ndane questions. His resolve
to oppose the king's usurpations in the spiritual realm caused the
bitter quarrel already described, which ended in a compromise.

When Henry I. came to the throne, he appointed Theobald, a feeble but
good man, to the See of Canterbury,--less ambitious than Lanfranc, more
inoffensive than Anselm; a Norman disinclined to quarrel with his
sovereign. He died during the reign of Henry II., and this great
monarch, as we have seen, appointed Becket to the vacant See, thinking
that in the double capacity of chancellor and archbishop he would be a
very powerful ally. But he was amazingly deceived in the character of
his Chancellor. Becket had not sought the office,--the office had sought
him. It would seem that he accepted it unwillingly. He knew that new
responsibilities and duties would be imposed upon him, which, if he
discharged conscientiously like Anselm, would in all probability
alienate his friend the King, and provoke a desperate contest. And when
the courtly and luxurious Chancellor held out, in Normandy, the skirts
of his gilded and embroidered garments to show how unfit he was for an
archbishop, Henry ought to have perceived that a future estrangement was
a probability.

Better for Henry had Becket remained in the civil service. But Henry,
with all his penetration, had not fathomed the mind of his favorite.
Becket may have been a dissembler, or a great change may have been
wrought in his character. Probably the new responsibilities imposed upon
him as Primate of the English Church pressed upon his conscience. He
knew that supreme allegiance was due to the Pope as head of the Church,
and that if compelled to choose between the Pope and the King, he must
obey the Pope. He was ambitious, doubtless; but his subsequent career
shows that he preferred the liberties of his Church to the temporal
interests of the sovereign. He was not a theologian, like Lanfranc and
Anselm. Of all the great characters who preceded him, he most resembles
Ambrose. Ambrose the governor, and a layman, became Archbishop of Milan.
Becket the minister of a king, and only deacon, became Archbishop of
Canterbury. The character of both these great men changed on their
elevation to high ecclesiastical position. They both became
high-churchmen, and defended the prerogatives of the clergy. But Ambrose
was superior to Becket in his zeal to defend the doctrines of the
Church. It does not appear that Becket took much interest i