourself, cannot
wish that I should go while that account is still unsettled. Our
fortunate meeting here this morning provides us with an oppor-
tunity. "
It was Morty's voice that he heard, and Morty's face that he
saw as he became accustomed to the gloom. He looked again at
the pretended messenger from the carded curate, and he then
remembered the old Sylvester who had brought the note from
Lord Fitzmaurice to the agent from Kenmare. In an instant
the meaning of the whole situation flashed across him.
It was
no casual re-encounter. He had been enticed into the place
where he found himself, with some sinister and perhaps deadly
purpose. A strange fatality had forced him again and again
into collision with the man of whose ancestral lands he had
come into possession. Once more, by a deliberate and treacher-
ous contrivance, he and the chief of the O'Sullivans had been
brought face to face together, and he was alone, without a friend
within call of him; unless his tenant, who as he could now see
had intended to give him warning, would interfere further in his
defense. And of this he knew Ireland well enough to be aware
that there was little hope.
He supposed that they intended to murder him. The door, at
which he involuntarily glanced, was fastened by this time with
iron bolts. He was a man of great personal strength and activ-
ity, but in such a situation neither would be likely to avail him.
Long inured to danger, and ready at all moments to meet what-
ever peril might threaten him, he calmly faced his adversary and
said:
"This meeting is not accidental, as you would have me be-
lieve. You have contrived it. Explain yourself further. "
## p. 6069 (#39) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6069
"Colonel Goring," said Morty Sullivan, "you will recall the
circumstances under which we last parted. Enemy as you are
and always have been to me and mine, I will do you the justice
to say that on that occasion you behaved like a gentleman and a
man of courage. But our quarrel was not fought out. Persons
present interfered between us. We are now alone, and can com-
plete what was then left unfinished. "
"Whether I did well or ill, sir," the colonel answered, "in
giving you the satisfaction which you demanded of me at the
time you speak of, I will not now say. But I tell you that the
only relations which can exist between us at present are those
between a magistrate and a criminal who has forfeited his life.
If you mean to murder me, you can do it; you have me at ad-
vantage. You can thus add one more to the list of villainies with
which you have stained an honorable name. If you mean that I
owe you a reparation for personal injuries, such as the customs
of Ireland allow one gentleman to require from another, this, as
you well know, is not the way to ask for it. But I acknowledge
no such right. When I last encountered you I but partly knew
you. I now know you altogether. You have been a pirate on
the high seas. Your letters of marque do not cover you, for you
are a subject of the King, and have broken your allegiance.
Such as you are, you stand outside the pale of honorable men,
and I should degrade the uniform I wear if I were to stoop to
measure arms with you. "
The sallow olive of Morty's cheek turned livid. He clutched
the bench before him, till the muscles of his hands stood out like
knots of rope.
"You are in my power, colonel," he said: "do not tempt me
too far. If my sins have been many, my wrongs are more. It
must be this or worse. One word from me, and you are a dead
man. "
He laid four pistols on the smith's tool-chest.
"Take a pair
of them," he said. "They are loaded alike. Take which you
please. Let us stand on the opposite sides of this hovel, and so
make an end. If I fall, I swear on my soul you shall have no
hurt from any of my people. My friend Connell is an officer of
mine, but he holds a commission besides in the Irish Brigade.
There is no better-born gentleman in Kerry. His presence here
is your sufficient security. You shall return to Dunboy as safe
from harm as if you had the Viceroy's body-guard about you, or
## p. 6070 (#40) ############################################
6070
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
your own boat's crew that shot down my poor fellows at Glen-
gariff. To this I pledge you my honor. "
"Your honor! " said Goring; "your honor! And you tempted
me here by a lying tale, sent by the lips of yonder skulking
rascal. That alone, sir, were there nothing else, would have suf-
ficed to show what you are. "
A significant click caught the ear of both the speakers. Look-
ing round, they saw Sylvester had cocked a pistol.
"Drop that," said Morty, "or by God! kinsman of mine though
you be, I will drive a bullet through the brain of you. Enough
of this, sir," he said, turning to Goring. "Time passes, and this
scene must end. I would have arranged it otherwise, but you
yourself know that by this way alone I could have brought you
to the meeting. Take the pistols, I say, or by the bones of my
ancestors that lie buried under Dunboy Castle yonder, I will call
in my men from outside, and they shall strip you bare, and score
such marks on you as the quartermaster leaves on the slaves
that you hire to fight your battles. Prince Charles will laugh
when I tell him in Paris how I served one at least of the hounds
that chased him at Culloden. "
The forge in which this scene was going on was perfectly
familiar to Goring, for he had himself designed it and built it.
There was the ordinary broad open front to the road, constructed
of timber, which was completely shut. The rest of the building
was of stone, and in the wall at the back there was a small door
leading into a field, and thence into the country. Could this
door be opened, there was a chance, though but a faint one, of
escape. A bar lay across, but of no great thickness. The staple
into which it ran was slight. A vigorous blow might shatter
both.
Sylvester caught the direction of Goring's eye, caught its
meaning, and threw himself in the way. The colonel snatched
a heavy hammer which stood against the wall. With the sud-
denness of an electric flash he struck Sylvester on the shoulder,
broke his collar-bone, and hurled him back senseless, doubled
over the anvil. A second stroke, catching the bar in the middle,
shattered it in two, and the door hung upon the latch. Morty
and Connell, neither of whom had intended foul play, hesitated,
and in another moment Goring would have been free and away.
Connell, recovering himself, sprang forward and closed with him.
The colonel, who had been the most accomplished wrestler of
## p. 6071 (#41) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6071
his regiment, whirled him round, flung him with a heavy fall on
the floor, and had his hand on the latch when, half stunned
as he was, Connell recovered his feet, drew a skene, and rushed at
Colonel Goring again. So sudden it all was, so swift the strug-
gle, and so dim the light, that from the other end it was hard to
see what was happening. Wrenching the skene out of Connell's
hands, and with the hot spirit of battle in him, Colonel Goring
was on the point of driving it into his assailant's side.
"Shoot, Morty! shoot, or I am a dead man! " Connell cried.
Morty, startled and uncertain what to do, had mechanically
snatched up a pistol when Sylvester was struck down. He raised
his hand at Connell's cry. It shook from excitement, and locked
together as the two figures were, he was as likely to hit friend.
as foe.
Again Connell called, and Morty fired and missed; and
the mark of the bullet is still shown in the wall of the smithy as
a sacred reminiscence of a fight for Irish liberty. The second
shot went true to its mark. Connell had been beaten down,
though unwounded, and Goring's tall form stood out above him
in clear view. This time Morty's hand did not fail him. A
shiver passed through Goring's limbs. His arms dropped. He
staggered back against the door, and the door yielded, and he
fell upon the ground outside.
But it was not to rise and fly.
The ball had struck him clean above the ear, and buried itself
in the brain. He was dead.
SCIENTIFIC METHOD APPLIED TO HISTORY
From Short Studies on Great Subjects>
ISTORICAL facts can only be verified by the skeptical and the
H inquiring, and skepticism and inquiry nip like a black frost
the eager credulity in which legendary biographies took
their rise. You can watch such stories as they grew in the con-
genial soil of belief. The great saints of the fifth, sixth, and
seventh centuries, who converted Europe to Christianity, were as
modest and unpretending as true, genuine men always are. They
claimed no miraculous powers for themselves.
