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square-shouldered, broad-chested:—with arms muscular as those of
a gladiator;[1234] highly-arched feet which looked made for the
stirrup;[1235]—a large, but not disproportionate head, round and well-
shaped, and covered with close-cropped hair of the tawny hue which
Fulk the Red seems to have transmitted to so many of his
descendants:[1236] a face which one of his courtiers describes as
“lion-like”[1237] and another as “a countenance of fire”[1238]—a face,
as we can see even in its sculptured effigy on his tomb, full of
animation, energy and vigour;—a freckled skin;[1239] somewhat
prominent grey eyes, clear and soft when he was in a peaceable
mood, but bloodshot and flashing like balls of fire when the demon-
spirit of his race was aroused within him:—[1240] Henry, his people
might guess almost at a glance, was no mirror of courtly chivalry and
elegance, but a man of practical, vigorous and rapid action. He
inherited as little of Geoffrey’s personal refinement as of his physical
grace. When the young duke of the Normans had first appeared in
England, his shoulders covered with a little short cape such as was
then usually worn in Anjou, the English knights, who since his
grandfather’s time had been accustomed to wear long cloaks
hanging down to the ground, were struck by the novelty of his attire
and nicknamed him “Henry Curtmantel.”[1241] When once the
Angevin fashion was transferred to the English court, however, there
was nothing in Henry’s dress to distinguish him from his servants,
unless it were its very lack of display and elegance; his clothing and
headgear were of the plainest kind; and how little care he took of his
person was shewn by his rough coarse hands, never gloved except
when he went hawking.[1242] In his later years he was accused of
extreme parsimony;[1243] even as a young man, he clearly had no
pleasure in pomp or luxury of any kind. He was very temperate in
meat and drink;[1244] over-indulgence in that respect seems indeed
never to have been one of the habitual sins of the house of Anjou;
and whatever complex elements may have had a part in his
innermost moral constitution, in temper and tastes Henry was an
Angevin of the Angevins. His restlessness seems to have outdone
that of Fulk Nerra himself. He was always up and doing; if a dream
of ease crossed him even in sleep, he spurned it angrily from him;
[1245] he gave himself no peace, and as a natural consequence, he
gave none to those around him. When not at war, he was constantly
practising its mimicry with hawk and hound; his passion for the
chase—a double inheritance, from his father and from his mother’s
Norman ancestors—was so great as to be an acknowledged scandal
in all eyes.[1246] He would mount his horse at the first streak of
dawn, come back in the evening after a day’s hard riding across hill,
moor and forest, and then tire out his companions by keeping them
on their feet until nightfall.[1247] His own feet were always swollen
and bruised from his violent riding; yet except at meals and on
horseback, he was never known to be seated.[1248] In public or in
private, in council or in church, he stood or walked from morning till
night.[1249] At church, indeed, he was especially restless; unmindful
of the sacred unction which had made him king, he evidently
grudged the time taken from secular occupations for attendance
upon religious duties, and would either discuss affairs of state in a
whisper[1250] or relieve his impatience by drawing little pictures all
through the most solemn of holy rites.[1251] His English or Norman
courtiers, unaccustomed to deal with the demon-blood of Anjou,
vainly endeavoured to account for an activity which remained
undiminished when they were all half dead with exhaustion, and
attributed it to his dread of becoming disabled by corpulence, to
which he had a strong natural tendency.[1252] A good deal of it,
however, was probably due to sheer physical restlessness and
superabundant physical energy; and a good deal more to the
irrepressible outward working of an extraordinarily active mind.

[1229] “Vir . . . quem miles diligenter inspectum accurrebant

[accurrebat?] inspicere.” W. Map, De Nugis Curialium, dist. v. c. 6
(Wright, p. 227).

[1230] Ibid. Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl.

Christ. Soc., p. 71). Peter of Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 193).

[1231] Pet. Blois as above.

 [1232] Gir. Cambr. as above.

[1233] W. Map as above.

[1234] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 70). Pet. Blois as above.

[1235] Pet. Blois as above.

[1236] Ibid. Gir. Cambr. as above.

[1237] Pet. Blois as above.

[1238] Gir. Cambr. as above.

[1239] See how Merlin’s prophecy about “fortem lentiginosum”

was applied to him, Gir. Cambr. Itin. Kambr., l. i. c. 6 (Dimock,
vol. vi. p. 62).

[1240] Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl. Christ.

Soc., p. 70). Pet. Blois as above.

[1241] Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. iii. c. 28 (Angl. Christ.

