Source: English Historical Documents, volume II: 1042-1189. Edited by David C. Douglas and George W. Greenaway. London and New York: Oxford, 1981; pp. 820-21.
Thus the night passed in lamentation and mourning, groans and sighs; not a ray of gladness shed its light upon the sad scene, and when the day dawned it brought with it the prospect of yet greater evil. . . . The monks, fearing lest the corpse should be shamefully abused and so precious a treasure be taken from them, prepared to bury it with all speed. They therefore had no time to wash and embalm the body, according to the custom of the church of Canterbury. And this, we believe, was occasioned not so much by the malice of men as by the providence of God. For what need had he of less precious perfumes whom the Lord had caused to be anointed with his own blood?
They therefore stripped him of his outer garments to put on him his pontifical vestments; in so doing they discovered that the body was covered in a hair-shirt, no less painful from its stiffness than from other causes and - a circumstance of which we have neither read nor heard of an example in the case of any other saint - they found the body covered in sackcloth, even from the thighs down to the knees, beneath the cowl and robe of the Cistercian habit. At this sight the monks gazed at one another, astounded at this proof of a hidden piety greater than might have been credited to the archbishop, and at this second cause of sorrow, they multiplied their tears. How could such a man have been suspected of covetousness or treachery? Could he ever have set his thoughts upon an earthly kingdom, who had thus preferred sackcloth above all worldly pleasures? Was he not betrayed by his king rather than a traitor who would neither yield to his betrayers, those sons of perdition, nor, as he could have done, resist them? . . .
Such was the passion of God’s doughty champion, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England and legate of the apostolic see, which took place in the year of our Lord’s Incarnation 1170 and the fifty-third of his age, on Tuesday, 29 December, at about five o’clock in the afternoon, so that on the fifth day after the Lord’s Nativity in this world of woe his servant might be born to glory and stand in the presence of the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be honour, glory, virtue, power and dominion, world without end. Amen.