Miracles might
have been worked in the days of their fathers. They for their
own parts relied on nothing but the natural powers of persuasion
and example. Their companions, who knew them personally in
life, were only a little more extravagant. Miracles and portents
## p. 6072 (#42) ############################################
6072
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
vary
in an inverse ratio with the distance of time. St. Patrick
is absolutely silent about his own conjuring performances. He
told his followers, perhaps, that he had been moved by his good
angel to devote himself to the conversion of Ireland. The angel
of metaphor becomes in the next generation an actual seraph.
On a rock in the county of Down there is, or was, a singular
mark, representing rudely the outline of a foot. From that rock,
where the young Patrick was feeding his master's sheep, a writer
of the sixth century tells us that the angel Victor sprang back to
heaven after delivering his message, and left behind him the
imprinted witness of his august visit. Another hundred years
pass, and legends from Hegesippus are imported into the life of
the Irish apostle. St. Patrick and the Druid enchanter contend
before King Leogaire on Tara Hill, as Simon Magus and St.
Peter contended before the Emperor Nero. Again a century, and
we are in a world of wonders where every human lineament is
löst. St. Patrick, when a boy of twelve, lights a fire with icicles;
when he comes to Ireland he floats thither upon an altar-stone
which Pope Celestine had blessed for him. He conjures a Welsh
marauder into a wolf, makes a goat cry out in the stomach of a
thief who had stolen him, and restores dead men to life, not
once or twice but twenty times. The wonders with which the
atmosphere is charged gravitate towards the largest concrete
figure which is moving in the middle of them, till at last, as
Gibbon says, the sixty-six lives of St. Patrick which were extant
in the twelfth century must have contained at least as many thou-
sand lies. And yet of conscious lying there was very little; per-
haps nothing at all. The biographers wrote in good faith and
were industrious collectors of material, only their notions of
probability were radically different from ours. The more mar-
velous a story, the less credit we give to it; warned by experi-
ence of carelessness, credulity, and fraud, we disbelieve everything
for which we cannot find contemporary evidence, and from the
value of that evidence we subtract whatever may be due to prev-
alent opinion or superstition. To the medieval writer, the
more stupendous the miracle the more likely it was to be true;
he believed everything which he could not prove to be false, and
proof was not external testimony, but inherent fitness.
So much for the second period of what is called human his.
tory. In the first or mythological there is no historical ground-
work at all. In the next or heroic we have accounts of real
## p. 6073 (#43) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6073
persons, but handed down to us by writers to whom the past
was a world of marvels, whose delight was to dwell upon the
mighty works which had been done in the old times, whose ob-
ject was to elevate into superhuman proportions the figures of the
illustrious men who had distinguished themselves as apostles or
warriors. They thus appear to us like their portraits in stained-
glass windows, represented rather in a transcendental condition.
of beatitude than in the modest and checkered colors of real
life. We see them not as they were, but as they appeared to an
adoring imagination, and in a costume of which we can only
affirm with certainty that it was never worn by any child of
Adam on this plain, prosaic earth. For facts as facts there is
as yet no appreciation; they are shifted to and fro, dropped out
of sight, or magnified, or transferred from owner to owner,-
manipulated to suit or decorate a preconceived and brilliant idea.
We are still in the domain of poetry, where the canons of the
art require fidelity to general principles, and allow free play to
fancy in details. The Virgins of Raphael are no less beautiful
as paintings, no less masterpieces of workmanship, though in no
single feature either of face or form or costume they resemble
the historical mother of Christ, or even resemble one another.
At the next stage we pass with the chroniclers into history
proper. The chronicler is not a poet like his predecessor. He
does not shape out consistent pictures with a beginning, a mid-
dle, and an end. He is a narrator of events, and he connects
them together on a chronological string. He professes to be re-
lating facts. He is not idealizing, he is not singing the praises
of the heroes of the sword or the crosier; he means to be true
in the literal and commonplace sense of that ambiguous word.
And yet in his earlier phases, take him in what part of the world
we please, take him in ancient Egypt or Assyria, in Greece or
in Rome, or in modern Europe,- he is but a step in advance of
his predecessor. He is excellent company. He never moralizes,
never bores you with philosophy of history or political economy.
He never speculates about causes. But on the other hand, he is
uncritical. He takes unsuspectingly the materials which he finds
ready to his hand,—the national ballads, the romances, and the bi-
ographies. He transfers to his pages whatever catches his fancy.
The more picturesque an anecdote, the more unhesitatingly he
writes it down, though in the same proportion it is the less likely
to be authentic. Romulus and Remus suckled by the wolf;
―――――――――――
1
## p. 6074 (#44) ############################################
6074
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
Curtius jumping into the gulf; our English Alfred spoiling the
cakes; or Bruce watching the leap of the spider,- stories of this
kind he relates with the same simplicity with which he records
the birth in his own day, in some outlandish village, of a child
with two heads, or the appearance of the sea-serpent or the fly-
ing dragon. Thus the chronicle, however charming, is often noth-
ing but poetry taken literally and translated into prose. It grows,
however, and improves insensibly with the growth of the nation.
Like the drama, it develops from poor beginnings into the lofti-
est art, and becomes at last perhaps the very best kind of histor-
ical writing which has yet been produced. Herodotus and Livy,
Froissart and Hall and Holinshed, are as great in their own
departments as Sophocles or Terence or Shakespeare. We are
not yet entirely clear of portents and prodigies. Superstition
clings to us as our shadow, and is to be found in the wisest as
well as the weakest. The Romans, the most practical people that
ever lived,—a people so pre-eminently effective that they have
printed their character indelibly into the constitution of Europe,
these Romans, at the very time they were making themselves
the world's masters, allowed themselves to be influenced in the
most important affairs of State by a want of appetite in the
sacred chickens, or the color of the entrails of a calf. Take him
at his best, man is a great fool. It is likely enough that we our-
selves habitually say and practice things which a thousand years
hence will seem not a jot less absurd. Cato tells us that the
Roman augurs could not look one another in the face without
laughing; and I have heard that bishops in some parts of the
world betray sometimes analogous misgivings.
In able and candid minds, however, stuff of this kind is tol-
erably harmless, and was never more innocent than in the case
of the first great historian of Greece. Herodotus was a man of
vast natural powers. Inspired by a splendid subject, and born at
the most favorable time, he grew to manhood surrounded by the
heroes of Marathon and Salamis and Platea. The wonders of
Egypt and Assyria were for the first time thrown open to the
inspection of strangers. The gloss of novelty was not yet worn
off, and the impressions falling fresh on an eager, cultivated, but
essentially simple and healthy mind, there were qualities and con-
ditions combined which produced one of the most delightful
books which was ever written. He was an intense patriot; and
he was unvexed with theories, political or moral. His philosophy
## p. 6075 (#45) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6075
was like Shakespeare's, -a calm, intelligent insight into human.
things. He had no views of his own, which the fortunes of
Greece or other countries were to be manipulated to illustrate.
The world as he saw it was a well-made, altogether promising
and interesting world; and his object was to relate what he had
seen and what he had heard and learnt, faithfully and accurately.
His temperament was rather believing than skeptical; but he was
not idly credulous. He can be critical when occasion requires.
He distinguishes always between what he had seen with his own
eyes and what others told him. He uses his judgment freely,
and sets his readers on their guard against uncertain evidence.
And there is not a book existing which contains in the same
space so much important truth,-truth which survives the sharp-
est test that modern discoveries can apply to it.
