monarch, do violence unto one that is the minister of a Greater than he." To this decision, in spite of the repeated solicitations of the English ambassadors, the Pope resolutely adhered, and they were in consequence obliged to return home with an unfavourable account of their long and wearisome journey. IMMOLATI VIR BEATUS AGNI CARNE SAGINATUS, ET PRESENTI ROBORATUS AD CERTAMEN NUMINE, QUAM SERMONE PRÆDICAVIT, MILLE SIGNIS QUAM PROBAVIT, HANC FIRMARE FESTINAVIT FUSO FIDEM SANGUINE. PRODIT MARTYR CONFLICTURUS, SUB SECURI STAT SECURUS, FERIT LICTOR, SICQUE VICTOR CONSUMMATUR GLADIO. TAM PRÆCLARA PASSIO REPLEAT NOS GAUDIO. CHAPTER I. Six years have elapsed since the struggle which we are recording between the Church and the Power of this world first commenced. And still it continues undecided. We leave it to the historian to relate its weary progress. It is on record, how, shortly after the interview related in the last chapter, Thomas of Canterbury pleaded his own cause before the Pope; how the Constitutions of Clarendon were read; how the whole assembly, as one man, declared that the cause of the Archbishop was the cause of the Church; and how the illustrious confessor took up his abode in the Cistercian Abbey of Pontigni. He also must relate, that on the return of the ambassadors the estates of the Archbishop and his followers were confiscated; that his friends and relations, to the number of four hundred, were banished; that an oath was first taken of them that they would present them selves before the Primate, if so be that his resolution might be moved; that the spectacle of so many sufferers produced a very contrary effect; and that the Bishops and Nobles of France execrated the tyranny of the persecutor. The historian also must relate the interview between the Kings of France and England at Gisors; the resolution of the latter to maintain, the perseverance of the Primate in refusing, the Constitutions of Clarendon ; the excommunication of the Bishop of Salisbury, Richard de Lucy, Chief Justiciary, Hugh de S. Clare, Thomas Fitz-Bernard, and others, for allowing or assisting in the appropriation of the goods belonging to the Church of Canterbury; the determination of the Archbishop to excommunicate King Henry; the council called in consequence by that Prince at Chinon; the agitation and tears in which he opened it; the new embassy to the Pope; the legatine commission obtained by the Archbishop; the sudden and unfavourable turn his affairs took at the Court of Rome, in consequence of Alexander's fear lest Henry should acknowledge the antipope; the remonstrances of the King of France; the various unavailing efforts for reconciliation; Archbishop Becket's invincible firmness; the excommunication of the Bishop of London; Henry's project of crowning his son by the hands of the Archbishop of York, to the infraction of the privileges of the Church of Canterbury; Becket's fruitless opposition; and we shall take up our tale with the |