Soc., p. 157).

[1242] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 193, 194).

[1243] See Ralf Niger (Anstruther), p. 169. Ralf, however, was

a bitter enemy. Gerald on the other hand seems to draw, and to
imply that Henry drew, a distinction between official and personal
expenditure: “Parcimoniæ, quoad principi licuit, per omnia datus.”
De Instr. Princ., dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 70). “Largus in
publico, parcus in privato” (ib. p. 71).

[1244] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 70). Pet. Blois as above (p.
195). W. Map, De Nug. Cur., dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 231).

[1245] W. Map as above (p. 227).

[1246] Ibid. Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 71). Pet. Blois as above
(p. 194).

[1247] Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl. Christ.

Soc., p. 71).

[1248] Ibid. Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 194).

 [1249] Pet. Blois as above.

[1250] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 72).

[1251] “Oratorium ingressus, picturæ et susurro vacabat.” R.

Niger (Anstruther), p. 169. It is only fair to add that some of the
highest clergy of the day were just as unscrupulous as the king
about talking business during mass. See, e.g., Chron. de Bello
(Angl. Christ. Soc.), pp. 73, 74; and there are plenty of other
examples.

[1252] W. Map, De Nug. Cur., dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 227).

It was no light matter to be in attendance upon such a king. His

clerks, some playfully, some in all seriousness, compared his court
to the infernal regions.[1253] His habit of constantly moving about
from one place to another—a habit which he retained to the very end
of his life—was in itself sufficiently trying to those who had to
transact business with him, and was made positively exasperating by
his frequent and sudden changes of plan. “He shunned regular hours
like poison.”[1254] “Solomon saith,” wrote his secretary Peter of Blois
to him once, after vainly striving to track him across land and sea,
“Solomon saith there be three things difficult to be found out, and a
fourth which may hardly be discovered: the way of an eagle in the
air; the way of a ship in the sea; the way of a serpent on the ground;
and the way of a man in his youth. I can add a fifth: the way of a king
in England.”[1255] In a letter to his old comrades of the court Peter
gives a detailed account of the discomforts brought upon them by
Henry’s erratic movements. “If the king has promised to spend the
day in a place—more especially, if his intention so to do has been
publicly proclaimed by a herald—you may be quite sure he will upset
everybody’s arrangements by starting off early in the morning. Then
you may see men rushing about as if they were mad, beating their
packhorses, driving their chariots one into another—in short, such a
turmoil as to present you with a lively image of the infernal regions.
If, on the other hand, the king announces that he will set out early in
the morning for a certain place, he is sure to change his mind; you
may take it for granted that he will sleep till noon. Then you shall see
the packhorses waiting with their burthens, the chariots standing
ready, the couriers dozing, the purveyors worrying, and all grumbling
one at another. Folk run to the women and the tent-keepers to
inquire of them whither the king is really going; for this sort of
courtiers often know the secrets of the palace. Many a time when the
king was asleep and all was silent around, there has come a
message from his lodging, not authoritative, but rousing us all up,
and naming the city or town whither he was about to proceed. After
waiting so long in dreary uncertainty, we were comforted by a
prospect of being quartered in a place where there was a fair chance
of accommodation. Thereupon arose such a clatter of horse and foot
that hell seemed to have broken loose. But when our couriers had
gone the whole day’s ride, or nearly so, the king would turn aside to
some other place where he had perhaps one single house, and just
enough provision for himself and none else. I hardly dare say it,”
adds the sorely-tried secretary, “but I verily believe he took a delight
in seeing the straits to which he put us! After wandering a distance of
three or four miles in an unknown wood, and often in the dark, we
thought ourselves lucky if we stumbled upon some dirty little hovel;
there was often grievous and bitter strife about a mere hut; and
swords were drawn for the possession of a lodging which pigs would
not have deemed worth fighting for. I used to get separated from my
people, and could hardly collect them again in three days. O Lord
God Almighty! wilt Thou not turn the heart of this king, that he may
know himself to be but man, and may learn to shew some grace of
regal consideration, some human fellow-feeling, for those whom not
ambition, but necessity, compels to run after him thus?”[1256]

[1253] W. Map, De Nug. Cur., dist. i. c. 2 (pp. 5, 6); dist. v. c. 7

(p. 238). Pet. Blois, Ep. xiv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 50).

[1254] R. Niger (Anstruther), p. 169.

