"Becket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 sea, ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... 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
... Saint Joseph, was notoriously uncomfortable in 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 nor theologist nor merely a mother,—she ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... 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 ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... of marionettes, which illustrated historical scenes. The puppets were dressed by Beth, our old nurse, and my sisters, and Hugh was the showman behind the scenes. The little curtains were drawn up for a tableau which was supposed to represent an episode in the life of Thomas a Becket. Hugh's voice enunciated, "Scene, an a-arid waste!" Then came a silence, and then Hugh was heard to say to his assistant in a loud, agitated whisper, "Where is the Archbishop?" But the puppet had been mislaid, ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 sleek and fair. While chafed the impatient squire like thunder, Old ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... pink newspaper. Pigeons and sparrows hopped about unconcernedly. On the file of cabs, just perceptible through the foliage, the cabmen lolled in listless attitudes. Sir Bartle Frere stolidly kept his back to me, not the least interested in this Gilbert a Becket story. I always thought something was wrong ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... 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, his aunts, sailors, ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... excommunicated by the church on account of this complaint, to prevent greater evils, he was obliged to cause the nobility satisfy both the avarice and arrogance of the clergy, who had now resolved upon and begun a journey to Rome, with a view to raise as great commotions in Scotland, as Thomas Becket had lately ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... as an author in 1851, by the publication of "Lelio, and other Poems," a volume which was received with warm encomiums by the press. In 1853, he published "Love in the Moon: a Poem," which was followed in the same year by "Thomas a Becket, and other Poems." His latest poetical publication appeared in 1854, under the title ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • 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 ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... A'BECKET, GILBERT, an English humourist, who contributed to Punch and other organs; wrote the "Comic Blackstone" and comic histories of England ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 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 they ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... the distance. Its cathedral must have occupied a site as striking as the temple of Poseidon, on the headland of Sunium. But of that cathedral nothing is now left but a heap of fragments, and a stone, on which, fabling tradition says, Henry II. was reconciled to the Church after the murder of Becket. It was pulled down in consequence of the injuries it received at the time of the Revolution; and the bare area where it stood is typical of that devastating tornado which swept feudal and Catholic France out of existence. Where once the learned Huetius lived and wrote, the house of the sous-prefet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... 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
... we made while there, especially that of Miss Molly Hamilton of 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 the youthful companionship of ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... 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 ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... pitched battle first entered England; but it was probably 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 ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... maintained whether the king were absent or present. The old Bishop Nigel of Ely was reappointed Treasurer, and presided over the Exchequer at Westminster. Thomas of London, known in later times by the name of Becket,[11] an active and vigorous man, fifteen years older than the king, who had been ordained a deacon, but had nothing clerical about him except the name, was made Chancellor. Thomas was the king's chosen friend, and the two ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... and French themselves, but in whose hands the Court patronage lay. As early as Henry the Second's time (A.D. 1154-62), if not before[11], this system prevailed. Afriend notes that Fitz-Stephen says of Becket: ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... [27] The efforts of St Dominic were followed by the murder of the papal legate, Pierre de Castelnau, in 1208, which created an excitement comparable with that aroused by the murder of Thomas a Becket, thirty-eight years before, and gave Innocent III. his opportunity. In the summer of 1209 a great army of crusaders assembled at Lyons, and Southern France was invaded by a horde composed partly of religious fanatics, ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... 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 ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... 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, an you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a stalwart lass, passenger of the Anne, was to make one of the governor's family, and literally to be "help" to his wife in the duties of the household, while Mary Becket consented to fill the same place in ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... large hooks or short pieces of rope with a knot at one end and an eye in the other; or formed like a circular wreath for handles; as with cutlass hilts, boarding pikes, tomahawks, &c.; or they are wooden brackets, and probably from a corruption and misapplication of this last term arose the word becket, which seems often to be confounded with bracket. Also, a grummet either of rope or iron, fixed to the bottom of a block, for making fast the standing end ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... facts, the determination to set up the 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 of humanity, against its ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... Bishop of Winchester, who is well known from the fact of his founding the Hospital of St Cross, near Winchester. Hilary, two years before this change was made, had been consecrated Bishop of Chichester, and subsequently became one of the episcopal opponents of Thomas Becket. Henceforth, until the dissolution in the reign of Henry VIII., the head of the religious community at Christchurch was a prior, who was, according to a charter granted by Richard de Redvers in 1160, elected by ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... the biographer of 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
