in the two principal powers made way for several
conferences leading to peace. But for a long time all their endeavors
seemed rather to inflame than to allay the quarrel. Whilst the king,
steady in asserting his rights, remembered with bitterness the
Archbishop's opposition, and whilst the Archbishop maintained the claims
of the Church with an haughtiness natural to him, and which was only
augmented by his sufferings, the King of France appeared sometimes to
forward, sometimes to perplex the negotiation: and this duplicity seemed
to be dictated by the situation of his affairs. He was desirous of
nourishing a quarrel which put so redoubted a vassal on the defensive;
but he was also justly fearful of driving so powerful a prince to forget
that he was a vassal. All parties, however, wearied at length with a
contest by which all were distracted, and which in its issue promised
nothing favorable to any of them, yielded at length to an accommodation,
founded rather on an oblivion and silence of past disputes than on the
settlement of terms for preserving future tranquillity. Becket returned
in a sort of triumph to his see. Many of the dignified clergy, and not a
few of the barons, lay under excommunication for the share they had in
his persecution; but, neither broken by adversity nor softened by good
fortune, he relented nothing of his severity, but referred them all for
their absolution to the Pope. Their resentments were revived with
additional bitterness; new affronts were offered to the Archbishop,
which brought on new excommunications and interdicts. The contention
thickened on all sides, and things seemed running precipitately to the
former dangerous extremities, when the account of these contests was
brought, with much aggravation against Becket, to the ears of the king,
then in Normandy, who, foreseeing a new series of troubles, broke out in
a violent passion of grief and anger,--"I have no friends, or I had not
so long been insulted by this haughty priest!" Four knights who attended
near his person, thinking that the complaints of a king are orders for
revenge, and hoping a reward equal to the importance and even guilt of
the service, silently departed; and passing with great diligence into
England, in a short time they arrived at Canterbury. They entered the
cathedral; they fell on the Archbishop, just on the point of celebrating
divine service, and with repeated blows of their clubs they beat him to
the ground, the