hero from
the pedestal on which he has been seated for ages plays a losing game.
No brilliancy in sophistical pleadings can make men long prefer what is
_new_ to that which is _true_. Becket is enshrined in the hearts of his
countrymen, even as Cromwell is among the descendants of the Puritans;
and substantially for the same reason,--because they both fought bravely
for their respective causes,--the cause of the people in their
respective ages. Both recognized God Almighty, and both contended
against the despotism of kings seeking to be absolute, and in behalf of
the people who were ground down by military power. In the twelfth
century the people looked up to the clergy as their deliverers and
friends; in the seventeenth century to parliaments and lawyers. Becket
was the champion of the clergy, even as Cromwell was the champion--at
least at first--of the Parliament. Carlyle eulogizes Cromwell as much as
Froude abuses Becket; but Becket, if more haughty and repulsive than
Cromwell in his private character, yet was truer to his principles. He
was a great hero, faithful to a great cause, as he regarded it, however
averse this age may justly be to priestly domination. He must be judged
by the standard which good and enlightened people adopted seven hundred
years ago,--not in semi-barbarous England alone, but throughout the
continent of Europe. This is not the standard which reason accepts
to-day, I grant; but it is the standard by which Becket must be
judged,--even as the standard which justified the encroachments of Leo
the Great, or the rigorous rule of Tiberius and Marcus Aurelius, is not
that which enthrones Gustavus Adolphus and William of Orange in the
heart of the civilized world.

AUTHORITIES

Eadmer's Life of Anselm; Historia Novarum; Sir J. Stephen's Life of
Becket, of William of Malmsbury, and of Henry of Huntington;
Correspondence of Thomas Becket, with that of Foliot, Bishop of London,
and John of Salisbury; Chronicle of Peter of Peterborough; Chronicle of
Ralph Niper, and that of Jocelyn of Brakeland; Dugdale's Monasticon;
Freeman's Norman Conquest; Michelet's History of France; Green, Hume,
Knight, Stubbs, among the English historians; Encyclopaedia Britannica;
Hook's Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury; Lord Littleton on Henry
II.; Stanley's Memorials of Canterbury; Milman's Latin Christianity;
article by Froude; Morris's Life of Thomas a Becket; J. Craigie
Robertson's Life of Thomas Becket.

THE