The same may be said in a slightly less degree of Livy and
of the best of the late European chroniclers: you have the same
freshness, the same vivid perception of external life, the same
absence of what philosophers call subjectivity, - the projection
into the narrative of the writer's own personality, his opinions,
thoughts, and theories. Still, in all of them, however vivid,
however vigorous the representation, there is a vein of fiction
largely and perhaps consciously intermingled. In a modern work
of history, when a statesman is introduced as making a speech,
the writer at any rate supposes that such a speech was actually
made. He has found an account of it somewhere either in detail
or at least in outline or epitome.
The boldest fabricator would
not venture to introduce an entire and complete invention. This
was not the case with the older authors. Thucydides tells us
frankly that the speeches which he interweaves with his narra-
tive were his own composition. They were intended as dramatic
representations of the opinions of the factions and parties with
which Greece was divided, and they were assigned to this person
or to that, as he supposed them to be internally suitable. Herod-
otus had set Thucydides the example, and it was universally
followed. No speech given by any old historian can be accepted
as literally true unless there is a specific intimation to that effect.
Deception was neither practiced nor pretended. It was a conven-
ient method of exhibiting characters and situations, and it was
therefore adopted without hesitation or reserve.
## p. 6076 (#46) ############################################
6076
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
THE DEATH OF THOMAS BECKET
From Short Studies on Great Subjects>
THE
HE knights were introduced. They advanced. The archbishop
neither spoke nor looked at them, but continued talking to
a monk who was next him. He himself was sitting on
a bed. The rest of the party present were on the floor. The
knights seated themselves in the same manner, and for a few
moments there was silence. Then Becket's black, restless eye
glanced from one to the other. He slightly noticed Tracy; and
Fitzurse said a few unrecorded sentences to him, which ended with
"God help you! " To Becket's friends the words sounded like
insolence. They may have meant no more than pity for the
deliberate fool who was forcing destruction upon himself.
Becket's face flushed. Fitzurse went on, "We bring you the
commands of the King beyond the sea; will you hear us in pub-
lic or in private? " Becket said he cared not. "In private, then,"
said Fitzurse. The monks thought afterwards that Fitzurse had
meant to kill the archbishop where he sat. If the knights had
entered the palace, thronged as it was with men, with any such
intention, they would scarcely have left their swords behind them.
The room was cleared, and a short altercation followed, of which
nothing is known save that it ended speedily in high words on
both sides. Becket called in his clergy again, his lay servants
being excluded, and bade Fitzurse go on. "Be it so," Sir Regi-
nald said. "Listen, then, to what the King says. When the peace
was made, he put aside all his complaints against you. He al-
lowed you to return, as you desired, free to your see. You have
now added contempt to your other offenses. You have broken
the treaty. You have allowed your pride to tempt you to defy
your lord and master to your own sorrow. You have censured
the bishops by whose administration the Prince was crowned.
You have pronounced an anathema against the King's ministers,
by whose advice he is guided in the management of the empire.
You have made it plain that if you could you would take the
Prince's crown from him. Your plots and contrivances to attain
your ends are notorious to all men. Say, then, will you attend us
to the King's presence, and there answer for yourself? For this
we are sent. "
The archbishop declared that he had never wished any hurt
to the Prince. The King had no occasion to be displeased if
1
## p. 6077 (#47) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6077
crowds
came about him in the towns and cities, after having
been SO long deprived of his presence. If he had done any
wrong he would make satisfaction, but he protested against being
suspected of intentions which had never entered his mind.
Fitzurse did not enter into an altercation with him, but con-
tinued: - "The King commands further that you and your clerks
repair without delay to the young King's presence, and swear
allegiance, and promise to amend your faults. "
The archbishop's temper was fast rising. "I will do whatever
may be
reasonable," he said, "but I tell you plainly, the King
shall have no oaths from me, nor from any one of my clergy.
There
has been too much perjury already. I have absolved
many,
with God's help, who had perjured themselves.
absolve the rest when he permits. "
I will
"I
understand you to say that you will not obey," said Fitz-
urse, and went on in the same tone: -"The King commands
you to absolve the bishops whom you have excommunicated with-
out his permission" (absque licentia sud).
"The Pope sentenced the bishops," the archbishop said. "If
you are not pleased, you must go to him. The affair is none of
mine. »
Fitzurse said it had been done at his instigation, which he did
not deny; but he proceeded to reassert that the King had given
his permission. He had complained at the time of the peace of
the injury which he had suffered in the coronation, and the King
had told him that he might obtain from the Pope any satisfaction
for which he liked to ask.
Fitzurse could scarce hear
If this was all the consent which the King had given, the pre-
tense of his authority was inexcusable.
the archbishop out with patience. "Ay, ay! " said he; "will you
the King out to be a traitor, then? The King gave you
leave
to excommunicate the bishops when they were acting by
his own order! It is more than we can bear to listen to such
monstrous accusations. "
make
John of Salisbury tried to check the archbishop's imprudent
tongue, and whispered to him to speak to the knights in private;
but when the passion was on him, no mule was more ungovern-
able
than Becket.
him :
Drawing to a conclusion, Fitzurse said to
"Since you refuse to do any one of those things which
the King requires of you, his final commands are that you and
your clergy shall forthwith depart out of this realm and out of
## p. 6078 (#48) ############################################
6078
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
his dominions, never more to return.
You have broken the peace,
and the King cannot trust you again. "
Becket answered wildly that he would not go-never again
would he leave England. Nothing but death should now part
him from his church. Stung by the reproach of ill-faith, he
poured out the catalogue of his own injuries. He had been
promised restoration, and instead of restoration he had been
robbed and insulted. Ranulf de Broc had laid an embargo on
his wine. Robert de Broc had cut off his mule's tail; and now
the knights had come to menace him.
De Morville said that if he had suffered any wrong he had
only to appeal to the Council, and justice would be done.
Becket did not wish for the Council's justice. "I have com-
plained enough," he said; "so many wrongs are daily heaped
upon me that I could not find messengers to carry the tale of
them. I am refused access to the court. Neither one king nor
the other will do me right. I will endure it no more. I will
use my own powers as archbishop, and no child of man shall
prevent me. "
"You will lay the realm under interdict, then, and excommu-
nicate the whole of us? " said Fitzurse.
"So God help me," said one of the others, "he shall not do
that. He has excommunicated over-many already. We have
borne too long with him. "
The knights sprang to their feet, twisting their gloves and
swinging their arms. The archbishop rose. In the general noise
words could no longer be accurately heard. At length the
knights moved to leave the room, and addressing the archbishop's
attendants, said, "In the King's name we command you to see
that this man does not escape. "
"Do you think I shall fly, then? " cried the archbishop.
"Neither for the King nor for any living man will I fly. You
cannot be more ready to kill me than I am to die.
Here
you will find me," he shouted, following them to the door as
they went out, and calling after them. Some of his friends
thought that he had asked De Morville to come back and speak
quietly with him, but it was not so. He returned to his seat,
still excited and complaining.
"My lord," said John of Salisbury to him, "it is strange that
you will never be advised. What occasion was there for you to
go after these men and exasperate them with your bitter speeches?
## p. 6079 (#49) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6079
You would have done better, surely, by being quiet and giving
them a milder answer. They mean no good, and you only com-
mit yourself. "
The archbishop sighed, and said, "I have done with advice.
