Thomas himself had changed. He was thinner. His features, which had always been of an ascetic nature, were more so. There was a look of serenity about him. He was still splendidly attired, but I learned later that under his fine garments he wore a hairshirt. I was surprised. I had always felt a certain contempt for those people who tortured their bodies. Why? I asked myself. What good were they doing to humanity? What satisfaction could such acts bring to God? And what sort of god would be impressed by such folly? The wearing of hairshirts seemed to me a form of self-righteousness which I despised. I was surprised that Thomas could have indulged in such self-torture.

I warmed to him a little because he had been good to my son. I was deeply conscious of the greeting between him and the King.

Thomas knelt before Henry and I saw the softness in the King’s face. “Get up,” he said roughly, and then they were clasping hands, Henry was laughing.

“Well Archbishop-now and Chancellor-that-is-no-more, how fare you? By the eyes of God, you look like an Archbishop. What have you done to yourself? Come, we shall ride side by side.”

And they did. I heard their laughter and some of their conversation, in which Henry referred to Thomas’s rejection of the Great Seal.

“Thomas, I could have killed you.”

“I guessed you would be displeased.”

“Displeased! I was murderous. It was a mercy for you, Thomas, that you did not bring the Seal yourself. How dared you provoke me so?”

“Because, my lord King, I knew I could not remain Chancellor and be Archbishop at the same time. The Church is apart from the State.”

“Why should they not march together?”

“They cannot always see through the same eyes.”

“Why shouldn’t we make them do so?”

“It may not always be possible.”

“Then there will be trouble between us.”

“I feared that if I took the post it would impair our friendship, and that is very dear to me.”

“To me also, Thomas. We will work together.”

“There may be battles between us.”

“Good. I like a battle. I’d rather do battle with you, Thomas, than live in peace with others.”

Besotted as ever, I thought.

But that was not quite true. I sensed that Thomas knew it and saw trouble ahead.

And how right he proved to be.

Looking back, it seems to me that for a long period after our return to England our lives were dominated by Thomas Becket.

I believe that, of all his possessions, Henry loved England best. If he had been content to be King of England only, his reign would have been completely rewarding. The people were of a less fiery nature than those across the Channel. They wanted a peaceful existence and knew that Henry was a strong king. It was because of this that he was able to leave the country in the hands of well-chosen administrators. He had already shown his ability to rule rather in the manner of his grandfather, the first Henry. At the beginning of his reign he had put the financial working of the exchequer in order and had changed the debased coinage of Stephen’s regime to a uniform currency; he had brought new laws of justice into the country and new forms of taxation. Henry himself did not live extravagantly; when he needed money, it was for the country or to build up an army, to provide arms for his wars, which he would say were for the good of England.

On our return Henry thought we should make a progress through the country, and after Oxford we traveled to Westminster, then through Kent to Windsor, to Wales and up to Carlisle in the north. Henry was very anxious to call at Woodstock and spend some time there. Later I was to discover why he was so attached to this place.

By this time there was a controversy about what was called Sheriff’s Aid. This was a tax which those who owned land paid to the sheriff to compensate him for his work on their behalf. Henry was in need of money and it occurred to him that if this tax was paid to the treasury as an ordinary one would be, instead of to the sheriffs, it could be of use to him.

At the council meeting at Woodstock, Henry brought up this matter of Sheriff’s Aid.

In the past Becket had given his opinion freely to the King, and their friendship had not been impaired by this. But he was in a different position now and perhaps he overrated the King’s affection for him, because he immediately opposed Henry’s suggestion that the tax should be paid to the treasury and not the sheriffs.

Becket said it would be a mistake to take this money from the sheriffs, which was just a payment for the services they rendered to the people who paid it. If the sheriffs were not paid, who knew what devious practices they would indulge in, to make up for their loss?

Henry was angry to be opposed—and by Becket.

“By the eyes of God,” he cried, “it shall be given to the treasury as a tax, and it is not fitting for you, Archbishop, to oppose me.”

Thomas ought to have seen Henry’s rising temper. He wanted Thomas on his side, not always pulling against him.

Thomas’s reply was: “By the reverence of those eyes, my lord King, not a penny shall be paid from any of the Church lands under my control.”

Henry’s rages were generally well timed, and the council meeting was not the place to indulge in one. Coldly he dismissed the subject. But I could imagine how Thomas’s opposition rankled; anyone else who aroused such animosity in him would have to beware. I thought then that it might have been different with Thomas—but perhaps not.

I believed Henry was waiting for some chance to show Thomas who was the master, and it did not help that he was defeated on this matter. He should have remembered that the Church had its own laws outside the State.

Even when I heard it, I could not resist mentioning this to Henry. I wanted to impress on him the mistake he had made in insisting on Becket’s taking the archbishopric. This was just a small matter of contention between them. There could be bigger ones.

I said to him: “This is one of the occasions when, in certain quarters, the Archbishop is more powerful than the King, the Church more than the State.”

“That is not so. But the Church has too much power.”

“You may think it is time that was changed. A matter like this will lead people to think that the Archbishop of Canterbury is the ruler of this country, not the King.”

That did nothing to soothe his ruffled temper, but I could not prevent myself telling him what I thought. I just had to remind him how foolish he had been to make so much of Becket and then commit the final folly of creating him Archbishop of Canterbury.

He then began to look about him to find some way of making Thomas understand that, although he had scored over this matter of the sheriff’s tax, the King was most displeased at this attitude and it was something he would not tolerate.

Shortly after the controversy about Sheriff’s Aid, there arose the case of Philip de Brois.

When Henry had taken over England after Stephen’s death, he had been appalled by the anarchy which prevailed throughout the country and he had immediately begun to reform the laws and the administration of justice. He had instituted judges who traveled around the countryside trying the cases against criminals so that these were not left to local courts. It had had an undoubted effect, and the country was considerably safer for law-abiding people than it had been in Stephen’s reign. But if a member of the Church was accused of a crime, he was not tried by the King’s court of law but by that of the Church. It seemed to Henry that, if these particular criminals had enough influence in high places, they escaped very lightly.

It was another example of the Church’s taking precedence over the State.

Thus the case of Philip de Brois.

The man was a canon who was accused of murdering a knight. I think it was some trouble over the knight’s daughter, whom the canon was said to have seduced. When the canon was threatened by the girl’s father and realized that his villainy was revealed, he promptly killed him. De Brois had been taken before an ecclesiastical court, presided over by the Bishop of Lincoln, where all he had been required to do was swear to his innocence—and having done so, he was released.

Henry, seeking ammunition with which to attack the Church, thought he might have it here.

“All this man did,” he pointed out, “was to swear he was innocent. Any criminal could do that. There was no submission of evidence, no witnesses called ... and he goes free. Why? Because he is a canon of the Church, and the Church protects its own. Well, I am going to protect my people.”

In this battle with Becket he turned more to me. He knew that from the first I had resented his friendship with the man and he supposed that I would certainly not be ready to support Becket against him. I was not entirely in agreement with him because I felt he was doing harm to the people’s image of him as a wise king by taking up the battle against Becket. By making Becket Archbishop, he had also made him a holy man in the eyes of the people. Chancellor Becket had been the worldly sophisticate; as an Archbishop he had made a complete turnabout; his tall, spare figure and his ascetic, pale face were an indication of his abstinence; the rich garments he wore were only a concession to his former tastes, and under them was the hairshirt.

My fortunes were bound up with those of Henry, and although I liked to score over him in private, I did not want his position to be shaken in the smallest way.

I said: “The man is said to be innocent because he swears before God that he is, and it is said that any churchman would prefer to take his punishment on Earth, rather than suffer eternal damnation.”