[1255] Pet. Blois, Ep. xli. (Giles, vol. i. p. 125). Arnulf of Lisieux
makes a like complaint in a more serious tone: Arn. Lis., Ep. 92
(Giles, p. 247). See also the remark of Louis of France on
Henry’s expedition to Ireland in 1172: R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
351.
 [1256] Pet. Blois, Ep. xiv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 50, 51).

This bustling, scrambling, roving Pandemonium was very unlike

the orderly, well-disciplined court of the first King Henry, where
everything was done according to rule;—where the royal itinerary
was planned out every month, and its stages duly announced and
strictly adhered to, so that every man knew exactly when and where
to find his sovereign, and his coming brought people together as to a
fair:—where all the earls and barons of the realm were set down in a
written list, according to which every one on his arrival at court was
furnished with a certain allowance of bread, wine and candles for the
term of his sojourn;[1257]—where the king’s own daily life was
passed in a steady routine, holding council with his wise men and
giving audiences until dinner-time, devoting the rest of the day to the
society of the young gallants whom he drew from every country on
this side of the Alps to increase the splendour of his household:—a
court which was “a school of virtue and wisdom all the morning, of
courtesy and decorous mirth all the afternoon.”[1258] Yet this hasty,
impetuous young sovereign, in whose rough aspect and reckless
ways one can at first glance discern so little either of regal dignity or
of steady application to regal duty, was in truth, no less than his
grandfather, an indefatigable worker and a born ruler of men. His
way of doing business, apparently by fits and starts, bewildered men
of less versatile intellect and less rapid decision; but they saw that
the business was done, and done thoroughly, though they hardly
understood when or how. They resigned themselves to be swept
along in the whirl of Henry’s unaccountable movements, for they
learned to perceive that those movements did not spring from mere
caprice and perversity, but had always a motive and an object,
inscrutable perhaps to all eyes save his own, but none the less
definite and practical. When he dragged them in one day over a
distance which should have occupied four or five, they knew that it
was to forestall the machinations of some threatening foe. When he
ran over the country from end to end without a word of notice, it was
to overtake his officials at unawares and ascertain for himself how
they were or were not attending to their duty.[1259] If he was never
still, he was also never idle. He seemed to be specially haunted by
that dread of the mischief attendant upon idle hands which an
Angevin writer quaintly puts forth as an apology for the ceaseless
warfare in which his race passed their lives.[1260] Henry’s hands
were never idle; in the intervals of state business, when not laden
with bow and arrows, they almost invariably held a book; for Henry
was, to the very close of his life, the most learned crowned head in
Christendom.[1261] He was a match for the best among his subjects
in all knightly exercises and accomplishments; he was no less a
match for the best, among laymen at least, in scholarship and mental
culture. If we may believe one of his chaplains, Walter Map, he knew
something of every language “from the bay of Biscay to the Jordan,”
though he only spoke two, Latin and his native French;[1262] he
evidently never learned to speak, and it is doubtful how far he
understood, the natural tongue of the people of his island realm. He
loved reading; he enjoyed the society of learned men; his delight
was to stand amid a little group of clerks, arguing out some knotty
point with them; not a day passed in his court without some
interesting literary discussion.[1263] His habit of shutting himself up in
his own apartments with a few chosen companions was a grievance
to those who remembered his grandfather’s practice of coming forth
in public at stated hours every day;[1264] yet Henry II. was never
difficult of access; once, when the prior of Witham made a witty retort
to the marshals who refused him admittance to the royal chamber,
the king himself, overhearing the jest, opened the door with a peal of
laughter;[1265] and a courier charged with important news from the
north made his way to the sovereign’s bedside and woke him in the
middle of the night without hesitation.[1266] When he did shew
himself to the people, they thronged him without ceremony; they
caught hold of him right and left, they pulled him this way and that,
yet he never rebuked them, never gave them an angry look, but
listened patiently to what each man had to say, and when their
importunity became intolerable he simply made his escape without a
word.[1267] Though not gifted with a good voice,[1268] he was a ready
and pleasant speaker;[1269] and he had two other natural
qualifications specially useful for a king. Unlike his grandfather Fulk
V., who never could remember a face and constantly had to ask the
names of his own familiar attendants,[1270] Henry never failed to
recognize a man whom he had once looked at; and a thing once
heard, if worth remembering, never slipped from his memory, which
was consequently stored with a fund of historical and experimental
knowledge ready for use at any moment.[1271]

[1257] W. Map, De Nug. Cur., dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, pp. 224,

225).

[1258] W. Map, De Nug. Cur., dist. v. c. 5 (Wright, p. 210).

