Thomas Becket (21 December 1119 – 29 December 1170) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 24 May 1162 to 21 December 1170, succeeding Theobald of Bec and preceding Roger de Bailleul. Becket served as Chancellor under King Henry II of England from 1155 to 1162, but he later fell out with King Henry over the rights and privileges of the Catholic Church and was murdered at Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, leading to his canonization in 1173.
Biography[]
Thomas Becket was born in Cheapside, London, England on 21 December 1119, the son of a Norman petty knight and his Anglo-Norman wife. Thomas Becket was a commoner and the son of a merchant, but he became a canon law scholar, Archdeacon of Canterbury in 1154, and Lord Chancellor in 1155, becoming close friends with King Henry II of England. Becket helped to implement King Henry's administrative and bureaucratic reforms, and, in 1162, King Henry decided to appoint his friend Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury to help him keep the Catholic Church in line. Becket was elected by the monks after King Henry successfully pressured them into doing so, but Becket immediately resigned as Chancellor and switched his loyalty to the Church, obeying the Pope over the King.
Archbishop of Canterbury[]
Becket as Archbishop
In 1164, after a dispute with the King over the King's efforts to have criminous clerics tried in civil rather than ecclesiastical courts (where they were often above the law), Becket fled to Rome, where he remained for the next six years. In 1170, when King Henry had his young son Henry crowned co-King of England without inviting Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to oversee the coronation (as per tradition), an infuriated Becket - who had just returned from exile - excommunicated every cleric involved. In a bout of Plantagenet rage, Henry II responded to this news at his castle at Bures, Normandy by shouting, "What miserable drones and traitors have I nurtured and promoted in my household who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric!"; he was also quoted as giving an indirect order, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"
Assassination[]
Becket's body
On 29 December 1170, four days after the King's Christmas outburst, four knights arrived at Canterbury Cathedral to confront the Archbishop. They demanded that Becket come with them to Winchester to give his account of his actions, and, when Becket refused, the knights called him a traitor and attempted to seize him. However, Becket declared, "I am no traitor and I am ready to die," and, when he bowed down at the altar to make his peace with God, a knight hacked at his head with his sword, nearly cutting his head open. Another knight dashed his brains across the floor with his sword, and the knights then left the scene of the murder. Becket's death shook the whole of Christendom, and he was canonized as a Catholic saint within just three years of his murder; he was widely seen as a martyr who stood up to tyranny.