"Becket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and hospital, dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, was erected by the Prior of Bermondsey, so long since as the year 1013; but the hospital was refounded, and the revenues increased, anno 1215, by Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester, in whose diocese it was situated, continuing, ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... within her; There pious Saints, in marble pomp repose, Whose shrines are worn by knees of many a Sinner; There, too, full many an Aldermanic nose Roll'd its loud diapason after dinner; And there stood high the holy sconce of Becket, —Till four assassins came from France to ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... but he could not contemplate without uneasiness the combination of spiritual and political power in South Wales in the hands of two able, ambitious, and energetic kinsmen, such as he knew Gerald and the Lord Rhys to be. Gerald had made no secret of his admiration for the martyred St. Thomas e Becket. He fashioned himself upon him as Becket did on Anselm. The part which Becket played in England he would like to play in Wales. But the sovereign who had destroyed Becket was not to be frightened by ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... Gad's Hill, famous as the residence of the late Charles Dickens. Further on is Canterbury, which is celebrated as the stronghold of Kentishmen and the first English Christian city. Its prime attraction of course is its fine cathedral, which in 1170 was the scene of Becket's murder. ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... bones not of men but of animals. There have been sacred springs and consecrated waters almost without number. They will still show you in Canterbury Cathedral stones worn by the feet of countless pilgrims seeking at the shrine of Thomas a Becket a healing to the reality of which those who wore away those stones bore testimony in a variety of gifts which made the shrine of a Becket at one time one of the treasure ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... that when close-hauled in a light wind under all sail she required little or no weather helm. As the wind increased I would go on deck, if below, and turn the wheel up a spoke more or less, relash it, or, as sailors say, put it in a becket, and then ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... legend, such as belongs to every robber's nest on that famous river. No hawk-eyed baron ready to pounce on the traveler, is recorded as having lived here; all that seems to be remembered of it is, that the murderers of Thomas A Becket lay secreted here for a time after that deed of blood, ere they ventured forth on their pilgrimage, haunted by the accursed memory of it all their lives. This is something, to be sure, in the way of historic incident, but the real interest of this immediate region arises from the fact of its ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... doctrine, in elaborate symbolism. A set of beggars and cripples, gathered for the occasion, was exhibited, and kings and cardinals went solemnly through the motions of serving them. As the English schoolboy phrased it, "Thomas Becket washed the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Bonner issued his injunctions than Bale denounced him in a fierce reply as "a beastly belly-god and damnable dung-hill." With a spirit worthy of the "bloody bitesheeps" whom he attacked, the ex-Bishop of Ossory regretted that when Henry plucked down Becket's shrine he had not burned the idolatrous priests upon it. It probably mattered little to Bale that at the moment when he wrote not a single Protestant had as yet been sent to the stake; but language such as this was hardly ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... assistant in the management of public affairs was Thomas Becket, whom he made chancellor of the kingdom. Becket was fond of pomp and luxury, and lived in a more magnificent manner than ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... possible, the death of the two sovereigns, at least of the latter, should be made to have some influence on the finale of the story. All the rest are glorious subjects; especially Henry I. (being the struggle between the men of arms and of letters, in the persons of Henry and Becket), Stephen, Richard I., Edward II., ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... up a discipline, not too strict in itself, but galling in the manner in which it was enforced by those who imitated his example. By the time the suite was collected, Christmas and the festival of St. Thomas a Becket were so near that it would have been neglect of a popular saint to have left his shrine without keeping his day. And after the Epiphany, though the party did reach Dover in a day's ride, a stormy period set in, putting ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was strewn with. He made many laws. One was that, if a priest or monk was thought to have committed any crime, he should be tried by the king's judge, instead of the bishop. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket, did not think it right to consent to this law; and, though he and the king had once been great friends, Henry was so angry with him that he was forced to leave England, and take shelter with the King of France. Six years passed by, ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... generation under the names of Hilliard, Hooper, and Jones. By his wife Bridget, he had but one child,—a daughter, Christian, born May 8, 1667. She married Thomas Mason, and died in 1693; leaving an only child, Susannah, born August 23, 1687. Edward Bishop was her guardian. She married John Becket in 1711, and by him had a son, John, and six daughters, as follows: Susannah, married to David Felt, Elizabeth to William Peele, Sarah to Nathaniel Silsbee, Rebecca to William Fairfield, Eunice to Thorndike Deland, and Hannah ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... together embroiled all his affairs, poisoned his satisfactions, endangered his dominions, and at length in his death triumphed over all the power and policy of this wise and potent monarch. This was Thomas a-Becket, a man memorable for the great glory and the bitter reproaches he has met with from posterity. This person was the son of a respectable citizen of London. He was bred to the study of the civil and canon law, the education, then, used to qualify a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... powers of reasoning or invention. He was quite conscious of it, and did his best to fill up the gap in his intellectual equipment. He showed what he might have done under more favouring circumstances in a very interesting volume on Becket's history and letters. But circumstances were hopelessly against him; he had not time, he had not health and strength, for the learning which he so needed, which he so longed for. But wherever he could, he learned. He was quite ready to submit his prepossessions to the ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... those curious mental processes of his mind where his young monarch was concerned. Shakespeare, in the play of "King Henry VIII," describes the meeting of the two kings, which occurred at Canterbury, "at a grand jubilee in honor of the shrine of Thomas a Becket." One historian thus ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... severely the yoke of the Roman supremacy pressed both on the clergy and laity of England during the reign of Henry II. Even the attempt of that wise and courageous monarch to make a stand for the independence of his throne in the memorable case of Thomas a Becket, had such an unhappy issue, that, like a suppressed rebellion, it was found to add new strength to the domination of the Church. Since the submission of the king in that ill-fated struggle, the voice of Rome had ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... gave rise to the old saying that "London Bridge was built upon woolpacks." Peter's bridge was a curious structure, with nineteen pointed arches and a drawbridge. There was a fortified gatehouse at each end, and a gothic chapel towards the centre, dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, the spurious martyr of Canterbury. In Queen Elizabeth's reign there were shops on either side, with flat roofs, arbours, and gardens, and at the south end rose a great four-storey wooden house, brought from Holland, which was covered with carving and gilding. In the Middle Ages, London Bridge ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... arrow are two feathers, generally of the spotted oval, not very neatly lashed on. The bowstring consists of from twelve to eighteen small lines of three-sinew sinnet, having a loose twist, and with a separate becket of the same size for going over the knobs at the end of ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... the drawing by Mr. Pennell, Fig. 29, we have the same scheme of color. Notice how the trees are darkest just where they are required to tell most strongly against the white in the centre of the picture. An admirable illustration of the effectiveness of this color-scheme is shown in the "Becket" poster by the "Beggarstaff Brothers," Fig. 69. Another scheme is to have the principal