The Courts of Love - Jean Plaidy [125]
He paused for a moment and looked full at Becket.
“My lord of Canterbury,” he went on, “I demand that you and all your bishops and clergy give your consent to the handing over to my courts of justice any of your churchmen who are caught committing crimes, as was the law in my grandfather’s reign.”
Thomas and his fellow churchmen were taken by surprise. They had thought they were called together to discuss other matters. Thomas must have forgotten what he knew of Henry if he thought he would let the matter of Philip de Brois be passed over easily. He should have been prepared for this.
He asked permission to retire with his fellow churchmen, for, he said, they must discuss this in private. Henry gave them permission and they filed out.
When they came back, Thomas announced that it was not fitting for the King to make such a demand, not was it fitting for the clergy to grant it. They must obey the law of the Church.
Henry shouted angrily that the laws had worked well in his grandfather’s day, and in those days archbishops who had been dedicated servants of the Church—holier men than some he could name today—had not questioned the rights of the King’s Courts to try criminals.
Thomas replied that the clergy would be obedient and ready to obey the King in everything they could, saving their order.
Henry cried out that he wanted to hear nothing of their order. He demanded that they obey the King. He wanted their obedience to the old laws which had worked well for the country under the first Henry.
He turned his back on Thomas and demanded one by one of the others if they would obey their King. They all gave the same answer which Becket had. They would obey the King, saving their order.
Henry talked to them, cajoling them, threatening them. They stood firmly with Becket.
They had already sworn an oath of allegiance from which they would never swerve, said Becket. They would obey him in all things . . . saving their order.
Saving their order! How he hated the phrase. It meant they would serve him unless the Church wanted them to do otherwise.
Frustrated, angry, unable to keep his rage under control, Henry left the hall. He came to me and told me exactly what had happened.
“‘Saving our order’: They kept repeating it . . . one after another. It was Becket. Without him it would have been easy. I should have had them. But there he was . . . determined to have his way, determined to show me that the Church comes before the State. Who would have believed it of him?”
“Some of us would,” I reminded him.
He might have turned on me in rage but he did not. All his anger was for Becket. I think he blamed himself. He had been warned. He had thought that an Archbishop who was also his Chancellor would go step by step with him. He had not known Becket, it seemed. In any case, Becket had changed. He was a different man from the one who had hawked and hunted with Henry. He was an archbishop now, not an elegant dilettante. He was a man of the Church and had taken up his new profession with a zeal which astonished all. Henry was beginning to see that, in thinking to make his way easy, he had created a great obstacle to his plans.
He had himself to blame—but instead he blamed Becket.
“I’ll show him,” he cried. “He will see what it means to bait me.”
He could never have been judicious where Becket was concerned. He must have either great love or great hatred for the man. Now it was hate and it burned fiercely.
What harm could he do Becket? Becket loved his possessions. He loved comfort, ease, grand living; his pallium could not make up for that. Very well, he would