as his representative twice visited Rome; and, recommended to the notice of King Henry, was appointed chancellor, preceptor of the young prince, depositary of the royal favor, and received several valuable sinecures.  He assumed great splendor and magnificence in his retinue.  He attended Henry on his expedition to France, and his chivalric exploits in Normandy at the head of seven hundred knights, twelve hundred cavalry, and four thousand infantry, were more befitting the career of a military adventurer than that of a churchman.

     Archbishop Theobald died in 1161, and left at the royal
     disposal the highest dignity in the English Church.

The favor enjoyed by the Chancellor Thomas Becket, and the situation which he filled, pointed him out as the person the most likely to succeed Theobald.  By the courtiers he was already called the “Future Archbishop”; and when the report was mentioned to him, he ambiguously replied that he was acquainted with four poor priests far better qualified for that dignity than himself.  But Henry, whatever were his intentions, is believed to have kept them locked up within his own breast.  During the vacancy the revenues of the see were paid into his exchequer, nor was he anxious to deprive himself of so valuable an income by a precipitate election.  At the end of thirteen months (A.D. 1162) he sent for the Chancellor at Falaise, bade him prepare for a voyage to England, and added that within a few days he would be archbishop of Canterbury.  Becket, looking with a smile of irony on his dress, replied that he had not much of the appearance of an archbishop; and that if the King were serious, he must beg permission to decline the preferment, because it would be impossible for him to perform the duties of the situation and at the same time retain the favor of his benefactor.  But Henry was inflexible; the legate Henry of Pisa added his entreaties; and Becket, though he already saw the storm gathering in which he afterward perished, was induced, against his own judgment, to acquiesce.

He sailed to England (May 30); the prelates and a deputation of the monks of Canterbury assembled in the king’s chapel at Westminster; every vote was given in his favor; the applause of the nobility testified their satisfaction; and Prince Henry in the name of his father gave the royal assent.  Becket was ordained priest by the Bishop of Rochester, and the next day, having been declared free from all secular obligations, he was consecrated by Henry of Winchester.  It was a most pompous ceremony, for all the nobility of England, to gratify the King, attended in honor of his favorite.  That the known intentions of Henry must have influenced the electors there can be little doubt; but it appears that throughout the whole business every necessary form was fully observed.  Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford, a prelate of rigid morals and much canonical learning, alone observed jeeringly that the King had at last wrought a miracle; for he had changed a soldier into a priest, a layman into an archbishop.  The sarcasm was noticed at the time as a sally of disappointed ambition.