345 LETTER VIII. THOMAS A BECKET. * I HAVE now, Sir, to consider your observations upon the view which is taken in the Book of the Church of Becket's character and conduct. When Dr. Milner says that "the Poet copiously discharges his bile upon this celebrated champion of the Church," I am not surprized at the remark;..."his similia multa evomuit verius quàm† dixit;"...and it is quite natural that I should appear bilious in the eyes of one who has the black jaundice. But I did not expect that you would have charged me with trying St. Thomas of Canterbury by the present constitution, the present laws and the present manners of Christian states, and by the present notions of what is fit and proper." With better cause may I complain that, in your statement of the case, you have passed over the main point upon which it + Erasmus. + Page 80. * Page 17. 66 turns, and then from loose general assertions deduced inferences which cannot be supported. The clerical immunities, you say, founded a part of the constitution of every Christian state,.. they had been granted and confirmed by wise and great Princes, and from the time in which they were granted, had been observed and respected by the good."* But the facts are as I have stated them... Before the Conquest the Bishop and the Sheriff sate together in the County Court, and clerical causes as well as other were heard before their joint tribunal. William the Conqueror was induced to grant a charter† empowering the clergy to be tried in a court of their own; after which, not so much by grants from wise Princes or weak ones as by aid of the forgeries which they foisted into the Decretals, they claimed an exemption from all secular jurisdiction. It has been argued that the extension of this privilege to criminal cases was a refuge provided by common law to save the lives of literate offenders. This, if it were so, would be analogous to the custom which prevailed (if I remember rightly) in some of the Italian * Page 80. † Turner, i. 208. Coleridge's Ed. of Blackstone, vol. iv. p. 369. N. 3. States, whereby a criminal obtained his pardon if he could show that he was the best workman in his craft. But it appears to have grown immediately out of that exemption which the clergy claimed when none but their own body could read, and which they grounded not upon the utility of sparing a learned man, but upon the sanctity of their order, perverting to their purpose the text of Scripture, which says, "touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm." * Mr. Barrington has observed that we are not to judge the propriety of this privilege by the present state of things, for, while it was confined to actual priests,† the inconvenience was far less than is commonly supposed: because such crimes only were within the benefit as a munificently provided priesthood had little temptation to commit. This observation is confuted by history. It is true that the poorest of the clergy could in those days be under no temptation to steal for want; but the complaints which were made against their immunity, prove that they were not less liable than other men to other temptations; and from the unnatural state wherein they were placed * Blackstone, b. iv. c. 28. N. a. f Ibid. N. 3. p. 369. by the law of celibacy, more liable to fall into those crimes which arise from illicit connection with the other sex. A case of this peculiar nature* brought on the contest between Henry and Becket. I must remind you, Sir, that the Judges complained† to the King of the frequent thefts, rapines, and homicides, which went unpunished because they were committed by the clergy. William of Newbury (a churchman himself,.. but one who, standing in no need of such immunities, perceived the evil which arose from them) affirms that more than an hundred homicides had been perpetrated by the clergy in England in that reign; and his honest avowal is, that having a license to do what they would with impunity, § they were in no fear either of God or man. The Popes themselves, when they were personally concerned, paid no regard to the immunities for which they contended so haughtily. Before the Italian mode of putting an enemy out of the way quietly was brought to that perfection which it had attained in the days of the Borgias, we read of their mutilat * Lyttelton, iv. 14. third ed. Quoted in Turner...ut supra. ing the Cardinals who opposed them, torturing them, and putting them to death, without observing any formalities of deprivation, or even of trial... The secular powers seldom ventured to violate this injurious immunity, but sometimes they had recourse to singular means for checking or punishing the audacity with which. the clergy presumed upon it. A woman of Santarem went to King Pedro 0 Justiceiro at Evora, and complained that a dignified and wealthy Priest had murdered her husband, and that no redress was given her. Pedro was a man whose character was worthy of being dramatized by Shakspeare, so strongly had the circumstances of his life and station acted upon his strong feelings and ungoverned mind. When next he came to Santarem, he fixed his eyes upon a young mason whose appearance he liked, sent for him, and ordered him to * Modern Universal Hist. vol. ix. 544. Luitprand, 1. vi. c. vi. referred to. † Lenfant, C. de Pise, t. i. 43-46. The Bishop of London was one of the cardinals whom Urban VI. tortured, and would have put to death, as he did the other cardinals, if the King had not interfered. Urban's pretext was, that these cardinals intended to poison him. One of them confessed he had deserved all his sufferings for the cruelties which he had practised when acting as legate for this very Urban. |