The Betrayal of Thomas Becket

"Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?!" These words supposedly uttered by a King over 800 years ago set in motion a chain of gruesome events, and sparked cult-like devotion across the world. Dr. Eleanor Janega and Matt Lewis consider Becket's meteoric rise in status to becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury, his increasingly fractious relationship with King Henry II, the vicious murder itself and finally, how the cult of St Thomas of Canterbury spread across the European continent. But how did Thomas Becket first rise to power and prominence? Professor Michael Staunton joins Eleanor to unwrap the enigma and get to the heart of who Thomas Becket was, and whether his fate was truly inescapable. MORE Henry II & Thomas Becket: A Doomed Friendship Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/henry-ii-thomas-becket-a-doomed-friendship/id1564113746?i=1000661775847 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/0CeOxglKXGPumgGwuYChaI The Murder of Thomas Becket Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-murder-of-thomas-becket/id1564113746?i=1000662039576 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/08Mf5xZ23lCFyUVipLfkla The Cult of Becket Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cult-of-becket/id1564113746?i=1000663384516 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/2UyzZfd8mRtQY9jpqZ1DQh Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega and Matt Lewis. Audio editors are Ella Blaxill and Amy Haddow, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Janiger, and some of the world's leading historians, as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with a whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 1:14Eleanor Janega?

  Hello, I'm Dr Eleanor Janiger, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were, and how we got here.

• 1:50Eleanor Janega?

  Happy Easter! This holiday weekend, we thought we'd give you a chance to hear one of our most popular episodes. Back in 2024, we recorded a special series on the murder of Thomas Becket, and how it shook the very foundations of England and the monarchy. It's one of my favourite ever episodes, and frankly, it's the true medieval way to spend an Easter Monday: thinking about martyrs. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

• 2:24Matt Lewis?

  Exactly 850 years ago, in July 1174, an English king approaches the city of Canterbury. Discarding his shoes and his royal robes, he pulls on a coarse sackcloth garment. Staggering barefooted through the streets, this sorry figure is in stark contrast to his usual regal demeanor. With each step, the weight of his guilt appears to sit more heavily upon his shoulders. As he reaches his destination, the enormous, heavy doors creak open and King Henry II enters the cathedral, where three years earlier,

• 3:09Matt Lewis?

  his former friend and ally, Thomas Becket, was brutally murdered.

• 3:18Eleanor Janega?

  Approaching Becket's shrine, Henry sinks to his knees, fervently praying and weeping. To all onlookers, the king truly appears to be in anguish. In an unprecedented act of penance, Henry confesses his sins publicly to the bishops and monks gathered about him. Henry then prostrates himself before the tomb and in turn, each bishop comes forward to strike his bare back five times with a rod. The 80 monks of Canterbury Cathedral follow, each dealing Henry three blows. Over the seemingly endless hours that follow, the king endures more than 250 lashes. For those who look on, the sight of the king humbling himself

• 4:03Eleanor Janega?

  in such extreme acts of self-mortification is both shocking and inspiring. It speaks of the power of the church and the seriousness with which Henry takes his faith and his responsibilities as a ruler. It reinforces the sanctity of Becket's martyrdom, further elevating his status as a saint and making Canterbury a major site of pilgrimage. This event will continue to resound through the centuries that follow and leave an indelible mark on English history.

• 4:36Eleanor Janega?

  But how did we get here? Before we start, let's remind ourselves of the event at the heart of all this: the infamous murder of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, in December 1170.

• 4:52Matt Lewis?

  The friendship between King Henry II and Becket had become increasingly strained, primarily because of Becket's staunch defence of the Church's independence from royal authority. Taken aback at his friend's newfound piety, Henry found himself at odds with Becket over the rights and privileges of the Church against the Crown. The tension reached a boiling point when Becket excommunicated several bishops who had supported Henry, including the Archbishop of York, for crowning Henry's son as joint king, an act that should have been Becket's prerogative. Feared for his fiery temper and unbending will, Henry, who was in Normandy at the time, exploded with rage upon hearing of Becket's actions,

• 5:37Matt Lewis?

  supposedly exclaiming in frustration, "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" These rash words set in motion the tragic events that led to Becket's grisly slaying in the Sacred House of God. Interpreting the king's words as a command to take immediate action, four knights, seeking to prove their loyalty and perhaps gain favour with Henry, crossed the Channel to England, galloped through the low vaulted cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral to confront Becket at the altar and cut him down.

