says Michelet, “arises from his being charged, weak and unassisted, with the interests of the Church Universal,—­a post which belonged to the Pope himself.”  He was still Archbishop; but his revenues were cut off, and had it not been for the bounty of Louis the King of France, who admired him and respected his cause, he might have fared as a simple monk.  The Pope allowed him to excommunicate the persons who occupied his estates, but not the King himself.  He feared a revolt of the English Church from papal authority, since Henry was supreme in England, and had won over to his cause the English bishops.  The whole question became complicated and interesting.  It was the common topic of discourse in all the castles and convents of Europe.  The Pope, timid and calculating, began to fear he had supported Becket too far, and pressed upon him a reconciliation with Henry, much to the disgust of Becket, who seemed to comprehend the issue better than did the Pope; for the Pope had, in his desire to patch up the quarrel, permitted the son of Henry to be crowned by the Archbishop of York, which was not only an infringement of the privileges of the Primate, but was a blow against the spiritual power.  So long as the Archbishop of Canterbury had the exclusive privilege of crowning a king, the King was dependent in a measure on the Primate, and, through him, on the Pope.  At this suicidal act on the part of Alexander, Becket lost all patience, and wrote to him a letter of blended indignation and reproach.  “Why,” said he, “lay in my path a stumbling-block?  How can you blind yourself to the wrong which Christ suffers in me and yourself?  And yet you call on me, like a hireling, to be silent.  I might flourish in power and riches and pleasures, and be feared and honored of all; but since the Lord hath called me, weak and unworthy as I am, to the oversight of the English Church, I prefer proscription, exile, poverty, misery, and death, rather than traffic with the liberties of the Church.”

What language to a Pope!  What a reproof from a subordinate!  How grandly the character of Becket looms up here!  I say nothing of his cause.  It may have been a right or a wrong one.  Who shall settle whether spiritual or temporal power should have the ascendency in the Middle Ages?  I speak only of his heroism, his fidelity to his cause, his undoubted sincerity.  Men do not become exiles and martyrs voluntarily, unless they are backed by a great cause.  Becket may have been haughty, irascible, ambitious.  Very likely.  But what then?  The more personal faults he had, the greater does his devotion to the interests of the Church appear, fighting as it were alone and unassisted.  Undaunted, against the advice of his friends, unsupported by the Pope, he now hurls his anathemas from his retreat in France.  He excommunicates the Bishop of Salisbury, and John of Oxford, and the Archdeacon of Ilchester, and the Lord Chief-Justice de Luci, and everybody who adhered to the Constitutions of Clarendon.