Letter no. 304, December 1170
from: The Letters of John of Salisbury, vol. II: 1163-1180. Edited and translated by W. J. Millor and C. N. L. Brooke. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979; pp. 715-25.
To Peter, abbot of Saint-Remi, Rheims
My delay could have very properly been put in the dock; but its defence is necessity. I ought to have returned your messenger the first moment I set foot in England, to let your affection know how your disciples fare. But at the instant I disembarked events took on a new and astonishing appearance; the discrepant views and statements I received from this man and that made me quite unsure and so I could by no means send sure news to another. The third day before I landed all the possessions of the archbishop of Canterbury and his following were put under surveillance and his own proctors removed from their administration; and in the ports a public edict was issued prohibiting any of our colleagues who might wish to leave England from crossing the Channel under penalty of exile and outlawry. The king’s devout and filial officials took all too careful measures, and to us most harmful, to ensure that the archbishop and his followers on their return from exile should find nothing or almost nothing save empty houses largely in ruins, barns destroyed, threshing floors bare; this is the comfort they provide for long proscription, this the amends for committing sacrilege. Although peace had been made with us on St. Mary Magdalene’s day, and our imperial lord the king had ordered his son, the new king, by letters patent to restore to the archbishop and his followers all their possessions as fully as they held them three months before they left England, all the revenues which could have accrued up to Christmas have been seized in the king’s name. The curial officials still hold by the government’s authority many possessions and churches which ought by rights, and in accordance with the treaty, to have been restored to the church of Canterbury. Among others I myself am deprived of a church which used to pay my predecessor forty marks a year.’ I happened to set sail on 16 Novembers and a synod was due to be held on the 18th at Canterbury in which I was to represent the absent archbishop. But I found everything thus in confusion quite contrary to our hopes and the good reputation and fine promises of the king; and so everyone had given up hope of our peace and the archbishop’s return, and I knew I was as it were in a sort of prison. None the less I made for Canterbury with a cheerful face and a stout heart, fortified in spirit, and was received by clergy and people with great honour, as if I had been an angel of the Lord! - and the good faithful people took heart from my coming, reckoning that the archbishop would certainly not have sent me on before if he was not himself to follow shortly.
The synod was held; and I went to visit the new king and was received with tolerable courtesy, even though his attendants made some threats, suspecting that peace had not been made wholeheartedly with us, but that the roots of enmity were more planted than ever, despite its public abatement. This I in fact observed from a variety of signs, but I acted as if I thought all was going according to our wish. Next I speedily made a visit to my mother, who has been ill these two years, and can joyfully await the day of the Lord now that she has seen me; and I earnestly pray she may have a place in the prayers of yourself and the saints who dwell with you. She had received an assurance from the Spirit that she would not see death. till she had seen myself and my brother return from exile. Meanwhile those old friends of the archbishop of Canterbury and champions of the Church’s liberty, my lords of York and London and their accomplices, took counsel with the publicans, and sent messengers to the king not to allow Canterbury’s return to England before he had renounced the office of legate, restored to him all the letters he had been granted by the Holy See, promised to keep the kingdom’s law inviolate, and so could be cornered into observing the customs under such a guarantee; for, said they, his return will bring shame and ruin to the king unless all this is first established. They had also had six leading men from each vacant cathedral summoned, to whom the chapters could delegate the election of the bishops, so that the elections, translated from the church to another palace, to another kingdom indeed, could be solemnised at the king’s will; and if the archbishop of Canterbury, out of respect for canon law and for what is due to his office, were to object, he would offend the king’s majesty. If he agreed, he would stand accused in God’s court and be convicted of assault on the Church’s laws. The archbishop had come to Rouen on the king’s instruction, there to be freed from his creditors, as had been promised, and to be sent to his own country with honour. But he was deceived in his expectation, for John of Oxford brought a letter from the king, in which he requested and warned him to return to his church without delay and have the pleasure of making his journey with John as escort and comforter. The archbishop obeyed. On the journey friends told him of his enemies’ intrigues. They had already set out and were now waiting on one side of the sea for a favourable wind, and our archbishop on the other side waited likewise. When he knew for sure of their journey and their plots, he took what action he could to baulk their scheme by sending the archbishop of York the papal letter by which he and the bishop of Durham are suspended from episcopal office for the illegal coronation of the new king. The messenger also carried another to the bishops of London and Salisbury, by which they are brought once more under the ban of excommunication, and all the bishops are suspended who took part in the coronation. After this a friendlier breeze blew out of Flanders and carried the archbishop to England after a comfortable crossing. On his arrival at the port called Sandwich he was intercepted by the king’s servants, who had guards lining the shore with harmful intent, as is thought. The soldiers made a great din; but John of Oxford restrained them and made them lay down their arms—not, as is thought, as a kindness to our folk, so much as for fear that if they did anything rash the king and his children would be branded as traitors. But they insisted that the foreigners who had accompanied the archbishop should take an oath of fealty to king and kingdom. There was in fact only one, Simon archdeacon of Sens, who would have been very ready to take the oath if the archbishop had allowed him; but he feared that this would make a bad precedent and replied that it was a barbarous breach of good manners that visitors and pilgrims should be forced to take oaths of this kind.
The royal servants might have used force, but they were afraid of a riot and were restrained by the great crowds which were as excited in receiving back their bishop as if Christ himself had come down from heaven among men. On the next day he reached Canterbury, and the messengers of the other archbishop and of the bishops who had been suspended came to him, announcing an appeal to the Holy See, although they knew full well that the Pope refused to allow any appeal. From the other direction came royal officials demanding in the king’s name, and insisting on the government’s authority, that he relax the sentence against the archbishop of York and the other bishops, unless he wished to be declared a public enemy to king and kingdom, as one who was attempting to take away the new king’s crown. The archbishop replied that he was doing no offense to the royal dignity; on the contrary, he would do all he could to increase the strength, wealth and glory of the king and kingdom in Christ, but this could on no account be achieved unless he asserted the right of his church against the insurgent bishops. The officials insisted noisily; and he added that out of respect for the king’s good name he was prepared to absolve the two bishops even though it could be perilous for him, and he would be going beyond his authority, since a lower judge cannot relax the sentence of a higher—on condition that they swore an oath first, as is the custom of the Church, to obey the mandates of the Pope, who had bound them. The officials refused to allow this: they said that bishops should not take such oaths, which were an offense against the customs of the realm. The archbishop replied that when they had on a former occasion tried every means to persuade the Pope to absolve them from a ban laid on them solely by Canterbury as authority, they only achieved absolution after swearing such an oath: if this was necessary to escape from the sentence of one bishop, which is far more feeble than a papal ban, it is only too clear that a papal ban cannot be lifted without such an oath, especially by a lesser judge. These and like arguments shook the bishops, and we have been assured that they would have thrown themselves on the archbishop’s mercy, had not the archbishop of York seduced them by persuading them to do nothing without consulting the king, whose support they enjoyed in all they did. And so they made haste in angry mood to wait on the king; and our archbishop set off to visit the new king. When he reached London, the younger king prohibited him from entering his cities or towns, and made him return with his followers to the neighbourhood of his own cathedral; and his followers were told not to leave the kingdom and not to appear in public; but, if they love themselves, to take care. On this proclamation the archbishop and his attendants returned to Canterbury, and there we await God’s salvation in great danger. No other path of comfort or safety is open to us, save by the prayers of yourself and the saints to escape the snares of those who thirst for the Church’s blood and seek to uproot us utterly from the earth or else to perish swiftly in the church’s ruin. The persecution is fearful, and hardly a single visitor comes to the archbishop from the circles of the rich and great. But he dispenses justice with a bishop’s serious care to all who come to him, without distinction of persons and without accepting gifts. My brother has gone to your friend the bishop of Exeter - whom I was not yet allowed to visit - and stays with him in much fear and constant anxiety. It will take a long time, and, I am afraid, be wearisome, if I begin to unfold all our troubles; but the bearer will supply what my letter fails to tell.
Please make it your business in your mercy to ask the holy prior and Christ’s friends at Mont-Dieu and Val-Saint-Pierre and the abbots of Saint-Nicaise and Saint-Crepin and your other saintly friends,) to pray for us to the Highest that by their merits we may be secure and free—we who by our own merits are in peril. I can scarcely recall without groans, sighs, and tears, our dear lords and brothers, who live in constant service of St. Remi, for they bring to mind how I lived happily in a place which had the likeness of paradise, while I enjoyed their company and saw in them the reflection of that love we hope to find in eternity. Earnestly request them, I beg of you, to remember their disciples in their prayers. By Christ’s mercy I will send word by express letter as soon as God grants a happier fortune: I will send a hasty letter. Fare well always, and prosper, my saintly friend; may the whole Church in prosperity advance in all good things; and please take kindly notice of the poor priest of St. Cosmas.
Thomas Becket Texts | Scott McLetchie Homepage | Top