"Becket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... olden days caused the highest and lowest in the land to perform penance in public. A notable instance of a king subjecting himself to this humiliating form of punishment is that of Henry II. The story of the King's quarrels with Becket, and of his unfortunate expression which led four knights to enact a tragic deed in Canterbury Cathedral, is familiar to the reader of history. After the foul murder of Becket had been committed, the King was in great distress, and resolved to do penance at the grave of the ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... after the Anglo-Saxon cheap, to buy, from which Cheapside, in London, Chippenham and Chipping Norton derive their names. Some crosses are "pilgrim" crosses, and were erected along the roads leading to shrines where pilgrimages were wont to be made, such as the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, Glastonbury, Our Lady of Walsingham. Sometimes they were erected at the places where the corpse rested on its way to burial, as the Eleanor crosses at Waltham and Charing, in order that people might pray ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... a coach runs to Chablis (p. 14), with its famous wines, passing through Pontigny (p.16), where Thomas Becket resided. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... external nature, at least in its aspects of wonder, appears. The Celtic saints are not hermits of the desert, but travellers or pilgrims. Among the lives of contemporary saints, by far the most remarkable is that of our English Becket by Garnier de Pont-Sainte-Maxence. Garnier had himself known the archbishop; he obtained the testimony of witnesses in England; he visited the places associated with the events of Becket's life; his ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the officer, as Jack slipped a becket over one of the spokes in the wheel and came forward to meet him. "What schooner is this and ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... North and south are the woods and the marshes, so that only on the high dry turf of the chalk land could a clear track be found. The Pilgrim's Way, it still is called; but the pilgrims were the last who ever trod it, for it was already of immemorial age before the death of Thomas a Becket gave a new reason why folk should journey to ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Napoleon as "our last great man," was to expose the inherent weakness of the Sartorian creed—that humanity exists for the sake of its great men. The other strange delusion is the entire omission from the "Hero as Priest" of any Catholic hero. Not only are St. Bernard, and St. Francis, Becket and Lanfranc—all the martyrs and missionaries of Catholicism—consigned to oblivion:—but not a word is said of Alfred, Godfrey, St. Louis, St. Ferdinand, and St. Stephen. In a single volume there must be selection of types. But the whole idea of Hero-Worship was perverted in a plan which had ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... and the next day's record is one of even worse omen. The poet thanks Heaven that his spirits are not affected by Mr. Dodsley's refusal, and that he is already preparing another poem for another bookseller, Mr. Becket. He adds, however: "I find myself under the disagreeable necessity of vending or pawning some of my more useless articles: accordingly have put into a paper such as cost about two or three guineas, and, being silver, have not greatly lessened in their value. The conscientious pawnbroker ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... Mr. Whitehouse's Pax and Priam, all winners of field trials. There have been several very good black and whites. Mr. Francis's, afterwards Mr. Salter's, Chang was a field trial winner of this colour. A still better one was Mr. S. Becket's Rector, a somewhat mean little dog to look at, but quite extraordinary in his work, as he won the Pointer Puppy Stake at Shrewsbury and the All-Aged Stake three years in succession. Mr. Salter's Romp family were quite remarkable in colour—a white ground, heavily ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... earliest religious drama known to have been performed in this country was one on St. Catherine. William Fitzstephen, in his "Life of St. Thomas a Becket," written in 1182, brings into contrast with the pagan shows of old Rome the "holier plays" of London, which he terms "representations of the miracles wrought by the holy confessors or of the sufferings whereby the constancy of the martyrs became gloriously ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... even more for his brains. Such a blow will remain forever unintelligible unless we realise what the brains of St. Thomas were thinking about just before they were distributed over the floor. They were thinking about the great mediaeval conception that the church is the judge of the world. Becket objected to a priest being tried even by the Lord Chief Justice. And his reason was simple: because the Lord Chief Justice was being tried by the priest. The judiciary was itself sub judice. The ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... Thomas a Becket Driscoll, the other's name was Valet de Chambre: no surname—slaves hadn't the privilege. Roxana had heard that phrase somewhere, the fine sound of it had pleased her ear, and as she had supposed it was a name, she loaded ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Bosham with his company, and also putting up prayers for the success of his mission. Of this success we shall see more when we come to Battle. Bosham furthermore claims Hubert of Bosham, the author of the Book of Becket's Martyrdom, who was with Saint Thomas of Canterbury when the assassins stabbed ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... headland of Sunium. But of that cathedral nothing is now left but a heap of fragments, and a stone, on which, fabling tradition says, Henry II. was reconciled to the Church after the murder of Becket. It was pulled down in consequence of the injuries it received at the time of the Revolution; and the bare area where it stood is typical of that devastating tornado which swept feudal and Catholic France out of existence. Where once the learned Huetius lived ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... is said,' answered his cousin; 'though I don't think it is certain whose it is. There is a room called Sir Hugh's Chamber, over the gateway, but the honour of naming it is undecided between Hugo de Morville, who murdered Thomas a Becket, and his namesake, the first Baronet, who lived in the time of William of Orange, when the quarrel began with our branch of the family. Do you know the history ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... during his father's lifetime, on June 14th, 1170. At the coronation banquet, when his father stood behind him, the Prince remarked, "The son of an earl may well wait on the son of a king." The event took place during the height of the quarrel between Henry II. and Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose right it was to put the crown on the royal head. Accordingly Becket excommunicated the Archbishop of York and the assistant bishops who had officiated on the occasion. This led to the murder of Becket, with disastrous consequences too numerous ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... foot, whom I thought I had lost. Col. Dixwell's horse taken by a soldier and delivered to my Lord, and by him to me to carry to London. Came to Canterbury, dined there. I saw the minster and the remains of Becket's tomb. To Sittiligborne and Rochester. At Chatham and Rochester the ships and bridge. Mr. Hetly's mistake about dinner. Come to Gravesend. A good handsome wench I kissed, the first that I have seen a great while. Supped with my ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Murray then took charge of the small Unitarian chapel of Blackfriars, at Canterbury. Thus Murray's early youth was passed in the mingled influences of Unitarianism at home, and of Cathedral services at York, and in the church where Becket suffered martyrdom. A not unnatural result was a somewhat eclectic and unconstrained religion. He thought but little of the differences of creed, believing that all good men held, in essentials, much the same faith. His view of essentials ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... Mammon, in spite of all efforts at compromise, do not really agree. In 1529, before the meeting of Parliament, Campeggio had appealed to Henry to prevent the ruin of the Church; he felt that without State protection the Church could hardly stand. In 1531 Warham, the successor of Becket and Langton, excused his compliance with Henry's demands by pleading (p. 271) Ira principis mors est.[746] In the draft of a speech he drew up just before his death,[747] the Archbishop referred to the case ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... Cross; and in 1276 Roger, earl of March, was granted a four days' fair at the feast of St Barnabas. In the reign of Henry VI. the market was held on Wednesday, and a fair was held at the Translation of St Thomas Becket. These continued to be held in the reign of James I., who annulled the former two fairs, and granted fairs at the feasts of St Mark, St Matthew, St Bartholomew, and SS. Simon ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... from his friend, when hunting for sport. Then Henry his brother takes quiet possession, As Henry the first, of the great English nation. Next Stephen, a kinsman gets the crown by his might, But no one pretends to say he had a right. Then comes Hal the second, who cuts a great figure With Becket, fair Rosamond and Queen Eliner. The Lion-hearted Richard, first of that name, Succeeded his father in power and in fame; He joined the Crusade to a far distant land But his life was cut short by a murderous hand. ...
— The Kings and Queens of England with Other Poems • Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow
... bestowed by the Virgin on St. Thomas a Becket, (according to a MS. in the Cotton Library,) he received from our Lady's own hands, at Sens, in France, a golden eagle, and a small phial of stone or glass, containing an unction, on whose virtues she largely expatiated. ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... Oak Plains, and I saw a son of his when I was taking care of Miss West last spring through that lung fever—looked like his father. I wish I'd thought to tell him about that Sunday. I heard he was waiting on that pretty Becket girl, the orphan one that lives with Nathan Becket. Her father and mother was both lost at sea, ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Porter, K.C.B. First Lord of the Admiralty. Captain Corcoran Commanding H.M.S. Pinafore. Ralph Rackstraw Able seaman. Dick Deadeye Able seaman. Bill Bobstay Boatswain's mate. Bob Becket Carpenter's mate. Tom Tucker Midshipmate. Sergeant of marines Josephine The Captain's daughter. Hebe Sir Joseph's first cousin. Little Buttercup A Portsmouth bumboat woman. First Lord's sisters, his cousins, his ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... whose mildness was stimulated into an angry reply; but Exeter gained his point, for both Brougham and the Duke were for postponing the Bill. Phillpotts would have made a great bishop in the days of Bonner and Gardiner, or he would have been a Becket, or, still better, a Pope either in the palmy days of papal power or during the important period of reaction which succeeded the Reformation. He seems cast in the ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... had Bonner issued his injunctions than Bale denounced him in a fierce reply as "a beastly belly-god and damnable dung-hill." With a spirit worthy of the "bloody bitesheeps" whom he attacked, the ex-Bishop of Ossory regretted that when Henry plucked down Becket's shrine he had not burned the idolatrous priests upon it. It probably mattered little to Bale that at the moment when he wrote not a single Protestant had as yet been sent to the stake; but language such as this was hardly likely ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... in the other; or formed like a circular wreath for handles; as with cutlass hilts, boarding pikes, tomahawks, &c.; or they are wooden brackets, and probably from a corruption and misapplication of this last term arose the word becket, which seems often to be confounded with bracket. Also, a grummet either of rope or iron, fixed to the bottom of a block, for making fast the standing ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of special interest excepting the church, which is dedicated to St Thomas a Becket. The arches dividing the aisles from the nave are high and rather pointed, giving an impression of loftiness. There is a beautiful carved screen, with painted figures on the panels; and the font is a very ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... to confirm his appointments. Apostle, they were ready to allow the Pope to be: sovereign or legislator, never. Doctrine they would accept at his hands; but he should not rule over their secular or ecclesiastical liberties. The quarrel between Henry the Second and Becket was entirely on this point. No wonder that Rome canonised the man who thus exalted her. The Kings who stood out most firmly for the liberties of England were Henry the Second, John, Edward the First and Second, and Richard the Second. This partly explains the reason ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... its appearance of being owned by nobody. It stood open, empty of worshippers, with not even a beggar on the steps in receipt of charitable custom—alone on a little island. It is the church of San Tomaso Cantuariense, otherwise Thomas a Becket, whom it was odd to meet so far from home: he was revered all over Europe for a long time after his canonization, as this church proves, since he was adopted as its patron in 1316, nearly a hundred and fifty years after his so-called martyrdom; but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... pals, at once," said the knight of Malta, flourishing Excalibur. "By St. Thomas a Becket, we'll have as fine a scene as I myself ever furnished to the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... might in some access of his morbid and changeful humour have uttered reproachful words against his Minister in the favourite's ear—even expressed a wish to be rid of him, as did our first Plantagenet when tired of the despotism of Thomas a Becket—and had perhaps listened to strange proposals for effecting such object. But the Cardinal knew right well also to what extent Louis was a king and a Frenchman, and devoted by self-interest to their common system. He despatched, therefore, Chavigny ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... probably brought hither by the Romans. The bird was here before Caesar's arrival; but no notice of his fighting has occurred to me earlier than the time of William Fitz-Stephen, who wrote the Life of Archbishop Becket, some time in the reign of Henry II. William describes the cocking as the sport of school-boys on Shrove Tuesday. "Every year, on the day which is called Carnelevaria (Carnival)—to begin with the sports of the London boys,—for we have all been boys—all the boys are wont to carry to their schoolmaster ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... turned them to the south, and afterwards to the west again; on the way, they met with a grand fall one hundred and fifty feet in height, which they named Becket's Cataract. At the head of the glen they found another fall which they estimated at two hundred and thirty feet in height; crossing above this cataract, which was called Bathurst's Fall, the eastern ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... invested the money of his ward in the lot at the extreme end of Forrester Street, where it connects with Essex Street, bounded by Forrester Street on the north and east, and Essex Street on the south. This was the property of Susannah when she married John Becket, Jr. Bishop appears to have continued his business of a sawyer to a very advanced age, and died in ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the famous struggle with Thomas Becket, which illustrates admirably the peculiar dependence of the monarchs of his day upon the churchmen. Becket was born in London. He early entered one of the lower orders of the Church, but grew up in the service of the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... wilt be perfect, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor." To this must be added the undeniable fact that the Church, when purest and when most powerful, has depended for its influence on its consideration with the many. Becket's letters, lately published,[363] have struck me not a little; but of course I now refer, not to such dark ages as most Englishmen consider these, but to the primitive Church—the Church of St. Athanasius and St. Ambrose. With a view of showing the power of the Church ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... dislike and recalls our heart again. The dramas, less than the lyrics, and even less than the "Idylls," are matter for the true Tennysonian. Their action is, at its liveliest rather vivacious than vital, and the sentiment, whether in "Becket" or in "Harold," is not only modern, it is fixed within Tennyson's own peculiar score or so of years. But that he might have answered, in drama, to a stronger stimulus, a sharper spur, than his time administered, may be guessed from a few passages of "Queen Mary," and from the dramatic ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... the most memorable instance of contrition recorded in history,—surpassing in moral sublimity, a thousand times over, the grief of Theodosius under the rebuke of Ambrose, or the sorrow of the haughty Plantagenet for the murder of Becket. His repentance was so profound, so sincere, so remarkable, that it is embalmed forever in the heart of a sinful world. Its wondrous depth and intensity almost make us forget the crime itself, which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... A loud knocking was heard from the terrified band without, who having vainly endeavoured to prevent the entrance of the knights into the cloister, now rushed before them to take refuge in the church. Becket, who had stepped some paces into the cathedral, but was resisting the solicitations of those immediately about him to move up into the choir for safety, darted back, calling aloud as he went, "Away, you cowards! By virtue of your obedience I command you not to shut ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... into the sea; and Denman, towing the girl by the becket of her life-buoy, paid no attention to the sinking hull until satisfied that they were ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... church, still androcentric, there was a great to-do to carry out this doctrine, in elaborate symbolism. A set of beggars and cripples, gathered for the occasion, was exhibited, and kings and cardinals went solemnly through the motions of serving them. As the English schoolboy phrased it, "Thomas Becket washed the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... table. Oh it is trim. Civis. These are old frendes, it is well handled and workemanly. Willyam Boswell in Pater noster rowe, painted them. Here is Christ, and Sathan, Sainct Peter, and Symon Magus, Paule, and Alexader the Coppersmith, Trace, and Becket, Martin Luther, and the Pope ... bishop Cramer, and bishop Gardiner. Boner wepyng, Bartlet, grene breche ... Salomon, and Will Sommer. The cocke and the lyon, the wolfe and the lambe." This passage also necessarily implies that Barclay's fame at that time ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... common wooden seats (of churchwardens' pattern) and wainscotting have been built up against its pillars, the stone work having been cut away to accommodate the painted wood. There are some good memorial windows; one of Henry II. being married to Eleanor (1152); and another of Thomas-a-Becket visiting ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... versions, figuring also as Isbel, Essels, and Sophia. It was probably an English ballad at the start, but bears the traces of the Scottish minstrels who were doubtless prompt to borrow it. There is likelihood enough that the ballad was originally suggested by the legend of Gilbert Becket, father of the great archbishop; the story running that Becket, while a captive in Holy Land, plighted his troth to the daughter of a Saracenic prince. When the crusader had made good his escape, ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... There all was bustle and commotion, for some people of high rank had just arrived on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, or rather to the place where the shrine had stood in past ages. King Henry the Eighth had destroyed the shrine, and a soldier had "rattled down proud Becket's glassy bones," but the spot where it had been was considered holy, and the poor deluded people even yet sometimes came to worship there, and to make their painful way up the Pilgrims' Stairs, which they had to ascend on their knees. Those stairs are now to be ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... Archdeacon of Canturburie made archbishop of Yorke.] Wherevpon one Roger that was before archdeacon of Canturburie, was chosen to that dignitie, and consecrated the tenth day of October, by archbishop Theobald, as legat to the pope, and not as archbishop of Canturburie. [Sidenote: Thomas Becket archdeacon of Canturburie.] Then also was Thomas Becket made archdeacon of Canturburie by the said Theobald. The new archbishop Roger first went to his see at Yorke, where after he had receiued his inthronization, and set ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (4 of 12) - Stephan Earle Of Bullongne • Raphael Holinshed
... was strewn with. He made many laws. One was that, if a priest or monk was thought to have committed any crime, he should be tried by the king's judge, instead of the bishop. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket, did not think it right to consent to this law; and, though he and the king had once been great friends, Henry was so angry with him that he was forced to leave England, and take shelter with the King of France. Six years passed by, and the king pretended to be reconciled to ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... In 1168, Becket had written to De Turbe from Vezelay, a town on the borders of Burgundy and Nivernois, and ordered him, by the Pope's authority, to publicly excommunicate Hugh Bigot, Earl of Norfolk. He had robbed ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... coercing, warring, managing among his fellow-creatures, while his day's work lasted,—fifty years or so, for it began early. He died in his Castle of Ballenstadt, peaceably among the Hartz Mountains at last, in the year 1170, age about sixty-five. It was in the time while Thomas a Becket was roving about the world, coming home excommunicative, and finally getting killed in Canterbury Cathedral;—while Abbot Samson, still a poor little brown Boy, came over from Norfolk, holding by his mother's hand, to St. Edmundsbury; having seen ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... flung himself upon his bed, rolled in the damask curtain, like Henry Plantagenet, what time he went off into one of his fury-fits about Thomas Becket; and Mr. Jardine and Towler were able to talk confidentially at a ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... is that of Thomas a Becket. The sudden transformation of this man of the world into an ascetic priest (it is true, on the occasion of his nomination as archbishop), from this devoted friend and servitor of the king of England into his most violent adversary, and into a champion of the Church against the State, evidently ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the vows ye've sworn At holy Becket's altar— Remember all the ills ye've borne, And scorn'd to shrink or falter— Remember every laurel'd field, Which saw the Crescent waving— Remember when compell'd to yield, Uncounted numbers braving: Remember these, remember too The cause ye strive for, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... miracle, as in Tennyson, who was not a man among men—being shy as a whip-poor-will, seclusive as flowers which haunt the woodland shadows—yet those reading him must know how accurately he reads the human heart; and his characterization of Guinevere, Pelleas, Bedivere, Enid, the lover in Maud, a Becket, the Princess, Philip, Enoch Arden, and Dora, are, in ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... simply endless. To take our own ancestors alone, no one can read the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, or Abbot Samson's Miracles of St. Edmund, or the accounts given by Eadmer and Osbern of the miracles of St. Dunstan, or the long lists of those wrought by Thomas a Becket, or by any other in the army of English saints, without seeing the perfect naturalness of this growth. This evolution of miracle in all parts of Europe came out of a vast preceding series of beliefs, extending not merely through the early ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... assistant in the management of public affairs was Thomas Becket, whom he made chancellor of the kingdom. Becket was fond of pomp and luxury, and lived in a more magnificent manner ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... from Mr. Glen's for St. A'Becket's Pool, where we camped. This water hole is a large one, and likely to last a long time. The country around is good—a large salt bush and grassy plain, with upwards of 300 cattle feeding upon it. ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... the two most representative buildings in the kingdom. Haddon is old English feudalism edificed. It represents the rough grandeur, hospitality, wassail and rude romance of the English nobility five hundred years ago. It was all in its glory about the time when Thomas-a-Becket the Magnificent used to entertain great companies of belted knights of the realm in a manner that exceeded regal munificence in those days,—even directing fresh straw to be laid for them on his ample mansion floor, that they might not soil the bravery of their ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... author of the 'Vita Mathildis' (Muratori, vol. v.) foreseen that his beloved Canossa would one day be nothing but a mass of native rock, he would undoubtedly have been more explicit on these points; and much that is vague about an event only paralleled by our Henry II.'s penance before Becket's shrine at ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... BECKET: CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON.—The Conqueror had granted to ecclesiastical courts the privilege of trying cases in which the clergy were concerned. On this privilege the clergy had been disposed to insist ever since the fall of the Roman Empire. Under ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Noel, dear; you can have it all, I don't want it. I'll just be a plain pilgrim, or Henry who killed Becket.' ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... tenant, who is delightful company: Lady Lucre. says he is a 'refined duck,' a 'gentlemanly angel,' and a 'manly poppet:' to which I made answer, that I thought so too; and that she was a 'seraphine concert.' Sermon, by the Rev. Loyalla a Becket, 'in aid of funds for supplying the poor, during this inclement but festive season, with food for the mind.' Captain de Camp did borrow a sovereign of me, to put in the plate; and I was told by my fellow-churchwarden, Mr. Flyntflayer, that he did put in a bad shilling, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... Canterbury.] Anselm's unflinching advocacy of Papal claims cost him years of exile from his diocese, and much suffering; but, in the following century, similar conduct involved still more serious consequences to St. Thomas a Becket, the then Archbishop of Canterbury. The new question in dispute was the right of clerical offenders to be tried in the spiritual courts, instead of coming under the jurisdiction of the civil power; but, in reality, it was only ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... notoriously uncomfortable in her Court, and always preferred to get as near to the door as he could. The choir at Chartres, on the contrary, was aristocratic; every window there had a court quality, even down to the contemporary Thomas a'Becket, the fashionable martyr of good society. Theology was put into the transepts or still further away in the nave where the window of the New Alliance elbows the Prodigal Son. Even to Blanche of Castile, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... importance must have led, from an early date, to their being roughly divided into "greater" and "lesser" barons, and indeed, under Henry II., the Dialogus de Scaccario already distinguishes their holdings as "greater" or "lesser" baronies. Within a century of the Conquest, as we learn from Becket's case (1164), there arose the practice of sending to the greater barons a special summons to the council, while the lesser barons, it is stipulated in Magna Carta (1215), were to be summoned only through ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... companions and fellow-laborers do; if the club yet exists; if you, and Richardson, and Lord John, and Ellis, and Lawrence, and Fitzpatrick, &c., meet, and joke, and write, as of old. What is become of Becket's, and the supper-parties,—the noctes coenaeque? Poor Burgoyne! I am sure you all mourned him as I did, particularly Richardson:—pray remember me affectionately to Richardson. It is a shame for you all, and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... charter, was a sufficient authority for any clerical possessions or privileges.[**] About a century before, these claims would have been supported by the court of Rome beyond the most fundamental articles of faith: they were the chief points maintained by the great martyr Becket; and his resolution in defending them had exalted him to the high station which he held in the catalogue of Romish saints. But principles were changed with the times: the pope was become somewhat jealous of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... Whatever opinion we may entertain of the character or principles of Thomas Becket, we must acknowledge that he suffered death with a constancy not unworthy of the primitive martyrs. See Lord Lyttleton's History of Henry II. vol. ii. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... English, and the ballads, that first exercised our memories, stored the mind with the traditions of our forefathers; their literature was our literature, their religion our religion, their history our history. The battle of Hastings, the murder of Becket, the signature of Runymede, the execution at Whitehall; the divines, the poets, the orators, the heroes, the martyrs, each and all were familiar ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... creed, those particularly which relate to restrictions on worship and on trade, are adored by squires and rectors in Pitt Clubs, under the name of a minister who was as bad a representative of the system which has been christened after him as Becket of the spirit of the Gospel. On the other hand, the cause for which Hampden bled on the field and Sidney on the scaffold is enthusiastically toasted by many an honest radical who would be puzzled to explain ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Riddell furthered the building of the church, and embellished it in various ways. He also recovered some property that had been taken away. Before consecration he had been compelled to profess publicly that he had had nothing to do with the murder of Archbishop Becket: "Mortem S. Thomae Archiepiscopi neque verbo neque facto neque scripto scienter procuravit." He became very wealthy. He died in 1189 at Winchester, whither he had gone to welcome King Richard. Not long after his death his tomb was violated, and the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... inside of the cover (viz. the following extract) "Surisberiensis (J.) Policraticus, &c., 8vo. L. Bat. 1595; very scarce, vellum 6s. This book is of great curiosity; it is stated in the preface that the author, J. of Salibury, was present at the murther of Thomas a Becket, whose intimate friend he was; and that 'dum pius Thomas ab impio milite cedetur in capite, Johannis hujus brachium fere simul percisum est,'" is from Lilly's Catalogue, and the passage relating to Becket was copied from that of Payne, to whom I communicated ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... Old Malling once stood a Saxon collegiate church founded by Caedwalla in 688 and therefore one of the first Christian churches erected in Sussex. The Archbishops of Canterbury had a residence near, and in the Memorials of Canterbury Dean Stanley tells how Becket's murderers entered the house and threw their arms on the dining-table, which immediately threw them off; replaced, they were again thrown farther off with a louder crash. One of the knights then suggested that the table refused to bear its sacrilegious burden. This is still ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... gathering around me the thousand recollections of scenic splendor, of terror, of bigotry, and superstition which were acted in sight of the very walls by which I was surrounded. Here the murder of Thomas a Becket was perpetrated; there was his miracle-working shrine, visited by pilgrims from all parts of Christendom, and enriched with the most costly jewels that the wealth of princes could purchase and lavish upon it; the very ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... wife Bridget, he had but one child,—a daughter, Christian, born May 8, 1667. She married Thomas Mason, and died in 1693; leaving an only child, Susannah, born August 23, 1687. Edward Bishop was her guardian. She married John Becket in 1711, and by him had a son, John, and six daughters, as follows: Susannah, married to David Felt, Elizabeth to William Peele, Sarah to Nathaniel Silsbee, Rebecca to William Fairfield, Eunice to Thorndike Deland, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Sir; there is no serious conversation." To us all serious speech of men, as that of Seventeenth-Century Puritans, Twelfth-Century Catholics, German Poets of this Century, has become jargon, more or less insane. Cromwell was mad and a quack; Anselm, Becket, Goethe, ditto ditto. ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... river again. All was thenceforth wonderment and devotion. Masses were sung, tapers were kindled, bells were tolled; the monks of St. Romuald had a solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the sacristan at their tail, and the holy breeches of St. Thomas a Becket in the centre; —Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of holy water. The Rood of Gillingham was deserted; the chapel of Rainham forsaken; every one who had a soul to be saved, flocked with his offering to St. Bridget's ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... notice, and second the recommendations of my friends. After a last revisal I consulted with Mr. Mallet and Dr. Maty, who approved the design and promoted the execution. Mr. Mallet, after hearing me read my manuscript, received it from my hands, and delivered it into those of Becket, with whom he made an agreement in my name; an easy agreement: I required only a certain number of copies; and, without transferring my property, I devolved on the bookseller the charges and profits of the edition. Dr. Maty undertook, in my ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... his brush with excellent effect on the back of an old band-box. Mary Anderson has written on the back of a photo, "Better late than never," for the picture was a long time coming; another excellent example of photographic work being a large head of Mr. Irving as "Becket," bearing his autograph. In a corner is a queer-looking wax model of Daniel O'Connell addressing the crowd, and amongst a hundred little odds and ends spring flowers are peeping out. Mr. Furniss finds little time now to use his paint-box. The example—an early one, by-the-bye—he ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... some loss to recognize now the truth of old Leland's description of that once stout and gallant bulwark of the North, when he 'numbrid 11 or 12 towres in the walles of the Castel, and one very fayre beside in the second area.' In that castle, the four knightly murderers of the haughty Becket (the Wolsey of his age) remained for a whole year, defying the weak justice of the times. There, too, the unfortunate Richard the Second,—the Stuart of the Plantagenets—passed some portion of his bitter imprisonment. And there, after the battle of Marston Moor, waved ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... whole length of the main avenue of the Crystal Palace, and the effect produced is superb. A Catholic bookseller from Belgium makes quite a display of his editions of devotional works for every country under heaven; and there, too, are the effigies of Cardinal Boromeo, Thomas a Becket, and the late Archbishop of Paris, all arrayed in full pontificals. Their crosiers are very richly jewelled. If the apostles of Christ could revisit the earth, they would never fancy that these were their successors in the work and ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... are older than I am; and you have always been a good friend to me. Now, do you think I am the sort of man to think I hear things where there isn't anything to hear, or to think I see things when there is nothing to see? No, you don't. Thank you. Well now, I had passed the last becket, and I sang out to the men to sway away, and I was standing on the jaws of the spanker-gaff, with my left hand on the bolt-rope of the trysail, so that I could feel when it was board-taut, and I wasn't thinking of anything except being glad the job was over, and that we were ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... Caledonia. 1. A lance. 2. The ornamented part, on a larger scale. 3. A cap ornamented with feathers, and girt with a sligg. 4. A comb. 5. A becket, or piece of cord made of cocoa-nut bark, used in throwing their lances. 6 and 7. Different clubs. 8. A pick-axe used in cultivating the ground. ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... out at Becket as we expected, we found ourselves way down near Otis and West Otis, and passed through North Blandford and Blandford to Fairfield, where we ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... concentrate his whole faculties in the service, not so much of a God of Truth as of a Catholic system. In his character will be found, I hope, some implicit apology for the failings of such truly great men as Dunstan, Becket, and Dominic, and of many more whom, if we hate, we shall never understand, while we shall be but too likely, in our own way, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... already singled him out for the high position of Attorney-General. That secured, only one step remained to place him in the seat of the Lord Chancellor. Truly, an imperial position—one that satisfied the proud ambition of a Wolsey and fitted the genius of a Thomas a Becket. It carries with it the position of keeper of the conscience of Her Majesty, giving the possessor precedence in all official functions over the English aristocracy, next to ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... of a world which changes its idols almost as often and as easily as its fashions. Time was when we should have found this great highway strewn with devotees hurrying to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket. But now, though we might detect, no doubt, in the throng around us, the counterpart of each individual whom Chaucer committed to his living canvass; of the knight who 'loved chevalrie' and the Frankelein 'who loved wine;' of the young squire 'with his locks in ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... the Middle Ages, that is the supremacy of law; that it is the law which is the supreme authority in the State, the law which is over every person in the State. When John of Salisbury, the secretary of Thomas a Becket, wishes to distinguish between the prince and the tyrant, he insists that the prince is one who rules according to law, while the tyrant is one who ignores and violates the law.[26] And in a memorable phrase, Bracton, ...
— Progress and History • Various
... too often anti-national position, which the Roman clergy held for many ages, and of which the instinct, at least, lingers among them in many countries. Out of it arose, too, all after struggles between the temporal and ecclesiastical powers. Becket, fighting to the death against Henry II., was not, as M. Thierry thinks, the Anglo-Saxon defying the Norman. He was the representative of the Christian Roman defying the Teuton, on the ground of rights which he believed to have existed while the Teuton was a ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... prelates; when they are proud and great, there is also danger from them; as it was in the times of Anselmus, and Thomas Becket, Archbishops of Canterbury; who, with their croziers, did almost try it with the king's sword; and yet they had to deal with stout and haughty kings, William Rufus, Henry the First, and Henry the Second. The danger ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... he could not contemplate without uneasiness the combination of spiritual and political power in South Wales in the hands of two able, ambitious, and energetic kinsmen, such as he knew Gerald and the Lord Rhys to be. Gerald had made no secret of his admiration for the martyred St. Thomas e Becket. He fashioned himself upon him as Becket did on Anselm. The part which Becket played in England he would like to play in Wales. But the sovereign who had destroyed Becket was not to be frightened by the canons of St. David's and the Archdeacon ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... calls this gentleman Mr. Becket, it seems that there was no young officer of that name at the battle of Fort Washington. Becket appears to be a mistake for Lieutenant Onslow Beckwith. The prisoners were now marched within six miles of New York ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... singularly sacred by the Normans, and all the more knightly races of the continent. Even the craftiest dissimulator, designing fraud, and stratagem, and murder to a foe, would not, to gain his ends, betray the pledge of the kiss of peace. When Henry II. consented to meet Becket after his return from Rome, and promised to remedy all of which his prelate complained, he struck prophetic dismay into Becket's heart by ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the cathedral; Black Edward's helm, and Becket's bloody stone, Were pointed out as usual by the bedral, In the same quaint, uninterested tone:— There 's glory again for you, gentle reader! All Ends in a rusty casque and dubious bone, Half-solved into these sodas or magnesias; ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... commerce far beyond the northern seas, both by caravans through Russia to the Orient, and by their venturesome barks which {109} sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean.[426] Only a little later, probably before 1200 A.D., a clerk in the service of Thomas a Becket, present at the latter's death, wrote a life of the martyr, to which (fortunately for our purposes) he prefixed a brief eulogy of the city of London.[427] This clerk, William Fitz Stephen by name, thus speaks of the ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... the Second claims our rhyme 1154-1189 'The hardest worker of his time'; A wiser King we never had Nor father with his sons so bad. Becket This the first 'Plantagenet' King With Becket strove like anything; Church v. Which should be Master, Church or Crown Crown Pull-King Pull-Bishop; both went down. Thomas was murdered by four Knights On steps of Altar—Sorry wights: With bleeding feet the King atones By pilgrimage to Becket's ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... world charged Christianity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself combined extreme bodily luxury with an extreme absence of artistic pomp. The modern man thought Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found the church ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... (1139-1148), a Cluniac monk, who, owing his position to his relative Milo, Earl of Hereford, was consecrated in 1139. He was made Bishop of Hereford in 1148, and was translated thence to London. Though he owed much to Becket, his patron and tutor, he is said to have taken the king's side in the quarrels with Becket, and to have been instrumental in the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... Canterbury Cathedral is claimed and justly claimed, perhaps, as the largest and most beautiful in England. It is thought to contain fragments of Roman and Saxon work, and much of it dates from the days of S. Anselm (1096-1100). It was here that the remains of S. Thomas a Becket lay from 1170 to 1220, and "here that Henry II., fasting and discrowned, with naked feet, bared back, and streaming tears, performed on July 12th, 1174, the memorable penance for his share in the murder of ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... Further on is Canterbury, which is celebrated as the stronghold of Kentishmen and the first English Christian city. Its prime attraction of course is its fine cathedral, which in 1170 was the scene of Becket's murder. ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... Lent, the wind veering at last to the east, ships arrived from England and Aquitaine, bearers of very ill news to the king. Two legates were on their way, sent by the Pope, to inquire into the murder of Becket, and armed in case of an unsatisfactory reply with all the terrors of an interdict. Henry hastily made over the government of Ireland to Hugo de Lacy, whom he placed in Dublin as his representative, and sailed from Wexford upon Easter Monday. ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... were, to our own firesides! A hundred thousand pilgrims a year used to visit Canterbury. Now Canterbury visits us. See that small white mark on the pavement. That marks the place where the slice of Thomas a Becket's skull fell when Reginald Fitz Urse struck it off with a "Ha!" that seems to echo yet through the vaulted arches. And see the broad stains, worn by the pilgrims' knees as they climbed to the martyr's shrine. For four hundred ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... continued working my way aft. As I got abreast of the main-mast, I saw some one had let run the halyards. I soon reached the beckets of the sweeps, and found four in them. I could not swim a stroke, and it crossed my mind to get one of the sweeps to keep me afloat. In striving to jerk the becket clear, it parted, and the forward ends of the four sweeps rolled down the schooner's side into the water. This caused the other ends to slide, and all the sweeps got away from me. I then crawled quite ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... settlers in Canterbury, New Zealand, were so called in allusion to the pilgrims to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket. Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' were told by such pilgrims. The name was given probably by Mr. William Lyon, who in 1851 wrote ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... others we have seen. Their weapons are clubs, spears or darts, bows and arrows, and stones. The clubs are of three or four kinds, and from three to five feet long. They seem to place most dependence on the darts, which are pointed with three bearded edges. In throwing them they make use of a becket, that is, a piece of stiff plaited cord about six inches long, with an eye in one end and a knot at the other. The eye is fixed on the fore-finger of the right hand, and the other end is hitched round the dart, where it is nearly on an equipoise. They hold the dart between the thumb and remaining ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... one of the biographers of Becket, states that the archbishop's murderers {409} (S. Thom. Cantuar., ed. Giles, vol. i. p. 65.), having crossed from France, landed at Portus Canum. It has been conjectured that this means Hythe, which is close to Saltwood Castle, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... we first came across Borough Farm. We left it in 1889. I did a great deal of work, there and in London, in those seven years. The Macmillan papers I have already spoken of. They were on many subjects—Tennyson's "Becket," Mr. Pater's "Marius," "The Literature of Introspection," Jane Austen, Keats, Gustavo Becquer, and various others. I still kept up my Spanish to some extent, and I twice examined—in 1882 and 1888—for ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fasten it through a hole in the end. Fasten the throat of sail tight to the top of the mast. Cut a number of short pieces of heavy twine, and lace the sail, at intervals of a foot, to the boom and mast. Fasten a becket or loop of rope at a suitable position on the mast, to set the heel of the sprit into. Rig main-sheet over two sheaves, as shown; it brings less strain on the boom, and clears the skipper's head in tacking. Make a good, large wooden cleat to belay ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... royal king was very wroth at the earl's evasion, and swore by Saint Thomas-a-Becket (whom he had himself translated into a saint by having him knocked on the head), that he would give the castle and lands of Locksley to the man who should bring in the earl. Hereupon ensued a process of thought in the mind of the knight. ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... the love of English poetry, for it is at the Tabard Inn that Chaucer more than five hundred years ago assembled his nine and twenty pilgrims who were preparing to visit the tomb of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. The witchery of the springtime had stirred the blood of these Londoners who, perhaps, were enticed from home more by the soft April showers and the melody of the birds than by their need of spiritual consolation. This, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... morality could be maintained. The bed was usually a bag of straw, a wooden log served as a pillow. Personal cleanliness was utterly unknown; great officers of state, even dignitaries so high as the Archbishop of Canterbury, swarmed with vermin; such, it is related, was the condition of Thomas a Becket, the antagonist of an English king. To conceal personal impurity, perfumes were necessarily and profusely used. The citizen clothed himself in leather, a garment which, with its ever-accumulating impurity, might ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Strood common to several other parts of the kingdom, e.g. Auster in Dorsetshire, which the quaint and diligent Lambarde, quoting from Polydore Virgil, evidently regarded as serious, and takes immense pains to confute! It relates to St. Thomas a Becket and his contention with King Henry II., whereby he began to be looked upon as the King's enemy, and as such began to be "so commonly ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... table, of 1170, is quoted from Giraldus Cambrensis by Dean Stanley in his Canterbury Memorials, p. 103. The table threw off the weapons of Becket's murderers. This was at South Malling. See the original in Wharton's Anglia ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... sacerdotal caste, and who ought not "to merge himself in the body of the nation." To him the Reformation was an infamous crime, and Henry VIII. was worse than the Bluebeard of the nursery. His hero was Thomas a Becket. He wrote a sketch of his life and career, which he did not live to finish. His friends ill-advisedly published it after his death. His ideal ecclesiastical statesman of modern times was Archbishop Laud. Charles I. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... his mind where his young monarch was concerned. Shakespeare, in the play of "King Henry VIII," describes the meeting of the two kings, which occurred at Canterbury, "at a grand jubilee in honor of the shrine of Thomas a Becket." One historian thus describes ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... and so forth, and has adventures identical with those of Lord Bateman, though the proud porter in the Scots version is scarcely so prominent and illustrious. As Motherwell saw, Bekie (Beichan, Buchan, Bateman) is really Becket, Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas of Canterbury. Every one has heard how HIS Saracen bride sought him in London. (Robert of Gloucester's Life and Martyrdom of Thomas Becket, Percy Society. See Child's Introduction, IV., i. 1861, ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... erected here, and bricks manufactured by a convict of the name of Becket, who came out in the last fleet, and has fifty-two people to work under him. He makes 25,000 bricks weekly. He says that they are very good, and would sell at Birmingham, where he worked about eighteen months ago, at more ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... belonging to the family of Crovequer. In the fifteenth of Edward II. Sir Thomas de Colepeper, who was castellan of the castle, was hanged on the drawbridge for having refused admittance to Isabel, the Queen-consort, in her progress in performing a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas 'a Becket at Canterbury. The manor and castle were forfeited to the crown by his attainder, but restored to his son, sir Thomas Colepeper. By his Diary of May 8, 1666, it appears to have been hired by Evelyn for a prison. "Here," he says, "I flowed the dry moat, made a new ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... of delight, that one of themselves, Nicholas Breakspear, had been elevated to the papal throne, and had held out his foot to be kissed by ambassadors sprung from the noblest houses of Normandy. It was a national as well as a religious feeling that drew great multitudes to the shrine of Becket, whom they regarded as the enemy of their enemies. Whether he was a Norman or a Saxon may be doubted: but there is no doubt that he perished by Norman hands, and that the Saxons cherished his memory with peculiar tenderness and veneration, and, in their popular poetry, represented ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... energy that inspired Loyola and Lanfranc burned in the bosom of this modern actor; and it was entirely in keeping with the drift of his character and the tenor of his life that the last subject that occupied his thoughts should have been the story of Becket, the great prelate—whom he intended to represent, and to whom in mental qualities he was nearly allied. In losing Lawrence Barrett the American stage lost the one man who served it with an apostle's zeal because he loved it with an ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... attraction of Moret lies less in its historic monuments and antiquated streets than in its chemins qui marchent, its ever reposeful water-ways. Like most French towns Moret is linked with English history. Its fine old church was consecrated by Thomas a-Becket in 1166. Three hundred years later the town was taken by Henry V., and re-taken by Charles VII. a decade after. Not long since five hundred skulls supposed to have been those of English prisoners were unearthed ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... chronological order, there were to be found the precious labours of the chosen servants of the church down to the last pamphlet written in opposition to the consecration of Dr Hampden; and raised above this were to be seen the busts of the greatest among the great: Chrysostom, St Augustine, Thomas a Becket, Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop Laud, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... before him, and like Chancellor Wolsey in a later time, Chancellor Becket was a royal tutor;[35] and like Swithin, who still remains the pluvious saint of humid England, and unlike Wolsey, who just missed the glory of canonization, Becket became a widely venerated saint. But less kind to St. Thomas ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... prevent greater evils, he was obliged to cause the nobility satisfy both the avarice and arrogance of the clergy, who had now resolved upon and begun a journey to Rome, with a view to raise as great commotions in Scotland, as Thomas Becket had lately ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... earlier volumes. But Borrow attempted something much more comprehensive than the Newgate Calendar and the State Trials in his book. In the former work the trials range from 1700 to 1802; in the latter from the trial of Becket in 1163 to the trial of Thistlewood in 1820. Both works are concerned solely with this country. Borrow went all over Europe, and the trials of Joan of Arc, Count Struensee, Major Andre, Count Cagliostro, Queen Marie Antoinette, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... of the arrow are two feathers, generally of the spotted oval, not very neatly lashed on. The bowstring consists of from twelve to eighteen small lines of three-sinew sinnet, having a loose twist, and with a separate becket of the same size for going over the knobs at ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... now! that's a fine thing! and a fine fellow! and a fleet foot! That lad 'll rise! He'll be a squire some day. Look at him. Bowels of a'Becket! 'tis a sight! I'd rather see that, now, than old Groschen 's supper-table groaning with Wurst again, and running a river of Rudesheimer! Tussle on! I'll lend a hand if there's occasion; but you shall have the honour, boy, an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... faith. Never ask devotion of self-interest, because such interest may change; but expect all from sentiments, religious faith, monarchical faith, patriotic faith. Those three beliefs produced such men as the Berthereaus of Geneva, the Sydneys and Straffords of England, the murderers of Thomas a Becket, the Jacques Coeurs, the Jeanne d'Arcs, the Richelieus, Dantons, Bonchamps, Talmonts, and also the Clements, Chabots, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... least as far back as the reign of Henry VI. There had been theatrical exhibitions in abundance, however, at a much earlier period. Stow, in his "Survey of London," in 1599, translates from the "Life of Thomas a Becket," by Fitzstephen, who wrote about 1182, mention of "the shews upon theatres and comical pastimes" of London, "its holy playes, representations of miracles which holy confessors have wrought, or representations of tormentes wherein ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... more interesting; and some people know that Alfred can still walk in Winchester and that St. Thomas at Canterbury was killed but did not die. It is at least as possible for a Philadelphian to feel the presence of Penn and Franklin as for an Englishman to see the ghosts of Alfred and of Becket. Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... (1811-1856).—Comic writer, b. in London, the s. of a lawyer, and belonged to a family claiming descent from Thomas a Becket. Destined for the legal profession, he was called to the Bar. In addition to contributions to various periodicals and newspapers, including Punch, The Illustrated London News, The Times, and Morning Herald, he produced over fifty plays, many of which attained great popularity, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Religion Becket inquiring for her sister," spoke the doctor in the same strange voice. "The sister seems to ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... he added to his seneschal, "thou wilt word this our second summons so courteously, as to gratify the pride of these Saxons, and make it impossible for them again to refuse; although, by the bones of Becket, courtesy to them is casting ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the Roman supremacy pressed both on the clergy and laity of England during the reign of Henry II. Even the attempt of that wise and courageous monarch to make a stand for the independence of his throne in the memorable case of Thomas a Becket, had such an unhappy issue, that, like a suppressed rebellion, it was found to add new strength to the domination of the Church. Since the submission of the king in that ill-fated struggle, the voice of Rome had double potency whenever it was heard, and the boldest peers of England held it more ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... deep beech-woods, which once were a great forest, stretching in a ring round the north of London, full of deer and boar, and of wild bulls too, even as late as the twelfth century, according to the old legend of Thomas a Becket's father and the fair Saracen, ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... the religious houses, the Cistercians especially, who always settled in the remote country, were most energetic farmers, their energy being materially assisted by their wealth. It is said that the great Becket when he visited a monastery did not disdain to ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... are among the most wonderful monuments of the intellectual power of man. The thirteenth century produced Thomas Aquinas, and Johannes Duns Scotus, and William Occam, and Roger Bacon. In the century before, Thomas a Becket drew around him a circle of literary men, whose correspondence has been handed down to us, and who deemed it their proudest distinction that they called each other philosophers. The Schoolmen often bewildered themselves in their subtleties, and often delivered dogmas and ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... arguing the matter further with Thomas o'Becket, or any one else—I skip'd into the boat, and in five minutes we got under sail, and scudded away ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... with its added matter, is reproduced exactly as it was printed for T. Becket to be sold in his shop at the corner of the Adelphi in the Strand, London, 1774. Errors of grammar and spelling are not corrected. The only change is the modernizing of the old s's which ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... indexed nearly two hundred donors to Christ Church alone. In most cases the gifts are of one or a few books, but occasionally collections of respectable size were received, as when T. Sturey, senior, enriched the library with nearly sixty books, when Thomas a Becket left over seventy, and when Prior Henry Eastry left eighty volumes at his death. As many or more donors to St. Augustine's are indexed. Here also some of the donations were fairly large: for example, Henry Belham ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... nickname "padre." It is not contempt. There is not room for real contempt alongside of the affection which the name implies. It's just a sense that, neither for good nor evil, is the padre of much importance. It is impossible to imagine King Henry speaking of Thomas a Becket as the padre. He hated that archbishop, and he also feared him, so he called him, not a padre, but ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... was the age of the Crusades, of Anselm and Abelard, of Bernard of Clairvaux, and Arnold of Brescia. It saw the settlement of the question of investitures, and in England the struggle between Henry II. and Becket, in which the murder of the archbishop gave him the victory. It saw a new enthusiasm of monasticism, not originated by, but centring in, the person of Bernard, a more conspicuous and a more authoritative figure than any pope of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... least of the latter, should be made to have some influence on the finale of the story. All the rest are glorious subjects; especially Henry I. (being the struggle between the men of arms and of letters, in the persons of Henry and Becket), Stephen, Richard I., Edward ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... England was not very general, we may infer, in the earlier ages of embroidery. There are certain evidences, however, showing that the glove was part of the priestly outfit, remains of gloves having been found on the bones of Thomas a Becket when they were transferred from the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral to the special shrine prepared for them; and a crimson leather pair, bearing the sacred monogram in embroidered gold, are preserved in the New College, Oxford, belonging to the founder, William of Wykeham, ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... diseases, and those blooming in aromatic beauty at the tomb of St. Bernard instantly cured grievous sicknesses.[33] The belt of St. Guthlac, and the belt of St. Thomas of Lancaster, were sovereign remedies for the headache, whilst the penknife and boots of Archbishop Becket, and a piece of his shirt, were found most admirably to aid parturition. Fragments of the veil of the saintess Coleta, and the use of her well-worn cloak, immediately cured a terrible luxation, and a cataleptic patient was restored to sanity by ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten |
