ot be
tried by the king's judges, but only in the Church's courts. He was
willing to allow that, if a clergyman were found guilty of a great crime
in these courts, he might be degraded,--that is to say, that he should
be turned out of the ranks of the clergy,--and that, when he had thus
become like other men, he might be tried like any other man for any
fresh offences which he might commit. But for the first crime Becket
would allow no other punishment than degradation at the utmost. The king
said that in such matters clergy and laity ought to be alike; and about
this chiefly the two quarrelled, although there were also other matters
which helped to stir up the strife.

In order to get out of the king's way, the archbishop secretly left
England (A.D. 1164), and for six years he lived in France, where king
Lewis treated him with much kindness, partly because this seemed a good
way to annoy the king of England. But at length peace was made, and
Becket had returned to England, when some new acts of his provoked the
king to utter some hasty words against him; whereupon four knights, who
thought to do Henry a service, took occasion to try to seize the
archbishop, and, as he refused to go with them, murdered him in his own
cathedral (A.D. 1170). But as you must have read the story of Becket in
the history of England, I need not spend much time in repeating it.

In 1185, when Urban III. was pope, tidings reached Europe that
Jerusalem had been taken by the great Mussulman hero and conqueror,
Saladin; and at once all Western Christendom was stirred up to make a
grand attempt for the recovery of the Holy City. The lion-hearted
Richard of England, Philip Augustus of France, and the emperor Frederick
Redbeard, who had lately made his peace with the pope, were all to take
part; but very little came of it. Frederick, after having successfully
made his way by Constantinople into Asia Minor, was drowned in the river
Cydnus, in Cilicia. Richard, Philip, and other leaders, after reaching
the Holy Land, quarrelled among themselves; and the Crusaders, after a
vast sacrifice of life, returned home without having effected the
deliverance of Jerusalem. You will remember how Richard, in taking his
way through Austria, fell into the hands of the emperor Henry VI., the
son of Frederick Redbeard, and was imprisoned in Germany until his
subjects were able to raise the large sum which was demanded for his
ransom.

CHAPTER XIII.

INNOCENT