the first to violate. The excommunication of the three prelates was in strict accordance with the canon law, which was parcel of the law of the land; and Becket's only chance, either of personal safety or of preserving the liberties of the country, was then to enforce the rights which clearly belonged to his office and to his order. His martyrdom must be considered one of the most splendid that has occurred since the propagation of the gospel to edify Christians, for, not ignorant of what was prepared for him, and being able at any time, by a slight concession, to avert his fate. he braved the assassins whom he could not withstand, and he received the deadly wounds they inflicted upon him with a constancy which could only have proceeded from a fervent faith in the promises of revelation, and the immediate aid of its divine Author. Setting aside exaggeration, and miracle, and religious prejudice. I must confess I am inclined to think that this last view of Becket is not only the more merciful, but the more just. I cannot doubt his sincerity, and almost all will agree that he believed himself to be sincere. Let us consider the sudden effect of the touch of the mitre on men of honour in our own time. It must be remembered that by the same ardour and enthusiasm he was led to put on a coat of mail and engage in single combat with a stalwart knight, and afterwards to wear a shirt of hair and to submit to the discipline of the whip. If he bore implacable resentment, he showed inflexible resolution in the support of what he considered a good cause, willingly submitting to poverty, exile, and death itself. Both sides concur in ascribing to him brilliant talents, great acquirements, and delightful manners, which captivated alike king and commonalty. Some have lately thought they discovered in Becket a patriot who took up the cause of the Saxons, and quarrelled with the Normans in trying to obtain justice for his countrymen; but although he is celebrated for his impartiality to both races while Chancellor, I can find nothing political in his subsequent disputes, --which appear to me to have been purely between the civil and spiritual authorities, and not between race and race.* We can best judge him by the large collection of his letters which have come down to us. In these, although we should in * Thierry, the great supporter of the notion that Becket's actions and his fare are to be explained from his being the champion of the Saxon race against Norman oppression, quotes (iii. 190.) from a note in Hearne's edition of William of Newbury "Willelmus Maltret percussit cum pede sanctum But there was no insurrection in England during Henry's reign, and the poem from which these lines are taken, giving an exaggerated account of the martyrdom of St. Thomas, is evidently the production of a later age. vain look for the classical style and delicate raillery of Erasmus, we find a vigour, an earnestness, and a reach of thought quite unexampled in the productions of the age in which he lived. Making us familiar with him, they explain to us the extraordinary ascendancy which he acquired over the minds of mankind.* CHAPTER IV. CHANCELLORS FROM THE RESIGNATION OF THOMAS à BECKET TO THE DEATH OF HENRY II. THE history of the Great Seal during the reign of Henry II. is left in a state of much uncertainty from the time when it was resigned in 1162 by Thomas à Becket till it was delivered in 1181 to Geoffrey Plantagenet, the King's natural son. In this interval there were very powerful chief justiciars Richard de Luci, and Robert Earl of Leicester; and they probably rendered the office of Chancellor for the time of little consequence. However, we find the names of several who are said to have held it. First, "JOANNES Cancellarius"† occurs; but of this John we know not the surname, nor what other dignity he ev[A. D. 1173. er attained. Next comes RODOLPHUS de Warnavilla, of whom we only know that when he was appointed he was archdeacon of Rohan. The third is WALTER de Constantiis, who was made Bishop of Ely. Although the last is supposed to have been at one time Chancellor to the King, it would appear that in the year 1175 he only held the Great Seal as a deputy, if we may judge from the account given us by Hoveden of an embassy to the Earl of Flanders, in which he was joined with the famous Ranulphus de Glanvil, afterwards Chief Justiciar, and the earliest writer on the Law of England. On this occasion he is described as “Vice-Cancellarius." What share any of these Chancellors had in the stirring events of the time, the framing of the Constitutions of Clarendon, the deadly controversy with Becket, conquest of Ireland, the war with