... Well, sir, I'd about give up lookin' when I happened to look on the wall of the settin'-room and there was one hangin' up. And, say, Cap'n Sears, I wisht you could have seen it! 'Twas triced up in a—a kind of becket, as you might say, made out of velvet—yes, sir, by creepin', velvet! And the velvet had posies and grass painted on it. And, I don't know as you'll believe it, but it's a fact, the handle of that brush broom was gilded! Yes ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... thirty-five more Pilgrims. Some of these were soon to wed Mayflower passengers. Widow Martha Ford, recently bereft, giving birth on the night of her arrival to a fourth child, was wed to Peter Brown; Mary Becket (sometimes written Bucket) became the wife of George Soule; John Winslow; later married Mary Chilton, and Thomas Cushman, then a lad of fourteen, became the husband, in manhood, of Mary Allerton. His father, Robert Cushman, remained in the settlement while ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... scheme of color. Notice how the trees are darkest just where they are required to tell most strongly against the white in the centre of the picture. An admirable illustration of the effectiveness of this color-scheme is shown in the "Becket" poster by the "Beggarstaff Brothers," Fig. 69. Another scheme is to have the principal black in the gray area, as in the Vierge drawing, Fig. 26 and in ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... assembled diggers, and trotted off, followed by his black boy, a short, wiry-framed aboriginal from the Burdekin River country, who was much attached to his master, and eyed his bound-up face with much concern. He, like Gerrard, carried a revolver at his saddle-bow, and a Snider carbine in a becket—Native Police fashion. Gerrard, in addition to his revolver, had a 44 deg. Winchester carbine slung across ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... and hospital, 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 ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... at once," said the knight of Malta, flourishing Excalibur. "By St. Thomas a Becket, we'll have as fine a scene as I myself ever ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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 ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... advice of his physicians, he soon sought a healthier abode with the canons of Soisy, in Brie, at whose house he died on November 16, 1240. His body was buried at Pontigny in the still abiding minster which had witnessed the devotions of Becket and Langton, and miracles were soon wrought at his tomb. Within eight years of his death he was declared a saint; and Henry, who had thwarted him in life, and even opposed his canonisation, was among the first of the pilgrims who worshipped at his shrine. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Peerage by Archdall, 1789, 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... 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 Becket, with ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... combination of spiritual and political power in South Wales in the hands of two able, ambitious, and energetic kinsmen, such as he knew Gerald and the Lord Rhys to be. Gerald had made no secret of his admiration for the martyred St. Thomas e Becket. He fashioned himself upon him as Becket did on Anselm. The part which Becket played in England he would like to play in Wales. But the sovereign who had destroyed Becket was not to be frightened by the canons ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... 1538, that a writ of summons was sent forth in the name of Henry VIII., "To thee, Thomas Becket, some time Archbishop of Canterbury"—who had then been dead for 368 years—"to appear within thirty days to answer to a charge of treason, contumacy, and rebellion against his sovereign lord, King ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... 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 of your Abbot Samson. I have read, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... "padre." It is not contempt. There is not room for real contempt alongside of the affection which the name implies. It's just a sense that, neither for good nor evil, is the padre of much importance. It is impossible to imagine King Henry speaking of Thomas a Becket as the padre. He hated that archbishop, and he also feared him, so he called him, not a ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... particular grant or charter, was a sufficient authority for any clerical possessions or privileges.[**] About a century before, these claims would have been supported by the court of Rome beyond the most fundamental articles of faith: they were the chief points maintained by the great martyr Becket; and his resolution in defending them had exalted him to the high station which he held in the catalogue of Romish saints. But principles were changed with the times: the pope was become somewhat ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... 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, Spelman, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... earliest religious drama known to have been performed in this country was one on St. Catherine. William Fitzstephen, in his "Life of St. Thomas a Becket," written in 1182, brings into contrast with the pagan shows of old Rome the "holier plays" of London, which he terms "representations of the miracles wrought by the holy confessors or of the sufferings whereby the constancy ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... to know how all my old companions and fellow-laborers do; if the club yet exists; if you, and Richardson, and Lord John, and Ellis, and Lawrence, and Fitzpatrick, &c., meet, and joke, and write, as of old. What is become of Becket's, and the supper-parties,—the noctes coenaeque? Poor Burgoyne! I am sure you all mourned him as I did, particularly Richardson:—pray remember me affectionately to Richardson. It is a shame for you all, and I will say ungrateful in many of you, to have so totally forgotten ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... In 1168, Becket had written to De Turbe from Vezelay, a town on the borders of Burgundy and Nivernois, and ordered him, by the Pope's authority, to publicly excommunicate Hugh Bigot, Earl of Norfolk. He had robbed the Priory of Pentnay, in Norfolk, of some of its possessions. De Turbe ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... 