posterity depended. Bromton has mentioned the rebuke given to Henry by a soldier soon after the death of Becket. In this, the ordinary suspicions of Henry, which would have been afloat at the time, find their climax in an appeal to him to drive out the Jews, adding with unconscious humour that he should leave them just money enough to take them safely out of the country. The encouragement which he had given to this useful and despised race seems to have offended many, who afterwards took a fearful revenge.3 Yet the only rational ground of complaint which the English had against the Jews could not have been increased by Henry's policy. He set aside a special division of the Exchequer for them, and, while encouraging their trade, restrained their usury. Nor was the rest of his policy towards the towns more acceptable to the monks. In at least one case, in which local privileges of monasteries

2

1 Bromton, p. 1008.

2 Bromton says, 'Judæos plus æquo fovit' (p. 1152). See too the satirical touch given by Fitz Stephen in his Life of Becket, when, at the end of a glowing eulogy on the order introduced by Henry, he speaks of the Jews coming out again from their hiding places to prey on their creditors, Steph. Vit. S. Thomæ, p. 13, ed. as above.

See the accounts of the riots against the Jews on Richard's accession, with which the chronicle of Richard of Devizes opens.

seem to have come into conflict with those of the towns, the burgesses were protected by Henry against the monks; and it is a fair inference from Henry's whole policy to believe that that case would not be an isolated one.

The effect of this policy seems to have been speedily apparent. Hitherto the towns had, as we saw, been rather centres of local life than political powers in the country generally. But in the resistance which they presented to young Henry's insurrection, we mark a consistent national policy. In Leicester,2 which was seized by the young King's men, the burgesses hasten to make peace with his father. In Northampton, the burgesses come out to fight for the old king. Norwich and Berwick are burnt by young Henry and his ally, the King of Scotland; and the men of Nottingham are murdered by him after some resistance of their city to his force. No great town seems to have been an exception to this rule.

It will now be easily explained why I have delayed till this point to speak of the struggle between Henry and Becket. The Constitutions

1 Jocelin of Brakelonde, see above.

2 The whole of this account is taken from Bromton, pp. 10901095.

of Clarendon were not, as some historians would have us believe, a mere personal attack on Becket, or even on his order. They were part of Henry's whole policy. The king, moved by the corruption of the clerical tribunals 2 which the Conqueror had introduced, sees the need of a firmer and surer jurisdiction for the country. It is at such a crisis that Becket becomes archbishop. He throws off his chancellorship at once. But the king is still hopeful that his old ally will support him in carrying out to their logical result those principles of law which he had helped to inauguBecket's hesitation irritates him. His treatment of John Marshal suggests-whether justly or unjustly the high-handed policy of clerical tribunals, his conduct to William of Eynesford,5 the dangerous power which the right of excommunication gave to the clergy. The opposition

rate.

4

1 Professor Stubbs uses nearly the same words, 'The Constitutions of Clarendon were but part of a scheme which was to reduce all men to equality before the law,' Intr. to Doc. Ill of Eng. Hist., p. 21.

2 See FitzStephen's account of the complaints of Henry about the sale of pardons by archdeacons, Vit. S. Thomæ, p. 28.

3 See Stubbs's Doc. Ill. of Eng. Hist., pp. 81, 82.

4 Roger of Hoveden, vol. i. p. 225.

5 Steph. Vit. S. Thomæ, p. 28.

of the Treasurer of the Exchequer to the fining of a clergyman by the king, confirms the dislike of the latter to the privileges of the order.1

3

Thus, then, the attempt of Becket2 to identify his cause with that of Anselm was really founded on a fallacy. The first point at issue between Anselm and Rufus had been the question of paying money for an ecclesiastical appointment, the cause for which Anselm was driven from the kingdom by Henry was his assertion of the necessity of investiture of bishops by the Pope. No one could know better than Becket that Henry had been zealous in checking simony, while, as to the second point, the question of investitures is not mentioned in the Constitutions of Clarendon, except so far as it is affected by the Fourth Constitution. With the exception of the Fourth and the Tenth (to both of which I shall have occasion to refer hereafter), and to some extent the Seventh, the Constitutions are concerned with the question of the subordination of the clergy in property or person to lay jurisdiction. Nor

1 Steph. Vit. S. Thomæ, p. 32.

2 Bouquet, Recueil des Historiens des Gaules, vol. xvi. p. 416. 3 See above.

4 Steph. Vit. S. Thomæ, p. 13.

can we forget, since Becket himself invited the comparison, the enormous moral difference between the tone of his controversy with Henry II., and that of Anselm with Rufus and Henry I. The mere violence of Becket, though it was such as to call forth a rebuke even from the faithful John of Salisbury,' might be passed over as beside our question; but the way in which he narrows the controversy as it proceeds, till his personal wrongs seem to have taken the place of the wrongs of the Church, must be considered to affect the political importance of the respective struggles. Anselm, who hesitated to excommunicate even Rufus, and who wrote in the gentlest spirit to both the kings with whom he struggled, never sinking for a moment to the thought of mere personal grievances, would, indeed, have been startled to hear that such a letter as that which

2

3

4

Becket wrote to the Bishop of Nevers on the occasion of an attempt of the latter to make peace

1 Bouquet, vol. xvi. p. 566.

2 Eadmer's Hist. Nov., Book II. p. 50.

His claim on the property of Canterbury Cathedral, in the beginning of his contest with Rufus, cannot be looked on as a mere personal question, Eadmer's Hist. Nov., Book I. pp. 43, 44.

4 Bouquet, vol. xvi. pp. 424, 425.