"Becket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fragmentary part—had made its way into this country, with unusual rapidity, in little more than ten centuries from its publication, is shown by its being frequently quoted by the English churchman John of Salisbury, the pupil of Abelard and friend and biographer of Becket (the Saint, not the boxer), who died (as Bishop of Chartres) in the year 1180. We may suppose that John took a copy of the Satyricon home with him from Paris, as undergraduates do to-day from Oxford and Cambridge. Two and a half centuries later, in 1423 (I owe this display of erudition to ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... back new plants and seeds; while it is well known that many of the religious houses, the Cistercians especially, who always settled in the remote country, were most energetic farmers, their energy being materially assisted by their wealth. It is said that the great Becket when he visited a monastery did not disdain to labour in ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... had helped to throw him into the river again. All was thenceforth wonderment and devotion. Masses were sung, tapers were kindled, bells were tolled; the monks of St. Romuald had a solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the sacristan at their tail, and the holy breeches of St. Thomas a Becket in the centre; —Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of holy water. The Rood of Gillingham was deserted; the chapel of Rainham forsaken; every one who had a soul to be saved, flocked with his offering to St. Bridget's shrine, and Emmanual Saddleton gathered more fees from the promiscuous ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... androcentric, there was a great to-do to carry out this doctrine, in elaborate symbolism. A set of beggars and cripples, gathered for the occasion, was exhibited, and kings and cardinals went solemnly through the motions of serving them. As the English schoolboy phrased it, "Thomas Becket washed the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... of the latter part of the twelfth century. The text is executed in a lower-case gothic. In the Calendar of Saints are found the names of Edward the Martyr, Cuthbert, Guthlac, Etheldrith, and Thomas a Becket. I think I am fully justified in calling this one of the richest, freshest, and most highly ornamented PSALTERS in existence. The illuminations are endless, and seem to comprise the whole history of the Bible. In the representations of armour, we observe the semicircular and slightly depressed ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... laboured more assiduously to defeat its own objects. Those who most warmly disapprove of the treatment of the monasteries have so far no reason to complain; and except in the one point of the papal supremacy, under which, be it remembered, the religious orders had luxuriated in corruption, Becket or Hildebrand would scarcely have done less or more than what had as yet been ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... have the same scheme of color. Notice how the trees are darkest just where they are required to tell most strongly against the white in the centre of the picture. An admirable illustration of the effectiveness of this color-scheme is shown in the "Becket" poster by the "Beggarstaff Brothers," Fig. 69. Another scheme is to have the principal black in the gray area, as in the Vierge drawing, Fig. 26 and in Rico's ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... scenes. The puppets were dressed by Beth, our old nurse, and my sisters, and Hugh was the showman behind the scenes. The little curtains were drawn up for a tableau which was supposed to represent an episode in the life of Thomas a Becket. Hugh's voice enunciated, "Scene, an a-arid waste!" Then came a silence, and then Hugh was heard to say to his assistant in a loud, agitated whisper, "Where is the Archbishop?" But the puppet had been mislaid, and he had to go on to the next tableau. The most remarkable ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wiry-framed aboriginal from the Burdekin River country, who was much attached to his master, and eyed his bound-up face with much concern. He, like Gerrard, carried a revolver at his saddle-bow, and a Snider carbine in a becket—Native Police fashion. Gerrard, in addition to his revolver, had a 44 deg. Winchester carbine slung across ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... church and hospital, dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, was erected by the Prior of Bermondsey, so long since as the year 1013; but the hospital was refounded, and the revenues increased, anno 1215, by Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester, in whose diocese it was situated, continuing, however, ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... the modern world charged Christianity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself combined extreme bodily luxury with an extreme absence of artistic pomp. The modern man thought Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found the church too simple exactly ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... least as far back as the reign of Henry VI. There had been theatrical exhibitions in abundance, however, at a much earlier period. Stow, in his "Survey of London," in 1599, translates from the "Life of Thomas a Becket," by Fitzstephen, who wrote about 1182, mention of "the shews upon theatres and comical pastimes" of London, "its holy playes, representations of miracles which holy confessors have wrought, or representations of tormentes wherein the constancie of martirs appeared." As Mr. Payne Collier ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... us. "The little grey church on the windy shore," which once belonged to William de Tracy, one of your friend Thomas a Becket's murderers. If you wish to vent your wrath against those who cut off your favourite Saxon hero, there is a tomb in the church which bears De Tracy's name; over which rival Dryasdusts contend fiercely with paper-arrows: ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... Art, preserved in the Northern Counties, portrayed by a very competent hand. Many of the objects possess considerable interest; such as the chair of the Venerable Bede, Cromwell's sword and watch, and