view of affairs taken by those who were not Thomas's immediate followers, and also as helping us to the more exact chronology of the period. The biographers commonly are rather careless as to the order of time. Each, as we have seen, recorded what struck him most or what he best knew; one set down one event, and another another; and none of them paid much regard to the order of details. The chroniclers step in to correct their errors and supply their deficiencies. Ralph de Diceto, Dean of St. Paul's, a moderate partisan of the king's, supplies in his Imagines Historiarum several important facts not in the biographies, together with the chronological arrangement of all. Gervase and Roger of Hoveden were also contemporaries; but they were younger men, who wrote after the biographers, whom they continually copy. But it is always curious to see which Life they follow for any particular fact, and they also often add touches and details of their own. Gervase especially, as a Canterbury monk, admitted by Thomas himself, had good means of information. William of Newburgh is chiefly remarkable for the manly and independent tone with which he treats the whole. controversy, doing full justice to the originally honest motives. of both the king and the primate, but not scrupling to deal severe censure to particular actions of both. The Letters, of course, are invaluable; at least they will be when any one shall be found to edit them decently. For the whole of Thomas's sojourn in France, they, much more than the biographers, are really the history. Many of the letters are strictly public documents, and many others, though private in form, were meant at least for the eyes of all the writer's own party. Mr. Robertson thinks the correspondence does not give a favourable idea of the time, and that it is on the whole discreditable to the medieval church. That the letters are full of strong language is no more than was to be expected; but we do not know that St. Thomas and his contemporaries use any stronger language than those worthies of the sixteenth century whom doubtless Mr. Robertson, as a sound Protestant, duly reverences. If Thomas is rather fond of calling Geoffroy Riddell "archidiabolus" instead of "archidiaconus," was it not the established joke of the Reformation to call a bishop a Bitesheep, and to turn "Cardinal Poole" into Carnal Fool? In short, in ages when decorum was not very stringent, all men who have been in earnest, from the Prophets and Apostles downwards, have used very strong language upon occasion. But Mr. Robertson's taste is so delicate that he is actually offended by Thomas's hearty, honest, and thoroughly English denunciations of the iniquities of the Roman Court. These we suspect, in any body but St. Thomas of Canterbury, he would have hailed as an instance of Protestantism before its time. But he has weightier accusations still against the unfortunate Letters. They are, he thinks, full of "cant," and of "strange tossing to and fro of Scripture, perverted by allegory and misapplication."* In a certain sense this is true; but talk of this sort always reminds us very strongly of the doctrine taught us by Mr. Grote, that all religions seem absurd to those who do not believe them. Most undoubtedly a calm and critical reader of those Hebrew and Greek writers which we call "Scripture," will find constant "misapplications" and strange "tossings to and fro" in the writings of Thomas, his friends, and his enemies. But he will find misapplications and tossings equally strange in any sermon, any religious tract, any religious biography of our own times. In their belief, as in that of the Protestant enthusiasts of the seventeenth century, every word of the Old and New Testament was written for the direct example and instruction of every man of every age. Believing this, they did not shrink from carrying it out in detail. If God spake unto Moses, why should He not speak also to Anselm or Bernard? If He bade Joshua lead his people against the Canaanite, did He not also bid Peter the Hermit to preach the crusade against the Saracen? If the destroying angel smote the host of Sennacherib before Jerusalem, was the arm of the Lord to be shortened when the schismatic Frederick threw up his banks and shot his arrows against the tomb and temple of the Prince of the Apostles? The faith of those times was at least a real, living, practical faith; professing to believe certain books as their rule of faith and their personal guide of life, they did believe them as such. Consistently, at all events, they shrank from no "misapplication," no "strange tossing to and fro," of what they held to be real lively oracles, speaking direct comfort and counsel in every circumstance of the life of every man. We, however, fully agree with Mr. Robertson in placing the letters of John of Salisbury far higher than any other in the collection. John was a thoroughly good and pious man, and withal learned, thoughtful, moderate, and prudent. A firm friend and faithful follower of Thomas, he rebukes him, whenever he thinks him in the wrong, with apostolic boldness; down to the very day of his death,† he withstands him to the face as often as he is to be blamed. We have no hesitation in setting down John as a wiser and better man than Thomas himself. But does not Mr. Robertson see that it speaks very much in Thomas's favour to have attracted and retained the devoted attachment of such a man? A really candid writer would have pointed out that if John's bold and faithful rebukes tell greatly to his honour, they tell almost equally to the honour of Thomas, who invariably took them in good part. In a similar spirit elsewhere Mr. Robertson exhibits an † Rog. Pont., ap. Giles, i. 164; Ben. Petr., ibid. ii. 62. * p. 173. * amount of delight and triumph altogether childish, in pointing out the error of "certain writers" who had not put the events connected with the excommunication at Vezelay and the removal from Pontigny in their right order. The The "certain writers" seem to be Dr. Lingard, and perhaps Dr. Giles and Mr. Froude. We are not greatly concerned for them; but when Mr. Robertson ventures to say that the original biographers "wished to falsify the history," that is quite another matter. The case is this. In 1166 Thomas went from Pontigny to Vezelay, and there, in discharge of legatine powers with which he had been lately invested by the Pope, he excommunicated, with especial solemnity, several of the king's friends, both clerical and lay, for various offences, and uttered a solemn warning against Henry himself. Him also he had intended to excommunicate, but forebore doing so on hearing that he was dangerously ill. On hearing of this proceeding, Henry, by violent threats against the whole Cistercian order, procured the removal of Thomas from the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, where he had hitherto been sheltered. The comment of an impartial historian would be, that the archbishop's conduct was violent and imprudent, the king's revenge mean and cowardly. Unfortunately it happens