(Thomas), lord chancellor of England, archbishop of Canterbury in the 12th century. The story of his birth is as extraordinary as that of his life. It is related, that his father Gilbert Becket, sometime sheriff of London, went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where, being surprised and enslaved by a party of Saracens, his master's daughter fell in love with him; and that when he made his escape, she followed him to London. So singular an instance of heroic affection struck him; and after consulting with some bishops, he baptized her by the name of Matilda, and married her; from which marriage proceeded the haughty Thomas Becket. Being raised to the archbishopric, he began the great dispute between the crown and the mitre, and sided with the pope; at which king Henry was greatly offended; and calling an assembly of the bishops at Westminster, offered six articles against papal encroachments, which he urged Becket to assent to. Becket, at the importunities of several lords, signed them; but relapsing, he was ordered to be tried as a traitor; traitor; upon which he fled into Flanders. The king banished all his relations, and Becket excommunicated all his opposers. At last, after seven years, by the intercession of the French king and the pope, he returned; but refused to absolve these bishops and others he had excommunicated: whereupon the king grew enraged; and four of his knights, thinking to please the king, murdered Becket. Two years after, Becket was canonized; and the same year, a particular collect was appointed to be read in all the churches of the province of Canterbury, for expiating the guilt of his murder. The next year, king Henry returning from France, went to Canterbury, where he did penance, as a testimony of his grief for the murder. In 1221, Becket's body was taken up, 50 years after his murder, in the presence of king Henry III., and a great concourse of the nobility and others, and deposited in a rich shrine, erected at the expense of Stephen Langton archbishop of Canterbury, which was soon visited from all parts, and enriched with the most costly gifts and offerings; and the miracles said to be wrought at his tomb were so numerous, that Gervase of Canterbury tells us, there were two large volumes of them kept in that church. The monks used to raise his body every year; and the day on which this ceremony was performed, which was called the day of his translation, was a general holiday: every 50th year there was celebrated a jubilee to his honour, which lasted 15 days: plenary indulgences were then granted to all that visited his tomb; and 100,000 pilgrims have been registered at a time in Canterbury. The devotion towards him had quite effaced in that town the adoration of the Deity; nay, even that of the Virgin. At God's altar, for instance, there were offered in one year 3l. 2s. 6d. at the Virgin's, 6s. 5½. 6d. at St Thomas's, 832l. 12s. 3d. But next year, the disproportion was still greater: there was not a penny offered at God's altar; the Virgin's gained only 4l. 1s. 8d. but St Thomas had got for his share 954l. 6s. 3d. Lewis VII. of France had made a pilgrimage to this miraculous tomb, and had bestowed on the shrine a jewel which was esteemed the richest in Christendom. Henry VIII. to whom, it may easily be imagined, how obnoxious a faint of this character behaved to appear, and how much contrary to all his projects for degrading the authority of the court of Rome, not only pillaged the rich shrine dedicated to St Thomas; but made the saint himself be cited to appear in court, and be tried and condemned as a traitor: he ordered his name to be struck out of the calendar; the office for his festival to be expunged from all breviaries; and his bones to be burnt, and the ashes thrown in the air.