had applied previously to the trial, for permission to leave the kingdom, and he now renewed his application through the Bishops of Hereford and Worcester. The King replied, that he would consider of his request till the following day; but it is probable, Becket knowing that his sentence was pronounced, imagined that Henry sought for a favourable opportunity of securing his person, which would have been utter ruin to all his hopes, and he therefore determined to fly immediately. It is true that none of his biographers have assigned such a reason for his flight, seeking to make us believe that his life was in danger. Every thing, however, shows that the sentence of parliament was pronounced, and Hoveden declares that sentence to have been incarceration, which to Becket perhaps would have been worse than death: so that we may well suppose his purpose was to avoid such a fate, although he himself affected to apprehend a violent death, and his partizans have taken care to assert that such a fate was likely to befal him. at the time within the walls of a religious house— that of the regular Canons of Northampton,-he dared not assume that the King would attempt to arrest him there; but affecting to fear the remorseless arm of assassination, he caused his bed to be removed into the church, and placed between two altars, covering by these outward shows his real intentions, as he did by the assumption of zeal for the Church his views of personal ambition. He Being supped, however, and went through all the usual forms of clerical life, as if about to retire to rest; but as soon as everything was still, he quitted the convent by a back-door accompanied by two monks, with whose aid he got out of the town of Northampton, by the only gate which was left open and unguarded.* Taking such a course as was most likely to deceive his pursuers, he fled to Lincoln, and thence, disguised and suffering great inconveniences, he made his way to Sandwich, and a boat being procured with some difficulty, he was conveyed to the coast of Flanders. The Sovereign of that country was bound by so many ties to Henry, that Becket dared not cast off his disguise; and consequently in the dress of a monk, he entered the town of Gravelines on foot, and took up his abode for the night at an inn. The report of all that occurred in England, however, had already reached Flanders, and Becket soon perceived that the landlord and his wife both served him with greater demonstrations of respect than were likely to be shown to a poor travelling monk in a common inn. In order therefore to do away any suspicions which might be entertained regarding his real name and character, he treated the host * The fact of the gate being open and unguarded, is taken from Hoveden, though Herbert de Boseham, one of the writers combined in the Historia Quadripartita, who accompanied Becket in his flight, does not mention by what means they got out of the city. familiarly, and bade him sit down to table with him; but the good man, whose penetration was not to be baffled, sat himself down at Becket's feet, saying, "I thank God, my lord, that I have been thought worthy to receive you under my roof." The Prelate, judging wisely that any further attempt to deceive his host might show a want of confidence which would be dangerous, acknowledged his station, and was not betrayed. He succeeded in making his way into France, through various perils and difficulties, and was received with joy and distinction by Louis, although Henry, to whom that monarch was under such vast obligations, had sent ambassadors to him to notify the flight of the Archbishop, and to require that he might not be harboured and protected in the French territory. Those ambassadors met with nothing from Louis but coldness, and we may say insult, for the comments which he thought fit to make upon Henry's conduct amounted to no less than insult to an independent sovereign. Becket then joined Alexander at Sens, where he was also welcomed with much satisfaction by the Pope. There his conduct was applauded, the constitutions of Clarendon publicly examined, ten out of the sixteen heads thereof condemned, and Henry's ambassadors were treated with harshness, severity and reproof, by the pontiff who owed his station more to the English monarch than to any other man on earth. All that the King re quired was, that the Archbishop should be sent back again to England, accompanied by legates empowered to judge between him and Henry without appeal. This Alexander positively refused, upon a plea not the most creditable to his court. He was afraid, we are told, that the legates might be either convinced by Henry's eloquence, overawed by his power, or bribed by his money. The latter, indeed, was not improbable, if the accounts given by some of Becket's own friends, regarding the integrity of Alexander's papal court, may be relied on. Whatever might be his motives, the ambassadors retired from Sens, angry and disappointed, and marked their indignation by not demanding the blessing of the Supreme Pontiff. Such was the beginning and progress of that lamentable dispute, which terminated in the murder of an Archbishop in his cathedral church, and in the abasement of an English monarch before the Pontiff of Rome. If we regard impartially the conduct of Becket and Henry, both in the commencement and the prosecution of this unhappy affair, we shall find, that though there be some excuses for each, both deserve great censure, though certainly not in an equal degree. That * The words employed by the historian are:-Sed dominus Papa nullum cardinalem, nec aliquem legatum mittere voluit: sciens quod rex Angliæ potens erat in opere et sermone, et quod legati ex facili possent corrumpi, utpote qui plus aurum, et argentum sitiunt, quam justitiam et æquitatem. Becket's opposition to the statutes of Clarendon constituted a conspiracy with a foreign power against the laws of the land, and contrary to his allegiance, thereby amounting absolutely and distinctly to high treason, no unprejudiced person at all acquainted with the codes of those times can at all doubt. The case was one of resistance, not to any arbitrary decision of the King, but both to the received and customary laws of the land, and to the same laws collected into statutes and sanctioned by the great council of the nation assembled in parliament. Such, then, was the head and front of Becket's offence; and in pursuing his object, he was guilty, beyond all doubt, of repeated perjury, of gross hypocrisy, and of a frequent violation of the laws of the land. It was not indeed that he wished to secure to the clergy a monopoly of rape, murder and robbery; but it was, that he sought to abstract them altogether from the secular power, in consonance with the universal efforts of the church of Rome, to establish an empire of its own within all other empires, and render all the crowns of earth, by one vast system of superstitious privileges, tributary and subservient to the tiara. In following this object, there may be a question, whether Becket was influenced merely by the spirit of his order and the peculiar character of his age,* which might lead *This epoch may be considered as one of the great days of battle between the power of the Roman see and its opponents, of which any one may convince themselves by examining the |