I know what I have before me. "
It was four o'clock when the knights entered. It was now
nearly five; and unless there were lights the room must have
been almost dark. Beyond the archbishop's chamber was an
ante-room, beyond the ante-room the hall. The knights, passing
through the hall into the quadrangle, and thence to the lodge,
called their men to arms. The great gate was closed. A mounted
guard was stationed outside, with orders to allow no one to go
out or in. The knights threw off their cloaks and buckled on
their swords. This was the work of a few minutes. From the
cathedral tower the vesper bell was beginning to sound. The
archbishop had seated himself to recover from the agitation of
the preceding scene, when a breathless monk rushed in to say
that the knights were arming.
"Who cares? Let them arm,"
was all that the archbishop said. His clergy was less indifferent.
If the archbishop was ready for death, they were not. The door
from the hall into the court was closed and barred, and a short
respite was thus secured. The intention of the knights, it may
be presumed, was to seize the archbishop and carry him off to
Saltwood or to De Morville's castle at Knaresborough, or perhaps
to Normandy. Coming back to execute their purpose, they found
themselves stopped by the hall door. To burst it open would
require time; the ante-room between the hall and the archbish-
op's apartments opened by an oriel window and an outside stair
into a garden. Robert de Broc, who knew the house well, led
the way to it in the dark. The steps were broken, but a ladder
was standing against the window, by which the knights mounted,
and the crash of the falling casement told the fluttered group
about the archbishop that their enemies were upon them. There
was still a moment. The party who entered by the window, in-
stead of turning into the archbishop's room, first went into the
hall to open the door and admit their comrades. From the arch-
bishop's room a second passage, little used, opened into the
northwest corner of the cloister, and from the cloister there was
a way into the north transept of the cathedral. The cry was
"To the church! To the church! " There at least there would
be immediate safety.
## p. 6080 (#50) ############################################
6080
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
The archbishop had told the knights that they would find him.
where they left him. He did not choose to show fear; or he
was afraid, as some thought, of losing his martyrdom. He would
not move. The bell had ceased. They reminded him that ves-
pers had begun, and that he ought to be in the cathedral. Half
yielding, half resisting, his friends swept him down the passage
into the cloister. His cross had been forgotten in the haste. He
refused to stir till it was fetched and carried before him as usual.
Then only, himself incapable of fear, and rebuking the terror of
the rest, he advanced deliberately to the door into the south
transept. His train was scattered behind him, all along the
cloister from the passage leading out of the palace. As he en-
tered the church, cries were heard, from which it became plain
that the knights had broken into the archbishop's room, had
found the passage, and were following him. Almost immediately
Fitzurse, Tracy, De Morville, and Le Breton were discerned in
the dim light, coming through the cloister in their armor, with
drawn swords, and axes in their left hands. A company of
men-at-arms was behind them. In front they were driving be-
fore them a frightened flock of monks.
From the middle of the transept in which the archbishop was
standing, a single pillar rose into the roof. On the eastern side
of it opened a chapel of St. Benedict, in which were the tombs
of several of the old primates. On the west, running of course
parallel to the nave, was a Lady chapel. Behind the pillar, steps
led up into the choir, where voices were already singing vespers.
A faint light may have been reflected into the transept from the
choir tapers, and candles may perhaps have been burning before
the altars in the two chapels; of light from without through the
windows at that hour there could have been none. Seeing the
knights coming on, the clergy who had entered with the arch-
bishop closed the door and barred it. "What do you fear? " he
cried in a clear, loud voice. "Out of the way, you coward! the
Church of God must not be made a fortress. " He stepped back
and reopened the door with his own hands, to let in the trem-
bling wretches who had been shut out among the wolves. They
rushed past him, and scattered in the hiding-places of the vast
sanctuary, in the crypt, in the galleries, or behind the tombs.
All, or almost all, even of his closest friends,— William of Can-
terbury, Benedict, John of Salisbury himself,- forsook him to
shift for themselves, admitting frankly that they were unworthy
## p. 6081 (#51) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6081
of martyrdom. The archbishop was left alone with his chaplain
Fitzstephen, Robert of Merton his old master, and Edward Grim,
the stranger from Cambridge,- or perhaps with Grim only, who
says that he was the only one who stayed, and was the only one
certainly who showed any sign of courage. A cry had been
raised in the choir that armed men were breaking into the
cathedral. The vespers ceased; the few monks assembled left
their seats and rushed to the edge of the transept, looking
wildly into the darkness.
The archbishop was on the fourth step beyond the central
pillar ascending into the choir, when the knights came in. The
outline of his figure may have been just visible to them, if light
fell upon it from candles in the Lady chapel. Fitzurse passed to
the right of the pillar, De Morville, Tracy, and Le Breton to
the left. Robert de Broc, and Hugh Mauclerc, another apostate
priest, remained at the door by which they entered. A voice
cried, "Where is the traitor? Where is Thomas Becket? " There
was silence; such a name could not be acknowledged. "Where
is the archbishop? " Fitzurse shouted. "I am here," the arch-
bishop replied, descending the steps, and meeting the knights full
in the face. "What do you want with me? I am not afraid of
your swords. I will not do what is unjust. " The knights closed
round him. "Absolve the persons whom you have excommuni-
cated," they said, "and take off the suspensions. " They have
made no satisfaction," he answered; "I will not. "
«Then you
shall die as you have deserved," they said.
They had not meant to kill him- certainly not at that time
and in that place. One of them touched him on the shoulder
with the flat of his sword, and hissed in his ears, "Fly, or you
are a dead man. " There was still time; with a few steps he
would have been lost in the gloom of the cathedral, and could
have concealed him in any one of a hundred hiding-places. But
he was careless of life, and he felt that his time was come. "I
am ready to die," he said. "May the Church through my blood
obtain peace and liberty! I charge you in the name of God that
you hurt no one here but me. "
The people from the town were now pouring into the cathe-
dral; De Morville was keeping them back with difficulty at the
head of the steps from the choir, and there was danger of a res-
cue. Fitzurse seized him, meaning to drag him off as a prisoner.
He had been calm so far; his pride rose at the indignity of an
«<
XI-381
## p. 6082 (#52) ############################################
6082
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
arrest. "Touch me not, thou abominable wretch! " he said,
wrenching his cloak out of Fitzurse's grasp. "Off, thou pander,
thou! " Le Breton and Fitzurse grasped him again, and tried to
force him upon Tracy's back. He grappled with Tracy and flung
him to the ground, and then stood with his back against the
pillar, Edward Grim supporting him. Fitzurse, stung by the foul
epithet which Becket had thrown at him, swept his sword over
him and dashed off his cap. Tracy, rising from the pavement,
struck direct at his head. Grim raised his arm and caught the
blow. The arm fell broken, and the one friend found faithful
sank back disabled against the wall. The sword with its remain-
ing force wounded the archbishop above the forehead, and the
blood trickled down his face. Standing firmly, with his hands
clasped, he bent his neck for the death-stroke, saying in a low
voice, "I am prepared to die for Christ and for his Church.
-for the shutter that had been thrown back had been closed
again, and the only light came from a window in the roof-he
made out three figures standing together at the further end of
the forge, in one of whom, though he tried to conceal himself,
he instantly recognized his visitor of the previous evening.