Scotland, the feudal subjection of that country on the capture of William the Scottish King, and the continued disputes and wars between Henry and his sons, we shall never learn. the * See Fitzstephen, Hoveden, Quadrologus, Lord Lyttelton's History of Henry II., Thierry's History of the Norman Conquest, Epist. Sanc. Thom.; Sanctus Thomas Cantuariensis, cd. J. A. Giles; and a Life of Becket in the "English Review," for September and December 1846. † Spel. Glos. 109. Id. Or. Jur. 3, § Et ad audiendum inde responsum comitis (Flandriæ) misit Walterum de Constantiis, VICE-CHANCELLARIUM suum et Ranulpham de Glanvilla. Hoveden, P. ii. p. 561. n. 10. It is the fashion of historians down to a much later era, to ascribe all the acts of government, even those connected with legislation and domestic administration, to the autocracy of the nominal chief of the state; but the most active sovereign could only in general have the merit of selecting good counsellors and taking good advice; and if our sovereigns would sometimes lose credit, they might as often be relieved from obloquy, by a disclosure of the share which each minister had in the measures of their reign. We now come to another Chancellor, whose origin, career, and character are well known to history. In the year 1181 Henry delivered the Great Seal to GEOFFREY, his son by the fair Rosamond.* Of all his progeny, legitimate or illegitimate, this was his favorite. The boy was tenderly reared at Court, and as he displayed lively parts, great pains were taken with his education. He could not have a regular appanage, as if he had been a son of the Queen, but it was thought that an ample provision might be made for him in the Church. While yet a youth, he was appointed archdeacon of Lincoln, and while in the 20th year of his age, by royal mandate he was elected bishop of that see. For a considerable time, under favour of a papal dispensation, he enjoyed the temporalities, without having been consecrated bishop, or even admitted into holy orders. A rebellion breaking out in 1174, he raised a large military force, took several castles, displayed great personal prowess, and was of essential service in reducing the insergent Barons to subjection. When Henry was raising an army to repel an invasion of the Scots, Geoffrey joined him, and brought, under his own banner. 140 knights raised in his bishopric, with many more men-at-arms, well mounted and accoutred. The King received him with much joy, and said in the hearing of a great multitude of persons who were present at their meeting, My other sons, by their conduct, have proved themselves bastards, but this alone has shown himself to be really my true and legitimate son." Though as a soldier Geoffrey obtained reputation, he was very deficient in his duty as a churchman, and after being seven years a bishop, he still refused to become a priest. At last, in the year 1181, Pope Alexander III. sent a mandate to Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, requiring the Primate to compel him by ecclesiastical censures no longer to defer what could not without scandal be any longer dispensed with, or to renounce his election to the bishopric of Lincoln. The slender restraints then imposed on ecclesiastical dignitaries weighed with him little, but to priestly tonsure and tunics he would not submit; and as in spite of all remonstrance he persisted in sincerely saying, “Nolo episcopari,”—so the see was declared vacant and bestowed on another. This was not from any levity of character or love of idleness, for Geoffrey had applied himself * Orig. Jur. 1. Spel. Gloss. 109. diligently to study, and had made considerable progress in the civil and canon law. By way of indemnity for his loss, the office of Chancellor was conferred upon him. Even in those days such an appointment must have been considered a very glaring job, the young man, notwithstanding his talents and acquirements, being entirely without experience, and the custody of the Great Seal having important judicial duties annexed to it. Nevertheless, he is said to have dedicated himself to business in a very exemplary manner, and to have given considerable satisfaction to the public. A doubt exists how long he remained in the office. Some accounts represent him as holding it during the remaining eight years of his father's reign*, while there are notices of three others having during this interval been in possession of the Great Seal, Ran NIGEL, Bishop of Ely†, WALTER de Bidun‡, and the beforementioned WALTER de Constantiis. Perhaps the authorities may be reconciled by supposing that these merely assisted as ViceChancellors, while Geoffrey remained Chancellor, enjoying the dignity and emoluments of the office till his father's death. ulphus de Glanvil was now Chief Justiciar, and he must have thrown into the shade all others connected with the administration of the law. A skilful military commander, he quelled a dangerous rebellion and gained a brilliant victory over the Scots, taking their King prisoner; he presided with distinguished lustre in the Aula Regia; and he wrote a book on the law and constitution of England, which is now read by all who wish to acquire a critical knowledge of them as they stood in the first century after the Conquest, before they were modified by the great charter of King John.