y broke his skull in pieces, and covered the altar with
his blood and brains.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1171.]

The horror of this barbarous action, increased by the sacredness of the
person who suffered and of the place where it was committed, diffused
itself on all sides with incredible rapidity. The clergy, in whose cause
he fell, equalled him to the most holy martyrs; compassion for his fate
made all men forget his faults; and the report of frequent miracles at
his tomb sanctified his cause and character, and threw a general odium
on the king. What became of the murderers is uncertain: they were
neither protected by the king nor punished by the laws, for the reason
we have not long since mentioned. The king with infinite difficulty
extricated himself from the consequences of this murder, which
threatened, under the Papal banners, to arm all Europe against him; nor
was he absolved, but by renouncing the most material parts of the
Constitutions of Clarendon, by purging himself upon oath of the murder
of Becket, by doing a very humiliating penance at his tomb to expiate
the rash words which had given occasion to his death, and by engaging to
furnish a large sum of money for the relief of the Holy Land, and taking
the cross himself as soon as his affairs should admit it. The king
probably thought his freedom from the haughtiness of Becket cheaply
purchased by these condescensions: and without question, though Becket
might have been justifiable, perhaps even laudable, for his steady
maintenance of the privileges which his Church and his order had
acquired by the care of his predecessors, and of which he by his place
was the depository, yet the principles upon which he supported these
privileges, subversive of all good government, his extravagant ideas of
Church power, the schemes he meditated, even to his death, to extend it
yet further, his violent and unreserved attachment to the Papacy, and
that inflexible spirit which all his virtues rendered but the more
dangerous, made his death as advantageous, at that time, as the means by
which it was effected were sacrilegious and detestable.

Between the death of Becket and the king's absolution he resolved on the
execution of a design by which he reduced under his dominion a country
not more separated from the rest of Europe by its situation than by the
laws, customs, and way of life of the inhabitants: for the people of
Ireland, with no difference but that of religion, still retain