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Monarchy and Church
Monarchy and Church; Part 4

Monarchy and Church; Part 4

King Stephen's reign is bare of any ecclesiastical dispute. Stephen certainly quarrelled with his bishops, and found that they were strong enough to do him much harm, but the quarrel was not about church matters. None the less his reign witnessed an increase in the power of the Church. While the barons were fighting with their king and each other, the Church was steadily working towards that independence from lay control which it desired.

Thus Henry II had to fight the matter over again, though this time on new ground, and the struggle was even more violent than in William II's day. For, though Henry had reason on his side, which William had not, yet the one king was fully as hot-tempered and impatient as the other, while on the side of the Church, instead of the gentle, patient Anselm, stood Becket, at least as fiery, wilful, and rash of speech as his royal master.

Not the least irritating of Becket's qualities in the king's eyes was his apparent ingratitude. Henry had raised Becket from an obscure station. He had made a personal friend of him, had joked and feasted in his company, had made him his Chancellor, and consulted with him on all the measures needed to bring the realm into order, and believed him to be heart and soul with him. Thus, when the Archbishopric of Canterbury fell vacant, giving the king the chance of putting in a man to forward his ideas, none seemed so suitable as Becket. Becket objected. "If this be done", said he, "our friendship will soon turn to bitter hate". Yet the king persisted in his idea that Becket would prove even more useful as Archbishop than he had been as Chancellor.

Once consecrated, Becket made clear immediately that he would prove as stout a supporter of the Church's privileges as any churchman could wish. He resigned his Chancellorship, justifying himself with the words, "Man cannot serve two masters". This was but a foretaste of the mixture of zeal and want of tact which was to distinguish the rest of his career. He might have made plain his wish henceforth to serve God without likening the service of his royal master and friend to that of Mammon. But Becket never did anything by halves. Hitherto, though he had always led an honest life, he had been careless, luxurious, worldly; suddenly he turned into an ascetic of the severest type, fasting with extreme rigour, wearing a hair-shirt, washing the feet of the sick and the poor. Men scoffed at the courtier who had become a monk. Yet Becket's change was no hypocrisy. He was a man who had taken up a new duty, and he meant to perform it with all his might. The fact that in doing so he would come into collision with the king did not turn him aside for a moment.

We recall that Henry II's chief aim was to destroy all those privileges and immunities which hindered the king's law; we know that owing to William I's change the Church was the one really great institution which still held these privileges; we can see that it was inevitably over this point that the battle would arise.

Monarchy and Church; Part 4

Chronology