• 6:13Eleanor Janega?

  Let's return now to July 1174. In the three years and seven months that have now passed since the murder of Becket, the story of his apparently royally sanctioned assassination has spread like wildfire throughout Europe. Scores of miraculous events have seemingly occurred around Becket's tomb and across the land. Pope Alexander has canonised Becket, and hundreds of thousands of pilgrims have visited his shrine to be healed, to pray, or to renew their faith. A cult of St Thomas Becket has taken hold on Christian hearts and minds, and Canterbury has taken full advantage of the burgeoning pilgrimage trade.

• 6:54Eleanor Janega?

  Henry II is most probably genuinely remorseful about his association with the killing of Becket. But Henry also has other matters on his mind of a more political kind. The Church is still outraged at Becket's murder and is threatening to undermine Henry's authority. The Pope has even threatened to excommunicate him. Henry's enemies have been emboldened, and his sons are showing their true colors. They want to dethrone him. Henry is desperate for an opportunity to resolve his conflict with the Church, quell the unrest, and reestablish his authority over his realm. What other gesture could he make that is public enough to placate the Church and his

• 7:36Eleanor Janega?

  subjects? Henry's journey to Canterbury and his atonement has lasting effects. It marks a turning point in the relationship between the English monarchy and the Church, highlighting the limits of royal authority over ecclesiastical matters. The pilgrimage also cements Becket's legacy as a martyr and a symbol of resistance against royal overreach. For Henry, it may be a moment of profound personal transformation, a public acknowledgement of his failings and a path to redemption that will shape the rest of his reign and his legacy as a monarch. It is a pilgrimage that will be recalled throughout the centuries to come as one of the most dramatic acts of royal contrition in all history.

• 8:20Eleanor Janega?

  But how did Thomas Becket first rise to power and prominence? In this first special episode, I'm delighted to be joined by Professor Michael Stoughton, Associate Professor of History at University College Dublin. He specializes in the relationship between religion and politics in the Middle Ages and has written extensively about the biographers of Thomas Becket. Welcome to Gone Medieval, Michael.

• 8:49Speaker 04

  Thank you, Alan. Very nice to be here.

• 8:51Eleanor Janega?

  I am very excited to delve into the person of Thomas Becket with you because I think this is one of these guys where we all know his name, everybody kind of knows the famous quote, but it's very difficult sometimes to uncover who the man actually was. And I think, to a certain extent, this is a problem of sources, right? So how do we know about Thomas Becket at all?

• 9:14Speaker 04

  One of the problems with actually getting to know Thomas is that we know so much about him. We know more about Thomas Becket than we know about any Englishman, any English person of the Middle Ages. We have this vast volume of writings. Some of it started before he died. When he was Archbishop of Canterbury, people in his circle started to collect his letters. So we have more than 800 letters written by him and by other protagonists in the dispute. And then, when Thomas was killed, and of course, really, Thomas, talking about Thomas, it always has to start from the fact that we know that he was murdered

• 9:54Speaker 04

  in the cathedral in 1170. After his murder, you had a very large number of people writing biographies of Thomas. And many of these people were people who knew him really well, who had worked for him. About five of them had actually been present in the cathedral when he was murdered. So they started to write about his life. And they wrote lives of Thomas that we know were quite accurate in certain ways, because he was a public figure, and because we can compare them to each other. But of course, as well, they were trying to write a story. They were trying to fit his life as they knew it into what

• 10:34Speaker 04

  they had seen of his murder and the aftermath in this great popular acclaim. On top of that, you have two gigantic collections of miracles. And these are the biggest collections of miracles of the Middle Ages, apart from the miracles of the Virgin Mary. So they tell us about Thomas during his life, about the people around him, about what happened afterwards. And they also tell us a huge amount about who were the people who venerated Thomas and regarded him very highly. So we have a huge amount of material about him. But that is the great joy of looking at Thomas Becket. And it's also part of the reason why Nobody will ever come to a final verdict on this is what Thomas was like,

• 11:18Speaker 04

  because he has the kind of ambiguity there that you don't generally have for medieval individuals. There's a few medieval individuals where you have these kinds of competing sources, people who are critical of him, people who are praising him, people who give different pictures of him. So we will always be able to debate, who was Thomas really?

• 11:41Eleanor Janega?

  You know, this is fantastic, a wonderful man to gossip about.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Exactly, and people did at the time.

• 11:46Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, yeah, but it's really interesting that you should mention, I think especially his own letters, because obviously the hagiographies, you know, the saints' lives, these are the way that we know a lot about him, but the letters are such a rich and incredible source. Is this normal to have people start collecting letters like this?

• 12:05Speaker 04

  It's a bit more normal in the time that Thomas was living. And one of the things about Thomas Becket is that he's an extraordinary, remarkable individual. But many of the things about his life, they tell us about the world of the 12th century. So you started to have the classic example of collecting letters was during the investiture controversy, at the end of the 11th century, when you have popes in conflict with the German emperors. So the popes and the people around them start to collect these letters. And the reason for this was so that they could be circulated and people could say, these are the arguments we're making. If you're in your local church in Germany, you can use these kinds of arguments as well.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  The same was the case for Thomas, that once the dispute got going, people started collecting these letters. They knew before he died, they knew that this was somebody whom people were talking about and people would continue to talk about. They knew that they were living through history. So after he died, it was one of the main elements in fostering the cult of Thomas and shaping his reputation was to collect all of these together. And the great thing is that they didn't just collect Thomas's letters. And some of these letters were written by people around him, some of them were written by him. They collected the letters that were sent to him by his critics,

• 13:32Speaker 04

  by his enemies, people saying to him, you should not be Archbishop of Canterbury. This is not a way that somebody behaves. And also, we knew that you would behave so badly as Archbishop because we knew you before you became Archbishop.

• 13:47Eleanor Janega?

  I like that we have the haters on record as well. That's really unusual for the Middle Ages. You know, in general, you just have glowing things that get kept because people don't necessarily want a 3D idea of an individual.

• 14:01Speaker 04

  That's true. And it actually, it tells you something about the confidence of people after Thomas's death, that they could say, look, we've seen all of these criticisms. We know that he aroused strong opinions. But we can actually say, you're wrong and he was right. And now we're going to tell you the story of his life and show you how it actually all fits together. Once you know about what happened at the end of his days and his posthumous acclaim on all of these miracles.

• 14:30Eleanor Janega?

  Speaking of that, Michael, let's try to introduce the story about Thomas Becket. If we begin at the beginning, what is it that we know about his early life?

• 14:42Speaker 04

  So we know that Thomas was a Londoner. He was born on Cheapside in the city of London. You can go there today. If you walk along Cheapside, you'll see there's a Tesco metro. And directly opposite, there's a plaque to Thomas. And he lived there between Ironmonger's Lane and Old Jury, which was then called the Jury. So right in the centre of London. His parents were both from Normandy. His father was called Gilbert Becket. His mother was Matilda. And Gilbert was involved in the textile trade. He, like many others, moved to England, moved to London in the aftermath of the conquest.

• 15:25Speaker 04

  Now, some time after the conquest, the early decades of the 12th century. That's what we know about him. A legend grew up about him shortly after his death, which gives us another perception of Thomas. And that legend says that Gilbert was actually a crusader. And Gilbert went to the Holy Land and there he was captured. And somehow an Emira's daughter managed to spot him in prison. They fell in love at first sight and she rescued him. And she made him promise to get in touch with her once he got, made his way back to London. So he did get in touch with her and he sent her instructions on coming to London.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  She only had the words London and Becket and she made her way to London. She was converted to Christianity and they married. The reason why this story was told was that it gives Thomas noble blood because he was an Emira's daughter. So it shows you that there was already a sense that there was something missing here. There was something unusual about him. So Thomas came from a well-off family. His father was a very successful merchant. He was involved in the government of London. And he ended up being somewhat downwardly mobile. He came from a well-off family, but he didn't come of noble blood. And that's something that he was always reminded of throughout his life.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  He was always brought up the fact that he was Becket, the London merchant's son. So he grew up in a comfortable situation, in a big house. We know that the family had servants, all of that. We hear a little bit about his mother, that she was supposed to have been a very pious woman, that she and Thomas seemed to have been very close. We hear a little about his father. We know that he retained connections with influential people from Normandy, which would turn out to be important for Thomas's advancement. And we know that he was educated. He was sent off to Merton Priory outside London. And then he came back for some schooling in London itself. But his background was a comfortable, wealthy background.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  But one that did not have noble roots. And that made him different to a lot of the people that he ended up mixing with later in life. Because he didn't have, his family didn't have land. His family didn't have these kinds of blood connections with the crown, with the senior nobility. He was not by no means the poorest, and that's what his biographers say. But nor on the other hand, did he have some of the advantages that other people had.