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 ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... Anglo-Saxon had no political outlet under Norman feudalism. What we note is that three Archbishops of Canterbury were strong enough and brave enough to stand up against the unchecked rule of kings, and the names of these great Archbishops—Anselm, Thomas a Becket, and Stephen Langton—are to be honoured for all time for the services they rendered in the making of English liberties. Not one of the three was in any sense a democrat. It is not till the latter ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... papal throne, and had held out his foot to be kissed by ambassadors sprung from the noblest houses of Normandy. It was a national as well as a religious feeling that drew great multitudes to the shrine of Becket, whom they regarded as the enemy of their enemies. Whether he was a Norman or a Saxon may be doubted: but there is no doubt that he perished by Norman hands, and that the Saxons cherished his memory with peculiar tenderness and veneration, and, in their popular ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sacerdotal caste, and who ought not "to merge himself in the body of the nation." To him the Reformation was an infamous crime, and Henry VIII. was worse than the Bluebeard of the nursery. His hero was Thomas a Becket. He wrote a sketch of his life and career, which he did not live to finish. His friends ill-advisedly published it after his death. His ideal ecclesiastical statesman of modern times was Archbishop Laud. Charles I. was a martyr, and the Revolution of 1688 an inglorious ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... adipose tissue, had managed to seat themselves upon the tomb of one Sir William de Tracy, who had one time unduly concerned himself in the murder of a certain Thomas a Becket. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... 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 Clements, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... or the Great Central, or the Midland Railway, must be conversant with the appearance of that "Pinnacle perched on a Precipice," which was Charles II.'s idea of the Visible Church on Earth—the Parish Church of Harrow on the Hill. Anselm consecrated it, Becket said Mass in it, and John Lyon, the Founder of Harrow School, lies buried in it. When I was a Harrow boy, the Celebrations of the Holy Communion in the School Chapel were rare, and generally late; so some of us were accustomed to communicate every Sunday at the 8 o'clock ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... appointments. Apostle, they were ready to allow the Pope to be: sovereign or legislator, never. Doctrine they would accept at his hands; but he should not rule over their secular or ecclesiastical liberties. The quarrel between Henry the Second and Becket was entirely on this point. No wonder that Rome canonised the man who thus exalted her. The Kings who stood out most firmly for the liberties of England were Henry the Second, John, Edward the First ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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 of Peterborough. ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... 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 ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... their language was incredible. No sooner had Bonner issued his injunctions than Bale denounced him in a fierce reply as "a beastly belly-god and damnable dung-hill." With a spirit worthy of the "bloody bitesheeps" whom he attacked, the ex-Bishop of Ossory regretted that when Henry plucked down Becket's shrine he had not burned the idolatrous priests upon it. It probably mattered little to Bale that at the moment when he wrote not a single Protestant had as yet been sent to the stake; but language such as this was hardly likely to stir Mary to a spirit of ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... King of England. Under him Thomas a Becket is made Archbishop of Canterbury: the first instance of any man of the Saxon race being raised to high office in Church or State ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... 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'; and ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... 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
... did not live to witness the completion of the structure, but died in 1205, and was buried in a crypt within the centre pier of the bridge, over which a chapel was erected, dedicated to St. Thomas-a-Becket. Mr. Brayley, in his Londiniana, wrote about five years since that "if due care be taken when the old bridge is pulled down, the bones and ashes of its venerable architect may still be found;"—and, true enough, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... fully equal to the length of our ship; and, after testing the matter through the whole afternoon, we all came to the conclusion that our boats would live in such a patch, and that the experiment was quite worth trying. Wherefore three bags were made, one for each boat, and attached by a becket to a length of line measuring about twenty fathoms. Then, when night had set in, and the darkness had become deep enough to conceal our movements, the bags were filled and dropped overboard, the other end of the line being made fast to the ringbolt in the stern ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... bosom of this modern actor; and it was entirely in keeping with the drift of his character and the tenor of his life that the last subject that occupied his thoughts should have been the story of Becket, the great prelate—whom he intended to represent, and to whom in mental qualities he was nearly allied. In losing Lawrence Barrett the American stage lost the one man who served it with an apostle's zeal because he loved it with an ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... by two treenails. Towards the opposite end of the arrow are two feathers, generally of the spotted oval, not very neatly lashed on. The bowstring 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 the end ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... Notes and Illustrations, by Henry T. Riley. Vol. I. A.D. 732 to A.D. 1180, is a new volume of the valuable series of Translations of Early English Chronicles, which is to give so important a character to Bohn's Antiquarian Library.