Henry, possessed of such extensive territories, and aiming at further acquisitions, saw with indignation that the sovereign authority in all of them, especially in England, had been greatly diminished. By his resumptions he had, indeed, lessened the greatness of several of the nobility. He had by force of arms reduced those who forcibly held the crown lands, and deprived them of their own estates for their rebellion. He demolished many castles, those perpetual resources of rebellion and disorder. But the great aim of his policy was to break the power of the clergy, which each of his predecessors, since Edward, had alternately strove to raise and to depress,--at first in order to gain that potent body to their interests, and then to preserve them in subjection to the authority which they had conferred. The clergy had elected Stephen; they had deposed Stephen, and elected Matilda; and in the instruments which they used on these occasions they affirmed in themselves a general right of electing the kings of England. Their share both in the elevation and depression of that prince showed that they possessed a power inconsistent with the safety and dignity of the state. The immunities which they enjoyed seemed no less prejudicial to the civil economy,--and the rather, as, in the confusion of Stephen's reign, many, to protect themselves from the prevailing violence of the time, or to sanctify their own disorders, had taken refuge in the clerical character. The Church was never so full of scandalous persons, who, being accountable only in the ecclesiastical courts, where no crime is punished with death, were guilty of every crime. A priest had about this time committed a murder attended with very aggravating circumstances. The king, willing at once to restore order and to depress the clergy, laid hold of this favorable opportunity to convoke the cause to his own court, when the atrociousness of the crime made all men look with an evil eye upon the claim of any privilege which might prevent the severest justice. The nation in general seemed but little inclined to controvert so useful a regulation with so potent a prince.
Amidst this general acquiescence one man was found bold enough to oppose him, who for eight years together embroiled all his affairs, poisoned his satisfactions, endangered his dominions, and at length in his death triumphed over all the power and policy of this wise and potent monarch. This was Thomas à-Becket, a man memorable for the great glory and the bitter reproaches he has met with from posterity. This person was the son of a respectable citizen of London. He was bred to the study of the civil and canon law, the education, then, used to qualify a man for public affairs, in which he soon made a distinguished figure. By the royal favor and his own abilities, he rose, in a rapid succession through several considerable employments, from an office under the sheriff of London, to be High Chancellor of the kingdom. In this high post he showed a spirit as elevated; but it was rather a military spirit than that of the gownman,--magnificent to excess in his living and appearance, and distinguishing himself in the tournaments and other martial sports of that age with much ostentation of courage and expense. The king, who favored him greatly, and expected a suitable return, on the vacancy, destined Becket, yet a layman, to the see of Canterbury, and hoped to find in him a warm promoter of the reformation he intended. Hardly a priest, he was made the first prelate in the kingdom. But no sooner was he invested with the clerical character than the whole tenor of his conduct was seen to change all at once: of his pompous retinue a few plain servants only remained; a monastic temperance regulated his table; and his life, in all respects formed to the most rigid austerity, seemed to prepare him for that superiority he was resolved to assume, and the conflicts he foresaw he must undergo in this attempt.