t time at Compline. And then each smote
at him, that they smote off a great piece of the skull of his head,
that his brain fell on the pavement. And so they slew and martyred him,
and were so cruel that one of them brake the point of his sword against
the pavement. And thus this holy and blessed archbishop St Thomas
suffered death in his own church for the right of all Holy Church. And
when he was dead they stirred his brain, and after went in to his
chamber and took away his goods and his horse out of his stable, and
took away his Bulls and writings and delivered them to Sir Robert
Broke to bear into France to the King. And as they searched his
chambers they found in a chest two shirts of hair made full of great
knots, and then they said: Certainly he was a good man; and coming
down into the churchyard they began to dread and fear that the ground
would not have borne them, and were marvellously aghast, but they
supposed that the earth would have swallowed them all quick. And then
they knew that they had done amiss. And soon it was known all about,
how that he was martyred, and anon after they took his holy body and
unclothed him and found bishop's clothing above and the habit of a
monk under. And next his flesh he wore hard hair, full of knots, which
was his shirt, and his breech was of the same, and the knots sticked
fast within his skin, and all his body full of worms; he suffered
great pain. And he was thus martyred the year of Our Lord one thousand
one hundred and seventy-one, and was fifty-three years old. And soon
after tidings came to the King how he was slain, wherefore the King
took great sorrow, and sent to Rome for his absolution...."

Of the King's penance Voragine says nothing, but indeed it must have
reverberated through Europe, though not perhaps with so enormous a
rumour as the humiliation of the Emperor Henry IV. before Pope Gregory
VII. at Canossa scarce a hundred years before had done. The first and
the most famous of Canterbury pilgrims came to St Dunstan's church upon
the Watling Street, outside the great West Gate of Canterbury, as we
may believe in July 1174. There he stripped him of his robes and,
barefoot in a woollen shirt, entered the city and walked barefoot
through the streets to the door of the Cathedral. There he knelt, and
being received into the great church, was led to the place of Martyrdom
where he knelt again and kissed the stones where St Thomas had fallen.
In the crypt where the b