black in the gray area, as in the Vierge drawing, Fig. 26 and in Rico's ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... olden days caused the highest and lowest in the land to perform penance in public. A notable instance of a king subjecting himself to this humiliating form of punishment is that of Henry II. The story of the King's quarrels with Becket, and of his unfortunate expression which led four knights to enact a tragic deed in Canterbury Cathedral, is familiar to the reader of history. After the foul murder of Becket had been committed, the King was in great distress, and resolved to do penance at the grave ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... in 1169 was erected, in the Cour du Donjon, the chapel Saint-Saturnin, which was consecrated by Saint Thomas a Becket, then ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... he did in his past writings, that our predecessors assented either tacitly or by permission, we declare that we do not give our assent, nor do we approve it; nay, we blame it, and let this be announced in Venice, so that, for the rest, every one may take care of his own conscience. St. Thomas a Becket, whose festival is celebrated this very day, suffered martyrdom for the ecclesiastical liberty; it is our duty likewise to support and defend it.' Contarini says: 'This remonstrance was delivered with some marks of anger, which induced me to tell him how the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... alone, no one can read the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, or Abbot Samson's Miracles of St. Edmund, or the accounts given by Eadmer and Osbern of the miracles of St. Dunstan, or the long lists of those wrought by Thomas a Becket, or by any other in the army of English saints, without seeing the perfect naturalness of this growth. This evolution of miracle in all parts of Europe came out of a vast preceding series of beliefs, extending not merely through the early Church but far back into paganism. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... seats (of churchwardens' pattern) and wainscotting have been built up against its pillars, the stone work having been cut away to accommodate the painted wood. There are some good memorial windows; one of Henry II. being married to Eleanor (1152); and another of Thomas-a-Becket visiting Lisieux when exiled ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... his cousin; 'though I don't think it is certain whose it is. There is a room called Sir Hugh's Chamber, over the gateway, but the honour of naming it is undecided between Hugo de Morville, who murdered Thomas a Becket, and his namesake, the first Baronet, who lived in the time of William of Orange, when the quarrel began with our branch of the family. Do you know the history of ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bartholomeus Exoniensis Episcopus, the celebrated Bartholomew Iscanus, the opponent of Thomas a Becket. Our correspondent should have given the title of the work where he found the signatures, as they are not appended to the "Constitutions" in Matthew ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... Archdall, 1789, vol. iv. p. 5., it is said that the wife of Theobald, second Butler, was Joane, eldest sister and co-heir of John de Marisco, a great baron in Ireland; and thirdly, Sir Bernard Burke, in his Extinct Peerage, makes his wife to be Maud, sister of Thomas a Becket. Which of these three ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... the Church was in its infancy; it only rose upon the conversion of Constantine, and it was weak compared to what it became in after ages; but, when the Emperor of Germany did penance barefoot before Pope Hildebrand, and a king of England was whipped at Becket's tomb, we only witness the full-grown strength of the infant power that was being reared by the Bishop of Alexandria. His writings are numerous and wholly controversial, chiefly against the Arians. The Athanasian creed ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... man's handiwork, in Europe. How great the delight to be able to bring them, bodily, as it were, to our own firesides! A hundred thousand pilgrims a year used to visit Canterbury. Now Canterbury visits us. See that small white mark on the pavement. That marks the place where the slice of Thomas a Becket's skull fell when Reginald Fitz Urse struck it off with a "Ha!" that seems to echo yet through the vaulted arches. And see the broad stains, worn by the pilgrims' knees as they climbed to the martyr's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... superfluous adipose tissue, had managed to seat themselves upon the tomb of one Sir William de Tracy, who had one time unduly concerned himself in the murder of a certain Thomas a Becket. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... are proud and great, there is also danger from them; as it was in the times of Anselmus, and Thomas Becket, Archbishops of Canterbury; who, with their croziers, did almost try it with the king's sword; and yet they had to deal with stout and haughty kings, William Rufus, Henry the First, and Henry the Second. The danger is not ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... piggy-wiggy, Noel, dear; you can have it all, I don't want it. I'll just be a plain pilgrim, or Henry who killed Becket.' ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... Bridge, the first stone bridge, built in the end of the twelfth century, there stood in the very midst of it a chapel of marvellous beauty with a crypt, from which by a flight of steps one might reach the river, dedicated in honour of St Thomas Becket. This chapel was built in memory of St Thomas by one Peter, priest of St Mary Colechurch, where the martyr had been christened. It was this same Peter who began to build the great bridge of stone, and when he died he was buried ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... of Canterbury Cathedral, consisting of Trinity Chapel and the circular adjunct called Becket's Crown. The building of these commenced the year following the fire which occurred A. D. 1174, and was carried on without intermission for several successive years. Gervase, a monk of the cathedral, and an eyewitness ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... Tory creed, those particularly which relate to restrictions on worship and on trade, are adored by squires and rectors in Pitt Clubs, under the name of a minister who was as bad a representative of the system which has been christened after him as Becket of the spirit of the Gospel. On the other hand, the cause for which Hampden bled on the field and Sidney on the scaffold is enthusiastically toasted by many an honest radical who would be puzzled to explain the difference between Ship-money ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... will, for you must surely understand that!" After pausing a moment in order to think how best to make her meaning clear, Mrs. Pitt went on in her pleasant voice. "You see, pilgrimages were always made to some especial shrine! We'll take Becket's for an example. After his terrible murder, Becket was immediately canonized (that is, made a saint), and for many years a very celebrated shrine to him existed at Canterbury Cathedral. In those days, sumptuous velvets and abundant jewels adorned the shrines, and if a person journeyed ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... was Thomas a Becket Driscoll, the other's name was Valet de Chambre: no surname—slaves hadn't the privilege. Roxana had heard that phrase somewhere, the fine sound of it had pleased her ear, and as she had supposed it was a name, she loaded ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fourteen versions, figuring also as Isbel, Essels, and Sophia. It was probably an English ballad at the start, but bears the traces of the Scottish minstrels who were doubtless prompt to borrow it. There is likelihood enough that the ballad was originally suggested by the legend of Gilbert Becket, father of the great archbishop; the story running that Becket, while a captive in Holy Land, plighted his troth to the daughter of a Saracenic prince. When the crusader had made good his escape, the lady followed him, inquiring her ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... a pillow. Personal cleanliness was utterly unknown; great officers of state, even dignitaries so high as the Archbishop of Canterbury, swarmed with vermin; such, it is related, was the condition of Thomas a Becket, the antagonist of an English king. To conceal personal impurity, perfumes were necessarily and profusely used. The citizen clothed himself in leather, a garment which, with its ever-accumulating impurity, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... [Sidenote: St. Thomas of Canterbury.] Anselm's unflinching advocacy of Papal claims cost him years of exile from his diocese, and much suffering; but, in the following century, similar conduct involved still more serious consequences to St. Thomas a Becket, the then Archbishop of Canterbury. The new question in dispute was the right of clerical offenders to be tried in the spiritual courts, instead of coming under the jurisdiction of the civil power; but, in reality, it was only ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... example