[1259] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 194).

[1260] See above, p. 343, note 6{1002}.

[1261] Pet. Blois as above.

[1262] W. Map, De Nug. Cur., dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 227).

[1263] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 194).

[1264] W. Map as above (p. 230).

[1265] Ib. dist. i. c. 6 (p. 7).

[1266] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 25 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 189).

[1267] W. Map, as above, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 231).

[1268] “Voce quassâ.” Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. ii. c. 29

(Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 70). This however refers to his later years.

[1269] Ib. p. 71. Pet. Blois as above (p. 195).

[1270] Will. Tyr., l. xiv. c. i.

[1271] Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl. Christ.

Soc., p. 73).
 His worst private vices only reached their full developement in
later years; it is plain, however, that he was much less careful than
his grandfather had been of the outward decorum of his household;
and unluckily his consort was not a woman to control it by her
influence or improve it by her example like the “good Queen Maude.”
His wrath was even more terrific than the wrath of kings is
proverbially wont to be.[1272] His passions were strong, and they
were lasting; when once he had taken a dislike to a man, he could
rarely be induced to grant him his favour; on the other hand, when
his friendship and confidence were once given, he withdrew them
with the utmost difficulty and reluctance;[1273] and he had the gift of
inspiring in all who came in contact with him a love or a hatred as
intense and abiding as his own. His temper was a mystery to those
who had not the key to it; it was the temper of Fulk Nerra. He had the
Black Count’s strange power of fascination, his unaccountable
variations of mood, and his cool, clear head. Like Fulk, he was at
one moment mocking and blaspheming all that is holiest in earth and
heaven, and at another grovelling in an agony of remorse as wild as
the blasphemy itself. Like Fulk, he was an indefatigable builder,
constantly superintending the erection of a wall, the fortification of a
castle, the making of a dyke, the enclosing of a deer-park or a fish-
pond, or the planning of a palace;[1274] and all the while his material
buildings were but types of a great edifice of statecraft which, all
unseen, was rising day by day beneath the hands of the royal
architect;—his ever-varying pursuits, each of which seemed to
absorb him for the moment, were but parts of an all-absorbing whole;
—and his seeming self-contradictions were unaccountable only
because the most useful of all his Angevin characteristics, his
capacity for instinctively and unerringly adapting means to ends,
enabled him to detect opportunities and recognize combinations
invisible to less penetrating eyes. This was the moral constitution
which in Fulk III. and Fulk V. had made the greatness of the house of
Anjou; its workings were now to be displayed on a grander scale and
in a more important sphere.

[1272] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxxv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 223).

 [1273] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (ib. p. 194). Gir. Cambr. De Instr.
Princ., dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl. Christ. Soc., (p. 71).

[1274] Pet. Blois as above (p. 195).

The young king saw at once that for his work of reconstruction and
reform in England the counsellors who surrounded him in Normandy
were of no avail; that he must trust solely to English help, and select
his chief ministers partly from among those who had been in office
under his predecessor, partly from such of his own English partizans
as were best fitted for the task. First among the former class stood
Richard de Lucy, who held the post of justiciar at the close of
Stephen’s reign,[1275] who retained it under Henry for five-and-
twenty years, and whose character is summed up in the epithet said
to have been bestowed on him by his grateful sovereign—“Richard
de Lucy the Loyal.”[1276] For thirteen years he shared the dignity and
the duties of chief justiciar with Earl Robert of Leicester,[1277] who,
after having been a faithful supporter of Stephen in his earlier and
better days, had transferred his allegiance to Henry, and continued
through life one of his most trusty servants and friends. The weight
of Robert’s character was increased by that of his rank and descent;
as head of the great house of Leicester, he was the most influential
baron of the midland shires; while as son of Count Robert of Meulan,
the friend of Henry I., he was a living link with that hallowed past
which Henry II. was expected to restore, and a natural representative
of its traditions of honour and of peace. Of the great ministers who
had actually served under the first King Henry only one survived: the
old treasurer, Nigel, bishop of Ely. We know not who took his place
on his fall in 1139; but the treasurer in Stephen’s latter years can
have had little more than an empty title; and when Nigel reappears in
office, immediately after Henry’s accession, it is not as treasurer, but
as chancellor.[1278] This, however, was a merely provisional
arrangement; in a few weeks the bishop of Ely was reinstated in his
most appropriate place, on the right side of the chequered table,
gathering up the broken threads of the financial system which he had
learned under his uncle of Salisbury;[1279] while the more
miscellaneous work of the chancellor was undertaken by younger
hands.

[1275] At the peace he held the Tower of London and the

castle of Windsor; Rymer, Fœdera, vol. i. p. 18: these were
peculiarly in the custody of the justiciar; Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol.
i. p. 449, note 1.

[1276] Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1540–1541 (Michel, p. 70).

[1277] Robert appears as capitalis justicia in a charter of,

apparently, 1155 (Eyton, Itin. Hen. II., p. 3). In 1159–1160, John
of Salisbury describes him as “illustris comes Legrecestriæ
Robertus, modeste proconsulatum gerens apud Britannias” (Joh.
Salisb. Polycrat., l. vi. c. 25; Giles, vol. iv. p. 65), and at his death
in 1168 he is named in the Chron. Mailros (ad ann.) as “comes
justus Leicestrie, et qui summa justitia vocatur.”

[1278] A charter issued at Westminster, evidently soon after

the coronation, is witnessed by “N. Epọ de Ely et Canc.” Eyton,
Itin. Hen. II., p. 2, note 2.

[1279] Dial. de Scacc., l. i. c. 8 (Stubbs, Select Charters, p.

199).

Under the old English constitutional system, alike in its native

purity and in the modified form which it assumed under the
Conqueror and his sons, the archbishop of Canterbury was the
official keeper of the royal conscience and the first adviser of the
sovereign. Theobald had contributed more than any other one man
to secure Henry’s succession; he saw in it the crowning of his own
life’s work for England; while Henry saw in Theobald his most
weighty and valuable supporter. It was therefore a matter of course
that the primate should resume the constitutional position which he
had inherited from Anselm and Lanfranc and their old-English
predecessors. Theobald, however, was now in advanced age and
feeble health; and when he fully perceived what manner of man it
was to whom he was bound to act as spiritual father and political
guide, he felt that to regulate these strong passions, to direct these
youthful impulses, to follow these restless movements, was a task
too hard for his failing strength. He feared the evil influences of the
courtiers upon the young king, who seemed so willing to be led
aright, and might for that very reason be so easily led astray;[1280] he
feared for the English Church, through which there was already
running a whisper of ill-omen concerning the Angevins’ known
hostility to the rights of religion;[1281] he feared for his own soul, lest
Henry should wander out of the right path for lack of guidance, and
the sin should lie at the door of the incompetent guide.[1282] There
was one man who, if he could but be placed at the young king’s side,
might be trusted to manage the arduous and delicate task. So to
place him could be no very difficult matter; for his own past services
to Henry’s cause were far too great to be left unrewarded. Neither
the recommendations of the bishops of Winchester,[1283] Bayeux
and Lisieux,[1284] nor even those of the primate, could have as much
weight as the known qualifications of the candidate himself in
obtaining the office of chancellor for Thomas Becket.[1285]

[1280] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 160.

[1281] Vita S. Thomæ, Anon. I. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), p.

11.

[1282] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 160.

[1283] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 18.

[1284] “Quorum consiliis rex in primordiis suis innitebatur.”

Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 12.

[1285] “Facile regi inspiratum est commendatum habere quem

propria satis merita commendabant.” E. Grim (ib. vol. ii.), p. 363.
I cannot attach any importance to the version of Thomas Saga
(Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 45–47.

The chancellor’s duties were still much the same as they had been
when first organized by Roger of Salisbury. He was charged with the
keeping of the royal seal, the drawing-up of royal writs and charters,
the conduct of the royal correspondence, the preservation of legal
records, the custody of vacant fiefs and benefices, and the
superintendence of the king’s chaplains and clerks;[1286]—in a word,
the management of the whole clerical and secretarial work of the
royal household and of the government. Officially, he seems to have
been ranked below the chief ministers of state—the justiciar, or even
the treasurer;[1287] personally, however, he was brought more than
either of them into close and constant relations with his sovereign.
The actual importance and dignity of the chancellorship depended in
fact upon the capacity of individual chancellors for magnifying their
office. Thomas magnified it as no man ever did before or since. In a
very few months he became what the justiciar had formerly been, the
second man in the kingdom;[1288] and not in the kingdom alone, but
in all the lands, on both sides of the sea, which owned Henry Fitz-
Empress for their sovereign.[1289] Theobald’s scheme far more than
succeeded; his favourite became not so much the king’s chief
minister as his friend, his director, his master.[1290] The two young
men, drawn together by a strong personal attraction, seemed to
have but one heart and one soul.[1291] Thomas was the elder by
fifteen years; but the disparity of age was lost in the perfect
community of their feelings, interests and pursuits. Thomas was now
in deacon’s orders, having been ordained by Archbishop Theobald at
the close of the previous year on his appointment to the
archdeaconry of Canterbury,[1292] an office which was accounted the
highest ecclesiastical dignity in England after those of the bishops
and abbots.[1293] He felt, however, no vocation and no taste for the
duties of sacred ministry, and was only too glad to “put off the
deacon” and fling all his energies into the more congenial sphere of
court life.[1294] Alike in its business and in its pleasures he was
thoroughly at home. His refined sensibilities, his romantic
imagination, revelled in the elegance and splendour which to Henry’s
matter-of-fact disposition were simply irksome; he gladly took all the
burthen of state ceremonial as well as of state business upon his
own shoulders; and he bore it with an easy grace which men never
wearied of admiring. One day he would be riding in coat of mail at
the head of the royal troops, the next he would be dispensing justice
in the king’s name;[1295] and his will was law throughout the land, for
all men knew that his will and Henry’s were one.[1296]