"You here, my man? " he said. "You left my house two
hours ago. Why are you not on your way home? "
Sylvester, seeing he was discovered, turned his face full round,
and in a voice quietly insolent, replied, "I fell in with some
friends of mine on the road. We had a little business together,
and it is good luck that has brought your honor to us while we
are talking, for the jintlemen here have a word or two they
would like to be saying to ye, colonel, before ye leave them. "
"To me! " said Goring, turning from Sylvester to the two
figures, whose faces were still covered by their cloaks. "If these
gentlemen are what I suppose them to be, I am glad to meet
them, and will hear willingly what they may have to say. "
## p. 6068 (#38) ############################################
6068
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
"Perhaps less willingly than you think, Colonel Goring," said
the taller of the two, who rose and stepped behind him to the
door, which he closed and barred. Goring, looking at him with
some surprise, saw that he was the person whom he had met on
the mountains, and had afterwards seen at the funeral at Der-
reen. The third man rose from a bench on which he had been
leaning, lifted his cap, and said:-
"There is an old proverb, sir, that short accounts make long
friends. There can be no friendship between you and me, but
the account between us is of very old standing. I have returned
to Ireland, only for a short stay; I am about to leave it, never
to come back. A gentleman and a soldier, like yourself, cannot
wish that I should go while that account is still unsettled. Our
fortunate meeting here this morning provides us with an oppor-
tunity. "
It was Morty's voice that he heard, and Morty's face that he
saw as he became accustomed to the gloom. He looked again at
the pretended messenger from the carded curate, and he then
remembered the old Sylvester who had brought the note from
Lord Fitzmaurice to the agent from Kenmare. In an instant
the meaning of the whole situation flashed across him.
It was
no casual re-encounter. He had been enticed into the place
where he found himself, with some sinister and perhaps deadly
purpose. A strange fatality had forced him again and again
into collision with the man of whose ancestral lands he had
come into possession. Once more, by a deliberate and treacher-
ous contrivance, he and the chief of the O'Sullivans had been
brought face to face together, and he was alone, without a friend
within call of him; unless his tenant, who as he could now see
had intended to give him warning, would interfere further in his
defense. And of this he knew Ireland well enough to be aware
that there was little hope.
He supposed that they intended to murder him. The door, at
which he involuntarily glanced, was fastened by this time with
iron bolts. He was a man of great personal strength and activ-
ity, but in such a situation neither would be likely to avail him.
Long inured to danger, and ready at all moments to meet what-
ever peril might threaten him, he calmly faced his adversary and
said:
"This meeting is not accidental, as you would have me be-
lieve. You have contrived it. Explain yourself further. "
## p. 6069 (#39) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6069
"Colonel Goring," said Morty Sullivan, "you will recall the
circumstances under which we last parted. Enemy as you are
and always have been to me and mine, I will do you the justice
to say that on that occasion you behaved like a gentleman and a
man of courage. But our quarrel was not fought out. Persons
present interfered between us. We are now alone, and can com-
plete what was then left unfinished. "
"Whether I did well or ill, sir," the colonel answered, "in
giving you the satisfaction which you demanded of me at the
time you speak of, I will not now say. But I tell you that the
only relations which can exist between us at present are those
between a magistrate and a criminal who has forfeited his life.
If you mean to murder me, you can do it; you have me at ad-
vantage. You can thus add one more to the list of villainies with
which you have stained an honorable name. If you mean that I
owe you a reparation for personal injuries, such as the customs
of Ireland allow one gentleman to require from another, this, as
you well know, is not the way to ask for it. But I acknowledge
no such right. When I last encountered you I but partly knew
you. I now know you altogether. You have been a pirate on
the high seas. Your letters of marque do not cover you, for you
are a subject of the King, and have broken your allegiance.
Such as you are, you stand outside the pale of honorable men,
and I should degrade the uniform I wear if I were to stoop to
measure arms with you. "
The sallow olive of Morty's cheek turned livid. He clutched
the bench before him, till the muscles of his hands stood out like
knots of rope.
"You are in my power, colonel," he said: "do not tempt me
too far. If my sins have been many, my wrongs are more. It
must be this or worse. One word from me, and you are a dead
man. "
He laid four pistols on the smith's tool-chest.
"Take a pair
of them," he said. "They are loaded alike. Take which you
please. Let us stand on the opposite sides of this hovel, and so
make an end. If I fall, I swear on my soul you shall have no
hurt from any of my people. My friend Connell is an officer of
mine, but he holds a commission besides in the Irish Brigade.
There is no better-born gentleman in Kerry. His presence here
is your sufficient security. You shall return to Dunboy as safe
from harm as if you had the Viceroy's body-guard about you, or
## p. 6070 (#40) ############################################
6070
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
your own boat's crew that shot down my poor fellows at Glen-
gariff. To this I pledge you my honor. "
"Your honor! " said Goring; "your honor! And you tempted
me here by a lying tale, sent by the lips of yonder skulking
rascal. That alone, sir, were there nothing else, would have suf-
ficed to show what you are. "
A significant click caught the ear of both the speakers. Look-
ing round, they saw Sylvester had cocked a pistol.
"Drop that," said Morty, "or by God! kinsman of mine though
you be, I will drive a bullet through the brain of you. Enough
of this, sir," he said, turning to Goring. "Time passes, and this
scene must end. I would have arranged it otherwise, but you
yourself know that by this way alone I could have brought you
to the meeting. Take the pistols, I say, or by the bones of my
ancestors that lie buried under Dunboy Castle yonder, I will call
in my men from outside, and they shall strip you bare, and score
such marks on you as the quartermaster leaves on the slaves
that you hire to fight your battles. Prince Charles will laugh
when I tell him in Paris how I served one at least of the hounds
that chased him at Culloden. "
The forge in which this scene was going on was perfectly
familiar to Goring, for he had himself designed it and built it.
There was the ordinary broad open front to the road, constructed
of timber, which was completely shut. The rest of the building
was of stone, and in the wall at the back there was a small door
leading into a field, and thence into the country. Could this
door be opened, there was a chance, though but a faint one, of
escape. A bar lay across, but of no great thickness. The staple
into which it ran was slight. A vigorous blow might shatter
both.
Sylvester caught the direction of Goring's eye, caught its
meaning, and threw himself in the way. The colonel snatched
a heavy hammer which stood against the wall. With the sud-
denness of an electric flash he struck Sylvester on the shoulder,
broke his collar-bone, and hurled him back senseless, doubled
over the anvil. A second stroke, catching the bar in the middle,
shattered it in two, and the door hung upon the latch. Morty
and Connell, neither of whom had intended foul play, hesitated,
and in another moment Goring would have been free and away.
Connell, recovering himself, sprang forward and closed with him.
The colonel, who had been the most accomplished wrestler of
## p. 6071 (#41) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6071
his regiment, whirled him round, flung him with a heavy fall on
the floor, and had his hand on the latch when, half stunned
as he was, Connell recovered his feet, drew a skene, and rushed at
Colonel Goring again. So sudden it all was, so swift the strug-
gle, and so dim the light, that from the other end it was hard to
see what was happening. Wrenching the skene out of Connell's
hands, and with the hot spirit of battle in him, Colonel Goring
was on the point of driving it into his assailant's side.
"Shoot, Morty! shoot, or I am a dead man! " Connell cried.
Morty, startled and uncertain what to do, had mechanically
snatched up a pistol when Sylvester was struck down. He raised
his hand at Connell's cry. It shook from excitement, and locked
together as the two figures were, he was as likely to hit friend.
as foe.
Again Connell called, and Morty fired and missed; and
the mark of the bullet is still shown in the wall of the smithy as
a sacred reminiscence of a fight for Irish liberty. The second
shot went true to its mark. Connell had been beaten down,
though unwounded, and Goring's tall form stood out above him
in clear view. This time Morty's hand did not fail him. A
shiver passed through Goring's limbs. His arms dropped. He
staggered back against the door, and the door yielded, and he
fell upon the ground outside.
But it was not to rise and fly.
The ball had struck him clean above the ear, and buried itself
in the brain. He was dead.
SCIENTIFIC METHOD APPLIED TO HISTORY
From Short Studies on Great Subjects>
ISTORICAL facts can only be verified by the skeptical and the
H inquiring, and skepticism and inquiry nip like a black frost
the eager credulity in which legendary biographies took
their rise. You can watch such stories as they grew in the con-
genial soil of belief. The great saints of the fifth, sixth, and
seventh centuries, who converted Europe to Christianity, were as
modest and unpretending as true, genuine men always are. They
claimed no miraculous powers for themselves.
Miracles might
have been worked in the days of their fathers. They for their
own parts relied on nothing but the natural powers of persuasion
and example. Their companions, who knew them personally in
life, were only a little more extravagant. Miracles and portents
## p. 6072 (#42) ############################################
6072
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
vary
in an inverse ratio with the distance of time. St. Patrick
is absolutely silent about his own conjuring performances. He
told his followers, perhaps, that he had been moved by his good
angel to devote himself to the conversion of Ireland. The angel
of metaphor becomes in the next generation an actual seraph.
On a rock in the county of Down there is, or was, a singular
mark, representing rudely the outline of a foot. From that rock,
where the young Patrick was feeding his master's sheep, a writer
of the sixth century tells us that the angel Victor sprang back to
heaven after delivering his message, and left behind him the
imprinted witness of his august visit. Another hundred years
pass, and legends from Hegesippus are imported into the life of
the Irish apostle. St. Patrick and the Druid enchanter contend
before King Leogaire on Tara Hill, as Simon Magus and St.
Peter contended before the Emperor Nero. Again a century, and
we are in a world of wonders where every human lineament is
löst. St. Patrick, when a boy of twelve, lights a fire with icicles;
when he comes to Ireland he floats thither upon an altar-stone
which Pope Celestine had blessed for him. He conjures a Welsh
marauder into a wolf, makes a goat cry out in the stomach of a
thief who had stolen him, and restores dead men to life, not
once or twice but twenty times. The wonders with which the
atmosphere is charged gravitate towards the largest concrete
figure which is moving in the middle of them, till at last, as
Gibbon says, the sixty-six lives of St. Patrick which were extant
in the twelfth century must have contained at least as many thou-
sand lies. And yet of conscious lying there was very little; per-
haps nothing at all. The biographers wrote in good faith and
were industrious collectors of material, only their notions of
probability were radically different from ours. The more mar-
velous a story, the less credit we give to it; warned by experi-
ence of carelessness, credulity, and fraud, we disbelieve everything
for which we cannot find contemporary evidence, and from the
value of that evidence we subtract whatever may be due to prev-
alent opinion or superstition. To the medieval writer, the
more stupendous the miracle the more likely it was to be true;
he believed everything which he could not prove to be false, and
proof was not external testimony, but inherent fitness.
So much for the second period of what is called human his.
tory. In the first or mythological there is no historical ground-
work at all. In the next or heroic we have accounts of real
## p. 6073 (#43) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6073
persons, but handed down to us by writers to whom the past
was a world of marvels, whose delight was to dwell upon the
mighty works which had been done in the old times, whose ob-
ject was to elevate into superhuman proportions the figures of the
illustrious men who had distinguished themselves as apostles or
warriors. They thus appear to us like their portraits in stained-
glass windows, represented rather in a transcendental condition.
of beatitude than in the modest and checkered colors of real
life. We see them not as they were, but as they appeared to an
adoring imagination, and in a costume of which we can only
affirm with certainty that it was never worn by any child of
Adam on this plain, prosaic earth. For facts as facts there is
as yet no appreciation; they are shifted to and fro, dropped out
of sight, or magnified, or transferred from owner to owner,-
manipulated to suit or decorate a preconceived and brilliant idea.
We are still in the domain of poetry, where the canons of the
art require fidelity to general principles, and allow free play to
fancy in details. The Virgins of Raphael are no less beautiful
as paintings, no less masterpieces of workmanship, though in no
single feature either of face or form or costume they resemble
the historical mother of Christ, or even resemble one another.
At the next stage we pass with the chroniclers into history
proper. The chronicler is not a poet like his predecessor. He
does not shape out consistent pictures with a beginning, a mid-
dle, and an end. He is a narrator of events, and he connects
them together on a chronological string. He professes to be re-
lating facts. He is not idealizing, he is not singing the praises
of the heroes of the sword or the crosier; he means to be true
in the literal and commonplace sense of that ambiguous word.
And yet in his earlier phases, take him in what part of the world
we please, take him in ancient Egypt or Assyria, in Greece or
in Rome, or in modern Europe,- he is but a step in advance of
his predecessor. He is excellent company. He never moralizes,
never bores you with philosophy of history or political economy.
He never speculates about causes. But on the other hand, he is
uncritical. He takes unsuspectingly the materials which he finds
ready to his hand,—the national ballads, the romances, and the bi-
ographies. He transfers to his pages whatever catches his fancy.
The more picturesque an anecdote, the more unhesitatingly he
writes it down, though in the same proportion it is the less likely
to be authentic. Romulus and Remus suckled by the wolf;
―――――――――――
1
## p. 6074 (#44) ############################################
6074
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
Curtius jumping into the gulf; our English Alfred spoiling the
cakes; or Bruce watching the leap of the spider,- stories of this
kind he relates with the same simplicity with which he records
the birth in his own day, in some outlandish village, of a child
with two heads, or the appearance of the sea-serpent or the fly-
ing dragon. Thus the chronicle, however charming, is often noth-
ing but poetry taken literally and translated into prose. It grows,
however, and improves insensibly with the growth of the nation.
Like the drama, it develops from poor beginnings into the lofti-
est art, and becomes at last perhaps the very best kind of histor-
ical writing which has yet been produced. Herodotus and Livy,
Froissart and Hall and Holinshed, are as great in their own
departments as Sophocles or Terence or Shakespeare. We are
not yet entirely clear of portents and prodigies. Superstition
clings to us as our shadow, and is to be found in the wisest as
well as the weakest. The Romans, the most practical people that
ever lived,—a people so pre-eminently effective that they have
printed their character indelibly into the constitution of Europe,
these Romans, at the very time they were making themselves
the world's masters, allowed themselves to be influenced in the
most important affairs of State by a want of appetite in the
sacred chickens, or the color of the entrails of a calf. Take him
at his best, man is a great fool. It is likely enough that we our-
selves habitually say and practice things which a thousand years
hence will seem not a jot less absurd. Cato tells us that the
Roman augurs could not look one another in the face without
laughing; and I have heard that bishops in some parts of the
world betray sometimes analogous misgivings.
In able and candid minds, however, stuff of this kind is tol-
erably harmless, and was never more innocent than in the case
of the first great historian of Greece. Herodotus was a man of
vast natural powers. Inspired by a splendid subject, and born at
the most favorable time, he grew to manhood surrounded by the
heroes of Marathon and Salamis and Platea. The wonders of
Egypt and Assyria were for the first time thrown open to the
inspection of strangers. The gloss of novelty was not yet worn
off, and the impressions falling fresh on an eager, cultivated, but
essentially simple and healthy mind, there were qualities and con-
ditions combined which produced one of the most delightful
books which was ever written. He was an intense patriot; and
he was unvexed with theories, political or moral. His philosophy
## p. 6075 (#45) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6075
was like Shakespeare's, -a calm, intelligent insight into human.
things. He had no views of his own, which the fortunes of
Greece or other countries were to be manipulated to illustrate.