is that of Thomas a Becket. The sudden transformation of this man of the world into an ascetic priest (it is true, on the occasion of his nomination as archbishop), from this devoted friend and servitor of the king of England into his most violent adversary, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Henry, son of Henry II., was crowned during his father's lifetime, on June 14th, 1170. At the coronation banquet, when his father stood behind him, the Prince remarked, "The son of an earl may well wait on the son of a king." The event took place during the height of the quarrel between Henry II. and Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose right it was to put the crown on the royal head. Accordingly Becket excommunicated the Archbishop of York and the assistant bishops who had officiated on the occasion. This led to ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... in the Decorative branch of Art, preserved in the Northern Counties, portrayed by a very competent hand. Many of the objects possess considerable interest; such as the chair of the Venerable Bede, Cromwell's sword and watch, and the grace-cup of Thomas a Becket. All are drawn with that distinctness which makes them available for the Antiquarian, for the Artist who is studying Costume, and for the study of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... Fortunately, Winifred and he were the only spectators; but unfortunately they blundered in at the very moment when the poor owner of the punt was on the rack. The central inquisitor was trying to extract from him information about Becket, almost prompting him with the very words, but without penetrating through the duncical denseness. John Lefolle breathed more freely when the Crusades were broached; but, alas, it very soon became evident that the dunce had by no means 'got hold of the ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... memorable, laying their count to meet Queen Margaret and her son, and win their ears beforehand, and wondering that they came not. Kentish breezes soon revived the Prioress, and she went through many strange devotions at the shrine of Becket, which, it might be feared, did not improve her spiritual, so much as her bodily, health, while Anne's chiefly resolved themselves into prayers that Harry Clifford might be guarded and restored, and that she herself might be saved ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which once were a great forest, stretching in a ring round the north of London, full of deer and boar, and of wild bulls too, even as late as the twelfth century, according to the old legend of Thomas a Becket's father and the fair Saracen, which ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... type, the transept may have a western aisle, and instead of a plain square chancel there is an apse with surrounding aisle and beyond it a series of four-sided chapels. Pontigny, famous for the shelter it gave to Thomas-a-Becket, and begun in 1114, is of this type, and so was Clairvaux itself, begun in 1115 and rebuilt in the eighteenth century. Now this is the type followed by Alcobaca, and it is worthy of notice that, as far as the plan of choir and transept goes, Alcobaca and Clairvaux are practically identical. ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... of the second great political principle of the Middle Ages, that is the supremacy of law; that it is the law which is the supreme authority in the State, the law which is over every person in the State. When John of Salisbury, the secretary of Thomas a Becket, wishes to distinguish between the prince and the tyrant, he insists that the prince is one who rules according to law, while the tyrant is one who ignores and violates the law.[26] And in a memorable phrase, Bracton, the great English ...
— Progress and History • Various
... a sacerdotal caste, and who ought not "to merge himself in the body of the nation." To him the Reformation was an infamous crime, and Henry VIII. was worse than the Bluebeard of the nursery. His hero was Thomas a Becket. He wrote a sketch of his life and career, which he did not live to finish. His friends ill-advisedly published it after his death. His ideal ecclesiastical statesman of modern times was Archbishop Laud. Charles I. was a martyr, and the Revolution of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... help suggesting a comparison between the prayer of this primitive martyr bound to the stake, with the prayer of Thomas Becket, of Canterbury, as stated in the ancient services for his day, when he was murdered in his own cathedral, to which we shall hereafter refer at length. The comparison will impress us with the difference between religion and superstition, ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... we may entertain of the character or principles of Thomas Becket, we must acknowledge that he suffered death with a constancy not unworthy of the primitive martyrs. See Lord Lyttleton's History of Henry II. vol. ii. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... fay, now! that's a fine thing! and a fine fellow! and a fleet foot! That lad 'll rise! He'll be a squire some day. Look at him. Bowels of a'Becket! 'tis a sight! I'd rather see that, now, than old Groschen 's supper-table groaning with Wurst again, and running a river of Rudesheimer! Tussle on! I'll lend a hand if there's occasion; but you shall have the honour, boy, an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... account of the state of things with you that I can rely on. I wish to know how all my old companions and fellow-laborers do; if the club yet exists; if you, and Richardson, and Lord John, and Ellis, and Lawrence, and Fitzpatrick, &c., meet, and joke, and write, as of old. What is become of Becket's, and the supper-parties,—the noctes coenaeque? Poor Burgoyne! I am sure you all mourned him as I did, particularly Richardson:—pray remember me affectionately to Richardson. It is a shame for you all, and I will say ungrateful in many of you, to have so totally forgotten me, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... church down to the last pamphlet written in opposition to the consecration of Dr Hampden; and raised above this were to be seen the busts of the greatest among the great: Chrysostom, St Augustine, Thomas a Becket, Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop Laud, and ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... some access of his morbid and changeful humour have uttered reproachful words against his Minister in the favourite's ear—even expressed a wish to be rid of him, as did our first Plantagenet when tired of the despotism of Thomas a Becket—and had perhaps listened to strange proposals for effecting such object. But the Cardinal knew right well also to what extent Louis was a king and a Frenchman, and devoted by self-interest to their common system. He despatched, therefore, Chavigny in all haste from Narbonne with irrefragable ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... instance, it was certainly odd that the modern world charged Christianity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself combined extreme bodily luxury with an extreme absence of artistic pomp. The modern man thought Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found the church too simple exactly where modern life is too complex; he found the church too ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... turning table, of 1170, is quoted from Giraldus Cambrensis by Dean Stanley in his Canterbury Memorials, p. 103. The table threw off the weapons of Becket's murderers. This was at South Malling. See the original in ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... this gentleman Mr. Becket, it seems that there was no young officer of that name at the battle of Fort Washington. Becket appears to be a mistake for Lieutenant Onslow Beckwith. The prisoners were now marched within six miles of New York ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... Canterbury the cathedral; Black Edward's helm, and Becket's bloody stone, Were pointed out as usual by the bedral, In the same quaint, uninterested tone:— There's glory again for you, gentle reader! All Ends in a rusty casque and dubious bone,[554] Half-solved into these sodas or magnesias, Which form that bitter draught, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... creed—that humanity exists for the sake of its great men. The other strange delusion is the entire omission from the "Hero as Priest" of any Catholic hero. Not only are St. Bernard, and St. Francis, Becket and Lanfranc—all the martyrs and missionaries of Catholicism—consigned to oblivion:—but not a word is said of Alfred, Godfrey, St. Louis, St. Ferdinand, and St. Stephen. In a single volume there must be selection of types. But the whole idea of Hero-Worship was ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... all gathered at the Tabard Inn in Southwark (a suburb of London and just across the Thames from the city proper), ready to start next morning, as thousands of Englishmen did every year, on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. The travelers readily accept the proposal of Harry Bailey, their jovial and domineering host, that he go with them as leader and that they enliven the journey with a