[1286] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 18. On

the chancellor’s office see Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 352,
353.

[1287] Will. Fitz-Steph., as above, does indeed say “Cancellarii

Angliæ dignitas est ut secundus a rege in regno habeatur”; but
he had in his mind one particular chancellor. He also says
“Cancellaria emenda non est”; but it seems that Thomas himself
paid for his appointment (Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxciv., Giles, vol. i. p.
268; Robertson, Becket, vol. v. Ep. ccxxv. pp. 523, 524), like the
chancellors before and after him, and like the other great
ministers of state.

[1288] “In regno secundus,” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 169.

“Secundus a rege,” Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.),
p. 18. “Nullus par ei erat in regno, excepto solo rege,” Rog.
Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 216. E. Grim (Robertson, Becket, vol.
ii.), p. 363, and the Thomas Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 49, liken
his position to that of Joseph.

[1289] “Secundum post regem in quatuor regnis quis te

ignorat?” writes Peter of Celle to Thomas (Robertson, Becket,
vol. v. Ep. ii. p. 4).

[1290] “Regis amicus,” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 169.

“Regis rector et quasi magister,” ib. pp. 160 and 169.

[1291] Joh. Salisb., Ep. lxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 109; Robertson,

Becket, vol. v. Ep. ix. p. 13).

[1292] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 159, 160. Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 213. Will. Cant. (Robertson, Becket, vol. i.), p.
4. Will. Fitz-Steph. (ib. vol. iii.), p. 17. Herb. Bosh. (ibid.), p. 168.
Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 11.

[1293] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above. He says it was worth a

hundred pounds of silver.

[1294] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 173.

 [1295] Anon. I. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), p. 12.

[1296] Ibid. E. Grim (ib. vol. ii.), p. 364.

In outward aspect Thomas must have been far more regal than
the king himself. He was very tall and elegantly formed,[1297] with an
oval face,[1298] handsome aquiline features,[1299] a lofty brow,[1300]
large, lustrous and penetrating eyes;[1301] there was an habitual look
of placid dignity in his countenance,[1302] a natural grace in his every
gesture, an ingrained refinement in his every word and action;[1303]
the slender, tapering, white fingers[1304] and dainty attire of the
burgher’s son contrasted curiously with the rough brown hands and
careless appearance of Henry Fitz-Empress; the order, elegance
and liberality of the chancellor’s household contrasted no less with
the confusion and discomfort of the king’s. The riches that passed
through Thomas’s hands were enormous; revenues and honours
were heaped on him by the king; costly gifts poured in upon him
daily from clergy and laity, high and low. But what he received with
one hand he gave away with the other; his splendour and his wealth
were shared with all who chose to come and take a share of them.
His door was always open, his table always spread, for all men, of
whatever race or rank, who stood in need of hospitality.[1305]
Besides fifty-two clerks regularly attached to his household—some to
act as his secretaries, some to take charge of the vacant benefices
in his custody, some to serve his own numerous livings and
prebends[1306]—he had almost every day a company of invited
guests to dinner; every day the hall was freshly strewn with green
leaves or rushes in summer and clean hay or straw in winter, amid
which those for whom there was no room on the benches sat and
dined on the floor. The tables shone with gold and silver vessels, and
were laden with costly viands; Thomas stuck at no expense in such
matters; but it was less for his own enjoyment than for that of his
guests;[1307] and these always included a crowd of poor folk, who
were as sumptuously and carefully served as the rich;[1308] the
meanest in his house never had to complain of a dinner such as the
noblest were often obliged to endure in King Henry’s court, where
half-baked bread, sour wine, stale fish and bad meat were the
ordinary fare.[1309] The chancellor’s hospitality was as gracious as it
was lavish. He was the most perfect of hosts; he saw to the smallest
details of domestic service; he noted the position of each guest,
missed and inquired for the absent, perceived and righted in a
moment the least mistake in precedence; if any man out of modesty
tried to take a lower place than was his due, it was in vain; no matter
in what obscure corner he might hide, Thomas was sure to find him
out; he seemed to pierce through curtains and walls with those
wonderful eyes whose glance brightened and cheered the whole
table.[1310] No wonder that barons and knights sent their sons to be
educated under his roof,[1311] and that his personal followers were
far more numerous than those of the king.[1312]

