As France, so England likewise, acknowledged Alexander III. notwithstanding the protection he seemed to grant to Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. This prelate elevated by the king, Henry II., to the most eminent dignities, dared to oppose himself to the punishment of a priest convicted of assassination, and to determine that the sole punishment should be, deprivation of his benefice. The king wished that the common law should be applied, by the regular tribunals, to the frequent crimes of the members of the church; he desired that no bishop should without his permission go to Rome or appeal to the Holy See, nor excommunicate or suspend a vassal or officer of the crown. A parliament at Clarendon adopted these articles: Becket after having at first rejected them without examination, next adopted them without reserve, lastly accused himself to the pope of having betrayed the rights of the clergy, did penance for it, and renounced the exercise of his ministry until the sovereign pontiff had absolved him. Treated as a rebel by all the peers of Great Britain, as well ecclesiastical as secular, he took refuge in France, threatened the king with the fate of Nebuchadnezzar, and pronounced anathemas against the most faithful ministers and subjects of Henry. This prince attempted to recal Becket to reason and his duty: he exhausted every way for the purpose, even that of taking for arbiter his rival Louis the Young, king of France. Let the archbishop, said he, conduct himself towards me, as the most holy of his predecessors did with the least illustrious of mine, and I shall be satisfied. An apparent reconciliation led Becket back to England; but if he returned it was to excommunicate anew all the clerks, curates, canons and bishops, who had declared against him. Henry lost all patience; even to that degree that he exclaimed: will none of my servants avenge me of the most meddling and ungrateful of men? Four assassins went, in effect, to seek the arch-bishop, and dispatched him in his church of Canterbury. Alexander, who had condemned the Articles of Clarendon, placed Thomas a Becket in the number of the holy martyrs; and the king, whose imprudent words had rendered him guilty both of the murder and the canonization, finished, by tarnishing with the most ignominious penance the rights and dignity of his throne. This quarrel has given place to a multitude of letters, as well of Alexander III. as of many English and French prelates: a deplorable correspondence, in which we behold with what rapidity were propagated the unsocial maxims preserved in the decree of Gratian.²¹⁰ ²¹⁰ Matth. Paris. Hist. mag. p. 82, 83, 101, 104.—Collier’s Ecclesiastical History, vol. 1, s. 12.—Concil. Magnse Britann. vol. 1. p. 434.—Epistolæ et Vita Thomæ Cantuar. &c. Brux. 1682, vol. 2. in 4to.—Natalis Alex. sec. 12, diss. 10, p. 833.—Telly’s Hist, of France, vol. 3, p. 181, 198.