Thomas à Becket was a secular clerk, bound by none of the vows of monastic orders; and therefore, though he led a strictly pure and self-denying life, he did hot consider himself obliged to abstain from worldly business or amusements, and in the year 1150 he was appointed Chancellor by Henry II. He was then in his thirty-eighth year, of great ability and cultivation, graceful in demeanor, ready of speech, clear in mind, and his tall frame (reported to have been no less than six feet two in height) fitting him for martial exercise and bodily exertion. The King, a youth of little past twenty, delighting in ability wherever he found it, became much attached to his gallant Chancellor, and not only sought his advice in the regulation of England after its long troubles, but, when business was done, they used to play together like two schoolboys. It must have been a curious scene in the hall of Chancellor Becket, when, at the daily meal, earls and barons sat round his table, and knights and nobles crowded, so thickly at the others, that the benches were not sufficient, and the floor was daily strewn with hay or straw in winter, or in summer with green boughs, that those who sat on it might not soil their robes. Gold and silver dishes, and goblets, and the richest wines, were provided, and the choicest, most costly viands were purchased at any price by his servants for these entertainments: they once gave a hundred shillings for a dish of eels. But the Chancellor seldom touched these delicacies, living on the plainest fare, as he sat in his place as the host, answering the pledges of his guests, amusing them with his converse, and providing minstrelsy and sports of all kinds for their recreation. Often the King would ride into the hall, in the midst of the gay crowd seated on the floor, throw himself off his horse, leap over the table, and join in the mirth. These rich feasts afforded afterward plentiful alms for the poor, who were never forgotten in the height of Becket’s magnificence, and the widow and the oppressed never failed to find a protector in the Chancellor. His house was full of young squires and pages, the sons of the nobility, who placed them there as the best school of knighthood; and among them was the King’s own son Henry, who had been made his pupil. The King seems to have been apt to laugh at Becket for his strict life and overflowing charity. One very cold day, as they were riding, they met an old man in a thin, ragged coat. “Poor old man!” said Henry, “would it not be a charity to give him a good, warm cloak?” “It would, indeed.” said Becket: “you had better keep the matter in mind.”