• 18:08Eleanor Janega?

  I think this is a really important point because I think now we have a tendency to think that class is about money and about connections. And certainly, if you are growing up in London, it's incredibly cosmopolitan place. You have people from all over Europe mixing, and especially if you're working in the textile trade, you know, these are kind of like the creme de la creme. These are people who are making money hand over fist. But that doesn't make one necessarily cordier material. It makes you, as we say, the middling sort. That comes up all the time, I think, when people speak about not just Thomas Becket, but Londoners in general. So we have this understanding that he's kind of coming from a kind of middle-class existence. And we know that his mother is pious.

• 18:53Eleanor Janega?

  So is he quite religious early on, or is he just a mama's boy?

• 18:57Speaker 04

  There's a lot of debate about this. What his biographers tell us is that he always had a certain religious purpose, but he tended to hide it quite well. And this goes for his early employment, it goes for his time when he was chancellor as well. They argue that you couldn't necessarily tell by the outward appearance of Thomas that he was particularly religious. But nonetheless, he retained a certain religious purpose within. And the way for him to get on, for somebody like him, who comes from a relatively new

• 19:38Speaker 04

  kind of social class, the London merchant, somebody who's educated, who's clearly very smart. Is to become a clerk, so is in some ways to go into religious orders. And in the Middle Ages, the word is clericus, and clericus means a cleric in our sense of the word. But it also means a clerk, as in somebody who writes. So this was the opportunity for him, his opportunity was going to be in some way within the church. To this end, he was sent off to Paris for an education. And again, an example of Thomas as somebody who illustrates the trends of the time.

• 20:22Speaker 04

  Because this is the period when you start to get a certain type of individual. They're sometimes called men raised from the dust. That's a famous phrase that was used of them. These people who don't come from nobility, but who manage to advance themselves through education, through church service, through acting as clerks in writing offices. So he goes off to Paris when he's aged to about twenty. And this is a time of great excitement in the intellectual world in Paris. You don't yet have the University of Paris, but you have these very vibrant schools. It's a little earlier, you'd had Abelard and Alweeze, you'd have other famous figures, Peter Lombard a little later.

• 21:04Speaker 04

  This is often associated with the 12th century Renaissance, this great flourishing of learning. So what role does Thomas Becket play in this? None, as far as we can tell, because he drops out within a year. And like most people who drop out of education, it's not necessarily because of a lack of ability or application. It's because other things are going on. He hears that his father's business is in trouble. His father's a number of houses that he had started renting out, another sign of his wealth, they burnt down. His fortunes start to decline. Thomas's mother dies and he's apparently distraught by this.

• 21:42Speaker 04

  So he comes back and by all accounts, he actually doesn't have any work for about a year. And then he goes into service as a clerk to an accountant. So he's one of the few saints who begin as an accountant. And he works in, there's some accounts say that he was instead working for the sheriff. Whatever way, he was a clerk, he was somebody who was able to write, he was somebody who was numerate. And it's at this point that he gets his big break, which is going into the church.

• 22:18Eleanor Janega?

  So how does he make this jump, right? And it's a fairly large jump because you're going from being a clerk within London, a trade, a middle-class person doing a middle-class job, one where you need to be literate and numerate, which he's picked up in Paris. But how do you get from there to working in some of the upper echelons of the church, which is very specifically here in England, at Canterbury?

• 22:44Speaker 04

  Interesting twist of fate. Gilbert Beckett came from the same area as Normandy as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald of Beck. There's a theory that the name Beckett comes from Beck because it's connected to the place. It seems that he was the one who his connections to Theobald allowed him to bring Thomas to the court, introduced him, and he was taken on. And this was a really important break because, as you say, you do have these ambitious figures who are trying to get a job as a clerk to somebody who's rich or important, maybe a noble, maybe a churchman, if you're really lucky, to a

• 23:27Speaker 04

  king. If you're looking for a place to start your career, Canterbury is the best place possible. This is the leading church in England. The Archbishop is the primate of England. The Archbishop of York disagrees with that sometimes, but it is clearly the premier ecclesiastical centre in England. It's a place that has this great tradition going back centuries of learning. It has this large monastic community there. Thomas was not part of this monastic community at this point, but it also has a lot of very talented young men. And many of the people who worked with Thomas at this time would later become quite

• 24:12Speaker 04

  famous. They would themselves become bishops, or they would hold some other important place. So this is a huge break for him. And it seems that Thomas makes great strides very early. He proves himself to be a very capable figure. He's favoured by the Archbishop. And of course, you're talking about him being favoured among A large number of other very talented, very able figures, most of these, or many of these, who would have come from a more advanced position socially to Thomas. And there are certain accounts that his abilities provoked the envy of others in the court.

