The Murder of Thomas Becket
Henry II raised Thomas Becket from chancellor to Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162 expecting a compliant primate. The dispute that followed turned on 'criminous clerks' — whether clergy accused of serious crimes should be tried in royal courts, which hanged, or ecclesiastical ones, which could not shed blood. The Constitutions of Clarendon in 1164 asserted royal jurisdiction; Becket first accepted and then repudiated them, and fled to France for six years. He returned in December 1170 and promptly excommunicated the bishops who had crowned Henry's son in his absence. Four knights of the royal household, hearing the king's fury, crossed to Canterbury and killed Becket in the cathedral on 29 December. Edward Grim, a clerk who was present and was wounded trying to shield him, recorded the scene. Henry's reported words — the famous 'Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?' — appear in no contemporary source and are a later invention; the earliest accounts give an outburst of frustration at his court's failure to act, not an order. The distinction did not help him. Becket was canonised in 1173, Canterbury became one of Europe's great pilgrimage sites, and in 1174 Henry walked barefoot to the tomb and was scourged by the monks. He abandoned the clauses on clerical jurisdiction.
- Year: 1170 CE
- Category: Political Violence
