Who was right in what is called the Becket Controversy? I’m not asking if the knights of Henry II should have killed Becket at Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170. I’m asking which side was right. A controversy bubbled into the English Reformation, which would say that Henry won in the end.
Thomas Becket’s dad, Gilbert, fell on financial hard times. He needed the employment of his twenty-something son. After succeeding in a first job as a clerk, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald of Bec, noticed him and then engaged him in many different notable capacities. When Henry II needed a new Lord Chancellor, Theobald recommended Becket. Henry hired him in 1155. Becket was essentially England’s second man and very loyal to his boss.
Henry II established common law in England. Russell Fowler writes:
Henry came to believe that justice was not only a fair resolution of disputes and punishment of the wicked, but it was also equal access to this justice. And these courts, staffed by his experienced and accountable judges, for the first time roved the land applying uniform rules and following the guide of recorded precedent in deciding similar cases.
Becket went right along with Henry under his employ. Henry expected him to continue when he appointed him Archbishop to replace Theobald in 1162.
The Roman Catholic Church functioned as a powerful entity in England, maybe greater than the King. Henry could not enforce common law on criminal priests operating with immunity under a different jurisdiction. This undermined the vision of Henry for the nation. He hoped Becket would help him, who instead betrayed him.
When Becket became Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, he defended the interests of the Pope in England. While Henry applied the law in a uniform manner among varied classifications, he could not include officers of Roman Catholicism. His former loyal assistant would not cooperate and this sabotaged his effort.
Without judging the outcome of the death of Becket, which side was right? The English Reformation occurred under a later King Henry, who became head of the Church of England. Today in Canterbury Cathedral, where the shrine to Becket once stood, a candle remains lit. The Church of England memorializes a Roman Catholic Archbishop with a candle.
I had two interesting visits in England, one to St. Augustine’s Abbey and the other to Dover Castle. The Pope sent Augustine to proselytize England in 598 from Canterbury, which originated the center of Christendom there. While my wife and I looked at the ruins, which included Augustine’s burial place, we spoke with a retired Anglican priest, now tour guide. I asked about the great respect for Becket all over Canterbury. One comment he made was that the state Church of England is less a state church than the non state church of the United States.
A fortification existed in Dover, England for the Romans as early as AD 43. Military planned both the Dunkirk evacuation and the Normandy invasion in miles of tunnels built under Dover Castle. In between first century Rome and World War 2, Henry II built the castle visible today between 1179 and 1189, the largest in all of England perhaps only second to Windsor.
Dover Castle is about thirty minutes from Canterbury by train, a very easy and beautiful ride. In a bit of irony, Henry II built up Dover Castle to protect and even accommodate important pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas Becket. This helped continue a good standing with the Pope, who canonized Becket as a saint in 1173. He built a chapel to Becket in the Great Tower, the centerpiece of the Castle. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales in 1387 about the varied characters making their way via this route. Henry VIII destroyed the shrine to and the bones of Becket in 1538, as well as ordering the termination of all further mention of his name.
I asked a tour guide at Dover Castle about Becket. I wondered out loud who supported Henry and who Becket in England today. He smiled and said that it probably depended on who you were and what you did. The controversy continues.
Populist support opposes the immunity of a religious hypocrite flouting common law. Of all people, the law should punish church officers. This may be why a 2006 BBC History poll called Becket the second worse Briton of the previous millennium behind Jack the Ripper (see also here and here).
When my wife and I visited Salisbury Cathedral, there we saw one of the four remaining original copies of the Magna Carta, a document signed by King John, the son of Henry II, in June of 1215. At least another copy sits for display in the British Library in London. The Church of England keeps its candle lit for Becket and houses the Magna Carta, perhaps two pieces of contradiction. This foundational document, a heritage of liberty in the United States, says everyone is under the law, a particular notion rejected by Becket in his rebellion against Henry II.
Maybe they were both wrong. Maybe Henry should have abolished state support for the Roman Catholic harlot, established freedom of religion, given people the Bible in English, and started attending an Anabaptist church, and Becket should have refused to become a Catholic Archbishop because such a position is evil and requires one to support idolatry, the blasphemy of the Mass, and denies justification by faith alone. Maybe Henry should not have had a state “church” where he could install yes-men for himself and Becket should not have been a yes-man for that false prophet and Antichrist, the Pope.
It is interesting to compare the truth or the ideal with the historical situation. When you consider the development that was occurring, I think Henry was on the preferred side. His common law instinct or respect of conscience trumped Becket’s loyalty to the Pope. England, I agree, is in the bad shape it is because it continued with the very Roman Catholic Church of England. The United States took everything further in the same English Heritage as the Magna Carta. Israel should have rejected a King too, but we still like David over Saul.
