e said that a Becket 'wanted to be
greater than the saints and better than St. Peter,' and rode away from
him with the King of England. His poor French Majesty asked a Becket's
pardon for so doing, however, soon afterwards, and cut a very pitiful
figure.

At last, and after a world of trouble, it came to this. There was
another meeting on French ground between King Henry and Thomas a Becket,
and it was agreed that Thomas a Becket should be Archbishop of
Canterbury, according to the customs of former Archbishops, and that the
King should put him in possession of the revenues of that post. And now,
indeed, you might suppose the struggle at an end, and Thomas a Becket at
rest. NO, not even yet. For Thomas a Becket hearing, by some means,
that King Henry, when he was in dread of his kingdom being placed under
an interdict, had had his eldest son Prince Henry secretly crowned, not
only persuaded the Pope to suspend the Archbishop of York who had
performed that ceremony, and to excommunicate the Bishops who had
assisted at it, but sent a messenger of his own into England, in spite of
all the King's precautions along the coast, who delivered the letters of
excommunication into the Bishops' own hands. Thomas a Becket then came
over to England himself, after an absence of seven years. He was
privately warned that it was dangerous to come, and that an ireful
knight, named RANULF DE BROC, had threatened that he should not live to
eat a loaf of bread in England; but he came.

The common people received him well, and marched about with him in a
soldierly way, armed with such rustic weapons as they could get. He
tried to see the young prince who had once been his pupil, but was
prevented. He hoped for some little support among the nobles and
priests, but found none. He made the most of the peasants who attended
him, and feasted them, and went from Canterbury to Harrow-on-the-Hill,
and from Harrow-on-the-Hill back to Canterbury, and on Christmas Day
preached in the Cathedral there, and told the people in his sermon that
he had come to die among them, and that it was likely he would be
murdered. He had no fear, however--or, if he had any, he had much more
obstinacy--for he, then and there, excommunicated three of his enemies,
of whom Ranulf de Broc, the ireful knight, was one.

As men in general had no fancy for being cursed, in their sitting and
walking, and gaping and sneezing, and all the rest of it, it was very
natura