to hear about the
storms which raged outside their walls. It is rather hard for us
nowadays to see things through Charterhouse spectacles. There is
our lord the Pope, Alexander III., slow and yet persistent, wrestling
hard with the terrible Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who is often
marching away to seiges of Milan, reducing strong rogues and
deeply wronging the church (whose forged documents are all purely
genuine). Then what a hubbub there is in the church! Monstrous
anti-popes, one of whom, Victor, dies, and a satanic bishop Henry of
Liege consecrates another, Pascal, and the dismal schism continues. Then
our lord Alexander returns to Rome, and the Emperor slaughters the
Romans and beseiges their city and enthrones Pascal. There
are big imperial plans afoot, unions of East and West, which end in
talk: but Sennacherib Frederick is defeated by a divine and opportune
pestilence. Then Pascal dies, and the schism flickers, the Emperor
crawls to kiss the foot of St. Peter, and finally, in 1179, Alexander
reigns again in Rome for a space. Meantime, Louis VII., a pious
Crusader, and dutiful son of the Regulars, plays a long, and mostly a
losing, game of buffets with Henry of Anjou, lord of Normandy, Maine,
Touraine, Poitou, Aquitaine and Gascony, and leader of much else
besides, King also of England, and conqueror of Ireland--a terrible man,
who had dared to aspire to hang priestly murderers. He has forced some
awful Constitutions of Clarendon upon a groaning church, or a church
which ought to groan and does not much, but rather talks of the laws and
usage of England being with the king. But the noble Thomas has withstood
him, and is banished and beggared and his kith and kin with him. The
holy man is harboured by our good Cistercian brothers of Pontigny, where
he makes hay and reaps and see visions. He is hounded thence. These
things ignite wars, and thereout come conferences. Thomas will not
compromise, and even Louis fretfully docks his alimony and sends him
dish in hand to beg; but he, great soul, is instant in excommunication,
whereafter come renewed brawls, fresh (depraved) articles. Even the
king's son is crowned by Roger of York, "an execration, not a
consecration." At last (woeful day!) Thomas goes home still cursing, and
gets his sacred head split open, and thus wins the day, and has immense
glory and sympathy, which tames the fierce anti-anarchist king. He, too,
kneels to our lord Alexander, and swears to go crusad