story-telling contest (two stories from each ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... named Religion Becket inquiring for her sister," spoke the doctor in the same strange voice. "The ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... gloves in England was not very general, we may infer, in the earlier ages of embroidery. There are certain evidences, however, showing that the glove was part of the priestly outfit, remains of gloves having been found on the bones of Thomas a Becket when they were transferred from the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral to the special shrine prepared for them; and a crimson leather pair, bearing the sacred monogram in embroidered gold, are preserved in the New College, Oxford, belonging to the founder, William of Wykeham, who opened the ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... of Robert Elsmere) for the summer, that we first came across Borough Farm. We left it in 1889. I did a great deal of work, there and in London, in those seven years. The Macmillan papers I have already spoken of. They were on many subjects—Tennyson's "Becket," Mr. Pater's "Marius," "The Literature of Introspection," Jane Austen, Keats, Gustavo Becquer, and various others. I still kept up my Spanish to some extent, and I twice examined—in 1882 and 1888—for the Taylorian scholarship in Spanish at Oxford, our old friend, Doctor Kitchin, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in it. Hazlitt, whom you must often have thought of, would have been pleased. Come to think of it, I shall put this book upon the Hazlitt shelf. You have acquired a manner that I can only call august; otherwise, I should have to call it such amazing impudence. The BAUBLE SHOP and BECKET are examples of what I mean. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these facts, the determination to set up the dominion of truth and justice which they held to be identical with that of the Church, as that was identical with the kingdom of God, supplies the key to the lives and characters of such men as Ambrose, Cyril, Dunstan, and Becket. They each came in collision with the civil power; but Ambrose against Justina or even Theodosius, Cyril against Orestes, Dunstan against Edwy, Becket against Henry Plantagenet—each represented, in a greater or less degree, the cause of religion, ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... pieces of meat to which diamonds adhered. The chief offence, besides his political obnoxiousness, by which he provoked this satirical warfare, (whose plan of attack was all arranged at a club held at Becket's,) was the lead which he took in a sort of conspiracy, formed on the ministerial benches, to interrupt, by coughing, hawking, and other unseemly noises, the speeches of Mr. Burke. The chief writers of these lively productions were Tickell, General ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... they were ready to allow the Pope to be: sovereign or legislator, never. Doctrine they would accept at his hands; but he should not rule over their secular or ecclesiastical liberties. The quarrel between Henry the Second and Becket was entirely on this point. No wonder that Rome canonised the man who thus exalted her. The Kings who stood out most firmly for the liberties of England were Henry the Second, John, Edward the First and Second, and Richard the Second. This partly explains ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... worthy merchant of London, named GILBERT A BECKET, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was taken prisoner by a Saracen lord. This lord, who treated him kindly and not like a slave, had one fair daughter, who fell in love with the merchant; and who told ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... difficulty for us, and we wandered about in the court-yard and cloister. The towers looked beautifully grey and soft against the bright blue sky, and the view over Soissons, with all its churches and old houses, was charming. It seems that Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, lived at the Abbey when he was exiled from England and ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... seems to have been known in England at least as far back as the reign of Henry VI. There had been theatrical exhibitions in abundance, however, at a much earlier period. Stow, in his "Survey of London," in 1599, translates from the "Life of Thomas a Becket," by Fitzstephen, who wrote about 1182, mention of "the shews upon theatres and comical pastimes" of London, "its holy playes, representations of miracles which holy confessors have wrought, or representations of tormentes ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... special interest excepting the church, which is dedicated to St Thomas a Becket. The arches dividing the aisles from the nave are high and rather pointed, giving an impression of loftiness. There is a beautiful carved screen, with painted figures on the panels; and the font is a very early one. Of the infants ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... the land for the Dominican to turn to. Unhappy England! Dominic was born in the same year that Thomas a Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral; Francis in the year before the judgment of the Most High began to fall upon the guilty king and his accursed progeny. Since then everything seemed to have gone wrong. The last six years of ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... I am proceeding rather too methodically. And yet I suppose I should not obtain Lisardo's forgiveness if, in arriving at the period of HENRY THE SECOND,[252] I did not notice that extraordinary student and politician, BECKET! ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... nearly fifty years. Henry was now in the midst of his great struggle with the Church, but William made no attempt to use the opportunity. He accepted the earldom of Huntingdon from Henry, and in 1170, when the younger Henry was crowned in Becket's despite, William took the oath of fealty to him as Earl of Huntingdon. But in 1173-74, when the English king's ungrateful son organized a baronial revolt, William decided that his chance had come. His grandfather, ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... older men had short bushy beards, and large heads of almost woolly hair. Besides spears and bows, they carried large heavy carved clubs in their hands, of various shapes, some being very formidable-looking weapons. They had also darts with barbed edges, which they threw from a becket or sort of sling fixed to the hand. With these darts we saw them kill both birds and fish at a distance of eight or ten yards. The only tools we saw were composed of stone or shells. Their hatchets were in form like an axe, the pointed end being fixed to a hole in a thick ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... in which he lived. Chaucer's greatest work is his Canterbury Tales, wherein the poet represents himself as one of a company of story-telling pilgrims who have set out from London on a journey to the tomb of Thomas Becket, at Canterbury. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... As Henry the first, of the great English nation. Next Stephen, a kinsman gets the crown by his might, But no one pretends to say he had a right. Then comes Hal the second, who cuts a great figure With Becket, fair Rosamond and Queen Eliner. The Lion-hearted Richard, first of that name, Succeeded his father in power and in fame; He joined the Crusade to a far distant land But his life was cut short by a murderous hand. Next comes the cruel and cowardly John, From whose ...
— The Kings and Queens of England with Other Poems • Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow
... in the ballad-literature of Scandinavia, Spain, and Italy; but the English tale has undoubtedly been affected by the charming legend of Gilbert Becket, the father of Saint Thomas, who, having been captured by Admiraud, a Saracen prince, and held in durance vile, was freed by Admiraud's daughter, who then followed him to England, knowing no English but 'London' and 'Gilbert'; and after much tribulation, found him and was married to him. ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... Isle of Thanet. A very old trackway runs along the crest of the Downs from the West Country to Kent, known now as the Pilgrim's Way, because it was followed in far later times by mediaeval wayfarers from Somerset and Dorset to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. But Mr. Charles Elton has shown conclusively that the Pilgrim's Way is many centuries more ancient than the martyr of King Henry's epoch, and that it was used in the Bronze Age for the transport of tin from the mines in Cornwall to the port of Sandwich. To this day antique ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... to get a word or two with her, and I liked her way of speaking. Well, I was sufficiently interested to say to myself that I might as well spend a week or two at Stockholm and keep up the acquaintance of these people; Becket, their name was. I'm not exactly the kind of fellow who goes about falling in love with nursery governesses, and at that time (perhaps you recollect?) I had somebody else in mind. I dare say it was partly the contrast between that shark of ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... marvellous than his transgression, offering the most memorable instance of contrition recorded in history,—surpassing in moral sublimity, a thousand times over, the grief of Theodosius under the rebuke of Ambrose, or the sorrow of the haughty Plantagenet for the murder of Becket. His repentance was so profound, so sincere, so remarkable, that it is embalmed forever in the heart of a sinful world. Its wondrous depth and intensity almost make us forget the crime itself, which nevertheless pursued him into the immensity of eternal night, and was visited upon the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... whose mildness was stimulated into an angry reply; but Exeter gained his point, for both Brougham and the Duke were for postponing the Bill. Phillpotts would have made a great bishop in the days of Bonner and Gardiner, or he would have been a Becket, or, still better, a Pope either in the palmy days of papal power or during the important period of reaction which succeeded the Reformation. He seems cast in ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... marshes, so that only on the high dry turf of the chalk land could a clear track be found. The Pilgrim's Way, it still is called; but the pilgrims were the last who ever trod it, for it was already of immemorial age before the death of Thomas a Becket gave a new reason why folk should journey to the ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the finest subject for a story of the same kind in any modern book, is that told in Turner's History of England, of a Mahometan woman, who having fallen in love with an English merchant, the father of Thomas a Becket, followed him all the way to England, knowing only the word London, and the name ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... faculties in the service, not so much of a God of Truth as of a Catholic system. In his character will be found, I hope, some implicit apology for the failings of such truly great men as Dunstan, Becket, and Dominic, and of many more whom, if we hate, we shall never understand, while we shall be but too likely, in our own way, to ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... or so in the morning the cook stuck his head out of the slit in the forec's'le companionway and spoke his welcome little piece. "Can't have any reg'lar sit-down this morning, boys. Have to leave the china in the becket for a while yet, but all that wants can make a mug-up, and when we get inside—if we do in anything like a decent ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... of those queer people of history who was half a priest and half a statesman, and he had to deal with a king who was half a king and half a tyrant. Every schoolboy knows about Becket, and delights to read of the wild ride to Canterbury, which began with the spilling of Becket's brains and ended with the spilling of the King's ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... reckoned an extraordinary luxury for Thomas a Becket to have his parlour strewed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... pilgriming to St. Thomas of Canterbury. He set out, with a fit train, in the autumn days of the year 1180; near Rochester City, his mule threw him, dislocated his poor kneepan, raised incurable inflammatory fever; and the poor old man got his dismissal from the whole coil at once. St. Thomas a Becket, though in a circuitous way, had brought deliverance! Neither Jew usurers, nor grumbling monks, nor other importunate despicability of men or mud-elements afflicted Abbot Hugo any more; but he dropt his rosaries, closed his account-books, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... were open, for it was tropic weather, and a murmur of voices ascended through the opening. I could not distinguish words, but I felt I must know what they were saying to Newman, or about him. So I took a chance. I slipped the wheel into the becket, and crept to the edge of ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... the earliest religious drama known to have been performed in this country was one on St. Catherine. William Fitzstephen, in his "Life of St. Thomas a Becket," written in 1182, brings into contrast with the pagan shows of old Rome the "holier plays" of London, which he terms "representations of the miracles wrought by the holy confessors or of the sufferings whereby the constancy of the martyrs became gloriously manifest." Thus we perceive how ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... Mr. Sage's chiefs went about for months trying to get rid of him. He offered to give a motor-cycle to anyone who would take him, it was a Government cycle," she added; "but there was nothing doing. We called him Henry the Second and Mr. Sage Becket, the archbishop not the boxer," 'she explained. "You know," she added, "there was once an English king who ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... (J.) Policraticus, &c., 8vo. L. Bat. 1595; very scarce, vellum 6s. This book is of great curiosity; it is stated in the preface that the author, J. of Salibury, was present at the murther of Thomas a Becket, whose intimate friend he was; and that 'dum pius Thomas ab impio milite cedetur in capite, Johannis hujus brachium fere simul percisum est,'" is from Lilly's Catalogue, and the passage relating to Becket was copied from that of Payne, to whom I communicated it, and which is found in the first ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... strangeness of adventure, in which a feeling for external nature, at least in its aspects of wonder, appears. The Celtic saints are not hermits of the desert, but travellers or pilgrims. Among the lives of contemporary saints, by far the most remarkable is that of our English Becket by Garnier de Pont-Sainte-Maxence. Garnier had himself known the archbishop; he obtained the testimony of witnesses in England; he visited the places associated with the events of Becket's life; his work has high value as an historical ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... of the recess itself has open tabernacle-work, now containing a series of figures representing the crowning of the Virgin; on one side are figures of King Ethelbert and St. John the Baptist, and on the other St. Thomas a Becket (with double crozier) and Bishop Thomas de Cantilupe. Of these, however, only the two central carvings are in their original positions, the others having been discovered by Mr. Cottingham when the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... Masters of Arts wished to select a pattern from among the good scholars, they would name Gerald before all others." Later he lectured at Paris on canon law and theology; his lectures, he tells us, were very popular. He returned thence in 1172, two years after the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, whose example and struggle for the rights of the Church made a deep and lasting impression on him. Gerald soon obtained preferment: he held three livings in Pembroke, one in Oxfordshire, and canonries at Hereford and St. David's. His energy soon made itself felt. He excommunicated the Welshmen ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... said the knight of Malta, flourishing Excalibur. "By St. Thomas a Becket, we'll have as fine a scene as I myself ever furnished to the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was the age of the Crusades, of Anselm and Abelard, of Bernard of Clairvaux, and Arnold of Brescia. It saw the settlement of the question of investitures, and in England the struggle between Henry II. and Becket, in which the murder of the archbishop gave him the victory. It saw a new enthusiasm of monasticism, not originated by, but centring in, the person of Bernard, a more conspicuous and a more authoritative figure than any pope of the time. To him was due the suppression ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... was an author, and produced a work on the career of S. Thomas of Canterbury, whose murder had taken place only seven years before Benedict came to Peterborough. He gave many ornaments and vestments to the church, and brought several relics; and in particular some of Thomas a Becket (and those we can certainly believe were more authentic than most relics), among which are mentioned his shirt and surplice, a great quantity of his blood in two crystal vessels, and two altars of the stone on which he fell when he was murdered. He was, as might be expected, very zealous in completing ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... the Scotch ballads, who becomes Young Beichan, Young Bichem, and so forth, and has adventures identical with those of Lord Bateman, though the proud porter in the Scots version is scarcely so prominent and illustrious. As Motherwell saw, Bekie (Beichan, Buchan, Bateman) is really Becket, Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas of Canterbury. Every one has heard how HIS Saracen bride sought him in London. (Robert of Gloucester's Life and Martyrdom of Thomas Becket, Percy Society. See Child's Introduction, IV., i. 1861, and Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. xv., 1827.) ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... the main avenue of the Crystal Palace, and the effect produced is superb. A Catholic bookseller from Belgium makes quite a display of his editions of devotional works for every country under heaven; and there, too, are the effigies of Cardinal Boromeo, Thomas a Becket, and the late Archbishop of Paris, all arrayed in full pontificals. Their crosiers are very richly jewelled. If the apostles of Christ could revisit the earth, they would never fancy that these were their successors in the work and patience of ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... political fact, arose the extra- national, and too often anti-national position, which the Roman clergy held for many ages, and of which the instinct, at least, lingers among them in many countries. Out of it arose, too, all after struggles between the temporal and ecclesiastical powers. Becket, fighting to the death against Henry II., was not, as M. Thierry thinks, the Anglo-Saxon defying the Norman. He was the representative of the Christian Roman defying the Teuton, on the ground of rights which he believed to have existed ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... occupied a site as striking as the temple of Poseidon, on the headland of Sunium. But of that cathedral nothing is now left but a heap of fragments, and a stone, on which, fabling tradition says, Henry II. was reconciled to the Church after the murder of Becket. It was pulled down in consequence of the injuries it received at the time of the Revolution; and the bare area where it stood is typical of that devastating tornado which swept feudal and Catholic France out of existence. Where once the learned Huetius lived and wrote, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... when she came to meet her husband on his return from Denmark in the year 1029, and to have been the temporary residence of Archbishop Lanfranc whilst his palace was being rebuilt in 1070. There is a legend, too, that the four knights who murdered Thomas a Becket made this house their rendezvous. Moreover, "The Fountain" can boast of a testimonial to its excellence as an inn written six hundred years ago, for, when the marriage of Edward the First to his second queen, Margaret ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... Cathedral. Mr. Murray then took charge of the small Unitarian chapel of Blackfriars, at Canterbury. Thus Murray's early youth was passed in the mingled influences of Unitarianism at home, and of Cathedral services at York, and in the church where Becket suffered martyrdom. A not unnatural result was a somewhat eclectic and unconstrained religion. He thought but little of the differences of creed, believing that all good men held, in essentials, much the same faith. His view of essentials was generous, as ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... the Pardon Churchyard of St. Paul's was a chapel of rich ornament, built by "Gilbert Becket, portgrave and principal magistrate in this City in the reign of King Stephen." He was the great Archbishop's father. The monuments in it and the surrounding churchyard are said to have rivalled in beauty ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... Martis") was a most remarkable day with Thomas Becket, Arch Bishop of Canterbury, as Weever, 201, observes from Mat. Paris: "Mars Secundum Poetas, Deus Belli nuncupatur. Vita Sancti Thomae (secundum illud Job, Vita hominis militia est super terram) tota fuit contra hostem bellicosa, &c". The life of St. Thomas (according ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... was sufficiently discouraging, and the next day's record is one of even worse omen. The poet thanks Heaven that his spirits are not affected by Mr. Dodsley's refusal, and that he is already preparing another poem for another bookseller, Mr. Becket. He adds, however: "I find myself under the disagreeable necessity of vending or pawning some of my more useless articles: accordingly have put into a paper such as cost about two or three guineas, and, being silver, have not greatly lessened in their value. The ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... tones of the solemn organ, echoed along its vaulted roof; a humbler but not less interesting trait marks its history. It was here that the zealous pilgrim, strong in bigot faith, rested his weary limbs, when the inspiring name of Becket led him from the rustic simplicity of his native home, to view the spot where Becket fell, and to murmur his pious supplication at the shrine of the murdered Saint; how often has his toil-worn frame been sheltered beneath that hospitable roof; imagination can even portray him entering the area of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... we come to dear old Winchelsea. The church (built between 1288-1292), of which only the choir and chancel, with some portions of the transepts, now remain, was originally dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, but in the present day is called after St. Thomas the Apostle. It possesses an exceptionally fine vane, perched on a curiously squat, barn-like structure, which does duty for a tower. With its creeper-covered dormer windows and a somewhat convivial-looking ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the church on account of this complaint, to prevent greater evils, he was obliged to cause the nobility satisfy both the avarice and arrogance of the clergy, who had now resolved upon and begun a journey to Rome, with a view to raise as great commotions in Scotland, as Thomas Becket had lately made ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... is a festival of Western origin, and of comparatively recent date; the earliest formal notice of the festival is in England, under Becket, in 1162; though the collect dates from the ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... here, and bricks manufactured by a convict of the name of Becket, who came out in the last fleet, and has fifty-two people to work under him. He makes 25,000 bricks weekly. He says that they are very good, and would sell at Birmingham, where he worked about eighteen months ago, at more than ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... a Cluniac monk, who, owing his position to his relative Milo, Earl of Hereford, was consecrated in 1139. He was made Bishop of Hereford in 1148, and was translated thence to London. Though he owed much to Becket, his patron and tutor, he is said to have taken the king's side in the quarrels with Becket, and to have been instrumental in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... rather more interesting; and some people know that Alfred can still walk in Winchester and that St. Thomas at Canterbury was killed but did not die. It is at least as possible for a Philadelphian to feel the presence of Penn and Franklin as for an Englishman to see the ghosts of Alfred and of Becket. Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... English writer, was born in north London on the 9th of January 1811. He belonged to a family claiming descent from the father of St Thomas Becket. His elder brother, Sir William a Beckett (1806-1869), became chief justice of Victoria (Australia). Gilbert Abbott a Beckett was educated at Westminster school, and was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1841. He edited Figaro in London, and was one ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Romsey. Her brother William, Count of Boulogne, died about 1159, and his estates passed to his sister. Matthew of Alsace cast covetous eyes on her broad lands and encouraged, it is said, by Henry II, who thought thereby to gain a powerful friend on the continent and, at the same time, annoy Thomas Becket, sought the abbess's hand in marriage. He persuaded her to leave Romsey and become his wife: it is thought that Henry II may have brought some pressure to bear upon her to induce her to take this step. Anyhow, she was married in 1161. Her new people gladly received ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... Mathildis' (Muratori, vol. v.) foreseen that his beloved Canossa would one day be nothing but a mass of native rock, he would undoubtedly have been more explicit on these points; and much that is vague about an event only paralleled by our Henry II.'s penance before Becket's shrine at Canterbury, might ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... is Morte below us. "The little grey church on the windy shore," which once belonged to William de Tracy, one of your friend Thomas a Becket's murderers. If you wish to vent your wrath against those who cut off your favourite Saxon hero, there is a tomb in the church which bears De Tracy's name; over which rival Dryasdusts contend fiercely with paper-arrows: ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... person that I met in St Louis, that I dared to speak with, was a boy somewhat younger than myself. I asked him his name, and in broken English he replied that his name was Henry Becket. ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... see here is that of an inn whose fame is as widespread as the love of English poetry, for it is at the Tabard Inn that Chaucer more than five hundred years ago assembled his nine and twenty pilgrims who were preparing to visit the tomb of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. The witchery of the springtime had stirred the blood of these Londoners who, perhaps, were enticed from home more by the soft April showers and the melody of the birds than by their need of spiritual consolation. This, at least, is the impression we receive as in imagination ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... Archbishop Lang of York, who began as a barrister. This early predestination has always been the common episcopal experience. Archbishop Benson's early attempts at religious services remind one both of St. Thomas a Becket, the "boy bishop," and those early ceremonies of St. Athanasius which were observed and inquired upon by the good bishop Alexander. (For though still a tender infant, St. Athanasius with perfect correctness ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... used his brush with excellent effect on the back of an old band-box. Mary Anderson has written on the back of a photo, "Better late than never," for the picture was a long time coming; another excellent example of photographic work being a large head of Mr. Irving as "Becket," bearing his autograph. In a corner is a queer-looking wax model of Daniel O'Connell addressing the crowd, and amongst a hundred little odds and ends spring flowers are peeping out. Mr. Furniss finds little time now to use his paint-box. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... example of Thomas Becket: the story of St. Thomas of Canterbury. I defy any man to read the story of Thomas a Becket in Stubbs, or in Green, or in Bright, or in any other of our provincial Protestant handbooks, and to make ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... this Vision of Piers Plowman indicates the existence of a popular spirit which had been slowly but steadily increasing—which sympathized with Henry II. and the priest-trammelling "Constitutions of Clarendon," even while it was ready to go on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a Becket, the illustrious victim of the quarrel between Henry and his clergy. And it points with no uncertain finger to a future of greater light and popular development, for this bold spirit of reform was strongly allied to political rights. The clergy ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... were informed, was built by the murderers of Thomas a Becket in expiation of their sin, but only a few fragments of the buildings now remained. We halted for rest and refreshments at the "Fox House Inn," which stood at a junction of roads and was formerly the hunting-box of the Duke ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Strood common to several other parts of the kingdom, e.g. Auster in Dorsetshire, which the quaint and diligent Lambarde, quoting from Polydore Virgil, evidently regarded as serious, and takes immense pains to confute! It relates to St. Thomas a Becket and his contention with King Henry II., whereby he began to be looked upon as the King's enemy, and as such began to be "so commonly ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... people, and rambled from one place to another, till, in the time of Harry the Second, they settled in Kent, and were called Long-Tails, from the long tails which were sent them as a punishment for the murder of Thomas-a-Becket, as the legends say. They have been always sought after by the ladies, but whether it be to show their aversion to popery, or their love to miracles, I cannot say. The Wagstaffs are a merry, thoughtless sort of people, ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... vivacious old lady, and was accompanied by her nephew, Hamilton Beckett, in whom I found a congenial playmate. His name made a strong impression upon my memory, as I was then reading the history of Thomas a Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury. I have heard that this friend of my childhood went eventually to England to reside. The Penningtons of Newark had a cottage near us. William Pennington subsequently ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... o'clock, dark, and all the stars were twinkling, when Sam says to me, 'Tom, let's go on shore; my black eyes can't be seen in the dark.' As we hauled up the boat, the second mate told Sam to take his harpoon-iron on shore for him, to have the hole for the becket punched larger. Away we went, and the first place, of course, that Sam went to, was the house where he knew that his wife put up at, as before. He went upstairs to her room, and I followed him. The door was not made fast, and in we went. There was his little devil of a wife, fast asleep in the ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... some loss to recognize now the truth of old Leland's description of that once stout and gallant bulwark of the North, when he 'numbrid 11 or 12 towres in the walles of the Castel, and one very fayre beside in the second area.' In that castle, the four knightly murderers of the haughty Becket (the Wolsey of his age) remained for a whole year, defying the weak justice of the times. There, too, the unfortunate Richard the Second,—the Stuart of the Plantagenets—passed some portion of his bitter imprisonment. And there, after the battle of Marston Moor, waved the banners ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... assembled diggers, and trotted off, followed by his black boy, a short, wiry-framed aboriginal from the Burdekin River country, who was much attached to his master, and eyed his bound-up face with much concern. He, like Gerrard, carried a revolver at his saddle-bow, and a Snider carbine in a becket—Native Police fashion. Gerrard, in addition to his revolver, had a 44 deg. Winchester carbine ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... large hooks or short pieces of rope with a knot at one end and an eye in the other; or formed like a circular wreath for handles; as with cutlass hilts, boarding pikes, tomahawks, &c.; or they are wooden brackets, and probably from a corruption and misapplication of this last term arose the word becket, which seems often to be confounded with bracket. Also, a grummet either of rope or iron, fixed to the bottom of a block, for making fast the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of surprise and rejoicing, November 19, 1621, when The Fortune arrived with thirty-five more Pilgrims. Some of these were soon to wed Mayflower passengers. Widow Martha Ford, recently bereft, giving birth on the night of her arrival to a fourth child, was wed to Peter Brown; Mary Becket (sometimes written Bucket) became the wife of George Soule; John Winslow; later married Mary Chilton, and Thomas Cushman, then a lad of fourteen, became the husband, in manhood, of Mary Allerton. His father, Robert Cushman, remained in the settlement while ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... throw him into the river again. All was thenceforth wonderment and devotion. Masses were sung, tapers were kindled, bells were tolled; the monks of St. Romuald had a solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the sacristan at their tail, and the holy breeches of St. Thomas a Becket in the centre; —Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of holy water. The Rood of Gillingham was deserted; the chapel of Rainham forsaken; every one who had a soul to be saved, flocked with his offering to St. Bridget's shrine, ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... before him, and like Chancellor Wolsey in a later time, Chancellor Becket was a royal tutor;[35] and like Swithin, who still remains the pluvious saint of humid England, and unlike Wolsey, who just missed the glory of canonization, Becket became a widely venerated saint. But less kind to St. Thomas of Canterbury ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... his friends, King Henry the Eighth, who startled Europe by the way he not only received new ideas but acted upon them, swept away the shrines, burned our Lady of Walsingham and prosecuted "the holy blisful martyr" Thomas a Becket for fraudulent pretensions.[9] ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... been assassinated from time to time. Becket's death was an act of assassination. Two Dukes of Gloucester, of the blood royal, were assassinated in prison,—one in the reign of Richard II., and the other in that of Henry VI. Not a few eminent persons in England were "done to death" by the abuse of judicial proceedings, which were in fact ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... old English feudalism edificed. It represents the rough grandeur, hospitality, wassail and rude romance of the English nobility five hundred years ago. It was all in its glory about the time when Thomas-a-Becket the Magnificent used to entertain great companies of belted knights of the realm in a manner that exceeded regal munificence in those days,—even directing fresh straw to be laid for them on his ample mansion floor, that they might not soil ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... perfect, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor." To this must be added the undeniable fact that the Church, when purest and when most powerful, has depended for its influence on its consideration with the many. Becket's letters, lately published,[363] have struck me not a little; but of course I now refer, not to such dark ages as most Englishmen consider these, but to the primitive Church—the Church of St. Athanasius and St. Ambrose. With a view of showing the power of the Church at ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... romances,[47] especially those dealing with Lancelot and the later fortunes of the Graal and the Round Table company, to no less a person than the famous Englishman Walter Mapes, or Map, the author of De Nugis Curialium, the reputed author (v. chap. i.) of divers ingenious Latin poems, friend of Becket, Archdeacon of Oxford, churchman, statesman, and wit. No valid reason whatever has yet been shown for questioning this attribution, especially considering the number, antiquity, and strength of the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... credulous were many and various. Reputed fragments of our Lord's manger, robe and cross; some of the hairs of His beard, and a thorn from His crown; a bottle containing the blood of St. Thomas a Becket, and St. ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... together," and "being happy yet").—"To church with my new tenant, who is delightful company: Lady Lucre. says he is a 'refined duck,' a 'gentlemanly angel,' and a 'manly poppet:' to which I made answer, that I thought so too; and that she was a 'seraphine concert.' Sermon, by the Rev. Loyalla a Becket, 'in aid of funds for supplying the poor, during this inclement but festive season, with food for the mind.' Captain de Camp did borrow a sovereign of me, to put in the plate; and I was told by my fellow-churchwarden, Mr. Flyntflayer, that he did ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... The trade in masses is surprising. For a certain sum you get one mass a week for a year, for a higher figure you get two masses a week and an oleograph, for a trifle more you get mentioned in special prayers for benefactors, with a rosary that has touched the relics of Thomas-a-Becket or has been laid on the shrine of Blessed Thomas More. One advertisement sets forth the proviso that unless the payment is regular the supplications will be stopped. No pay, no prayer. Point d'argent, point de pretre. Prayers and advice, political or otherwise, at ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... II. Henry the Second claims our rhyme 1154-1189 'The hardest worker of his time'; A wiser King we never had Nor father with his sons so bad. Becket This the first 'Plantagenet' King With Becket strove like anything; Church v. Which should be Master, Church or Crown Crown Pull-King Pull-Bishop; both went down. Thomas was murdered by four Knights On steps of ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... seriously with the direct course of travel, and at the heads of many of them there were cataracts and waterfalls which compelled the wanderers to turn away to the south; and on one occasion to revert almost to the west. One of these striking natural features received the name of Becket's Cataract, and another was christened Bathurst's Falls. Once again tempests and storms beset them, and this wild weather found them wandering amongst the steep ravines and dizzy descents of the mountainous range, seeking a way leading to ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... to him, and the leaves happened to open at a picture representing the murder of Becket. A scowl blackened his face as he glanced at it, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... extent by my brother, and I dare say by me. Orchard was a painter of whom perhaps no memory remains at the present day: he exhibited some few pictures, among which I can dimly remember one of "The Flight of Archbishop Becket from England." His age may, I suppose, have been twenty-seven or twenty-eight years at the date of his death. In our circle he was unknown; but, conceiving a deep admiration for Rossetti's first exhibited picture (1849), "The ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Pilgrims' Way in 1174, four years after Thomas a Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral. His tomb in the Cathedral became the second shrine in Christendom, and pilgrims came to it along the old trackway through Surrey, from Farnham east of the Hog's Back along the hills to Canterbury in Kent. Henry the Second, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Republic there was a Tribune of the People, whose person was inviolable like an ambassador's. There was much the same idea in Becket's attempt to remove the Priest, who was then the popular champion, from the ordinary courts. We shall have no Tribune; for we have no republic. We shall have no Priest; for we have no religion. The best we deserve or can expect is a Fool ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... little time after Bob and Dick got on board, both were very busy, Bob dipping overboard a bucket that had a "becket" of rope for a handle, and a longer rope bent on to this with which he proceeded to haul the bucket up again, full of sea-water, wherewith he sluiced the decks fore and aft thoroughly; while Dick, on his part, scrubbed the planks with a piece of "holystone," ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... which, in the present times, we can easily form a notion of Westminster-hall was the dining-room of William Rufus, and might frequently, perhaps, not be too large for his company. It was reckoned a piece of magnificence in Thomas Becket, that he strewed the floor of his hall with clean hay or rushes in the season, in order that the knights and squires, who could not get seats, might not spoil their fine clothes when they sat down on the floor to eat ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... contiguous, namely of Christ and St. Augustine, both of them once filled with Benedictine Monks: the former was afterwards dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, the name of Christ being obliterated; it stands almost in the middle of the town, and with so much majesty lifts itself, and its two towers, to a stupendous height, that, as Erasmus says, it strikes even those who only see it ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... Station, G.N.R.) is a parish and village. The church is E.E., standing on the site of an earlier edifice; the present tower and spire were built in 1840, and the church itself restored in 1870. We learn from Matthew of Westminster that Thomas Becket held the living here as his first charge; a pond near the church is called "Becket's Pond". Queen Hoo Hall, N.W. from the village, is now a farmhouse, but was formerly an Elizabethan residence, and gave the title to a romance partly written by Sir Walter ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... on sea the other on land. St. Anthony of Padua. The Madre Dolorosa. Simeon with the Child in his arms. Landscape, with a Hunt in the back ground. Abraham and Isaac going to sacrifice. Thomas a Becket. Angel in the Sun. Order of the Garter, differing in composition from that ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... agree. In 1529, before the meeting of Parliament, Campeggio had appealed to Henry to prevent the ruin of the Church; he felt that without State protection the Church could hardly stand. In 1531 Warham, the successor of Becket and Langton, excused his compliance with Henry's demands by pleading (p. 271) Ira principis mors est.[746] In the draft of a speech he drew up just before his death,[747] the Archbishop referred to the case of St. Thomas, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... intrusted with the carrying of it on foot, whom I thought I had lost. Col. Dixwell's horse taken by a soldier and delivered to my Lord, and by him to me to carry to London. Came to Canterbury, dined there. I saw the minster and the remains of Becket's tomb. To Sittiligborne and Rochester. At Chatham and Rochester the ships and bridge. Mr. Hetly's mistake about dinner. Come to Gravesend. A good handsome wench I kissed, the first that I have seen a great while. Supped with my Lord, drank ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Review contains an article on "Woman," so liberal and radical, that I sometimes think it must have crept in there by mistake. Our fashionable lecturers, too, are now, instead of the time-worn subjects of "Catholicism," "The Crusades," "St. Bernard," and "Thomas a Becket," choosing Woman for their theme. True, they do not treat this new subject with much skill or philosophy; but enough for us that the great minds of our day are taking this direction. Mr. Dana, of Boston, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... notoriously uncomfortable in her Court, and always preferred to get as near to the door as he could. The choir at Chartres, on the contrary, was aristocratic; every window there had a court quality, even down to the contemporary Thomas a'Becket, the fashionable martyr of good society. Theology was put into the transepts or still further away in the nave where the window of the New Alliance elbows the Prodigal Son. Even to Blanche of Castile, Mary was neither a philanthropist ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... theatre. He does not merely assert, but gives full and sufficient reason for every action until every one on the stage grasps the exact meaning of the scene as well as he does himself. As an instance of this, let us follow the rehearsals of "Becket." ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various |
