The Conquering Family (10 page)

Brakespeare’s great opportunity came when a most delicate situation developed in the Scandinavian countries. No longer content to be governed from the see of Hamburg-Bremen, the people of the north were clamoring for archbishops of their own. As their conversion had been accomplished
for the most part by English missionaries, it was deemed wise to send an Englishman as papal legate. Brakespeare, accordingly, was selected.

The Scandinavian countries included Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the Orkneys, and Sodor, and the legate had to please all of them if possible. He had, in the first place, to make a choice among three embattled antagonists in Norway: Sigurd of the Mouth, Inge the Hunchback, and Eyestein. His choice fell on Inge, but he found means somehow of placating the unsuccessful candidates. In Sweden he could not set up a parent see because of the racial enmity between the Sviars of the north and the Gautors of the south. This difficulty he solved by placing Sweden temporarily under the Danish see he established at Lund. Brakespeare acted with such vision and discretion, in fact, and with such supreme tact that the northern countries, when he left, were satisfied with everything and so well disposed to him personally that a friendly recollection of him seems to have been retained for a long period of time after.

His success on this trying mission led to his selection as Pope in succession to Anastasius, when he assumed the name of Adrian IV. This was in 1154, and it thus happened that he and Henry came into power in the same year.

If the new Pope had been no more than a suave diplomat, he would have failed miserably in his exalted post. His elevation came at a juncture when a firm hand and a cool and resolute head were needed at the Vatican. Under the leadership of Arnold of Brescia, a devout and fanatical reformer, Rome was in revolt against the temporal power of the Church. A republic had been declared and it had been found advisable, and perhaps necessary, to withdraw the papal offices from the Leonine City. There were dynastic difficulties as well. William of Sicily had been crowned without any attempt being made to obtain apostolic sanction. In Germany the young Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I, called Barbarossa because of his flaring red beard, was showing the early symptoms of a boundless ambition and a willingness to swallow all Italy.

The rather frail cardinal, who had been such a success in the field of diplomacy, brought to these trying problems a strength of will and determination which could hardly have been anticipated. When he first met Barbarossa, that haughty monarch refused to hold the papal stirrup while he dismounted. Adrian remained sternly in his saddle, withholding the kiss of peace. The anger of the Emperor was so violently expressed that all the papal officials, who had ridden out with the Pope, turned and fled for their lives. Adrian was not disturbed, and wiser second thoughts replaced the rage of the red Frederick. He asked Adrian to meet him the following day and he then performed the ceremony of the stirrup. After that, Pope and Emperor seemed to work in concert and even amity. The
English-born Adrian went to the length of crowning Frederick Emperor at St. Peter’s in spite of the violent protests of the people of Rome. Earlier he had dared to lay an interdict on the Eternal City. Now, with Barbarossa, he succeeded in driving Arnold of Brescia out of Rome and later in having him captured. Arnold, who had called the
Curia
“a house of merchandise and a den of thieves,” was brought back to Rome a prisoner and was hanged by the prefect, if not on instructions of Adrian, at least with his full consent.

Certain parallels can be drawn between the ruler at Rome and the young ruler at London. They possessed in common the gift of decision; they believed equally in vigorous action when their judgment said it was necessary; they were not held back by scruples, nor did they balk at risks. There were dealings between them, of course. Adrian’s decisions on English problems seem to have been entirely those of the Pope of Rome without any prompting from Nicholas Brakespeare of Abbots Langley. In the matter of Henry’s ambition to invade and conquer Ireland, however, he may have been less completely detached. Henry’s ambassador in this matter was John of Salisbury, with whom the Pope had always enjoyed the most cordial relations. John of Salisbury based his plea on the desire of the English King to enlarge the bounds of the Church and to bring a higher degree of civilization to the savage Irish tribes. Adrian listened, was convinced, and was supposed to have issued his bull
Laudabiliter
, putting the papal sanction on the project. The authenticity of the document is now doubted. A paper was in existence, however, which reads as follows:

Adrian, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his very dear son in Jesus Christ, the illustrious king of England, apostolical greeting and benediction.

Thou hast communicated unto us, our very dear son in Jesus Christ, that thou wouldst enter the island of Hibernia, to subdue that people to the yoke of the laws, to root out from among them the seeds of vice, and also to procure to payment there to the blessed apostle Peter of the annual pension of a penny for each house. Granting to this thy laudable and pious desire the favor which it merits, we hold it acceptable that, for the extension of the limits of the holy church, the propagation of the Christian religion, the correction of morals, and the sowing of the seeds of virtue, thou make thy entrance into that island, and there execute, at thy discretion, whatever thou think proper for the honor of God and the salvation of the country. And that the people of that country receive and honor thee as their sovereign lord and master, saving the rights of the churches which must remain untouched, and the annual pension of one penny per house due to the blessed Peter; for it is beyond a doubt, and has been acknowledged, that all the islands upon which Christ the sun of justice hath shone, and which have been taught the faith, belong of lawful right to St. Peter and the most holy and sacred church of Rome.

If then thou think it fit to put in execution what thou hast conceived in thy thoughts, use thy endeavors to form that people in good morals, and let the
church in that country, as well by thy own efforts as by those men of acknowledged sufficiency in faith and words and life, be adorned with new lustre. Let the true religion of Christ be planted there and increase. In a word, let everything which concerns the honor of God and the salvation of souls be, by thy prudence, so ordered that thou shalt become worthy of obtaining in Heaven a reward everlasting, and upon earth a name illustrious and glorious in all ages.

The morality of the King’s plea and the Pope’s compliance will be discussed later. Henry, as it happened, found himself too concerned with other matters to proceed with his designs on the sister island. The project languished for many years, and the Pope had been at rest for a decade in his red sarcophagus of Egyptian granite when Henry finally made a move.

Adrian’s early death may have been due to the extraordinary difficulties which confronted him at every stage of his brief incumbency. It was a tired and unhappy man who closed his eyes on September 1, 1159, at Anagni.

The only Englishman to wear the rochet and the red mozetta and to hold spiritual sway over the Christian world was a strong pope, but he could not be listed among the great men of the papacy. He was too much a product of his times for that. Adrian’s policy was that of Thomas à Becket, who died to elevate the Church above the authority of kings. Because of the Pope’s determination on that score, Arnold of Brescia’s body was burned and his ashes, the ashes of a great man, were consigned to the waters of the Tiber. This can be said for English Adrian, he was pure to the point of austerity and as free of personal corruption as any man who ever held the vast resources of the papacy in his hands. One of the charges hurled at Becket when he was Archbishop of Canterbury was that he had failed to do anything for the old mother of Adrian, who lived, long after her great son’s death, in unrelieved poverty in the small house in Abbots Langley where he had been born.

An interesting speculation is raised by the early death of Adrian. If he had lived longer and had seen Henry’s ambitions mature, would he have been disposed to grant what was so clearly in the English King’s mind, though never expressed in word or the scratch of a paper, the creation of an empire of the west?
Hail, Caesar!
And if it had so come about, where would the new emperor have established himself in a capital city? London, Rouen, Bordeaux? It would almost certainly have been London, for that city always had capacity for greatness.

G
ILBERT BECKET
was not a Norman soldier who went on the First Crusade and married a Saracen princess, as many early historians asserted, nor was he a dull Saxon merchant who sent his son Thomas to France to acquire the education and manners of a Norman, as others have contended. The truth lies between. Gilbert Becket was a London merchant of Norman birth who married a Caen woman named Rohaise and became quite wealthy. He was rich enough, in fact, to have a fine solar apartment in his house in West Chepe, containing a bed of the very new tester type, with a most convenient canopy, on top of which blankets and sheets and pillows could be stored. He owned other property within the walls and he founded a chapel in the churchyard at St. Paul’s, originally, perhaps, a chantry.

They were devout people, the Beckets, and on each birthday of her only son, Madame Rohaise made a ceremony of weighing him and then sending to the poor the equivalent of his weight in food, clothing, and money. This quickly became a costly charity, for Thomas of the Snipe grew rapidly. He kept growing until he had reached his reputed six feet, which would make him one of the tallest men in England. The handsome youth was sent to the fashionable priory of Merton and then to Oxford. Then he returned to London, where he was occupied for a few years in business, and it was during this London phase that the Archbishop of Canterbury, good old Theobald, a friend of the family, took serious notice of him. The primate had made a practice of keeping about him a circle of promising young men for service in the Church, and Thomas à Becket became immediately the one for whom the highest hopes were entertained. Believing that his prodigy needed the advantages of a legal education, Theobald sent him to Paris and Bologna, where he gained a thorough grounding in both canon and secular law. He came back a polished man of the world, a convincing talker, a diplomat of great charm, and the possessor of a keen and active mind. The archbishop now took him into his own organization, making him Archdeacon of Canterbury and provost
of Beverley. A deacon’s degree sufficed for these posts, but it was understood that later he would take holy orders. Certain other benefices were given him, and he began to enjoy a quite considerable income.

His first chance to show his full capacity came when Theobald sent him to Rome on a secret mission to Pope Eugenius. Stephen was King and trying every means to have his son Eustace declared his successor. Becket’s instructions were to convince the Pope that to do this would be to perpetuate the division in England and that, apart from the political issues involved, Matilda’s son Henry gave great promise of developing into a wise ruler while Eustace gave very little. It appears that the tall young Becket handled this delicate mission with much discretion and address and succeeded in persuading Eugenius that papal influence should be thrown quietly to the Angevin succession. Young Henry did not know at the time that such skilled advocacy was being exerted in his behalf, but he heard of it later. The success of Becket’s diplomacy had something to do, of course, with the favorable impression he made on Henry at their first meeting, and it certainly was a factor in his selection for the post of chancellor.

The chancellors in the past had been members of the
Curia Regis
, acting in the capacity of legal advisers. They had superintended the work of the clerical staff around the King; they presided at “the trial of the pyx,” when the accuracy of new mintings was decided by a panel of London silversmiths; they were custodians of the Great Seal. The post took on a fresh importance and significance, however, from the moment that Thomas à Becket stepped into it. The era he inaugurated amazed the men about the King, accustomed to the old ways. The chancellery had been quiet enough: two guards with bared pikes at the entrance; a long and drafty hall in which churchmen were certain to be encountered, walking sedately and talking in low tones; a few open doors into small stone apartments where clerks could be seen at work; an anteroom filled with the usual sour-faced petitioners.

Becket’s staff grew so quickly that he soon had fifty-two clerks. How they were disposed of is a mystery. There had been no enlargement of the Westminster facilities when Henry I put government on a businesslike basis, nor had there been any since. It can only be assumed that in the Becket period the small stone apartments had three or four occupants instead of the customary one and that the anteroom was taken over for clerical work, driving the sour-faced petitioners to waiting in the long hall. The chancellery, as all records agree, became a hive of industry, and the chancellor himself was the busiest man there. He saw visitors without delay, sometimes walking along the line and pausing for a few words with each, disposing of their concerns fairly as well as quickly. He wrote scores of letters each day; he was always in attendance at the
Curia Regis
; he always had time for long consultations with the King.

Henry was delighted with the change which had come about. This hum of activity, this furious driving of quills in the hands of competent scriveners meant that the work of all the earls and sheriffs throughout the kingdom was being supervised and corrected. No corner of the country, he knew, was now unwatched. This was government as he understood it, as he wanted it.

That a new star on the political horizon had arisen was soon recognized by everyone with the results that might be expected. People went to great pains to make the acquaintance of the new chancellor. His table was frequented by the great nobles and courtiers. More and more the young men of his staff were driven to the extreme ends of the table. Thomas à Becket never sat down to meat without a large company, and he saw to it that his guests were well fed. The fancy era in cooking had begun which was to reach its peak a century later in the fantastic embellishments of the great French royal cook, Taillevent. There were carvers at the chancellor’s side tables to baste the joints with the rare spices now coming from the East and with rose water and sauces of onion and young leeks before they were carried along the tables. One writer of the day asserts that a hundred shillings was paid on one occasion by the chancellor for a dish of eels from across the Channel, but this is one of the absurd exaggerations which are often copied and believed. One hundred shillings was a very considerable amount, enough to set a man up in the fishmongering trade with warehouse and kiddles to catch fish in the Thames.