[1297] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket vol. iii.), p. 17.

Herb. Bosh. (ibid.), p. 327. Will. Cant. (ib. vol. i.), p. 3. Thomas
Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 29.

[1298] Herb. Bosh. as above.

[1299] Will. Fitz-Steph., Herb. Bosh., and Thomas Saga, as

above.

[1300] Herb. Bosh. as above.

[1301] Ib. p. 229.

[1302] Will. Cant., Will. Fitz-Steph., and Thomas Saga, as

above.

[1303] Anon. II. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), p. 84.

[1304] Herb. Bosh. (ib. vol. iii.), p. 327.

[1305] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), pp. 20, 21.
Joh. Salisb., Entheticus in Polycraticum (Giles, vol. iii.) p. 3.

[1306] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above, p. 29.

[1307] Ib. pp. 20, 21.

 [1308] Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 13.

[1309] Pet. Blois, Ep. xiv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 49).

[1310] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 229.

[1311] Will. Fitz-Steph. (ibid.), p. 22.

[1312] E. Grim (ib. vol. ii.), p. 363. Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 13.

Henry might have been jealous of his minister; but there was no
thought of jealousy in his mind. He was constantly in and out at the
chancellor’s house; half in sheer fun, half to see for himself the truth
of the wonderful stories which he heard about it, he would come
uninvited to dinner, riding up suddenly—often bow in hand, on his
way to or from the chase—when Thomas was seated at table;
sometimes he would take a stirrup-cup, nod to his friend and ride
away; sometimes he would leap over the table, sit down and eat.
When their work was over, king and chancellor played together like a
couple of schoolboys, and whether it was in their private apartments,
in the public streets, in the palace, or in church, made no difference
at all. It was a favourite tale among their associates how as they
rode together through the streets of London one winter’s day, the
king, seeing a ragged shivering beggar, snatched at the chancellor’s
handsome new mantle of scarlet cloth lined with vair, crying—“You
shall have the merit of clothing the naked this time!” and after a
struggle in which both combatants nearly fell off their horses, sent
the poor man away rejoicing in his new and strangely acquired
garment, while with shouts of applause and laughter the bystanders
crowded round Thomas, playfully offering him their cloaks and capes
in compensation for his loss.[1313]

[1313] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), pp. 24, 25.

It is hardly possible to deny that such enormous wealth as passed

through Thomas’s hands during his tenure of the chancellorship
must have been acquired, in part at least, by means which in the
case of a minister of the Crown in our own day would be accounted
little less than scandalous. But in the twelfth century there was no
scandal about the matter. Costly gifts of all kinds were showered at
the feet of kings and great men openly and as matter of course, and
kings and great men received them as openly, often without any idea
of bribery on either side. Moreover it is to be remembered that
Thomas’s position as chancellor gave him command over a
considerable portion of the royal revenues, and that he was left free
to draw upon them at his own discretion to meet an expenditure of
which part was incurred directly in the king’s behalf, while the whole
of it might be regarded as indirectly tending to the king’s glorification
and benefit. The two friends in fact seem to have had but one purse
as well as “one mind and one heart,” and not till many years later
was there any thought of disentangling their accounts. Amid all the
chancellor’s wild magnificence, there is no evidence of corruption;
and there was certainly no arrogance. Thomas had nothing of the
upstart in him; he never ignored his burgher-origin, he never dropped
the friends of his boyhood; his filial submission to the primate
remained unchanged;[1314] his gratitude to his early teachers at
Merton was proved by his choice of a confessor from among them,
[1315] and by his successful efforts to bring their house under the

special patronage of the king.[1316] His tastes were those of the most
refined aristocrat, but his sympathies were with the people from
whose ranks he had sprung; his boundless almsgiving was doubled
in value by the gracious considerateness with which it was
bestowed; his tenderness for the poor was as genuine and as
delicate as that of his mother the good dame Rohese, and he was
quick alike to supply their needs and to vindicate their cause.[1317]

[1314] Anon. I. (Robertson, Beckett, vol. iv.) p. 11.

