CHAPTER XI. (Part 2 of 2)
In 1139, Miles the constable of Gloucester secured St Peter’s abbey for his kinsman Gilbert Foliot. Gloucester, capital of Earl Robert’s Angevin-aligned territories and a vulnerable Welsh-border town, made the post demanding. Gilbert’s discipline and balanced judgment made him a leading English churchman trusted across the political spectrum. He liaised between the western Welsh-march dioceses and Archbishop Theobald, navigating the Anarchy neutrally despite Angevin sympathies. When Theobald defied Stephen at the 1148 Reims council, Gilbert initially stayed home but joined after Bishop Robert of Hereford died there, receiving the vacant see. Though he did homage to Stephen for its temporalities, he considered the oath invalid, recording his reasoning in a letter to Brian Fitz-Count that circulated among the Empress’s supporters. As bishop, he remained Theobald’s chief contact in the west, closest to reform-resistant Roger of Pont-l’Evêque. His polished letters contain dry sarcasm beneath exaggerated humility—often mistaken for hypocrisy.
The 1159 death of Pope Adrian IV caused schism: reformers elected Roland of Siena as Alexander III; Emperor Frederick Barbarossa backed Octavian as Victor IV. Frederick’s Pavia council condemned Alexander, but rumors that Victor had surrendered his ring to the Emperor made him a puppet. Most of Christendom rejected Victor, though Henry II, seeking an imperial alliance against France, was initially sympathetic. Imperial envoys claimed Henry had assented, but Arnulf of Lisieux—a veteran Norman diplomat, former Paris scholar, and prolific letter-writer—reached Henry first and won recognition of Alexander. Arnulf coordinated with Louis VII; by summer 1160, both kings’ bishops unanimously accepted Alexander, guided by Arnulf’s treatise.
By spring 1161, the English Church was in crisis: Bishop Richard of London paralyzed, Henry of Winchester back at Cluny, three sees vacant, Theobald dying. Theobald’s final letters yearned for Henry’s return and for his archdeacon Thomas Becket, his hoped-for successor. John of Salisbury, who had dedicated his Polycraticus to Thomas as the one court figure whose follies could be criticized without fear because he had no part in them, oversaw diocesan affairs and returned to theology by composing his Metalogicus—a vivid sketch of his own early life drawing on the journey from Paris schools into Theobald’s service that, through years of correspondence with friends like Abbot Peter of Celle, made him the primate’s indispensable intellectual companion. Overwhelmed with “the care of all the churches” transferred to him by the dying archbishop, John found relief in that correspondence while continuing scholarly labors. Thomas, reluctant to leave court as chancellor, was Theobald’s deepest hope. Theobald died April 18, 1161.
Over a year later, Henry summoned Thomas to England to secure recognition of his young son as heir. At Falaise, Henry announced Thomas would be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Thomas warned their clash over Church policy would destroy their friendship, but Henry, backed by Cardinal Henry of Pisa, refused to relent. Christ Church Canterbury’s monks resisted, calling Thomas “scarcely a clerk at all,” but royal pressure forced consent. Thomas was elected at Westminster on May 23, 1162; only Gilbert Foliot protested. Roger of York claimed the right to consecrate him, but Thomas refused, so Henry of Winchester performed the consecration on the octave of Pentecost. A quit-claim freed Thomas from chancellorship obligations, and he resigned the great seal—shocking Henry, who had planned to retain him in both roles with papal dispensation.
Thomas embraced his office with radical intensity: washing 13 poor men’s feet before dawn, doubling almsgiving to feed 26 daily, studying theology with Herbert of Bosham, enforcing strict ordination standards. He reclaimed alienated archiepiscopal lands aggressively, clashing with Earl Roger of Clare over Tunbridge and demanding Rochester Castle’s return, making enemies at court.
His first test came at Woodstock on July 31, 1163, when Henry proposed redirecting the sheriff’s aid (a two-shilling-per-hide Danegeld remnant) into the royal treasury. Thomas opposed: “Saving your good pleasure, we will not give you this money as revenue, for it is not yours.” When Henry insisted, Thomas swore, “Then by God’s Eyes, not a penny shall you have from my lands, or from any lands of the Church!” Henry backed down; Danegeld vanished from the Pipe Rolls forever—the first successful national opposition to a royal financial demand since the Norman Conquest.
A dispute with William of Eynesford over patronage deepened the rift. Thomas excommunicated him without royal notification, refusing to lift the sentence: “It is not for the king to dictate who should be bound or who loosed.” Henry pursued reforms curbing clerical immunities—his justiciars reported 100+ unpunished murders in nine years. At Westminster in October 1163, he demanded the bishops accept the “customs of his grandfather” Henry I, including surrendering degraded clerks and renouncing temporal jurisdiction. Thomas refused, arguing the two swords were separate; the bishops backed him “saving our order.” Henry stormed out, demanded Thomas surrender his chancellor lands, and removed his son from Thomas’s care.
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