For the first time in the interview the Archbishop had assumed an attitude of defiance; the fury of the knights broke at once through the bonds which had partially restrained it, and displayed itself openly in those impassioned gestures which are now confined to the half-civilized nations of the South and East, but which seem to have been natural to all classes of medieval Europe.  Their eyes flashed fire, they sprang upon their feet, and, rushing close up to him, gnashed their teeth, twisting their long gloves, and wildly threw their arms above their heads.  Fitzurse exclaimed:  “You threaten us—­you threaten us! are you going to excommunicate us all?”

Becket sprang up from his couch at this insulting demonstration, and in the state of great excitement into which he could fall when roused, he flung down his defiant challenge that all the swords in England could not shake his obedience to the Pope.  The four knights, goaded to fury by other passionate words, left him, shouting, “To arms! to arms!” They made their way with an excited throng to the great gateway, where they armed, while the doors were closed to shut off the monastery from communication with the town.  The Archbishop seems to have been fully alive to his danger, and yet he persistently refused to take the smallest measure for his safety, opening with his own hands the door from the cloisters into the north transept which some of the monks had closed and barred immediately after they had dragged the Archbishop into the nearly dark building.

Vespers had just begun when the murderers entered, but the singing of that service was never completed.  The fear of sacrilege induced the knights to try to drag the defenceless Archbishop out of the Cathedral, but he struggled with such vigour, flinging one of the men down on the stone floor, that they gave up the attempt and killed him with three or four sword strokes, the last of which, as he lay prone, was delivered by Richard le Bret, or the Breton, and so tremendous was the force with which it was delivered that the crown of the head was severed from the skull and the sword broke in two on the pavement.

Canterbury being much divided in its attachment to Becket, the murderers found escape easy, and the general regrets most expressed seem to have been at the sacrilege rather than at the murder.

It is almost incredible how rapidly Becket became St. Thomas of Canterbury.  Within a few hours of the tragic scene, when, night having fallen and the great church being closed and deserted, Osbert, the Archbishop’s chamberlain, entering with a light in his hand, found his master’s body lying on its face, with the frightful wound exposed, the monks had kissed the hands and feet of the corpse and called him by the name of Saint Thomas.  What appears to have raised the fraternity to this enthusiastic anticipation of the canonization, officially announced at Westminster in 1173, was the discovery that Becket