The world as he saw it was a well-made, altogether promising
and interesting world; and his object was to relate what he had
seen and what he had heard and learnt, faithfully and accurately.
His temperament was rather believing than skeptical; but he was
not idly credulous. He can be critical when occasion requires.
He distinguishes always between what he had seen with his own
eyes and what others told him. He uses his judgment freely,
and sets his readers on their guard against uncertain evidence.
And there is not a book existing which contains in the same
space so much important truth,-truth which survives the sharp-
est test that modern discoveries can apply to it.
The same may be said in a slightly less degree of Livy and
of the best of the late European chroniclers: you have the same
freshness, the same vivid perception of external life, the same
absence of what philosophers call subjectivity, - the projection
into the narrative of the writer's own personality, his opinions,
thoughts, and theories. Still, in all of them, however vivid,
however vigorous the representation, there is a vein of fiction
largely and perhaps consciously intermingled. In a modern work
of history, when a statesman is introduced as making a speech,
the writer at any rate supposes that such a speech was actually
made. He has found an account of it somewhere either in detail
or at least in outline or epitome.
The boldest fabricator would
not venture to introduce an entire and complete invention. This
was not the case with the older authors. Thucydides tells us
frankly that the speeches which he interweaves with his narra-
tive were his own composition. They were intended as dramatic
representations of the opinions of the factions and parties with
which Greece was divided, and they were assigned to this person
or to that, as he supposed them to be internally suitable. Herod-
otus had set Thucydides the example, and it was universally
followed. No speech given by any old historian can be accepted
as literally true unless there is a specific intimation to that effect.
Deception was neither practiced nor pretended. It was a conven-
ient method of exhibiting characters and situations, and it was
therefore adopted without hesitation or reserve.
## p. 6076 (#46) ############################################
6076
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
THE DEATH OF THOMAS BECKET
From Short Studies on Great Subjects>
THE
HE knights were introduced. They advanced. The archbishop
neither spoke nor looked at them, but continued talking to
a monk who was next him. He himself was sitting on
a bed. The rest of the party present were on the floor. The
knights seated themselves in the same manner, and for a few
moments there was silence. Then Becket's black, restless eye
glanced from one to the other. He slightly noticed Tracy; and
Fitzurse said a few unrecorded sentences to him, which ended with
"God help you! " To Becket's friends the words sounded like
insolence. They may have meant no more than pity for the
deliberate fool who was forcing destruction upon himself.
Becket's face flushed. Fitzurse went on, "We bring you the
commands of the King beyond the sea; will you hear us in pub-
lic or in private? " Becket said he cared not. "In private, then,"
said Fitzurse. The monks thought afterwards that Fitzurse had
meant to kill the archbishop where he sat. If the knights had
entered the palace, thronged as it was with men, with any such
intention, they would scarcely have left their swords behind them.
The room was cleared, and a short altercation followed, of which
nothing is known save that it ended speedily in high words on
both sides. Becket called in his clergy again, his lay servants
being excluded, and bade Fitzurse go on. "Be it so," Sir Regi-
nald said. "Listen, then, to what the King says. When the peace
was made, he put aside all his complaints against you. He al-
lowed you to return, as you desired, free to your see. You have
now added contempt to your other offenses. You have broken
the treaty. You have allowed your pride to tempt you to defy
your lord and master to your own sorrow. You have censured
the bishops by whose administration the Prince was crowned.
You have pronounced an anathema against the King's ministers,
by whose advice he is guided in the management of the empire.
You have made it plain that if you could you would take the
Prince's crown from him. Your plots and contrivances to attain
your ends are notorious to all men. Say, then, will you attend us
to the King's presence, and there answer for yourself? For this
we are sent. "
The archbishop declared that he had never wished any hurt
to the Prince. The King had no occasion to be displeased if
1
## p. 6077 (#47) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
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crowds
came about him in the towns and cities, after having
been SO long deprived of his presence. If he had done any
wrong he would make satisfaction, but he protested against being
suspected of intentions which had never entered his mind.
Fitzurse did not enter into an altercation with him, but con-
tinued: - "The King commands further that you and your clerks
repair without delay to the young King's presence, and swear
allegiance, and promise to amend your faults. "
The archbishop's temper was fast rising. "I will do whatever
may be
reasonable," he said, "but I tell you plainly, the King
shall have no oaths from me, nor from any one of my clergy.
There
has been too much perjury already. I have absolved
many,
with God's help, who had perjured themselves.
absolve the rest when he permits. "
I will
"I
understand you to say that you will not obey," said Fitz-
urse, and went on in the same tone: -"The King commands
you to absolve the bishops whom you have excommunicated with-
out his permission" (absque licentia sud).
"The Pope sentenced the bishops," the archbishop said. "If
you are not pleased, you must go to him. The affair is none of
mine. »
Fitzurse said it had been done at his instigation, which he did
not deny; but he proceeded to reassert that the King had given
his permission. He had complained at the time of the peace of
the injury which he had suffered in the coronation, and the King
had told him that he might obtain from the Pope any satisfaction
for which he liked to ask.
Fitzurse could scarce hear
If this was all the consent which the King had given, the pre-
tense of his authority was inexcusable.
the archbishop out with patience. "Ay, ay! " said he; "will you
the King out to be a traitor, then? The King gave you
leave
to excommunicate the bishops when they were acting by
his own order! It is more than we can bear to listen to such
monstrous accusations. "
make
John of Salisbury tried to check the archbishop's imprudent
tongue, and whispered to him to speak to the knights in private;
but when the passion was on him, no mule was more ungovern-
able
than Becket.
him :
Drawing to a conclusion, Fitzurse said to
"Since you refuse to do any one of those things which
the King requires of you, his final commands are that you and
your clergy shall forthwith depart out of this realm and out of
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6078
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
his dominions, never more to return.
You have broken the peace,
and the King cannot trust you again. "
Becket answered wildly that he would not go-never again
would he leave England. Nothing but death should now part
him from his church. Stung by the reproach of ill-faith, he
poured out the catalogue of his own injuries. He had been
promised restoration, and instead of restoration he had been
robbed and insulted. Ranulf de Broc had laid an embargo on
his wine. Robert de Broc had cut off his mule's tail; and now
the knights had come to menace him.
De Morville said that if he had suffered any wrong he had
only to appeal to the Council, and justice would be done.
Becket did not wish for the Council's justice. "I have com-
plained enough," he said; "so many wrongs are daily heaped
upon me that I could not find messengers to carry the tale of
them. I am refused access to the court. Neither one king nor
the other will do me right. I will endure it no more. I will
use my own powers as archbishop, and no child of man shall
prevent me. "
"You will lay the realm under interdict, then, and excommu-
nicate the whole of us? " said Fitzurse.
"So God help me," said one of the others, "he shall not do
that. He has excommunicated over-many already. We have
borne too long with him. "
The knights sprang to their feet, twisting their gloves and
swinging their arms. The archbishop rose. In the general noise
words could no longer be accurately heard. At length the
knights moved to leave the room, and addressing the archbishop's
attendants, said, "In the King's name we command you to see
that this man does not escape. "
"Do you think I shall fly, then? " cried the archbishop.
"Neither for the King nor for any living man will I fly. You
cannot be more ready to kill me than I am to die.