§ Whatever might be the qualifications of Geoffrey Plantagenet for his office of Chancellor, all authors are loud in his praise. [A. D. 1198.] for his steady fidelity and attachment to the King, while his brothers were constantly thwarting and annoying him, and were often in arms against him. In 1189, near the close of this reign, the pious Chancellor fought valiantly by his father's side in a hard-contested battle ncar Frenelles in Normandy, and the English army being obliged to retreat in some disorder, he offered to keep watch at an outpost, fatigued and spent as he was, while his father should *This opinion is espoused by Lord Lyttelton in his History of Henry II. Cart. 5 Ed. 3. m. 1. Lel. Coll. vol. i. p. 38. Glanvil not having been Chancellor, I do not feel myself at liberty to give any detailed account of his life; but I may be excused transcribing in a note a character of him to be found in the preface to the eighth part of Lord Coke's reports. "Et nota quod præfatus Ranulph' de Glanvilla fuit vir præclarissimus genere utpote de nobili sanguine, vir insuper strenuissimus corpore, qui provectiori ætate ad Terram Sanctam properavit et ibidem contra inamicos crucis Christi strenuissime usque ad necem dimicavit." Coke seems to envy the glory of the crusader; for though he himself had "written learnedly and profoundly," his own exploits as ex-chief justice when sheriff of Buckinghamshire, could not compare with those of ex- chief justice Glanvil. enjoy some repose; but Henry would not suffer him to be his guard with so much danger to himself. Soon after, hearing of his father's dangerous illness at Chinon, he hastened thither, and finding him so much oppreseed by fever that he could not sit up in his bed, he gently raised his head and supported it on his own bosom. Henry fetched a deep sigh, and turning his languid eyes upon him, said: My dearest son, as you have in all changes of fortune behaved yourself most dutifully and affectionately to me, doing all that the best of sons could do, so will I, if the mercy of God shall permit me to recover from this sickness, make such returns to you as the fondest of fathers can make, and place you among the greatest and most powerful subjects in all my dominions. But if death should prevent my fulfilling this intention, may God, to whom the recompence of all goodness belongs, reward you for me.""I have no solicitude." replied Geoffrey, "but that you may recover and may be happy." The King with his last breath expressed a wish that this pious son should be provided for by his successor, a wish that was held sacred by the penitent Richard. Geoffrey, dutiful to the last, attended the corpse to the nunnery of Fontevrault,-where blood running from its mouth at the approach of Richard, that generous though violent spirit, in a fit of remorse, reproached himself as the murderer of his father. During the latter part of the reign of Henry II., while his son Geoffrey was Chancellor, all things being reduced to peace, our legal polity is supposed to have made greater advances than it had done from the Conquest downwards. The great regularity in the order of proceeding, and the refinement with which questions respecting property were treated, show that if the age was barbarous, it produced individuals of enlarged minds and well skiled in the principles of jurisprudence. Very able men followed as Chancellors in the succeeding reigns. but from foreign war and domestic strife little improvement was effected by any of them for near a century afterwards. Although there be as yet no traces of the Chancellor having a separate court of his own, either for common law or equitable jurisdiction, it is certain that in the time of Henry II. he was looked up to as a high judicial authority, and he occasionally went the circuit as a justice in eyre or of assize.* CHAPTER V. CHANCELLORS DURING THE REIGN OF RICHARD I. RICHARD, as soon as he had attended his father's funeral, was * Mad. Ex. p. 61. See Lord Lyttelton's Hist. iii. 479. 4 Inst. 159. |