• 24:54Speaker 04

  There's one figure called Roger of Pontlevec, who was the Archdeacon of Canterbury, an important figure around the same age as Thomas. And he apparently used to sneer at Thomas's background. He would talk about how he was introduced by a man called Balehatch, meaning carrying an axe, and that he would try to undermine him in whatever way possible. This Roger went on to greater things. He became Archbishop of York and he was one of the main figures involved in prompting Thomas Becket's murder later on.

• 25:43Speaker 05

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• 26:22Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  And I'm Carter Roy and this is What the Fact? Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it, the history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 27:03Eleanor Janega?

  This is quite an interesting mix for somebody like Thomas, because on the one hand, we see that he's getting into the position that he is essentially through nepotism, right? So his hands are in the same place as the Archbishop, so hey, he's a good old boy. But at the same time, he is underprivileged in comparison with the other young men who are at the cathedral. And these are the best and brightest. These are, you know, the bright young things who are making their way through the ranks. So we can say that there is some form of egalitarianism at play. So, you know, he's particularly good, so he climbs the ladder. And I mean, he climbs the ladder to the extent that he gets noticed by the

• 27:45Eleanor Janega?

  papacy itself. Eventually, he's getting sent on business from the papacy, and he travels really widely, right?

• 27:54Speaker 04

  That's right. He's serving Archbishop Theobald. And Archbishop Theobald is responsible for his diocese. So Thomas is responsible for things there. He's responsible for things on a national scale. This is another important thing about Canterbury. Canterbury is on the way from London to the coast. Kings pass through. He's involved in national business. But also Archbishop Theobald, one of his main tasks at this time was to lobby for the position of papal legate in England. And Thomas was sent to try to arrange that. And he succeeded in doing so. He met the Pope, he met various Cardinals, who started building up certain connections already. He was also sent to study law. Theobald sent

• 28:39Speaker 04

  him to Bologna, which was the main center, also to Auger. Bologna was the main center of law at this time. And it seems that he learned not only church law, but he learned civil law as well, against some understanding of that. And this would become absolutely crucial to his later life, because the dispute with Henry II was, to a great extent, about law. So you can see him already, he's built- Building up these kinds of connections, he's getting experience, he's getting to understand the aspects of life that a future Archbishop will find useful. Even though I don't think anybody at this time would have thought that Thomas was Archbishop material. And you were asking earlier, did he show any kind of religious signs?

• 29:23Speaker 04

  A very strong theme is concealment here. Maybe this is if we try to psychoanalyze somebody who's coming from a less kind of elevated social class. And there are other people like him, there are people like John of Salisbury, who would later be his secretary, who also comes from a more humble background. But when he finds himself in this situation, maybe he feels that he has to conceal certain aspects of himself. His biographers, who are of course writing after his murder, say that even when he was a secretary to an accountant in the City of London, the other boys would engage in lewd conversation. And Thomas joined in with it because he didn't want to seem

• 30:04Speaker 04

  different from them. But within he was thinking pure thoughts. And that's what they say about him when he's a clerk to Theobald as well. And the other thing is that they say that during this time, and they also claim that he did this as Royal Chancellor, he's actually acting on behalf of the Church. When people are thinking about Thomas and his achievements after his death, it's not just about his individual piety, it's about saying that he was a champion of the Church early on. The problem was that he didn't really seem to be, he didn't show an awful lot of signs of that, especially when he was Chancellor. So there was an attempt to say all the time, he was trying to fight for the Church.

• 30:47Eleanor Janega?

  I absolutely love this. I mean, what a great excuse to be down at the pub swapping dirty stories. And you're like, yeah, but when I was doing it, it was incredibly holy, though.

• 30:55Speaker 04

  That's it. And one of the great things about the claim to concealment is saying that Thomas was so holy that he kept it from everybody else. That's impossible to prove or disprove.

• 31:07Eleanor Janega?

  This is a brilliant piece of medieval hagiography and storytelling, because you're exactly right. I mean, how is anyone going to prove that it wasn't all of a display? So if you've got some story about the time you heard the dirtiest joke in the entire world come from a future saint, they'll go, oh, yeah, but he didn't, that just proves my point. Oh, he fooled you, didn't he?

• 31:29Eleanor Janega?

  You've kind of touched on this already, but 1154, Becket makes his way into the royal chancery. Theobald says to Henry the Second, "Look, I've got a great chancellor for you." It's the young Thomas Becket. And I suppose really, all of these characteristics would kind of recommend him to Henry the Second, where you're like, "Oh, this is a bit of a body guy. He's a bit of a normal lad. I mean, very, very clever. He's come up through the ranks of the church." But it's also not that unusual to have someone who's kind of a normal person within the church, right? There's plenty of people for whom this is a career. Is that what gets him recommended? Are these kind of like normal qualities?

• 32:09Speaker 04

  Well, it's likely that Henry the Second had some sort of contact with Thomas before. And certainly, he seemed like the ideal sort of person to serve him. Thomas grew up at a time of turbulence in England. When he was about 15 years old, 1135, King Henry I dies. There's a succession crisis. You have King Stephen, Henry I's nephew succeeds. He's challenged by the Empress Matilda. And I know Gone Medieval has podcasts on all of this. And so you can, of course, listen to that for more information on it.

• 32:45Eleanor Janega?

  I'm Team Matilda, just I'm putting out.

• 32:48Speaker 04

  And of course, so is Henry the Second as the son of Matilda. So by the 1150s, Henry the Second is quite obviously seems like the clear successor to Stephen. So you have in 1153, the nobles and the leading ecclesiastics come together, and they broker a peace which says that Stephen will remain as king until he dies. Henry will succeed him. And Stephen dies a year later. Henry succeeds at the age of, what is he, 21? Theobald had been one of the leading figures involved in these negotiations. So we can assume that Thomas was involved as well.

• 33:28Speaker 04

  And we can assume as well that he was very much Theobald's recommendation. This is somebody who, I'm sure he said to Henry, who is very practical, who is very smart, who is able to get things done. But also, from Theobald's point of view, Theobald does seem to have considered that Thomas would be some kind of a restraint on Henry II. And this is a claim that's made by hagiographers. They say that Theobald, who's worried about Henry, he was very young, he was a very vigorous king, he was somebody who was acquisitive of other people's rights, so that the church needed to have somebody in there.

• 34:08Speaker 04

  And we might think that this is purely hagiographical, but we do actually have letters from Theobald to Thomas later in Theobald's life, where he seems to show real disappointment at how Thomas has gone so far into the king's way of doing things. And he's saying, "I'm an old man. I got you this job. I want you to visit me. You used to serve me, I was your master." All of this. So it does seem that there was some kind of an intention of keeping a bit of restraint, but also knowing that this is the sort of person who would appeal to Henry.

• 35:00Speaker 05

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• 35:39Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with a whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 36:21Eleanor Janega?

  Well, what kind of life is it that Thomas is leading at court? If you're not going back to Canterbury to check in with Theobald, it seems that there must be something kind of compelling keeping him around at court. Is it just like good times for Thomas and Henry? Are they just, you know, throwing dice and feasting and hanging out? I mean, what does life look like at Henry II's court?

• 36:44Speaker 04

  It wasn't all play with Henry II. Henry II was very serious about what he was doing. And particularly in those early years as king, where he wanted to restore the crown to the way that it had been under his grandfather, Henry I. So he wanted to restore the power of the crown. He wanted to bring back law and order, all of this. And Thomas is presented by his own biographers as being the leading figure in all of this. So he's actually involved in, we can imagine this as first of all, a very busy work life. So the chancellor is somebody who, the office was originally one, it was the King's Chaplain,

• 37:28Speaker 04

  and the King's Chaplain would run the royal writing office. By this time, that office has become extremely important. It all ties in with the importance of clerks and educated people. It's the crown wanting to use not just the charisma of Henry II himself, but the mechanisms of government, that this is a way of expanding the reach of royal governments. Thomas has practical things to do. He's running this writing office. He's advising the king. He's involved in all kinds of other things. He's traveling around with him, or when Henry is away in the continent, he's running things himself.