Here
you will find me," he shouted, following them to the door as
they went out, and calling after them. Some of his friends
thought that he had asked De Morville to come back and speak
quietly with him, but it was not so. He returned to his seat,
still excited and complaining.
"My lord," said John of Salisbury to him, "it is strange that
you will never be advised. What occasion was there for you to
go after these men and exasperate them with your bitter speeches?
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JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6079
You would have done better, surely, by being quiet and giving
them a milder answer. They mean no good, and you only com-
mit yourself. "
The archbishop sighed, and said, "I have done with advice.
I know what I have before me. "
It was four o'clock when the knights entered. It was now
nearly five; and unless there were lights the room must have
been almost dark. Beyond the archbishop's chamber was an
ante-room, beyond the ante-room the hall. The knights, passing
through the hall into the quadrangle, and thence to the lodge,
called their men to arms. The great gate was closed. A mounted
guard was stationed outside, with orders to allow no one to go
out or in. The knights threw off their cloaks and buckled on
their swords. This was the work of a few minutes. From the
cathedral tower the vesper bell was beginning to sound. The
archbishop had seated himself to recover from the agitation of
the preceding scene, when a breathless monk rushed in to say
that the knights were arming.
"Who cares? Let them arm,"
was all that the archbishop said. His clergy was less indifferent.
If the archbishop was ready for death, they were not. The door
from the hall into the court was closed and barred, and a short
respite was thus secured. The intention of the knights, it may
be presumed, was to seize the archbishop and carry him off to
Saltwood or to De Morville's castle at Knaresborough, or perhaps
to Normandy. Coming back to execute their purpose, they found
themselves stopped by the hall door. To burst it open would
require time; the ante-room between the hall and the archbish-
op's apartments opened by an oriel window and an outside stair
into a garden. Robert de Broc, who knew the house well, led
the way to it in the dark. The steps were broken, but a ladder
was standing against the window, by which the knights mounted,
and the crash of the falling casement told the fluttered group
about the archbishop that their enemies were upon them. There
was still a moment. The party who entered by the window, in-
stead of turning into the archbishop's room, first went into the
hall to open the door and admit their comrades. From the arch-
bishop's room a second passage, little used, opened into the
northwest corner of the cloister, and from the cloister there was
a way into the north transept of the cathedral. The cry was
"To the church! To the church! " There at least there would
be immediate safety.
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JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
The archbishop had told the knights that they would find him.
where they left him. He did not choose to show fear; or he
was afraid, as some thought, of losing his martyrdom. He would
not move. The bell had ceased. They reminded him that ves-
pers had begun, and that he ought to be in the cathedral. Half
yielding, half resisting, his friends swept him down the passage
into the cloister. His cross had been forgotten in the haste. He
refused to stir till it was fetched and carried before him as usual.
Then only, himself incapable of fear, and rebuking the terror of
the rest, he advanced deliberately to the door into the south
transept. His train was scattered behind him, all along the
cloister from the passage leading out of the palace. As he en-
tered the church, cries were heard, from which it became plain
that the knights had broken into the archbishop's room, had
found the passage, and were following him. Almost immediately
Fitzurse, Tracy, De Morville, and Le Breton were discerned in
the dim light, coming through the cloister in their armor, with
drawn swords, and axes in their left hands. A company of
men-at-arms was behind them. In front they were driving be-
fore them a frightened flock of monks.
From the middle of the transept in which the archbishop was
standing, a single pillar rose into the roof. On the eastern side
of it opened a chapel of St. Benedict, in which were the tombs
of several of the old primates. On the west, running of course
parallel to the nave, was a Lady chapel. Behind the pillar, steps
led up into the choir, where voices were already singing vespers.
A faint light may have been reflected into the transept from the
choir tapers, and candles may perhaps have been burning before
the altars in the two chapels; of light from without through the
windows at that hour there could have been none. Seeing the
knights coming on, the clergy who had entered with the arch-
bishop closed the door and barred it. "What do you fear? " he
cried in a clear, loud voice. "Out of the way, you coward! the
Church of God must not be made a fortress. " He stepped back
and reopened the door with his own hands, to let in the trem-
bling wretches who had been shut out among the wolves. They
rushed past him, and scattered in the hiding-places of the vast
sanctuary, in the crypt, in the galleries, or behind the tombs.
All, or almost all, even of his closest friends,— William of Can-
terbury, Benedict, John of Salisbury himself,- forsook him to
shift for themselves, admitting frankly that they were unworthy
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JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6081
of martyrdom. The archbishop was left alone with his chaplain
Fitzstephen, Robert of Merton his old master, and Edward Grim,
the stranger from Cambridge,- or perhaps with Grim only, who
says that he was the only one who stayed, and was the only one
certainly who showed any sign of courage. A cry had been
raised in the choir that armed men were breaking into the
cathedral. The vespers ceased; the few monks assembled left
their seats and rushed to the edge of the transept, looking
wildly into the darkness.
The archbishop was on the fourth step beyond the central
pillar ascending into the choir, when the knights came in. The
outline of his figure may have been just visible to them, if light
fell upon it from candles in the Lady chapel. Fitzurse passed to
the right of the pillar, De Morville, Tracy, and Le Breton to
the left. Robert de Broc, and Hugh Mauclerc, another apostate
priest, remained at the door by which they entered. A voice
cried, "Where is the traitor? Where is Thomas Becket? " There
was silence; such a name could not be acknowledged. "Where
is the archbishop? " Fitzurse shouted. "I am here," the arch-
bishop replied, descending the steps, and meeting the knights full
in the face. "What do you want with me? I am not afraid of
your swords. I will not do what is unjust. " The knights closed
round him. "Absolve the persons whom you have excommuni-
cated," they said, "and take off the suspensions. " They have
made no satisfaction," he answered; "I will not. "
«Then you
shall die as you have deserved," they said.
They had not meant to kill him- certainly not at that time
and in that place. One of them touched him on the shoulder
with the flat of his sword, and hissed in his ears, "Fly, or you
are a dead man. " There was still time; with a few steps he
would have been lost in the gloom of the cathedral, and could
have concealed him in any one of a hundred hiding-places. But
he was careless of life, and he felt that his time was come. "I
am ready to die," he said. "May the Church through my blood
obtain peace and liberty! I charge you in the name of God that
you hurt no one here but me. "
The people from the town were now pouring into the cathe-
dral; De Morville was keeping them back with difficulty at the
head of the steps from the choir, and there was danger of a res-
cue. Fitzurse seized him, meaning to drag him off as a prisoner.
He had been calm so far; his pride rose at the indignity of an
«<
XI-381
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JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
arrest. "Touch me not, thou abominable wretch! " he said,
wrenching his cloak out of Fitzurse's grasp. "Off, thou pander,
thou! " Le Breton and Fitzurse grasped him again, and tried to
force him upon Tracy's back. He grappled with Tracy and flung
him to the ground, and then stood with his back against the
pillar, Edward Grim supporting him. Fitzurse, stung by the foul
epithet which Becket had thrown at him, swept his sword over
him and dashed off his cap. Tracy, rising from the pavement,
struck direct at his head. Grim raised his arm and caught the
blow. The arm fell broken, and the one friend found faithful
sank back disabled against the wall. The sword with its remain-
ing force wounded the archbishop above the forehead, and the
blood trickled down his face. Standing firmly, with his hands
clasped, he bent his neck for the death-stroke, saying in a low
voice, "I am prepared to die for Christ and for his Church.