—Thomas a Becket and other Poems, by Patrick Scott. Notices of new poems scarcely fall within our vocation, but Mr. Scott is a true poet, and we cannot refuse to praise the present volume, and more especially the little poem which ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... a teacher as poor as themselves in porch and doorway, or dropped his alms into the cap of the mendicant scholar, could hardly discern that beneath rags and poverty lay a power greater than the power of kings, the power for which Becket had died and which bowed Henry to penance and humiliation. On all but its eastern side indeed the town was narrowly hemmed in by jurisdictions independent of its own. The precincts of the Abbey of ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... Graydon calls this gentleman Mr. Becket, it seems that there was no young officer of that name at the battle of Fort Washington. Becket appears to be a mistake for Lieutenant Onslow Beckwith. The prisoners were now marched within six miles of New York ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... object (as Mr. Fett explained 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 ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... 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 ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... have to say that when close-hauled in a light wind under all sail she required little or no weather helm. As the wind increased I would go on deck, if below, and turn the wheel up a spoke more or less, relash it, or, as sailors say, put it in a becket, and ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... was very wroth at the earl's evasion, and swore by Saint Thomas-a-Becket (whom he had himself translated into a saint by having him knocked on the head), that he would give the castle and lands of Locksley to the man who should bring in the earl. Hereupon ensued a process of thought in the mind of the knight. ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... 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
... England. Henry II. did not at first claim the Quercy as a part of Eleanor's actual possessions in Aquitaine; but he claimed homage from the Count of Toulouse, who was then suzerain of the Count of Quercy. Homage being refused, Henry invaded the county, captured Cahors, where he left Becket with a garrison, and thence proceeded to reduce the other strongholds. Roc-Amadour appears to have offered little if any resistance. The Quercy was formally made over to the English in 1191 by the treaty ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... 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 Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... able statesman's weaknesses, as we have elsewhere hinted, to suppose himself, though of low rank and limited education, qualified to play the courtier and the man of gallantry. He did not, indeed, actually enter the lists of chivalrous combat, like Becket, or levy soldiers, like Wolsey. But gallantry, in which they also were proficients, was his professed pursuit; and he likewise affected great fondness for the martial amusement of the chase. Yet, however well he might succeed with certain ladies, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 to labour ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... 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
... their mouths open in front of bridges or anything else, felt the mystery of these things. And they put chapels in the middle of them, as you may see at Bale, and at Bradford-upon-Avon, and especially was there one upon old London Bridge, which was dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, and was very large. And speaking of old London Bridge, every one in London should revere bridges, for a ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... 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 energetic restraint exercised ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... tomb, which was adorned by a rich pall, the gift of William the Conqueror. When at last our founder's name was added to the roll of saints, the body was transferred (October 13, 1163) to an elaborate shrine, in the presence of Henry II. and his then friend the Archbishop, Thomas a Becket. When this part of the old church was destroyed to make way for Henry the Third's new building, the old shrine was removed to a temporary chapel, while a new and more magnificent one, which we shall examine more {58} closely ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... 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 ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... 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 be selection of types. But the whole ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... cover (viz. the following extract) "Surisberiensis (J.) Policraticus, &c., 8vo. L. Bat. 1595; very scarce, vellum 6s. This book is of great curiosity; it is stated in the preface that the author, J. of Salibury, was present at the murther of Thomas a Becket, whose intimate friend he was; and that 'dum pius Thomas ab impio milite cedetur in capite, Johannis hujus brachium fere simul percisum est,'" is from Lilly's Catalogue, and the passage relating to Becket was copied from that of Payne, to whom I communicated it, and which ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... 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
... comfortable doctrines of the Tory creed, 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 Ship-money and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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
... 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 sodas or magnesias, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... spears or darts, bows and arrows, and stones. The clubs are of three or four kinds, and from three to five feet long. They seem to place most dependence on the darts, which are pointed with three bearded edges. In throwing them they make use of a becket, that is, a piece of stiff plaited cord about six inches long, with an eye in one end and a knot at the other. The eye is fixed on the fore-finger of the right hand, and the other end is hitched ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... style 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 ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... himself upon his bed, rolled in the damask curtain, like Henry Plantagenet, what time he went off into one of his fury-fits about Thomas Becket; and Mr. Jardine and Towler were able to talk confidentially at ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... 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 here in the wilderness; ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... decay. It stands today, though subdued and stained by time, as proudly as 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 ...