• 38:05Speaker 04

  But Thomas is also a member of the court. And the court is something that is famously hard to pin down. Contemporary of Thomas's Walter Map says, I know I'm in the court. I know the court exists, but I don't know what the court is. The court is something that moves around the king. The court isn't a place. The court is those people who seem to be close to the king. So they're constantly fighting with each other, backbiting, all of this, jostling for influence. Position as chancellor would be important anyway. But it was made especially important by the bond between him and Henry II, a personal bond. Now, Henry is quite a bit younger than Thomas.

• 38:48Speaker 04

  But Henry and Thomas do seem to have a strong bond from early on. They enjoy similar things. Thomas, again, we can try our psychoanalysis of him at a distance of a few hundred years and think this is somebody who hasn't had all of these trappings of nobility when he's young. So what's he going to do when he's able, he's going to embrace them fully? So Thomas had a pet wolf. Thomas enjoyed hunting. Thomas enjoyed hawking. Thomas enjoyed doing all of these things. He enjoyed playing chess. He liked his elaborate clothes. He's described as wearing these elaborate clothes with these sort of draped sleeves that the fanciest courtiers would have.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  So he enjoys doing all of that. There are accounts of Thomas and Henry feasting together. There are accounts of them kind of playing practical jokes on each other. There's one account of the two of them are on their horses, travelling through the streets of London in the middle of winter. It's freezing cold and a poor beggar approaches them who's shivering. And Henry says, wouldn't it be a great act of charity to give him? A cloak and Thomas says, absolutely. And Henry says, let's give him your cloak. Grabs the cloak from him and wrestles with Thomas, trying to grab the cloak from him. Thomas tries to grab the cloak off Henry. The two of them start wrestling with each other. They fall on the ground.

• 40:18Speaker 04

  The courtiers run up, say, what's going on? And then they burst out laughing and they give Thomas's cloak to the beggar. So you have all of these stories and there's a possibility that it's built up as a way of saying, look what he was before, look at this remarkable transformation he underwent. But there really does seem to have been something of that bond. And there are various other stories about Thomas's extravagance, the kind of lifestyle that he had, which seem in very strong contrast to what you have later. So one of these is about an embassy that he he pays to Paris. So the the son of Henry the second, also called Henry,

• 41:01Speaker 04

  is betrothed to the daughter of the King of France. Her name is Margaret and they're both children, they're both infants, but it's a diplomatic matter. So Thomas is given the task of leading the embassy to Paris to make it all official. And there's this vivid description of how he travels. He travels with literally hundreds of attendants. They're all dressed in the finest gear so that they will give this impression. He's got something like seven or eight wagons. Each of these wagons is pulled by five horses. On top of each horse is a monkey. The wagons themselves, one of them is just for ale. Another one is for various changes of clothing.

• 41:46Speaker 04

  And then Thomas will grant these fine costumes to people as he passes through. And there's a description of them passing through, coming into the towns as he's going on his way to Paris. And all of these wagons, they rattle over the cobblestones and the people run out. And they say, who is this? Who is this incredible person? And they say, this is the Chancellor of the King of England. And they say, if this is the Chancellor, what must the King be like? So he is even more extravagant than the King of England. He's even more glorious in his ways. So that's one thing. Another thing is that Thomas fights in battle. Thomas is a warrior.

• 42:27Speaker 04

  One of these was a campaign by Henry the Second in Toulouse, where he was trying to seize Toulouse, claiming that he had a right to it by marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine. So this was a massive campaign. You have all of these armies being levied from all around. So Thomas, he himself, leads a contingent down to Toulouse. And the siege of Toulouse is thwarted by the fact that the King of France races to Toulouse. And Henry the Second is eventually, he's unwilling to attack his lord for his lands in France. The person who's saying, why do you care about that? Why don't you just go for it? Is Thomas Becket.

• 43:11Speaker 04

  Something that Henry might have remembered himself later on, when he thought about loyalty and all of that. And Thomas, after this, is involved in various other military campaigns. And he's described as unhorsing a famous French knight, leading his army. He's the first to charge into battle. They describe the magnificence of his company, the way they're blowing the trumpets, how brave they're seen as in all of this. In all of these ways, he appears like a very secular figure. But we have to remember that he was still a clerk. He was still a churchman.

• 43:46Eleanor Janega?

  What a guy. You know, I absolutely love Thomas Becket as being like, you know, the mate with the lads outside the pub, who's like, now you can take him. It's the exact opposite of what you would think about a saint. Okay, look, just as my last question. This picture of Becket is not what we think of when we think of a saint. You know, when we talk about him now, it's, oh, this poor pious man who was cut down in his prime. But here we can see that he is an incredibly worldly guy. He's obviously a very ambitious courtier. You know, he's involved in these kinds of propaganda and actual outright military maneuvers, right? But this is about to change. Let's do one last bit of psychoanalysis hundreds of years later. What is it that makes him?