Henry was right that priests who break civil laws deserve to be punished. Of course, both Henry’s Erastianism and Becket’s Papal supremacy were wrong. Making the king the head of the Church of England was indeed a victory for Henry’s Erastianism at the time of the Reformation.
King Henry II was born into paradigm totally different than our own here in post American Revolution, America. He was a Head of State that had to operate in an intertwined political and religious government where the Pope exercised great influence. Given the situation, Henry’s camp would be the one I would side with.
Of course we would prefer a separation of Church and State, but that concept is relatively new to history, at least in it’s practical execution. Before the Bill of Rights in the United States, all Christians, true historic Baptists, generally have had to live with Church-State governments, and experienced varying levels of liberty or persecution depending on who was in power at a given time.
If we were born in Henry’s day, I expect we would be grateful for his efforts to apply a common law equitably on common people, government officers, and Catholic officers.
Very fascinating choice of topic, Dr. Brandenburg.
We can think of the Archbishopric as having been primarily a political office. Bishops in the medieval context were just high-ranking officers loyal to the state power. These ministers of state were basically required to take on this religious component to their positions, and far from being like Biblical bishops the duties of these bishops was primarily related to the administration and execution of state policy rather than church duties, evangelism or preaching. Although in many cases theological learning was the forte of many of these men, the primary cause for their elevation to these posts was loyalty of the appointee to the appointer. This is a precedent that was set back in the ancient world by Constantine. Obviously, the right to make an appointment, or veto it, was of tremendous political importance.
Something that few people remember is that when the Magna Carta was being drafted, the Archbishop of Canterbury had produced a document that originated from the reign of Henry I in the year 1100, called the Charter of Liberties, which was written by Anglo-Saxon survivors, and purported to represent the ancient law of the Anglo-Saxons from before the invasion of 1066. The context here was that Henry I had pledged to make amends for the arbitrary conduct of his predecessor, the king William II (r. 1087-1100), a king who had operated above the law, taking what he wanted. Interestingly, in 1103 Henry I had also drafted the “Tractatus Eboracenses” which was also very erastian for its time. During the Investiture Controversy between himself and Anselm of Canterbury, Henry I told the Roman bishop that he would be “forced to withdraw [his] obedience” if the pope did not “let your gentleness so moderate yourself,” noting that “the people of England would not suffer it” otherwise.
The Charter of Liberties had in practice largely been ignored. But now it was being produced as a precedent on which the barons, during the First Barons’ War, could use as a valid conditional on which arbitrary conduct of the king could be reined in. This precedent led to the English Civil War outcome where Charles I was executed by parliamentarians, and later the outcome of James II being ousted, and eventually the development of the Constitutional history of the United States as we know it, wherein the British king had violated the colonial charters.
Looking back, there are many ironies in the way in which the conflict surrounding the First Barons’ War unfolded. It had started as a conflict between John and Innocent III over the appointment of Stephen Langton to Canterbury, but after John was militarily defeated by his subordinates (who had been instigated by Innocent), he was driven in desperation to vassalize himself to Rome. Instantly, the rebellious barons turned against this newfound alliance of John and Innocent, declaring John in violation of his oath and creating the “Army of God and Holy Church.”
Stephen Langton, the man whom Innocent had originally endorsed against the wishes of John, who was now acting Archbishop, produced the Charter of Liberties to the nobles at a meeting (in Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, England), on November 20, 1214, to “promote the real interests of the kingdom” as it says in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. Of course, we know the rest of the story. The Roman pope tried to annull John’s signature to the Magna Carta, and the war with the barons would only conclude indecisively with king John’s death.
William Blackstone summarizes all of this unfolding history quite cogently, showing how starting with the Statute of Marlborough, in which all of this was codified into law, and reaffirmed with Confirmatio Cartarum by Edward I and most notably his laws against “praemunire” and “mortmain,” the monarchy of England extricated itself from the tangled web spun by the various agents of the Roman pope, introduced by their various mendicant and monastic orders in the early second millennium. Importantly, the English, unlike many of the continental powers, had never truly been subdued at any time under Roman influence. The Inquisition in Britain had never been in a position of dominance, without being reliant on the will of the king, as we see in the example of “De Heretico Comburendo,” as well as ultimately the ability of Henry VIII to take control of the state church virtually unopposed.
As for Thomas Becket, he has more of a place in popular history and in influencing the popular mind against this backdrop. He was clearly in the wrong, as there shouldn’t be two sovereigns, a church as well as a state; nor should they be merged in one. We all should take heed to Romans 13 and keep the two institutions separate. Meanwhile, the state system should avoid imposing itself on the individual conscience, because conversion by the sword is not what Christ came to do.