strode through the nave and choir right up to the shrine of St. Thomas, and there sum moned the defunct Archbishop to appear, either personally or by proxy, before the king's Court of Justice, there to answer the information laid 'against him by his majesty's attorney-general for high treason, contumacy and rebellion. Silence reigned supreme when the coarse accents of the summons had died away in distant echoes; the monks bowed their heads in heaviness and fear, but, perhaps with hope, as their imaginations wandered backward and they saw their brethren, Icng sir.cj passed away, standing with sharp scourges in their hands and heard the lashes fall fast and thick upon the bare back of a proud king who had done their saint to death; many wor shippers were still doing reverence at the shrine, they knew of the wondrous stories told of St. Thomas' might, and doubtless, they half expected, half feared, the martyr would show some terrible sign of his anger. Nothing happened to the king's messenger as he retired as proudly as he had entered. Day by day for thirty days (according to the Canon law) the pursuivant returned and repeated his summons, but the saint would not quit the tomb in which he had reposed for two centuries and a half, and to human sense "there was neither voice, nor any that re garded." Judgment of ouster would have passed against the illustrious chancellor of Henry II. had not the king, to show his impartiality and great regard for the administration of justice assigned him counsel at the public ex pense. The Court sat at Westminster on June ii, perhaps in the great Hall of William Rufus, the scene of so many great and glori ous pageants and events. The attorney-general, Sir Christopher Hale, said all that needed be said against the dead traitor. Doubtless with Mr. Altoway (whom Lingard and Campbell say was for the Crown) was the Solicitor-General Rich, a
man whom Lord Campbell tells us brought a greater stain upon the bar of England than any other member of the profession, who laid traps to betray Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More under the guise of friendship, who disgraced himself at the trial of the for mer, and perjured himself to do to death the latter, and won his honors by palpable fraud, chicanery and perjury. Audley was chancel lor; of him Campbell says, "Such a sordid slave does not deserve that we should say more of his vices or demerits. But no eunuch in a seraglio was ever a more submissive tool of the caprice and vengeance of a passionate and remorseless master than was Lord Chan cellor Audley." The advocate of the accused, alas! stat nominis umbra, pleaded eloquently for the mar tyred bishop, the miracle-working saint. The judgment was, however, predetermined: the hearing, but a hollow mockery; it declared that Thomas, some time Archbishop of Can terbury, had been guilty of the crimes charged against him, and decreed that his bones should be publicly burnt to admonish the liv ing of their duty by the punishment of the dead: and that the offerings which had been made at his shrine, the personal property of the reputed saint, should be forfeited to the crown. The sentence was executed in due form; and the gold, silver and jewels, the spoils of the demolished altar, were conveyed in two pondrons coffers to the royal treasury. Shortly afterwards a proclamation was drawn up by the astute Thomas Cromwell, the dcus ex machina of the whole proceeding, to the following effect: "Forasmuch as it appeareth now clearly, that Thomas Becket some time Archbishop of Canterbury, stub bornly withstanding the wholesome laws established against the enormities of the clergy, by the King's Highness Most Noble Progenitor, King Henry the Second, for the commonwealth, rest and tranquility of this realm, of his forward mind fled the realm