that not one of the biographers, except the anonymous Lambeth writer, describes this scene in all its fullness. The complete account of the matter has to be made out from the chroniclers and the Letters. That most of the biographers do not mention it, is really not very wonderful. Edward Grim was not there, and his whole narrative of this part of Thomas's life is utterly meagre. Roger of Pontigny cuts his almost as short, because his brethren knew all about it. William Fitz-Stephen was not there; he tells us chiefly what happened in Henry's dominions. Herbert was there, and records the scene; he does not, indeed, directly mention the excommunication; but this is clearly because the warning against the king was the most striking point, that which he found most vividly impressed on his mind eighteen years after. For an archbishop of Canterbury to suspend a disobedient bishop, and excommunicate a schismatic dean and a sacrilegious layman, was no very wonderful occurrence. The awful and expected part of the proceedings was, when Thomas arose, with a voice broken with tears,† to warn the King of England that, if he did not repent, excommunication should fall upon him as well as upon inferior sinners. That Herbert had no intention of concealing the far less important fact of the excommunication and suspension, appears from his speaking directly of them in p. 193. un +Confestim, omnibus audientibus et stupentibus, miro motu compunctûs, voce quidem flebili et intentissimo compassionis affectu in ipsum Anglorum Regem Henricum nominative comminatorium emisit edictum." Herb., ap. Giles, vii. 230. the very next page. So equally does William Fitz-Stephen,† though without strict regard to chronology, he being more intent on the reception of the excommunications in England than on their first denunciation in Burgundy. In short, if Mr. Robertson enjoys crowing over Dr. Lingard, we have not the least wish to interfere with his enjoyment; but he has not the slightest right to repeat the note of triumph over any one of Thomas's original biographers. We must now turn from the ancient and modern biographers of Thomas to the estimate which we have ourselves formed of Thomas himself. If we can trust ourselves, that estimate is not swayed by party considerations of any kind. We do not feel ourselves bound to indiscriminate worship because of a papal canonisation; but we do not look on such papal canonisation as at all taking away a claim to honour when honour is due. And be it remembered that it was not only the Roman Chancery, but the spontaneous voice of the English nation which raised Thomas to the honours of saintship. Through his whole archiepiscopal career, alike in England and in France, Thomas was the darling of the people. One of his biographers is content almost to rest his claims to reverence on the adage, familiar then as now, that the voice of the people is the voice of God. When he "fought with beasts" at Northampton, when his king accused him, when barons condemned him and bishops deserted him, an admiring multitude followed him in triumph from the castle-gate to his lodging at St. Andrew's. When he turned away from the conference at Montmirail, when every earthly power seemed to have forsaken him, every eye as he passed was fixed in admiration on the primate who "would not deny the honour of God for the face of two kings." His return from banishment, his reception at Sandwich, at Canterbury, and at London, was a nobler triumph than ever awaited returning conqueror. The bells, the organs, the processions of monks and clergy, might have expressed a mere constrained or official homage; but there could have been nothing of such compulsion in the voice with which, in defiance of hostile nobles and officials, all Kent and all London poured forth to bless him who came back to them in the name of the Lord, the father of the orphans, and the judge of the widows.§ Such popular reverence does not prove that the cause which he defended was one which the sober voice of history will permanently approve. It does not prove that his own character may not have been disfigured by many and grievous faults. But it is a homage which assuredly was never paid to a mere proud and ambitious Lamb., ap. Giles, ii. 136. Herb., ap. Giles, vii. 315. * Giles, vii. 231. † Ib. i. 258. hypocrite, or to the assertor of a cause which was at the time palpably that of unrighteousness or oppression. Nor must we suppose that the popularity of Thomas in his own day was at all the popularity of an assertor of the cause of the "Saxon" against the Norman. This is a mere dream, to which an unlucky currency has been given by the eloquent writing of Thierry. There is no trace in the history of the period of any such strongly marked antagonism as Thierry supposes still to have existed; still less is there any trace of Thomas of London being its impersonation, if it did exist. Thomas, in reality, was himself of Norman descent. His family was settled in London at the time of his birth; but his father was originally from Rouen, while his mother seems actually to have been born at Caen.* It is evident, however, that at the time of his birth his family was thoroughly established in England, and that they had the feelings, not of strangers, but of Englishmen and Londoners. The truth is, that there is not a word about "Saxons and Normans," or any controversies between them, in any one contemporary biographer, chronicler, or letterwriter. The whole evidence seems to us to show that the wide distinction and hostility between the two races, supposed by Thierry and his school to have remained so late as the reign of Henry the Second, is a mere imagination. The probability is, that though the upper classes were mainly of Norman, the lower of old English descent, the distinction had then become one merely of class, and not of nation. In the middle class, Thomas's own class, the two races must have been much mixed up together. Indeed, the Conquest itself must have had the highly beneficial effect of at once forming a middle class out of the higher ranks of the conquered people. The Norman gentleman, born in England, often of an English mother, would soon feel himself much more English than Norman. The Norman citizen, Gilbert Becket or his father, would do so still sooner. In truth, every where mankind are far more sensible of birth than of descent, and they identify themselves with the country where they were born, rather than with the country of their fathers. We are sometimes led to suppose that the feeling of race lasted longer than it did because the kings remained foreign so long. Henry the Second was not an Englishman, he was not even a Norman; he was a great French prince, who reigned in France, and treated England as a dependency. To his English subjects he was the "rex transmarinus,"† the king beyond the sea, who sometimes visited them, but who commonly dwelt in more favoured parts of his dominions. Twice in his reign he seems to have wished Lamb., ap. Giles, ii. 73. † William Fitz-Stephen, ap. Giles, i. 284, 289, 294. |