"Becket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... olden days caused the highest and lowest in the land to perform penance in public. A notable instance of a king subjecting himself to this humiliating form of punishment is that of Henry II. The story of the King's quarrels with Becket, and of his unfortunate expression which led four knights to enact a tragic deed in Canterbury Cathedral, is familiar to the reader of history. After the foul murder of Becket had been committed, the King was in great distress, ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... that I met in St Louis, that I dared to speak with, was a boy somewhat younger than myself. I asked him his name, and in broken English he replied that his name was Henry Becket. ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... old English feudalism edificed. It represents the rough grandeur, hospitality, wassail and rude romance of the English nobility five hundred years ago. It was all in its glory about the time when Thomas-a-Becket the Magnificent used to entertain great companies of belted knights of the realm in a manner that exceeded regal munificence in those days,—even directing fresh straw to be laid for them on his ample mansion floor, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... produced a work on the career of S. Thomas of Canterbury, whose murder had taken place only seven years before Benedict came to Peterborough. He gave many ornaments and vestments to the church, and brought several relics; and in particular some of Thomas a Becket (and those we can certainly believe were more authentic than most relics), among which are mentioned his shirt and surplice, a great quantity of his blood in two crystal vessels, and two altars of the stone on which he fell when he was murdered. He was, as might be expected, ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... nails, which is believed to possess miraculous powers, and exhibited only once a year with great solemnity. There is another in a private oratory of the Escurial; and I was surprised in observing in the same case a relic of Sir Thomas a Becket. All the nails, from the time of Constantine, are rejected as spurious by Cardinal Baronius;[21] yet a former Pope had expressed his belief in their authenticity;[22] and the ingenious idea of miraculous vegetation might have been easily applied to them. But to trace the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... vows ye've sworn At holy Becket's altar— Remember all the ills ye've borne, And scorn'd to shrink or falter— Remember every laurel'd field, Which saw the Crescent waving— Remember when compell'd to yield, Uncounted numbers braving: Remember these, remember ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... to get to the front—he has used his brush with excellent effect on the back of an old band-box. Mary Anderson has written on the back of a photo, "Better late than never," for the picture was a long time coming; another excellent example of photographic work being a large head of Mr. Irving as "Becket," bearing his autograph. In a corner is a queer-looking wax model of Daniel O'Connell addressing the crowd, and amongst a hundred little odds and ends spring flowers are peeping out. Mr. Furniss ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Roman supremacy pressed both on the clergy and laity of England during the reign of Henry II. Even the attempt of that wise and courageous monarch to make a stand for the independence of his throne in the memorable case of Thomas a Becket, had such an unhappy issue, that, like a suppressed rebellion, it was found to add new strength to the domination of the Church. Since the submission of the king in that ill-fated struggle, the voice of Rome had double potency whenever it was heard, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... in England since the second Henry walked barefoot through the streets of Canterbury, and knelt while the monks flogged him on the pavement in the Chapter House, doing penance for Becket's murder. The clergy had won the battle in the twelfth century because they deserved it. They were not free from fault and weakness, but they felt the meaning of their profession. Their hearts were in their vows, their authority was exercised more justly, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... fit train, in the autumn days of the year 1180; near Rochester City, his mule threw him, dislocated his poor kneepan, raised incurable inflammatory fever; and the poor old man got his dismissal from the whole coil at once. St. Thomas a Becket, though in a circuitous way, had brought deliverance! Neither Jew usurers, nor grumbling monks, nor other importunate despicability of men or mud-elements afflicted Abbot Hugo any more; but he dropt his rosaries, closed his account-books, closed his old ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... have excepted only (1) those which were so near some other reading previously adopted or suggested, as to be undeserving of separate record, and (2) a few (of Becket, Jackson, and others) which were palpably erroneous. Even of these we have given a sufficient number ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... been recorded for our information, of which I have an obscure suspicion, remains to be ascertained. The minds of men of great political sagacity were unquestionably at that moment full of obscure indications of the approaching change; Erasmus, when at Canterbury before the tomb of Becket, observing it loaded with a vast profusion of jewels, wished that those had been distributed among the poor, and that the shrine had been only adorned with boughs and flowers; "For," said he, "those who have heaped up all this mass of treasure will one ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... bite the rushes and sticks it was strewn with. He made many laws. One was that, if a priest or monk was thought to have committed any crime, he should be tried by the king's judge, instead of the bishop. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket, did not think it right to consent to this law; and, though he and the king had once been great friends, Henry was so angry with him that he was forced to leave England, and take shelter with the King of France. Six years passed by, and the king pretended to be reconciled ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dominion of truth and justice which they held to be identical with that of the Church, as that was identical with the kingdom of God, supplies the key to the lives and characters of such men as Ambrose, Cyril, Dunstan, and Becket. They each came in collision with the civil power; but Ambrose against Justina or even Theodosius, Cyril against Orestes, Dunstan against Edwy, Becket against Henry Plantagenet—each represented, in a greater or less degree, the cause of religion, nay ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... it) being to throw Billy Priske's sweetheart off the scent. For two days past he had been slyly working upon Billy's fears, and was relating to him how, with two words, a Moorish lady had followed Gilbert a Becket from Palestine to London, and found him there—when my father, attracted by the smell of pitch, strolled forward and caught Mr. Badcock in the act of sealing the bottles from a ladle which stood heating over a lamp. In the next five ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... in Henry's kingdom—his Lord Chancellor (S145), Thomas Becket—who was always ready to serve him. At his own expense the Chancellor now equipped seven hundred knights, and, crossing the Channel, fought valiantly for the suppression of the rebellion in Toulouse (S161) in the south of France. (See map facing ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... that our predecessors assented either tacitly or by permission, we declare that we do not give our assent, nor do we approve it; nay, we blame it, and let this be announced in Venice, so that, for the rest, every one may take care of his own conscience. St. Thomas a Becket, whose festival is celebrated this very day, suffered martyrdom for the ecclesiastical liberty; it is our duty likewise to support and defend it.' Contarini says: 'This remonstrance was delivered with some marks of anger, which induced me to tell him how the tribunal of the most excellent the Lords ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... side of Cheapside, (between Ironmonger Lane and Old Jewry,) stood the Hospital of St. Thomas of Acon, founded by Thomas Fitz-Theobald de Helles, and his wife Agnes, sister to the turbulent Thomas Becket, who was born in the house of his father, Gilbert, situated on this spot. The mother of our meek saint was a fair Saracen, whom his father had married in the Holy Land. On the site of this house rose the hospital, built within twenty years ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... made no difficulty for us, and we wandered about in the court-yard and cloister. The towers looked beautifully grey and soft against the bright blue sky, and the view over Soissons, with all its churches and old houses, was charming. It seems that Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, lived at the Abbey when he was exiled from England and had taken ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... Christo was a very good fellow, and he sometimes reminded me of a terrier ready to obey or take a hint from his master upon any active subject, while at others, in his calmer moments, he resembled King Henry's knights, who interpreted their monarch's wishes respecting Thomas a-Becket. ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... sacred by the Normans, and all the more knightly races of the continent. Even the craftiest dissimulator, designing fraud, and stratagem, and murder to a foe, would not, to gain his ends, betray the pledge of the kiss of peace. When Henry II. consented to meet Becket after his return from Rome, and promised to remedy all of which his prelate complained, he struck prophetic dismay into Becket's heart by evading the kiss ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Domesday Book, where he will find a few brief lines to cover the intervening space in England's history. From the struggles of Stephen and Matilda he is led to the quarrel of her son, King Henry, with Thomas Becket, and so onward step ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... the Pardon Churchyard of St. Paul's was a chapel of rich ornament, built by "Gilbert Becket, portgrave and principal magistrate in this City in the reign of King Stephen." He was the great Archbishop's father. The monuments in it and the surrounding churchyard are said to have rivalled in beauty those inside the cathedral. How ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... by the Virgin on St. Thomas a Becket, (according to a MS. in the Cotton Library,) he received from our Lady's own hands, at Sens, in France, a golden eagle, and a small phial of stone or glass, containing an unction, on whose virtues she largely expatiated. Being then in banishment, ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... Star. There all was bustle and commotion, for some people of high rank had just arrived on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, or rather to the place where the shrine had stood in past ages. King Henry the Eighth had destroyed the shrine, and a soldier had "rattled down proud Becket's glassy bones," but the spot where it had been was considered holy, and the poor deluded people even yet sometimes came to worship there, and to make their painful way up the Pilgrims' Stairs, which ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... morbid and changeful humour have uttered reproachful words against his Minister in the favourite's ear—even expressed a wish to be rid of him, as did our first Plantagenet when tired of the despotism of Thomas a Becket—and had perhaps listened to strange proposals for effecting such object. But the Cardinal knew right well also to what extent Louis was a king and a Frenchman, and devoted by self-interest to their common system. He despatched, therefore, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... from the Isle of Thanet. A very old trackway runs along the crest of the Downs from the West Country to Kent, known now as the Pilgrim's Way, because it was followed in far later times by mediaeval wayfarers from Somerset and Dorset to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. But Mr. Charles Elton has shown conclusively that the Pilgrim's Way is many centuries more ancient than the martyr of King Henry's epoch, and that it was used in the Bronze Age for the transport ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... we come to dear old Winchelsea. The church (built between 1288-1292), of which only the choir and chancel, with some portions of the transepts, now remain, was originally dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, but in the present day is called after St. Thomas the Apostle. It possesses an exceptionally fine vane, perched on a curiously squat, barn-like structure, which does duty for a tower. With its creeper-covered dormer windows and a somewhat convivial-looking chimney-pot sticking up out of one of ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Philadelphia. She was a vivacious old lady, and was accompanied by her nephew, Hamilton Beckett, in whom I found a congenial playmate. His name made a strong impression upon my memory, as I was then reading the history of Thomas a Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury. I have heard that this friend of my childhood went eventually to England to reside. The Penningtons of Newark had a cottage near us. William Pennington subsequently became Governor of New Jersey. I also enjoyed ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... teacher and a Mentor,—a young gentleman from Geneva, whom historians love to call an adventurer, but who occupied the post of private secretary to the Danish minister. Aristocratic pedants call everybody an adventurer who makes his fortune by his genius and his accomplishments. They called Thomas Becket an adventurer in the time of Henry II., and Thomas Cromwell in the reign of Henry VIII. The young secretary to the Danish minister seems to have been a man of remarkable ability, insight, and powers of fascination, based on his intelligence and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... is said,' answered his cousin; 'though I don't think it is certain whose it is. There is a room called Sir Hugh's Chamber, over the gateway, but the honour of naming it is undecided between Hugo de Morville, who murdered Thomas a Becket, and his namesake, the first Baronet, who lived in the time of William of Orange, when the quarrel began with our branch of the family. Do you know the history ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lion, who reigned for nearly fifty years. Henry was now in the midst of his great struggle with the Church, but William made no attempt to use the opportunity. He accepted the earldom of Huntingdon from Henry, and in 1170, when the younger Henry was crowned in Becket's despite, William took the oath of fealty to him as Earl of Huntingdon. But in 1173-74, when the English king's ungrateful son organized a baronial revolt, William decided that his chance had come. His grandfather, David, had made him Earl of Northumberland, ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... synod of the clergy was assembled to hear these important documents. The English monarch had contrived to impress the Holy See with wonderful ideas of his sanctity, by his penitential expiations of his share in the murder of St. Thomas a Becket. It was therefore easy for him to procure a confirmation of Adrian's Bull from the then reigning Pontiff, Alexander III. The Pope also wrote to Christian, the Legate, to the Irish archbishops, and to the King. Our historians ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Caledonia. 1. A lance. 2. The ornamented part, on a larger scale. 3. A cap ornamented with feathers, and girt with a sligg. 4. A comb. 5. A becket, or piece of cord made of cocoa-nut bark, used in throwing their lances. 6 and 7. Different clubs. 8. A pick-axe used in cultivating the ground. ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... prelates; when they are proud and great, there is also danger from them; as it was in the times of Anselmus, and Thomas Becket, Archbishops of Canterbury; who, with their croziers, did almost try it with the king's sword; and yet they had to deal with stout and haughty kings, William Rufus, Henry the First, and Henry the Second. The danger is not from that state, but where it hath a dependence of foreign ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... were informed, was built by the murderers of Thomas a Becket in expiation of their sin, but only a few fragments of the buildings now remained. We halted for rest and refreshments at the "Fox House Inn," which stood at a junction of roads and was formerly the hunting-box of the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... are old frendes, it is well handled and workemanly. Willyam Boswell in Pater noster rowe, painted them. Here is Christ, and Sathan, Sainct Peter, and Symon Magus, Paule, and Alexader the Coppersmith, Trace, and Becket, Martin Luther, and the Pope ... bishop Cramer, and bishop Gardiner. Boner wepyng, Bartlet, grene breche ... Salomon, and Will Sommer. The cocke and the lyon, the wolfe and the lambe." This passage also necessarily implies that ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... would indeed be faced by a strange task if he were compelled to trace the moral ideals of Simeon Stylites and of Howard the philanthropist, of Francis of Assisi and Oliver Cromwell, of Thomas Aquinas and Thomas a Becket, to a common source. The only ethical and social principles which can properly be called Christian are those which can be proved to have their root in the teaching and