prelate some preferments and offices. By their means he was
enabled to travel for improvement to Italy, where he studied the civil
and canon law at Bologna; and on his return he appeared to have made
such proficiency in knowledge, that he was promoted by his patron to the
archdeaconry of Canterbury, an office of considerable trust and profit.
He was afterwards employed with success by Theobald in transacting
business at Rome; and on Henry's accession, he was recommended to that
monarch as worthy of further preferment Henry, who knew that Becket had
been instrumental in supporting that resolution of the archbishop, which
had tended so much to facilitate his own advancement to the throne, was
already prepossessed in his favor; and finding on further acquaintance,
that his spirit and abilities entitled him to any trust he soon promoted
him to the dignity of chancellor, one of the first civil offices in the
kingdom. The chancellor, in that age, besides the custody of the great
seal, had possession of all vacant prelacies and abbeys; he was the
guardian of all such minors and pupils as were the king's tenants; all
baronies which escheated to the crown were under his administration; he
was entitled to a place in council, even though he were not particularly
summoned; and as he exercised also the office of secretary of state, and
it belonged to him to countersign all commissions, writs, and letters
patent, he was a kind of prime minister and was concerned in the
despatch of every business of importance. Besides exercising this high
office, Becket by the favor of the king or archbishop, was made provost
of Beverley, dean of Hastings, and constable of the Tower: he was put
in possession of the honors of Eye and Berkham large baronies that had
escheated to the crown; and to complete his grandeur, he was intrusted
with the education of Prince Henry, the king's eldest son, and heir
of the monarchy. The pomp of his retinue, the sumptuousness of his
furniture, the luxury of his table, the munificence of his presents,
corresponded to these great preferments; or rather exceeded any thing
that England had ever before seen in any subject. His historian and
secretary, Fitz-Stephens, mentions, among other particulars, that his
apartments were every day in winter covered with clean straw or hay, and
in summer with green rushes or boughs, lest the gentlemen who paid court
to him and who could not, by reason of their great number, find a place