is Henry's deep-seated wrath awoke. Beset by the
exiles with cries for protection, he let the complaint escape him in
the presence of his knights, that among so many to whom he had shown
favour there was not one who had courage enough to avenge the insults
offered to him.[27] As opposed to the Church sympathies which through
the clergy wrought on all people, the temporal state was mainly kept
together by the reciprocal relations of the feudal lord and sovereign
to his vassals and knights, and of them to him: to spiritual reverence
was opposed personal devotion. But these feelings, too, as they have
their justification, so they have their moral limitations; they are as
capable of exaggeration and excess as all others. Enflamed by the
King's words which seemed to touch the honour of knighthood, four of
his knights hastened to Canterbury, and sought out the man, who dared
to bid the King defiance in his own kingdom; as Becket refused to
recall the excommunication, they murdered him horribly in the
cathedral. When required to obey the King, Becket was wont to reserve
the rights of the Church and the priesthood; for this reservation he
died.

Henry II by calling forth, intentionally or not, this brutal act of
violence in the ecclesiastical strife, drew on himself the catastrophe
of his life.

By Becket's murder the ideas of Church independence gained what was
yet wanting to them, a martyr: his death was more advantageous to them
than his life could ever have been. The belief that the victim wrought
miracles, which were ascribed to him in increasing measure, at first
slight, then more and more surprising ones, viz. cures of incurable
diseases,--who does not know the resistless nature of this illusion,
bound up as it is with the nearest needs of man in every form?--made
him the idol of England. Henry II had to live to see the man who had
refused him the old accustomed obedience, reverenced among his people
with almost divine honours as one of the greatest saints that had ever
lived. The great Hohenstaufen in the unsuccessful struggle with the
Papacy was at last brought to declare that all he had hitherto done
rested on an error; and in like manner, but one far more humiliating
and painful, Henry II had to do penance, and receive the discipline of
the scourge, at the tomb of the man who had been murdered by his loyal
subjects. On a hasty glance it seems as though his Constitutions were
established, but a more accurate inquiry