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bishop met those of Herbert, as if the words suggested the same thought to both.a

b

Before the end of the meal the Bishops of London and Chichester appeared, and proposed that the Archbishop should make his peace by resigning to the King for a time the manors of Otford and Mundeham. He replied that the King already had one manor which rightfully belonged to the Church of Canterbury, and that, rather than resign even his claim to that manor, he was willing to expose his head (which he touched as he spoke) to any hazard. He then sent the Bishops of Rochester, Hereford, and Worcester to request the King's safe conduct for his return to Canterbury, and permission to go abroad. These envoys found Henry in good humour, but he deferred his answer until the morrow; and late in the evening Becket was informed by two great noblemen (probably the Earls who have been already often named) with the strongest protestations of their truth, that some powerful and audacious men had conspired his death. Everything seemed to point to the expediency of flight.

The Archbishop signified his intention of spending the night in the chapel; his bed was prepared behind the high altar, and the monks, on going to sing the

b Alan, i. 350.

a Herb., vii. 150, says that the | ix. 10. passage was the account of the persecution of Pope Liberius. The text in question, however, is not quoted there, but by the Arian Bishop Demophilus, on being turned out of Constantinople by Theodosius. Cassiodor. Hist. Trip.,

One writer speaks of return to Canterbury; another of “ egressum de terra." Fitzst., i. 237; Alan, i. 350; Herb., vii. 150.

d Joh. Sarisb. S. T. C., i. 330.

a

compline office, saw him apparently asleep. But while these things were done to prevent suspicion, the means of escape were provided; horses were in waiting without the walls of the monastery; and in the middle of a dark and stormy night he passed through the unguarded north gate of Northampton."

a

Garnier, 48.

b Roger, i. 144. For defences of his flight see Joh. Sarisb. in S. T.

C., i. 330; Anon. Lambeth., ii. 98; Joh. Sarisb. Opera, ed. Giles, ii. 82; Buss, 325.

CHAPTER VIII. .

THE BEGINNING OF EXILE.-OCT. 1164-JAN. 1165.

THE Archbishop was accompanied in his flight by two monks of Sempringham and by one of his own lay domestics. After having ridden about five-and-twenty miles, in rain so heavy that Becket's clothes were saturated with water, and he was fain to lessen the weight of his cloak by twice cutting off the lower part of it, they rested for some hours at a village which is called by the biographers Graham or Grabam ; and early on the following morning they entered the city of Lincoln, where they found lodgings at the house of one James, a fuller by trade, who was "known to the brethren." Here the Archbishop disguised himself in a monastic dress, and assumed the name of Brother Christian, or Dearman. From Lincoln he descended the Witham

d

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Roger, i. 144. See Ap-| Oakham, or Gretton, may be pendix XVIII.

b Roger, i. 145; Herb., vii. 162; Gervase, 1393. The editor of Robert of Gloucester inserts in brackets the letters nt in the middle of the word Graham; but the position of Grantham does not very well agree with the description. Perhaps Greetham, near

meant.

c Grim, i. 48; Herb., vii. 162. The word fullonis becomes in the printed Gervase (1393) Fulconis, as if it were a proper name, while in the Quadrilogue (63) and in Dr. Giles's edition of Alan (S. T. C., i. 351) it is felonis!

d Both names are given. Rober

about forty miles, to a lonely hermitage among the fens, belonging to the monks of Sempringham, where he remained three days for the purpose of recruiting his strength; and in the mean time measures were taken to facilitate his farther progress. Travelling by an

unusual route, and chiefly during the night, he was received by a succession of friendly monks who had been secretly warned of his coming; and at length he reached Eastry, near Sandwich, a manor belonging to the monastery of Christchurch in Canterbury. At this place he waited a week for the means of passing over to the Continent; and we are told that a small opening was made from his chamber into the church, so that without being seen he was able to share in the offices, to see the elevation of the Host, to receive the pax from a clerk who was in the secret, and to bestow his blessing on the people.

On All Souls' day, before daybreak, he embarked at Sandwich in a little boat managed by two Nov. 2. priests, and in the evening he reached the opposite coast. On the same day a party of bishops and others, whom the King had commissioned to plead his cause with the Pope, crossed the sea from Dover.

d

of Gloucester is amusing on the mean Haverholme. See the Mochange of name :— nasticon, vi. 949.

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a

The biographers tell us that, while the Saint found the water delightfully calm, his enemies were tossed about by a violent tempest, so that Foliot in terror threw off his cloak and hood—a contrast which brings to Herbert's mind the exemption of Israel from the Egyptian plagues. Into the probability of this story it is needless to inquire; but we may learn something as to Herbert's veracity from the fact that, in a passage which he seems to have forgotten, he had already described the Archbishop as having suffered from the roughness of the voyage; nor can there be any doubt that, if the contrast had been reversed, an explanation favourable to the great hierarchical hero would equally have been put on it.c

b

The Archbishop did not yet consider himself out of danger. The news of his flight had by this time spread, and every traveller from England was naturally looked on with suspicion. The Count of Boulogne was to be dreaded, because Becket, while Chancellor, had on religious grounds opposed his marriage with King Stephen's daughter, the Abbess of Romsey, who by the death of her brothers had become heiress to that county.a

a Fitzst. i. 238; Herb., vii. 169. | part which Henry took in this b vii. 163.

marriage of a nun that the Afflighem continuer of Sigebert traces the troubles of his latter years (Patrol., clx. 291). The Countess,

The inference of the biographers, for instance, is very different when they have to relate the speedy passage of the Arch-after having borne two children, bishop's murderers to England. Quadr., iii. 12.

d See Alex. III.,Ep.114 (Patrol., cc.); Herb., vii. 166. It is to the

returned to the monastic life "unde invita discesserat." Rob.de Monte, ib. 511.

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