[1315] Will. Fitz-Steph. (ib. vol. iii.), p. 21. This confessor,

Robert by name, was with him all through his exile; see Garnier
(Hippeau), p. 137.

[1316] Will. Fitz-Steph. (as above), p. 23.

 [1317] Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 13. Cf. Thomas Saga
(Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 49, 55–57.

Like the king himself, Thomas was a standing marvel to his

contemporaries; the strict stood aghast at his unclerical mode of life;
the simple were half inclined to take him for a wizard.[1318] But his
witchery was universal and irresistible; and after all it was only the
magic of a winning personality, a vivid imagination, a dauntless spirit
and a guileless heart. For the chancellor’s frivolity was all on the
surface of his life; its inner depths were pure. Amid the countless
temptations of a corrupt court, no stain ever rested upon his personal
honour. He shared in all the king’s pursuits, except the evil ones; into
them Henry tried to entrap him night and day, but in vain.[1319] The
one thing he would not do, the one thing he would not tolerate, was
evil; the one species of human being to whom his doors were
inexorably closed was a man of known bad character.[1320]
Coarseness, immorality, dishonesty, in word or deed, met with
summary and condign punishment at his hands.[1321] Above all
things, “lying lips and a deceitful tongue were an abomination unto
him.”[1322] When in after-days a biographer of the martyred
archbishop copied from the Epistle to the Ephesians the description
of the spiritual armour in which his hero was supposed to have
clothed himself at his consecration, he significantly omitted the first
piece of the panoply;[1323] Thomas had no need then to put on the
girdle of truth, for he had worn it all his life.

[1318] Will. Cant. (Robertson, Becket, vol. i.), p. 5.

[1319] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 21. Cf.

Herb. Bosh. (ibid.) p. 166; Joh. Salisb. (ib. vol. ii.), p. 303; Will.
Cant. (ib. vol. i.), pp. 5, 6; Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 12, 13; Thomas
Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 53–55.

[1320]
“Nota domus cunctis, vitio non cognita soli.”
“Huic, quæ sola placet, solâ virtute placebis.”
Joh. Salisb., Enthet. in Polycrat. (Giles, vol. iii.) pp. 2, 3.
 [1321] Anon. I. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), p. 8. Will. Fitz-
Steph. (ib. vol. iii.), p. 21.

[1322] Herb. Bosh. (ib. vol. iii.), p. 166.

[1323] Ib. p. 198.

His position at court was no easy one; for a while envy, hatred and
malice assailed him from all sides, and their attacks, added to an
immense load of work, so overwhelmed him that he more than once
declared to his friends and to the primate that he was weary of his
life and would be thankful to end it, or at any rate to break away from
the bondage of the court, if only he could do so with honour. But he
was not the man to forsake a task which he had once undertaken;
[1324] his nature was rather to do it, like the king himself, with all his
might. In the after-years, when friends and foes alike could hardly
look back upon any period of Thomas’s career save in the light of the
martyr’s aureole, more than half the credit of Henry’s early reforms
was bestowed upon the chancellor.[1325] Even at the time, he was
described by no mean authority as the champion of all liberty,[1326]
the defender of all rights, the redresser of all wrongs, the restorer of
peace,[1327] the mediator who stood between king and people to
soften the inflexibility of law and prevent justice from degenerating
into legal wrong.[1328] It is certain that the brightest and happiest
years of Henry’s reign were those during which Thomas held the
foremost rank and took the foremost part in the administration of
government. For the successful execution of Henry’s policy,
therefore, Thomas is entitled to a large share of credit. But that he in
any serious degree influenced and moulded the general scope of
that policy is a theory opposed both to the evidence of actual events
and to the inferences which must be drawn from the characters of
the two men, as developed in their after-careers. Thomas may have
suggested individual measures—we shall see that he did suggest
one of very great importance;—he may have contrived modifications
in detail; but Henry’s policy, as a whole, bears the clear stamp of one
mind—his own. The chancellor’s true merit lies in this, that he was
Henry’s best and most thorough fellow-worker—not so much his