— 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
... 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 of his innocent playmates, ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... he'd feel most at home. "Anyhow, the company is less mixed," he said, "than it was all winter up at twenty-three, where they had a Presbyterian missionary down the shaft, a Salvation Army captain turnin' the windlass, a nigger thief dumpin' the becket, and a dignitary of the Church of England doin' the cookin', with the help of a Chinese chore-boy. They're all there now (except one) washin' out gold for the couple of San Francisco card-sharpers ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... wickedness, 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 ...
— 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
... 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 the edition. Dr. Maty undertook, in my absence, to correct the sheets: he inserted, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... table, of 1170, is quoted from Giraldus Cambrensis by Dean Stanley in his Canterbury Memorials, p. 103. The table threw off the weapons of Becket's murderers. This was at South Malling. See the original in Wharton's Anglia Sacra, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... he may be seen riding to Bosham with his company, and also putting up prayers for the success of his mission. Of this success we shall see more when we come to Battle. Bosham furthermore claims Hubert of Bosham, the author of the Book of Becket's Martyrdom, who was with Saint Thomas of Canterbury when the assassins stabbed him to ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... 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
... to the ecclesiastic power. He chose Thomas a Becket to the vacant portfolio as Archbishop of Canterbury, hoping thus to secure him as an ally; but a Becket, though accustomed to ride after a four-in-hand and assume a style equal to the king himself, ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... the 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 the ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... 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, or from any copy of the Spectator ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... was a Tribune of the People, whose person was inviolable like an ambassador's. There was much the same idea in Becket's attempt to remove the Priest, who was then the popular champion, from the ordinary courts. We shall have no Tribune; for we have no republic. We shall have no Priest; for we have no religion. The best we deserve ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... 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, who have always been opinionated of their ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... loss to recognize now the truth of old Leland's description of that once stout and gallant bulwark of the North, when he 'numbrid 11 or 12 towres in the walles of the Castel, and one very fayre beside in the second area.' In that castle, the four knightly murderers of the haughty Becket (the Wolsey of his age) remained for a whole year, defying the weak justice of the times. There, too, the unfortunate Richard the Second,—the Stuart of the Plantagenets—passed some portion of his bitter imprisonment. And there, after the battle of ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sufficiently discouraging, 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 ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... 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 was violated, and the episcopal ring on his finger purloined. The violators ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... canonised saints in the Church in England. I refer to such 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 who are set up before her children as models ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... them to the south, and afterwards to the west again; on the way, they met with a grand fall one hundred and fifty feet in height, which they named Becket's Cataract. At the head of the glen they found another fall which they estimated at two hundred and thirty feet in height; crossing above this cataract, which was called Bathurst's Fall, the eastern course was once more resumed, and tempests ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... in France and at Rome. It was barely thirty years since in England, after an outburst of passion on the part of King Henry II., four knights of his court had murdered the Archbishop Thomas-a- Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Was the Count of Toulouse, too, guilty of having instigated the shedding of blood and the murder of a prelate? Such was, in the thirteenth century, the general cry throughout ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 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 ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... 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
... 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 ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith |
