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Example research essay topic: Henry The Ii King Of England Western Civilization - 1,260 words

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... ed to give sumptuous banquets; when he went to France on the marriage negotiations, he had an escort of 200 knights and squires, eight wagons of ermine, silks, furs, carpets, and rich tapestries, two wagons of ales, 250 footmen and innumerable pack horses. Henry seems to have regarded this worldliness with an amused tolerance. Having himself no inner insecurities, he did not need outward magnificence, and he himself lived without display; but Beckett was a nobody who had risen to a dangerous height, and was soon to rise from dangerous height to a fatal one. Henry was set on resolving the old conflict between church and crown by making himself master of the church in England, and Beckett had agreed that the policy was sound.

In 1161 Theobald Archbishop of Canterbury died, and Henry nominated Beckett. Surprisingly, Beckett demurred; the archbishop, he warned the King, might be a very different man from the chancellor. Henry persisted, and Beckett accepted. he said later to the Prior of Leicester that now he was bound either to quarrel the King or neglect the service of God. To quarrel the King was to do without his personal support, and from the hour of his appointment to Canterbury Beckett lived a life of extraordinary, sometimes grotesque, theatricality to mask his inner insecurity. He renounced his magnificent style, drank only water, wore a hair shirt infested with lice, and mortified the flesh by having his monks whip him.

Gilbert Follow said that the King had made an archbishop out of a man of the world; in fact, Henry had imposed on Beckett a role he was too weak to refuse and too weak to play out. Beckett saw it his duty as Canterbury to oppose the King on every important matter: on finance, on the appointment of the clergy, and above all on the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. The church claimed the right to try all clerics on all charges, civil or not; and as the taking of minor orders involved no vows or duties incompatible with lay life any man with a smattering of literacy could escape trial by pleading "benefit of clergy. " A cleric's duty to his church might properly sometimes supersede his duty to the state, but Beckett pushed matters so far that he protected acknowledged murderers if they claimed benefit, a course of action that he must have known was not only totally unacceptable to the King but totally incompatible with the rules of the law. When Henry insisted that secular crimes must be tried in secular courts, Beckett replied that t Canterbury was the representative of God on earth and as such was set above all Kings, at which Henry lost his temper and called him a low-born clerk. In 1164 Henry attempted, in the Articles of Clarendon, to define the position of the Church in the feudal state. On the question of benefit of clergy, the articles stated that a cleric accused of a civil crime was to be brought first before a civil court, that any subsequent proceedings in a Church court were to be observed by an officer of the crown, and that if the cleric were found guilty he was to forfeit the protection of the Church.

He summoned a council to ratify these articles, and Beckett, with blasphemous arrogance, said that the proceedings were like Christ's trial before Pilate. He came under heavy pressure to accept articles, accepted, tried to withdraw, and, to the horror of his followers, attempted to flee the country and failed. Henry now changed tactics. It happened that one of his men already had a suit against Beckett on a charge misappropriating money, and under Henry's new legal proceedings this was transferred to the royal court, and Beckett summoned to appear.

It was a poor occasion for the representative of God upon earth, and Beckett neither defied nor complied, pleading illness, that the were incorrect because a witness had testified on a hymnal not a Bible, but eventually had to agree to a fine of 300 Pounds (a sizable sum then). This was followed by a series of similar charges involving the great sum of 20, 000 Pounds, and Beckett When he celebrated Mass that morning (October 13, 1164), Beckett used the Introit "Princes sate and spake against me. " (6) When he came into court he carried even further his earlier comparison of himself with Christ by taking on his back his great pectoral Cross (except that Christ's Cross was not of silver). Whether from prudence, from regret, or from disgust of histrionics, Henry refused to meet him. Whatever his emotion was, it was soon superseded by wrath, as he discovered that Beckett had already appealed his case in Rome, which was a violation of the Articles of Clarendon he had been thought to have accepted.

Accused of faithlessness, Beckett first used a legal quibble, and then (the charge was still of misappropriating money) fell back on the thunders of the Church. Henry behaved with such remarkable restraint that Beckett fell into panic; he fled the country, this time successfully, hidden under a bundle of old clothes on a pack horse. It seemed that he never forgave Henry for inflicting this shame on him. Louis of France helped him on his way to Rome, where the Pope advised him to wait in hope of a compromise. Beckett took refuge in the Abbey of Pontigny, where he began systematically excommunicating the clergy who supported the King, while Henry responded by expelling from the kingdom Beckett's numerous relations.

Beckett stopped short of the ultimate sanction of excommunicating the King himself, writing to him that he would return to serve him in all matters "saving God's honor and that of the Roman Church, " and at the same time threatening him with the vengeance of Almighty God. This position endured until 1170. The King's oldest son, young Henry, was now fifteen, and to ensure the succession Henry proposed to have him crowned. In Beckett's absence the ceremony was carried out by the Archbishop of York, and for this uncanonical proceeding Beckett promptly got the Pope's permission to place all Henry's Continental possessions under the ban of the Church. A compromise was now essential, and in the presence of King Louis, Henry and Beckett met in France. Henry spoke kindly. "My lord Archbishop, " he said, "let us return to our old friendship and each show the other what good he can; let us forget our hatred completely. " (7) He withdrew the offending articles, and gave Beckett permission to act against the bishop who had assisted at the coronation of the Young King, as the heir was called.

Henry seemed to have been sincere in his offers of friendship; but Beckett, who had spent four years in shameful impotence, was now actuated by a spirit of manic vindictiveness against the world. On his arrival in England he excommunicated the erring bishops and questioned legality of the Young King's coronation. This amounted to treason, and was a total denial of the supposed reconciliation. When Henry heard the news he broke into an Angevin rage, shouting, "What idle and miserable and faithless men do I keep about me, who let me be mocked by a low-born clerk!" (8) Henry's rages were well known, but four ambitious knights thought it polite to take this one seriously.

Reginald FitzUrse, William de Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard Brito arrived in Canterbury on Tuesday, the twenty-ninth of December. They saw Beckett in the cathedral, and demand...


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