and run all the hazards of the
passage, in order to prevent the fatal consequences which might ensue
from any delay in giving satisfaction to his holiness. He found, on
his arrival, that Alexander was already wrought up to the greatest rage
against the king, that Becket's partisans were daily stimulating him to
revenge, that the king of France had exhorted him to fulminate the most
dreadful sentence against England, and that the very mention of Henry's
name before the sacred college, was received with every expression of
horror and execration.

The Thursday before Easter was now approaching, when it is customary for
the pope to denounce annual curses against all his enemies; and it was
expected that Henry should, with all the preparations peculiar to the
discharge of that sacred artillery, be solemnly comprehended in the
number. But Barre found means to appease the pontiff, and to deter him
from a measure which, if it failed of success, could not afterwards be
easily recalled: the anathemas were only levelled in general against all
the actors, accomplices and abettors of Becket's murder. The abbot of
Valasse, and the archdeacons of Salisbury and Lisieux, with others
of Henry's ministers, who soon after arrived, besides asserting their
prince's innocence, made oath before the whole consistory, that he would
stand to the pope's judgment in the affair, and make every submission
that should be required of him. The terrible blow was thus artfully
eluded; the cardinals Albert and Theodin were appointed legates to
examine the cause, and were ordered to proceed to Normandy for that
purpose; and though Henry's foreign dominions were already laid under
an interdict by the archbishop of Sens, Becket's great partisan, and the
pope's legate in France, the general expectation that the monarch would
easily exculpate himself from any concurrence in the guilt, kept every
one in suspense, and prevented all the bad consequences which might be
dreaded from that sentence.

The clergy, meanwhile, though their rage was happily diverted from
falling on the king, were not idle in magnifying the sanctity of Becket,
in extolling the merits of his martyrdom, and in exalting him above all
that devoted tribe who, in several ages, had, by their blood, cemented
the fabric of the temple. Other saints had only borne testimony by their
sufferings to the general doctrines of Christianity; but Becket had
sacrificed his life to the power and privileges of