He is
accused of being light and frivolous; but this I doubt. He had too many
cares and duties for frivolity. He doubtless unbent. All men loaded down
with labors must unbend somewhere. It was nothing against him that he
told good stories at the royal table, or at his own, surrounded by earls
and barons. These relaxations preserved in him elasticity of mind,
without which the greatest genius soon becomes a hack, a plodding piece
of mechanism, a stupid lump of learned dulness. But he was stained by no
vices or excesses. He was a man of indefatigable activity, and all his
labors were in the service of the Crown, to which, as chancellor, he was
devoted, body and soul.

Is it strange that such a man should have been offered the See of
Canterbury on the death of Theobald? He had been devoted to his royal
master and friend; he enjoyed rich livings, and was Archdeacon of
Canterbury; he had shown no opposition to the royal will. Moreover Henry
wanted an able man for that exalted post, in order to carry out his
schemes of making himself independent of priestly influence and papal
interference.

So Becket was made archbishop and primate of the English Church at the
age of forty-four, the clergy of the province acquiescing,--perhaps with
secret complaints, for he was not even priest; merely deacon, and the
minister of an unscrupulous king. He was ordained priest only just
before receiving the primacy, and for that purpose.

Nothing in England could exceed the dignity of the See of Canterbury.
Even the archbishopric of York was subordinate. Becket as metropolitan
of the English Church was second in rank only to the King himself. He
could depose any ecclesiastic in the realm. He had the exclusive
privilege of crowning the king. His decisions were final, except an
appeal to Rome. No one dared disobey his mandates, for the law of
clerical obedience was one of the fundamental ideas of the age. Through
his clergy, over whom his power was absolute, he controlled the people.
His law courts had cognizance of questions which the royal courts could
not interfere with. No ecclesiastical dignitary in Europe was his
superior, except the Pope.

The Archbishop of Canterbury had been a great personage under the Saxon
kings. Dunstan ruled England as the prime minister of Edward the Martyr,
but his influence would have been nearly as great had he been merely
primate of the Church. Nor was the power of the archbishop reduced by
the Norman kings