he pressure of the strife with the Primate. For six years the contest
raged bitterly; at Rome, at Paris, the agents of the two powers intrigued
against each other. Henry stooped to acts of the meanest persecution in
driving the Primate's kinsmen from England, and in confiscating the lands
of their order till the monks of Pontigny should refuse Thomas a home;
while Beket himself exhausted the patience of his friends by his violence
and excommunications, as well as by the stubbornness with which he clung
to the offensive clause "Saving the honour of my order," the addition of
which to his consent would have practically neutralised the king's
reforms. The Pope counselled mildness, the French king for a time
withdrew his support, his own clerks gave way at last. "Come up," said
one of them bitterly when his horse stumbled on the road, "saving the
honour of the Church and my order." But neither warning nor desertion
moved the resolution of the Primate. Henry, in dread of Papal
excommunication, resolved in 1170 on the coronation of his son: and this
office, which belonged to the see of Canterbury, he transferred to the
Archbishop of York. But the Pope's hands were now freed by his successes
in Italy, and the threat of an interdict forced the king to a show of
submission. The Archbishop was allowed to return after a reconciliation
with the king at Freteval, and the Kentishmen flocked around him with
uproarious welcome as he entered Canterbury. "This is England," said his
clerks, as they saw the white headlands of the coast. "You will wish
yourself elsewhere before fifty days are gone," said Thomas sadly, and
his foreboding showed his appreciation of Henry's character. He was now
in the royal power, and orders had already been issued in the younger
Henry's name for his arrest when four knights from the King's Court,
spurred to outrage by a passionate outburst of their master's wrath,
crossed the sea, and on the 29th of December forced their way into the
Archbishop's palace. After a stormy parley with him in his chamber they
withdrew to arm. Thomas was hurried by his clerks into the cathedral, but
as he reached the steps leading from the transept to the choir his
pursuers burst in from the cloisters. "Where," cried Reginald Fitzurse in
the dusk of the dimly-lighted minster, "where is the traitor, Thomas
Beket?" The Primate turned resolutely back: "Here am I, no traitor, but a
priest of God," he replied, and again descending the ste