• 44:32Eleanor Janega?

  Really turn on a dime here when he's elevated.

• 44:36Speaker 04

  This is the question that people have been asking since the 1160s. One theory on it, quite influential theory, is that Thomas is being described as an actor who perfectly played whatever role presented itself. And there is a certain amount of this even said by his biographers. One of his biographers says, he was great in the court. He was great in the church. He was great at whatever he did. He managed to do whatever he was called upon and to do it well. Again, this thing of concealment, posthumously, a lot of people said, when he was chancellor, he was really acting on behalf of the church.

• 45:17Speaker 04

  And there's plenty of evidence that he didn't, in fact, though there is some evidence in favour of it as well. But again, you have this sense of concealment that people couldn't quite see who he was. And I think when it comes to him becoming Archbishop, one thing is that he always said, I know Henry, I know him better than any of you, and you can't trust him. You can never trust him. So I do think that's part of it, that he had that experience of working for him. He was working directly for him. When he becomes Archbishop, there's nobody who he needs to answer to, except God and occasionally to the Pope, but he didn't always go along with what the Pope said either. That's part of the answer, I think.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  But I think a more fundamental answer comes back to what we were talking about at the start, about the whole volume of material that we have about Thomas and how this gives us a bit more nuance. It's actually normal for people to change their minds. It's normal for people, as they grow older, to take different stances on things. It's normal for people to say, you know, what I believed at that time, that's not the real me, this is the real me. So it doesn't happen with everybody. And you can say that Thomas's transformation was more dramatic than you have for many other people. But it's also something that is not that unusual for individuals.

• 46:45Speaker 04

  It's just that when we look at individuals from the Middle Ages, they tend to be flattened out. We tend to get this picture of this is what they're like, and they're consistently like this. And I think anybody in looking at an individual, historical biography, people tend to go towards what are the connections that we can see between the different elements of a person. But sometimes, as Thomas Becket shows us, we should actually be able to appreciate the complexity of people in the past.

• 47:15Eleanor Janega?

  Michael, thank you so much for coming along to help complicate the picture of a really complex person in a really complex situation.

• 47:25Speaker 04

  Thank you, Eleanor. It's been really nice to talk to you about Thomas.

• 47:28Eleanor Janega?

  Well, as Michael exits the studio, look who's entering. It's none other than my boy, Matt Lewis. Matt, what is up?

• 47:36Matt Lewis?

  Bursting into the cathedral. Great to see you.

• 47:39Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, so we have just learned rather a lot about Becket the man, I would say, as opposed to Becket the saint, right? And what has really become clear to me is that he's living the life over at Henry's court. But this is something that isn't too unsurprising, given what we know of Henry II, right?

• 47:59Matt Lewis?

  Well, that's the thing, and we're going to find out a load more about this in the next episode. So why is Becket doing those things? Why do we have a king of England who is letting someone else wear the party hat and put on the fancy clothes and swagger around and do all of those kinds of things? What is going on in the dynamic between Henry and Thomas that means Thomas is living this high life? And what does it mean when that high life might be taken away?

• 48:25Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, if I was Henry, and you go from like, here's your drunken, fancy, high-living, you know, battlefield swaggering priest to get this heel turn, almost, you know, for Henry, this is going to feel, I don't know, like a personal betrayal?

• 48:42Matt Lewis?

  I'm going to say slap in the face because otherwise it's a kick somewhere else. So it's going to feel weird. And obviously, the fallout from how that breaks down is going to define decades, centuries of English history afterwards.

• 48:57Eleanor Janega?

  You know, Henry II, he's just bros before hosanna's trademark. No one can steal that from me now. Thank you.

• 49:05Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, so definitely come back next time and we are going to get into the weeds of what is going on between Henry and Thomas and why does it all fall apart?

• 49:13Eleanor Janega?

  Can't wait. Thank you so much for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. If you want to continue to follow the story of Henry and Thomas's friendship, and who could blame you? You can hear how it fell apart and how it came to reshape English history for centuries afterwards by following the links to the rest of our series in the show notes for this episode. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film, The Trials of Joan of Arc, by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts. And tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with a whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.