example of the Founder of Christianity. But the Gospel of Christ was a product of Jewish soil. It is historically ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... By his wife Bridget, he had but one child,—a daughter, Christian, born May 8, 1667. She married Thomas Mason, and died in 1693; leaving an only child, Susannah, born August 23, 1687. Edward Bishop was her guardian. She married John Becket in 1711, and by him had a son, John, and six daughters, as follows: Susannah, married to David Felt, Elizabeth to William Peele, Sarah to Nathaniel Silsbee, Rebecca to William Fairfield, Eunice to Thorndike Deland, and Hannah to ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... abroad were able to bring back new plants and seeds; while it is well known that many of the religious houses, the Cistercians especially, who always settled in the remote country, were most energetic farmers, their energy being materially assisted by their wealth. It is said that the great Becket when he visited a monastery did not disdain ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... the very ancient history of Amboise, Walter and I were glad to connect it with a later time when Louis VII met Thomas a Becket here with a view to bringing about a reconciliation between the proud prelate and his lord and master, Henry II of England. This meeting seemed comparatively recent, after the shadowy traditions of Caesar and St. Martin that were poured into our ears, and we began to feel ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... land are those hills, and wealthy; full of noble houses buried in the deep beech-woods, which once were a great forest, stretching in a ring round the north of London, full of deer and boar, and of wild bulls too, even as late as the twelfth century, according to the old legend of Thomas a Becket's father and the fair Saracen, which you ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... a blow will remain forever unintelligible unless we realise what the brains of St. Thomas were thinking about just before they were distributed over the floor. They were thinking about the great mediaeval conception that the church is the judge of the world. Becket objected to a priest being tried even by the Lord Chief Justice. And his reason was simple: because the Lord Chief Justice was being tried by the priest. The judiciary was itself sub judice. The kings were themselves in the dock. The idea was to create an invisible kingdom, ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... appeal to Rome. Bishop Riddell furthered the building of the church, and embellished it in various ways. He also recovered some property that had been taken away. Before consecration he had been compelled to profess publicly that he had had nothing to do with the murder of Archbishop Becket: "Mortem S. Thomae Archiepiscopi neque verbo neque facto neque scripto scienter procuravit." He became very wealthy. He died in 1189 at Winchester, whither he had gone to welcome King Richard. Not long after his death his tomb ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... the King's gittar, and Fairbrother, the rogue that I intrusted with the carrying of it on foot, whom I thought I had lost. Col. Dixwell's horse taken by a soldier and delivered to my Lord, and by him to me to carry to London. Came to Canterbury, dined there. I saw the minster and the remains of Becket's tomb. To Sittiligborne and Rochester. At Chatham and Rochester the ships and bridge. Mr. Hetly's mistake about dinner. Come to Gravesend. A good handsome wench I kissed, the first that I have seen a great while. Supped with my Lord, drank late below with Penrose, the Captain. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... over to Oak Plains, and I saw a son of his when I was taking care of Miss West last spring through that lung fever—looked like his father. I wish I'd thought to tell him about that Sunday. I heard he was waiting on that pretty Becket girl, the orphan one that lives with Nathan Becket. Her father and mother was both lost at ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the 'Vita Mathildis' (Muratori, vol. v.) foreseen that his beloved Canossa would one day be nothing but a mass of native rock, he would undoubtedly have been more explicit on these points; and much that is vague about an event only paralleled by our Henry II.'s penance before Becket's shrine at ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... dignities go so far into the outer world as Archbishop Lang of York, who began as a barrister. This early predestination has always been the common episcopal experience. Archbishop Benson's early attempts at religious services remind one both of St. Thomas a Becket, the "boy bishop," and those early ceremonies of St. Athanasius which were observed and inquired upon by the good bishop Alexander. (For though still a tender infant, St. Athanasius with perfect correctness and validity was baptizing a number ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... of Sparkford), is a village on the N.E. side of Cadbury Camp, with a church dedicated to St Thomas a Becket, who is perhaps intended by the fresco of a bishop which is on the splay of a window in the N. aisle. The responds of the aisle arches are curiously banded. There is a good reredos, a piscina, and ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... healing value, later proved to have been the bones not of men but of animals. There have been sacred springs and consecrated waters almost without number. They will still show you in Canterbury Cathedral stones worn by the feet of countless pilgrims seeking at the shrine of Thomas a Becket a healing to the reality of which those who wore away those stones bore testimony in a variety of gifts which made the shrine of a Becket at one time one of ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... Henry the Second claims our rhyme 1154-1189 'The hardest worker of his time'; A wiser King we never had Nor father with his sons so bad. Becket This the first 'Plantagenet' King With Becket strove like anything; Church v. Which should be Master, Church or Crown Crown Pull-King Pull-Bishop; both went down. Thomas was murdered by four Knights On steps of Altar—Sorry wights: With bleeding feet the King ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... reading or experience commensurate with his original powers of reasoning or invention. He was quite conscious of it, and did his best to fill up the gap in his intellectual equipment. He showed what he might have done under more favouring circumstances in a very interesting volume on Becket's history and letters. But circumstances were hopelessly against him; he had not time, he had not health and strength, for the learning which he so needed, which he so longed for. But wherever he could, he learned. He was quite ready to submit his prepossessions to the test and ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... there was a great to-do to carry out this doctrine, in elaborate symbolism. A set of beggars and cripples, gathered for the occasion, was exhibited, and kings and cardinals went solemnly through the motions of serving them. As the English schoolboy phrased it, "Thomas Becket ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... deck dark-skinned men, whose clothing clung to their shivering limbs as if they had been overboard, had finished recoiling the braces, and clearing the gear. The kassab, after having hung the fore-topsail halyards in the becket, strutted into the waist toward a row of men who stood idly with their shoulders against the side of the long boat amidships. He passed along looking up close at the stolid faces. Room was made for him, and he took ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... of the latter, should be made to have some influence on the finale of the story. All the rest are glorious subjects; especially Henry I. (being the struggle between the men of arms and of letters, in the persons of Henry and Becket), Stephen, Richard I., Edward ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Bang, and Mr. Whitehouse's Pax and Priam, all winners of field trials. There have been several very good black and whites. Mr. Francis's, afterwards Mr. Salter's, Chang was a field trial winner of this colour. A still better one was Mr. S. Becket's Rector, a somewhat mean little dog to look at, but quite extraordinary in his work, as he won the Pointer Puppy Stake at Shrewsbury and the All-Aged Stake three years in succession. Mr. Salter's Romp family were quite remarkable in colour—a white ground, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... (of churchwardens' pattern) and wainscotting have been built up against its pillars, the stone work having been cut away to accommodate the painted wood. There are some good memorial windows; one of Henry II. being married to Eleanor (1152); and another of Thomas-a-Becket visiting ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... fay, now! that's a fine thing! and a fine fellow! and a fleet foot! That lad 'll rise! He'll be a squire some day. Look at him. Bowels of a'Becket! 'tis a sight! I'd rather see that, now, than old Groschen 's supper-table groaning with Wurst again, and running a river of Rudesheimer! Tussle on! I'll lend a hand if there's occasion; but you shall have the honour, boy, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... suggesting a comparison between the prayer of this primitive martyr bound to the stake, with the prayer of Thomas Becket, of Canterbury, as stated in the ancient services for his day, when he was murdered in his own cathedral, to which we shall hereafter refer at length. The comparison will impress us with the difference between religion and superstition, between the purity of primitive Christian worship, and the ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... have long remembered the essentials of the film, The Death of Thomas Becket. It may not compare in technique with some of our present moving picture achievements, but the idea must have been particularly adapted to the film medium. The story has stayed in my mind with great persistence, not only as a narrative, but as the first hint to me that orthodox religious feeling ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... those particularly which relate to restrictions on worship and on trade, are adored by squires and rectors in Pitt Clubs, under the name of a minister who was as bad a representative of the system which has been christened after him as Becket of the spirit of the Gospel. On the other hand, the cause for which Hampden bled on the field and Sidney on the scaffold is enthusiastically toasted by many an honest radical who would be puzzled to explain the difference between ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... second the recommendations of my friends. After a last revisal I consulted with Mr. Mallet and Dr. Maty, who approved the design and promoted the execution. Mr. Mallet, after hearing me read my manuscript, received it from my hands, and delivered it into those of Becket, with whom he made an agreement in my name; an easy agreement: I required only a certain number of copies; and, without transferring my property, I devolved on the bookseller the charges and profits of ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... clearing my eyes, blinded with the hissing spray, just as Guy answered, coolly as ever. He had run his arm through a becket, and did not seem to have moved otherwise, whereas I disgraced myself by falling at full length as the ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... saw at Canterbury the cathedral; Black Edward's helm, and Becket's bloody stone, Were pointed out as usual by the bedral, In the same quaint, uninterested tone:— There's glory again for you, gentle reader! All Ends in a rusty casque and dubious bone,[554] Half-solved into these ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... in the end of the twelfth century, there stood in the very midst of it a chapel of marvellous beauty with a crypt, from which by a flight of steps one might reach the river, dedicated in honour of St Thomas Becket. This chapel was built in memory of St Thomas by one Peter, priest of St Mary Colechurch, where the martyr had been christened. It was this same Peter who began to build the great bridge of stone, and when he died he was buried in the chapel he had erected in ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... the extra- national, and too often anti-national position, which the Roman clergy held for many ages, and of which the instinct, at least, lingers among them in many countries. Out of it arose, too, all after struggles between the temporal and ecclesiastical powers. Becket, fighting to the death against Henry II., was not, as M. Thierry thinks, the Anglo-Saxon defying the Norman. He was the representative of the Christian Roman defying the Teuton, on the ground of rights which he believed to have existed while the Teuton was a heathen in the German forests. Gradually, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... by two tree-nails. Towards the opposite end of the arrow are two feathers, generally of the spotted oval, not very neatly lashed on. The bow-string consists of from twelve to eighteen small lines of three-sinew sinnet, having a loose twist, and with a separate becket of the same size for going over the knobs at ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... in it. Hazlitt, whom you must often have thought of, would have been pleased. Come to think of it, I shall put this book upon the Hazlitt shelf. You have acquired a manner that I can only call august; otherwise, I should have to call it such amazing impudence. The BAUBLE SHOP and BECKET are examples of what I mean. But ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sovereigns and their seneschals in Western Aquitaine. It was only in the wilder parts of the country, such as the Quercy and the Rouergue, where Celtic blood was, and still is, almost pure, and where the people were very difficult to govern—Caesar had found that out before Henry Plantagenet, Becket, and John Chandos—that there were frequent revolts, entailing as a fatal consequence in those feudal ages barbaric repression. Throughout the flourishing Bordelais the people became firmly and thoroughly attached to the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... complete break up; he is low to a degree, and his expressions yesterday, while the Council were sitting in his bedroom, were most melancholy. The Council consisted of Lord Bathurst, Colchester, Conyngham, Becket, and Vice-Chancellor, who was here by accident. I suppose if they had wanted another they would have sent for me. There is no party at the Pavilion, and everything looks glum ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... and the next day's record is one of even worse omen. The poet thanks Heaven that his spirits are not affected by Mr. Dodsley's refusal, and that he is already preparing another poem for another bookseller, Mr. Becket. He adds, however: "I find myself under the disagreeable necessity of vending or pawning some of my more useless articles: accordingly have put into a paper such as cost about two or three guineas, and, being silver, have not greatly ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... management of public affairs was Thomas Becket, whom he made chancellor of the kingdom. Becket was fond of pomp and luxury, and lived in a more magnificent manner than even ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... leaped into the sea; and Denman, towing the girl by the becket of her life-buoy, paid no attention to the sinking hull until satisfied that they ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... English ballad at the start, but bears the traces of the Scottish minstrels who were doubtless prompt to borrow it. There is likelihood enough that the ballad was originally suggested by the legend of Gilbert Becket, father of the great archbishop; the story running that Becket, while a captive in Holy Land, plighted his troth to the daughter of a Saracenic prince. When the crusader had made good his escape, the lady followed him, inquiring her way to "England" and to "London," where she ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... judge unto that nation," which occurs in the Acts of the Apostles (c. XXIV. v. 10), was what actually misled Bracciolini; the more so, as when he was in this country, he discharged what Dean Hook called "the heavenly occupations of a parish priest" (Life of Becket, p. 359), and for the very reason that he was a consecrated man he must have taken a much greater interest and placed far more trust in St. Paul, than Tacitus or any other heathen among the ancient Romans was likely to have done; but an error so extraordinary ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... Mag. for 1773, p. 192, is announced: 'The Iliad of Homer. Translated by James Macpherson, Esq., 2 vols. 4to. L2 2s. Becket.' Hume writes:—'Finding the style of his Ossian admired by some, he attempts a translation of Homer in the very same style. He begins and finishes in six weeks a work that was for ever to eclipse the translation of Pope, whom he does not even deign to mention in his preface; but ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... "incongruity of character" between these two imaginaries. He takes it for granted that "we are something which divides us from mediaeval Christianity by an impassable gulf." When he speaks of asceticism he must quote "the hair shirt of Thomas a Becket." If he is speaking of Oxford undergraduates one has "pleasant faces, cheerful voices, and animal spirits," and at the end of the fine but partial essay on Spinoza we have six lines which might come bodily from a leader in the Daily Telegraph, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... a misprint for Bartholomeus Exoniensis Episcopus, the celebrated Bartholomew Iscanus, the opponent of Thomas a Becket. Our correspondent should have given the title of the work where he found the signatures, as they are not appended to the "Constitutions" in Matthew Paris, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... it did when a monarch, bare-footed, walked through the roughly paved streets to do penance at the tomb of its martyred archbishop. It escaped lightly during the Reformation and civil war, though Becket's shrine was despoiled as savoring of idolatry and Cromwell's men desecrated its sanctity by stabling their horses in the ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... Gad's Hill, famous as the residence of the late Charles Dickens. Further on is Canterbury, which is celebrated as the stronghold of Kentishmen and the first English Christian city. Its prime attraction of course is its fine cathedral, which in 1170 was the scene of Becket's murder. ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... vol. iv. p. 5., it is said that the wife of Theobald, second Butler, was Joane, eldest sister and co-heir of John de Marisco, a great baron in Ireland; and thirdly, Sir Bernard Burke, in his Extinct Peerage, makes his wife to be Maud, sister of Thomas a Becket. Which of these three accounts am I ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, was erected by the Prior of Bermondsey, so long since as the year 1013; but the hospital was refounded, and the revenues increased, anno 1215, by Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester, in whose diocese it was situated, continuing, however, to be held of the priors of Bermondsey till ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... for a year, for a higher figure you get two masses a week and an oleograph, for a trifle more you get mentioned in special prayers for benefactors, with a rosary that has touched the relics of Thomas-a-Becket or has been laid on the shrine of Blessed Thomas More. One advertisement sets forth the proviso that unless the payment is regular the supplications will be stopped. No pay, no prayer. Point d'argent, point de pretre. Prayers and advice, political or otherwise, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... faith. Never ask devotion of self-interest, because such interest may change; but expect all from sentiments, religious faith, monarchical faith, patriotic faith. Those three beliefs produced such men as the Berthereaus of Geneva, the Sydneys and Straffords of England, the murderers of Thomas a Becket, the Jacques Coeurs, the Jeanne d'Arcs, the Richelieus, Dantons, Bonchamps, Talmonts, and also the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... precious labours of the chosen servants of the church down to the last pamphlet written in opposition to the consecration of Dr Hampden; and raised above this were to be seen the busts of the greatest among the great: Chrysostom, St Augustine, Thomas a Becket, Cardinal Wolsey, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... for the summer, that we first came across Borough Farm. We left it in 1889. I did a great deal of work, there and in London, in those seven years. The Macmillan papers I have already spoken of. They were on many subjects—Tennyson's "Becket," Mr. Pater's "Marius," "The Literature of Introspection," Jane Austen, Keats, Gustavo Becquer, and various others. I still kept up my Spanish to some extent, and I twice examined—in 1882 and 1888—for the Taylorian scholarship in Spanish at Oxford, our old ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... certainly odd that the modern world charged Christianity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself combined extreme bodily luxury with an extreme absence of artistic pomp. The modern man thought Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found the church too simple exactly where modern life ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... erected here, and bricks manufactured by a convict of the name of Becket, who came out in the last fleet, and has fifty-two people to work under him. He makes 25,000 bricks weekly. He says that they are very good, and would sell at Birmingham, where he worked about eighteen months ago, at more than 30 shillings ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... installation of Napoleon as "our last great man," was to expose the inherent weakness of the Sartorian creed—that humanity exists for the sake of its great men. The other strange delusion is the entire omission from the "Hero as Priest" of any Catholic hero. Not only are St. Bernard, and St. Francis, Becket and Lanfranc—all the martyrs and missionaries of Catholicism—consigned to oblivion:—but not a word is said of Alfred, Godfrey, St. Louis, St. Ferdinand, and St. Stephen. In a single volume there must ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... returned in triumph. The temporal power of the Church was in its infancy; it only rose upon the conversion of Constantine, and it was weak compared to what it became in after ages; but, when the Emperor of Germany did penance barefoot before Pope Hildebrand, and a king of England was whipped at Becket's tomb, we only witness the full-grown strength of the infant power that was being reared by the Bishop of Alexandria. His writings are numerous and wholly controversial, chiefly against the Arians. The Athanasian creed seems to have been so named only because it was thought to ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Palace, and the effect produced is superb. A Catholic bookseller from Belgium makes quite a display of his editions of devotional works for every country under heaven; and there, too, are the effigies of Cardinal Boromeo, Thomas a Becket, and the late Archbishop of Paris, all arrayed in full pontificals. Their crosiers are very richly jewelled. If the apostles of Christ could revisit the earth, they would never fancy that these were their successors in the work and patience ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... would name Gerald before all others." Later he lectured at Paris on canon law and theology; his lectures, he tells us, were very popular. He returned thence in 1172, two years after the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, whose example and struggle for the rights of the Church made a deep and lasting impression on him. Gerald soon obtained preferment: he held three livings in Pembroke, one in Oxfordshire, and canonries ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... tight along the boom, and fasten it through a hole in the end. Fasten the throat of sail tight to the top of the mast. Cut a number of short pieces of heavy twine, and lace the sail, at intervals of a foot, to the boom and mast. Fasten a becket or loop of rope at a suitable position on the mast, to set the heel of the sprit into. Rig main-sheet over two sheaves, as shown; it brings less strain on the boom, and clears the skipper's head in tacking. Make a good, large wooden cleat ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... parts of the kingdom, e.g. Auster in Dorsetshire, which the quaint and diligent Lambarde, quoting from Polydore Virgil, evidently regarded as serious, and takes immense pains to confute! It relates to St. Thomas a Becket and his contention with King Henry II., whereby he began to be looked upon as the King's enemy, and as such began to be "so commonly neglected, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... blood, and in his own train he kept up a discipline, not too strict in itself, but galling in the manner in which it was enforced by those who imitated his example. By the time the suite was collected, Christmas and the festival of St. Thomas a Becket were so near that it would have been neglect of a popular saint to have left his shrine without keeping his day. And after the Epiphany, though the party did reach Dover in a day's ride, a stormy period set in, putting crossing out of the question, and detaining the suite ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with some legend, such as belongs to every robber's nest on that famous river. No hawk-eyed baron ready to pounce on the traveler, is recorded as having lived here; all that seems to be remembered of it is, that the murderers of Thomas A Becket lay secreted here for a time after that deed of blood, ere they ventured forth on their pilgrimage, haunted by the accursed memory of it all their lives. This is something, to be sure, in the way of historic incident, but the real ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... her Court, and always preferred to get as near to the door as he could. The choir at Chartres, on the contrary, was aristocratic; every window there had a court quality, even down to the contemporary Thomas a'Becket, the fashionable martyr of good society. Theology was put into the transepts or still further away in the nave where the window of the New Alliance elbows the Prodigal Son. Even to Blanche of Castile, Mary was neither a philanthropist ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... earlier and later periods. These throw a good deal of light upon his skill in making characters delineate themselves, and they reveal incidentally some of his methods of dramatic narrative. For this paper, however, please confine your criticism to "Queen Mary," "Harold," "Becket," "The Cup," "The Falcon," "The Promise of May," and "The Foresters." In studying "Becket," compare Irving's stage version of ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Cluniac monk, who, owing his position to his relative Milo, Earl of Hereford, was consecrated in 1139. He was made Bishop of Hereford in 1148, and was translated thence to London. Though he owed much to Becket, his patron and tutor, he is said to have taken the king's side in the quarrels with Becket, and to have been instrumental ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... Morte below us. "The little grey church on the windy shore," which once belonged to William de Tracy, one of your friend Thomas a Becket's murderers. If you wish to vent your wrath against those who cut off your favourite Saxon hero, there is a tomb in the church which bears De Tracy's name; over which rival Dryasdusts contend fiercely with paper-arrows: the one party asserting that he became a priest, and died ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... debt, caused no doubt by his lavish expenditure in bribery at Rome. On his death in October, 1166, the King kept the abbacy vacant for several months, for at this time the great conflict between the King and the Archbishop, Becket, was raging, and the King wished ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... is true; I am proceeding rather too methodically. And yet I suppose I should not obtain Lisardo's forgiveness if, in arriving at the period of HENRY THE SECOND,[252] I did not notice that extraordinary student and politician, BECKET! ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of the recess itself has open tabernacle-work, now containing a series of figures representing the crowning of the Virgin; on one side are figures of King Ethelbert and St. John the Baptist, and on the other St. Thomas a Becket (with double crozier) and Bishop Thomas de Cantilupe. Of these, however, only the two central carvings are in their original positions, the others having been discovered by Mr. Cottingham when the oak ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... thenceforth wonderment and devotion. Masses were sung, tapers were kindled, bells were tolled; the monks of St. Romuald had a solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the sacristan at their tail, and the holy breeches of St. Thomas a Becket in the centre; —Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of holy water. The Rood of Gillingham was deserted; the chapel of Rainham forsaken; every one who had a soul to be saved, flocked with his ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... endless. To take our own ancestors alone, no one can read the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, or Abbot Samson's Miracles of St. Edmund, or the accounts given by Eadmer and Osbern of the miracles of St. Dunstan, or the long lists of those wrought by Thomas a Becket, or by any other in the army of English saints, without seeing the perfect naturalness of this growth. This evolution of miracle in all parts of Europe came out of a vast preceding series of beliefs, extending not merely through the early Church but far ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Thomas a Becket, in his Description of London, supposed to be written about the middle of the reign of Henry II, says of this city, "ennobled by her men, graced by her arms, and peopled by a multitude of inhabitants," ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... at this Tokio Delmonico's. Last night we had a party of the most celebrated actors enjoying a dinner to commemorate the successful completion of a new piece which had enjoyed a great run. I amused myself trying to select the Montagu, Gilbert, Becket, and Booth of the party, and succeeded well, as I afterward heard. Actors are held in estimation in Tokio, and these attracted great attention as they dined. Matters are much as with us, I fancy. Our interpreter, in his broken English, told us in regard to the ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... of Canterbury Cathedral, consisting of Trinity Chapel and the circular adjunct called Becket's Crown. The building of these commenced the year following the fire which occurred A. D. 1174, and was carried on without intermission for several successive years. Gervase, a monk of the cathedral, and an eyewitness of this re-edification, ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... century was the age of the Crusades, of Anselm and Abelard, of Bernard of Clairvaux, and Arnold of Brescia. It saw the settlement of the question of investitures, and in England the struggle between Henry II. and Becket, in which the murder of the archbishop gave him the victory. It saw a new enthusiasm of monasticism, not originated by, but centring in, the person of Bernard, a more conspicuous and a more authoritative figure than any pope of the time. To him was due the suppression of the intellectual ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... known in England at least as far back as the reign of Henry VI. There had been theatrical exhibitions in abundance, however, at a much earlier period. Stow, in his "Survey of London," in 1599, translates from the "Life of Thomas a Becket," by Fitzstephen, who wrote about 1182, mention of "the shews upon theatres and comical pastimes" of London, "its holy playes, representations of miracles which holy confessors have wrought, or representations of tormentes ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... men as St. Bede, who lived in the eighth century; to St. Odo of Canterbury; to St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the tenth century; to St. Wolstan of Worcester; to St. Osmond, Bishop of Salisbury in the eleventh century; to St. Thomas a Becket, in the twelfth century; to St. Richard, Bishop of Chichester and St. Edmund, in the thirteenth century; and to many others we could mention, whose names are enrolled in the lists of the Catholic Church, and ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... of the biographers of Becket, states that the archbishop's murderers {409} (S. Thom. Cantuar., ed. Giles, vol. i. p. 65.), having crossed from France, landed at Portus Canum. It has been conjectured that this means Hythe, which is close to Saltwood Castle, where the knights were received by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... donors to Christ Church alone. In most cases the gifts are of one or a few books, but occasionally collections of respectable size were received, as when T. Sturey, senior, enriched the library with nearly sixty books, when Thomas a Becket left over seventy, and when Prior Henry Eastry left eighty volumes at his death. As many or more donors to St. Augustine's are indexed. Here also some of the donations were fairly large: for example, Henry Belham and Henry Cokeryng gave nineteen books each, a prior twenty-seven, a certain John ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... who becomes Young Beichan, Young Bichem, and so forth, and has adventures identical with those of Lord Bateman, though the proud porter in the Scots version is scarcely so prominent and illustrious. As Motherwell saw, Bekie (Beichan, Buchan, Bateman) is really Becket, Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas of Canterbury. Every one has heard how HIS Saracen bride sought him in London. (Robert of Gloucester's Life and Martyrdom of Thomas Becket, Percy Society. See Child's ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... Lingard is now actually recommended as a standard authority for the young by educated Protestants, who seem utterly unable to see that, whether the man be honest or not, his whole view of the course of British events since Becket first quarrelled with his king must be antipodal to their own; and that his account of all which has passed for three hundred years since the fall of Wolsey is most likely to be (and, indeed, may be proved to be) one huge ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... to the smallest baron, exceeded every thing which, in the present times, we can easily form a notion of Westminster-hall was the dining-room of William Rufus, and might frequently, perhaps, not be too large for his company. It was reckoned a piece of magnificence in Thomas Becket, that he strewed the floor of his hall with clean hay or rushes in the season, in order that the knights and squires, who could not get seats, might not spoil their fine clothes when they sat down on the floor to eat their dinner. The great Earl of Warwick is said to have entertained every day, at ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... remembering the Christian name. How she found him at last in his English home, and was united to him, after being baptized, in holy wedlock. How the issue of this marriage was no other than the sainted Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket {23}. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... Probably of the latter part of the twelfth century. The text is executed in a lower-case gothic. In the Calendar of Saints are found the names of Edward the Martyr, Cuthbert, Guthlac, Etheldrith, and Thomas a Becket. I think I am fully justified in calling this one of the richest, freshest, and most highly ornamented PSALTERS in existence. The illuminations are endless, and seem to comprise the whole history of the Bible. In the representations ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of 1170 (December 29th) occurred an event memorable in ecclesiastical history—the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1162 Becket (who had previously been Chancellor to Henry II.) was made Archbishop, in succession to Archbishop Theobald. The King soon found that he who had served him faithfully as Chancellor would oppose ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... groom and yeoman to the stall. Whistling they came, and free of heart, But soon their mood was changed; Complaint was heard on every part, Of something disarranged. Some clamoured loud for armour lost; Some brawled and wrangled with the host; "By Becket's bones," cried one, "I fear That some false Scot has stol'n my spear!" Young Blount, Lord Marmion's second squire, Found his steed wet with sweat and mire; Although the rated horse-boy sware, Last night he dressed him ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... speech, attacked the Archbishop, whose mildness was stimulated into an angry reply; but Exeter gained his point, for both Brougham and the Duke were for postponing the Bill. Phillpotts would have made a great bishop in the days of Bonner and Gardiner, or he would have been a Becket, or, still better, a Pope either in the palmy days of papal power or during the important period of reaction which succeeded the Reformation. He seems cast in the ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... II is remembered less for his wise laws and far-sighted government than for the murder of Thomas a Becket, which clouded his latter years and brought his enemies—his wife and his son among them—swarming about his ears. This northern coast of Devon is linked with that dark crypt in Canterbury where Becket fell in the sacerdotal robes of High Mass; for ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... fell one by one, while during the same period war was carried on against shrines and pilgrimages. The images of Our Lady of Ipswich and of Our Lady of Walsingham were destroyed; the tomb of St. Thomas Becket was rifled of its precious treasures, and the bones and relics of the saint were treated with the greatest dishonour. Everywhere throughout the country preachers inspired by Cromwell and Cranmer, the latter of whom aimed at nothing less than a Lutheran revolution ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... English writer, was born in north London on the 9th of January 1811. He belonged to a family claiming descent from the father of St Thomas Becket. His elder brother, Sir William a Beckett (1806-1869), became chief justice of Victoria (Australia). Gilbert Abbott a Beckett was educated at Westminster school, and was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1841. He edited Figaro in London, and was one of the original staff of Punch ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... before the three grand inquisitors at the table. Fortunately, Winifred and he were the only spectators; but unfortunately they blundered in at the very moment when the poor owner of the punt was on the rack. The central inquisitor was trying to extract from him information about Becket, almost prompting him with the very words, but without penetrating through the duncical denseness. John Lefolle breathed more freely when the Crusades were broached; but, alas, it very soon became evident that the dunce ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... very narrow compass. Early in his journey he visited Rome, where he found R. Jechiel to be the steward of the household of Pope Alexander. This can be no other than Pope Alexander III, who played so important a part in the struggle between King Henry II and Thomas a Becket. The German Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, supported the anti-Pope Victor IV, and in consequence Alexander had to leave Rome soon after his election in 1159 and before his consecration. He did not return to settle down permanently ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... Henry II., was crowned during his father's lifetime, on June 14th, 1170. At the coronation banquet, when his father stood behind him, the Prince remarked, "The son of an earl may well wait on the son of a king." The event took place during the height of the quarrel between Henry II. and Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose right it was to put the crown on the royal head. Accordingly Becket excommunicated the Archbishop of York and the assistant bishops who had officiated on the occasion. This led to the murder of ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... mediation of an intimate friend and fellow citizen of Fitz-Stephen that Archbishop Theobald had invited Henry of Anjou over from France in 1153. Thomas of London, better known as Thomas Becket, although of foreign descent, was born in the heart of the city, having first seen the light in the house of Gilbert, his father, some time Portreeve of London, situate in Cheapside on a site now occupied by the hall and chapel ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... certainly will, for you must surely understand that!" After pausing a moment in order to think how best to make her meaning clear, Mrs. Pitt went on in her pleasant voice. "You see, pilgrimages were always made to some especial shrine! We'll take Becket's for an example. After his terrible murder, Becket was immediately canonized (that is, made a saint), and for many years a very celebrated shrine to him existed at Canterbury Cathedral. In those days, sumptuous velvets and abundant jewels adorned ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... in England was not very general, we may infer, in the earlier ages of embroidery. There are certain evidences, however, showing that the glove was part of the priestly outfit, remains of gloves having been found on the bones of Thomas a Becket when they were transferred from the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral to the special shrine prepared for them; and a crimson leather pair, bearing the sacred monogram in embroidered gold, are preserved in the New College, Oxford, belonging to the ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... St. Ethelwold, on July 15, 980, when the relics of Birinus were enshrined at the same time, although these had already been translated from Dorchester to Winchester by Bishop Hedda as early as the seventh century. The shrine attracted an immense number of pilgrims until that of Becket at Canterbury rose into prominence. The skull of St. Swithun is said to have been taken to Canterbury by St. Elphege in the eleventh century, and an arm of this patron saint of Winchester was one of the most treasured possessions ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... 'on one side,' if the expression were meant to be particular; 'aside,' if general."—New Gram., p. 345. By these writers, a is also supposed to be sometimes a corruption of of: as, "Much in the same manner, Thomas of Becket, by very frequent and familiar use, became Thomas a Becket; and one of the clock, or perhaps on the clock, is written one o'clock, but pronounced one a clock. The phrases with a before a participle are out of use in the solemn style; but still prevail in ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... brought hither by the Romans. The bird was here before Caesar's arrival; but no notice of his fighting has occurred to me earlier than the time of William Fitz-Stephen, who wrote the Life of Archbishop Becket, some time in the reign of Henry II. William describes the cocking as the sport of school-boys on Shrove Tuesday. "Every year, on the day which is called Carnelevaria (Carnival)—to begin with the sports of the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Honourable Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B. First Lord of the Admiralty. Captain Corcoran Commanding H.M.S. Pinafore. Ralph Rackstraw Able seaman. Dick Deadeye Able seaman. Bill Bobstay Boatswain's mate. Bob Becket Carpenter's mate. Tom Tucker Midshipmate. Sergeant of marines Josephine The Captain's daughter. Hebe Sir Joseph's first cousin. Little Buttercup A Portsmouth bumboat woman. First Lord's sisters, his cousins, ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... at the instigation of the prince of this world, namely, the devil?" But in this he is only re-echoing the teaching of St. Augustine; and he is followed, among other representative writers, by John of Salisbury, the secretary and champion of Thomas Becket, and by Pope Innocent III. To all three there is an instructive contrast between a power divinely conferred and one that has at the best been wrested from God by ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... chaplain, so that they were in a state of almost constant feud throughout his government, although at the end of his career he bore the strongest testimony to the merits of the only man who durst resist him. The old game of Ambrose and Theodosius, Hildebrand and Henry, Becket and Plantagenet, has to be played over and over again, wherever the State refuses to understand that spiritual matters lie beyond its grasp; and when Governor Macquarie prescribed the doctrines to be preached and the hymns to be used in the churches, and commanded ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... founded by Caedwalla in 688 and therefore one of the first Christian churches erected in Sussex. The Archbishops of Canterbury had a residence near, and in the Memorials of Canterbury Dean Stanley tells how Becket's murderers entered the house and threw their arms on the dining-table, which immediately threw them off; replaced, they were again thrown farther off with a louder crash. One of the knights then suggested that ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... of pilgrims, on their way to the shrine of Saint Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, met at the old Tabard Inn, later called the Talbot, in Southwark, and the host proposed that they should beguile the ride by each telling a tale to his fellow-pilgrims. This we all know ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... has probably in mind such an interdict as that pronounced in 1200, by Innocent III, against France. All ecclesiastical functions were suspended and the land was in desolation."—HART. England was put under interdict several times, as in 1170 (for the murder of Becket) and 1208. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... oath of allegiance to the king. [Sidenote: St. Thomas of Canterbury.] Anselm's unflinching advocacy of Papal claims cost him years of exile from his diocese, and much suffering; but, in the following century, similar conduct involved still more serious consequences to St. Thomas a Becket, the then Archbishop of Canterbury. The new question in dispute was the right of clerical offenders to be tried in the spiritual courts, instead of coming under the jurisdiction of the civil power; but, in reality, it was only another ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... arguing the matter further with Thomas o'Becket, or any one else—I skip'd into the boat, and in five minutes we got under sail, and scudded away ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... among his fellow-creatures, while his day's work lasted,—fifty years or so, for it began early. He died in his Castle of Ballenstadt, peaceably among the Hartz Mountains at last, in the year 1170, age about sixty-five. It was in the time while Thomas a Becket was roving about the world, coming home excommunicative, and finally getting killed in Canterbury Cathedral;—while Abbot Samson, still a poor little brown Boy, came over from Norfolk, holding by his mother's hand, to St. Edmundsbury; having seen "SANTANAS s with outspread wings" fearfully ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... rebukes our dislike and recalls our heart again. The dramas, less than the lyrics, and even less than the "Idylls," are matter for the true Tennysonian. Their action is, at its liveliest rather vivacious than vital, and the sentiment, whether in "Becket" or in "Harold," is not only modern, it is fixed within Tennyson's own peculiar score or so of years. But that he might have answered, in drama, to a stronger stimulus, a sharper spur, than his time administered, may be guessed from a few passages of "Queen ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... BECKET: CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON.—The Conqueror had granted to ecclesiastical courts the privilege of trying cases in which the clergy were concerned. On this privilege the clergy had been disposed to insist ever since the fall of the Roman Empire. Under Stephen the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... story is current in the ballad-literature of Scandinavia, Spain, and Italy; but the English tale has undoubtedly been affected by the charming legend of Gilbert Becket, the father of Saint Thomas, who, having been captured by Admiraud, a Saracen prince, and held in durance vile, was freed by Admiraud's daughter, who then followed him to England, knowing no English but 'London' and 'Gilbert'; ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... a fine thing! and a fine fellow! and a fleet foot! That lad 'll rise! He'll be a squire some day. Look at him. Bowels of a'Becket! 'tis a sight! I'd rather see that, now, than old Groschen 's supper-table groaning with Wurst again, and running a river of Rudesheimer! Tussle on! I'll lend a hand if there's occasion; but you shall have the honour, boy, an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... terrier ready to obey or take a hint from his master upon any active subject, while at others, in his calmer moments, he resembled King Henry's knights, who interpreted their monarch's wishes respecting Thomas a-Becket. ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Peperharrow Rectory (the Murewell Vicarage of Robert Elsmere) for the summer, that we first came across Borough Farm. We left it in 1889. I did a great deal of work, there and in London, in those seven years. The Macmillan papers I have already spoken of. They were on many subjects—Tennyson's "Becket," Mr. Pater's "Marius," "The Literature of Introspection," Jane Austen, Keats, Gustavo Becquer, and various others. I still kept up my Spanish to some extent, and I twice examined—in 1882 and 1888—for the ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but others, are the people who have brought Humanity thus far. I don't deny that there are great souls among them; Beckets, and Hugh Grostetes, and Elizabeths of Hungary. But you are the last people to praise them, for you don't understand them. Thierry honours Thomas a Becket more than all Canonisations and worshippers do, because he does see where the man's true greatness lay, and you don't. Why, you may hunt all Surius for such a biography of a mediaeval worthy as Carlyle has given ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... a time, a worthy merchant of London, named GILBERT A BECKET, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was taken prisoner by a Saracen lord. This lord, who treated him kindly and not like a slave, had one fair daughter, who fell in love with the merchant; and who told him ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... son, were a rakish, disorderly sort of people, and rambled from one place to another, till, in the time of Harry the Second, they settled in Kent, and were called Long-Tails, from the long tails which were sent them as a punishment for the murder of Thomas-a-Becket, as the legends say. They have been always sought after by the ladies, but whether it be to show their aversion to popery, or their love to miracles, I cannot say. The Wagstaffs are a merry, thoughtless sort of people, ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... before him, and like Chancellor Wolsey in a later time, Chancellor Becket was a royal tutor;[35] and like Swithin, who still remains the pluvious saint of humid England, and unlike Wolsey, who just missed the glory of canonization, Becket became a widely venerated saint. But less kind to St. Thomas of Canterbury ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... festival of Western origin, and of comparatively recent date; the earliest formal notice of the festival is in England, under Becket, in 1162; though the collect dates ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... that Alfred can still walk in Winchester and that St. Thomas at Canterbury was killed but did not die. It is at least as possible for a Philadelphian to feel the presence of Penn and Franklin as for an Englishman to see the ghosts of Alfred and of Becket. Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... faith and heirs of the kingdom." "If thou wilt be perfect, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor." To this must be added the undeniable fact that the Church, when purest and when most powerful, has depended for its influence on its consideration with the many. Becket's letters, lately published,[363] have struck me not a little; but of course I now refer, not to such dark ages as most Englishmen consider these, but to the primitive Church—the Church of St. Athanasius and St. Ambrose. With a view of showing ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman |
