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, some time 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 II. 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: 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 is reported to have dropped these expressions: "That he was an unhappy prince, who maintained a great number of lazy insignificant persons about him, none of whom had gratitude or spirit enough to revenge him on a single insolent prelate who gave him so much disturbance." These words of the king put four gentlemen of his court on forming a design against the archbishop's life, which they executed in the cathedral church of Canterbury, on the 29th of December 1171. They endeavoured to drag him out of the church; but finding they could not do this without difficulty, killed him there. The assassins being afraid they had gone too far, durst not return to the king's court at Normandy, but retired to Knaresborough in Yorkshire; where everybody avoided their company, hardly any person even choosing to eat or drink with them. They at length took a voyage to Rome, and being admitted to penance by Pope Alexander III. they went to Jerusalem; where, according to the pope's order, they spent their lives in penitential austerities, Becket and died in the Black Mountain. They were buried at Jerusalem, without the church door belonging to the Templars. King Henry was, or affected to be, much disturbed at the news of Becket's death, and despatched an embassy to Rome to clear himself from the imputation of being the cause of it. Immediately all divine offices ceased in the church of Canterbury, and this for a year, excepting nine days; at the end of which, by order of the pope, it was reconsecrated. Two years after, Becket was canonized; and the following year, Henry returning to England, went to Canterbury, where he did penance as a testimony of his regret for the murder of Becket. When he came within sight of the church where the archbishop was buried, he alighted off his horse, and walked barefoot, in the habit of a pilgrim, till he came to Becket's tomb; where, after he had prostrated himself and prayed for a considerable time, he submitted to be scourged by the monks, and passed all that day and night without any refreshment, and kneeling upon the bare stone. 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, 63l. 5s. 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 934l. 6s. 3d. Louis 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 saint of this character behoved 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. From Mr Thomas Warton we learn, that Becket was the subject of poetical legends. The Lives of the Saints in verse, in Bennet's library (Number CLXV.), contain his martyrdom and translation. This manuscript is supposed to be of the 14th century. The same ingenious writer informs us, from Peter de Blois, that the palace of Becket was perpetually filled with bishops highly accomplished in literature, who passed their time there in reading, disputing, and deciding important questions of the state. "These prelates, though men of the world, were a society of scholars; yet very different from those who frequented the universities, in which nothing was taught but words and syllables, unprofitable subtleties, elementary speculations, and trifling distinctions. De Blois was himself eminently learned, and one of the most distinguished ornaments of Becket's attendants. We know that John of Salisbury, his intimate friend, the companion of his exile, and the writer of his life, was scarcely exceeded by any man of his time for his knowledge in philological and polite literature."