66
Henry Il
government. He made them see that they had duties as well as rights, a fact which the poorer classes of Englishmen have almost wholly forgotten to-day.
His quarrel with Thomas Becket, 1164-70.But for one frightful stroke of ill-luck Henry might have left an England completely united. Hear the story of St. Thomas Becket.
The twelfth century was the ‘golden age’ of the Church. The aims of the popes, even of those popes who were most hostile to the growth of nations, were not entirely selfish. Christendom was to them one family which God had given them to rule. Kings were to be the earthly instruments of their will, to be petted as long as they obeyed, but scolded and even deposed when they did not. No king and no lay court of justice was to dare to touch a priest, much less to hang him if he committed murder or theft, which too many priests still did. Henry wanted to hang such priests. He was told of a hundred murders committed by priests in the first ten years of his reign, which had gone unpunished, because the Church said all priests were ‘sacred’. So he chose his favourite minister, Thomas Becket, already Chancellor of England, to be Archbishop of Canterbury. He believed that Thomas would help him to make one law for clergymen and laymen alike; but Thomas, as proud and hot-tempered a man as the King, had no sooner become Archbishop than he turned right round and supported the most extreme claims of the Church. He even went further than the Pope, who was most anxious not to quarrel with Henry. ‘The Church lands,’ he said, ‘should pay no taxes; as for hanging priests, he would not hear of it.’ Henry was naturally furious, especially when Thomas went abroad and stirred up the King of France