the grace-cup of Thomas a Becket. All are drawn with that distinctness which makes them available for the Antiquarian, for the Artist who is studying Costume, and for the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... motored up from Becket—his country place, close to his plough works in Worcestershire—stood a moment on the pavement, stretching his long legs and giving directions to his chauffeur. He had been stopped twice on the road for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was a vivacious old lady, and was accompanied by her nephew, Hamilton Beckett, in whom I found a congenial playmate. His name made a strong impression upon my memory, as I was then reading the history of Thomas a Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury. I have heard that this friend of my childhood went eventually to England to reside. The Penningtons of Newark had a cottage near us. William Pennington subsequently became Governor of New Jersey. I also enjoyed the youthful ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... gittar, and Fairbrother, the rogue that I intrusted with the carrying of it on foot, whom I thought I had lost. Col. Dixwell's horse taken by a soldier and delivered to my Lord, and by him to me to carry to London. Came to Canterbury, dined there. I saw the minster and the remains of Becket's tomb. To Sittiligborne and Rochester. At Chatham and Rochester the ships and bridge. Mr. Hetly's mistake about dinner. Come to Gravesend. A good handsome wench I kissed, the first that I have seen a great while. Supped with my Lord, drank late below with Penrose, the Captain. To bed late, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... ABBOTT (1811-1856).—Comic writer, b. in London, the s. of a lawyer, and belonged to a family claiming descent from Thomas a Becket. Destined for the legal profession, he was called to the Bar. In addition to contributions to various periodicals and newspapers, including Punch, The Illustrated London News, The Times, and Morning Herald, he produced over fifty plays, many of which attained great popularity, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... am proceeding rather too methodically. And yet I suppose I should not obtain Lisardo's forgiveness if, in arriving at the period of HENRY THE SECOND,[252] I did not notice that extraordinary student and politician, BECKET! ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the later fortunes of the Graal and the Round Table company, to no less a person than the famous Englishman Walter Mapes, or Map, the author of De Nugis Curialium, the reputed author (v. chap. i.) of divers ingenious Latin poems, friend of Becket, Archdeacon of Oxford, churchman, statesman, and wit. No valid reason whatever has yet been shown for questioning this attribution, especially considering the number, antiquity, and strength of the documents by which it is attested. Map's date (1137-96) is the right one; his abilities ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... versions, figuring also as Isbel, Essels, and Sophia. It was probably an English ballad at the start, but bears the traces of the Scottish minstrels who were doubtless prompt to borrow it. There is likelihood enough that the ballad was originally suggested by the legend of Gilbert Becket, father of the great archbishop; the story running that Becket, while a captive in Holy Land, plighted his troth to the daughter of a Saracenic prince. When the crusader had made good his escape, the lady followed him, inquiring her way to "England" and to ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... provides for efficiency one provides for the best part of truth ... honesty of statement. I shall hope for a little more elasticity in your dogmas than Becket or Cranmer or Laud would have allowed. When you've a chance to re-formulate the reasons of your faith for the benefit of men teaching mathematics and science and history and political economy, you won't neglect to answer or ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... avenue of the Crystal Palace, and the effect produced is superb. A Catholic bookseller from Belgium makes quite a display of his editions of devotional works for every country under heaven; and there, too, are the effigies of Cardinal Boromeo, Thomas a Becket, and the late Archbishop of Paris, all arrayed in full pontificals. Their crosiers are very richly jewelled. If the apostles of Christ could revisit the earth, they would never fancy that these were their successors in the work and patience of ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... common wooden seats (of churchwardens' pattern) and wainscotting have been built up against its pillars, the stone work having been cut away to accommodate the painted wood. There are some good memorial windows; one of Henry II. being married to Eleanor (1152); and another of Thomas-a-Becket visiting ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... 'Vita Mathildis' (Muratori, vol. v.) foreseen that his beloved Canossa would one day be nothing but a mass of native rock, he would undoubtedly have been more explicit on these points; and much that is vague about an event only paralleled by our Henry II.'s penance before Becket's shrine at ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Yarrow; and perhaps the finest subject for a story of the same kind in any modern book, is that told in Turner's History of England, of a Mahometan woman, who having fallen in love with an English merchant, the father of Thomas a Becket, followed him all the way to England, knowing only the word London, and the name of her ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... and kept there till you had worked the murder of Becket in tapestry and four acts. I shall be more merciful. When you can show me a representation of the man who drew Slipaway in the Calcutta Sweep trying to believe that it wouldn't have won, even if it hadn't been knocked down when it was leading by ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... kingdom. Haddon is old English feudalism edificed. It represents the rough grandeur, hospitality, wassail and rude romance of the English nobility five hundred years ago. It was all in its glory about the time when Thomas-a-Becket the Magnificent used to entertain great companies of belted knights of the realm in a manner that exceeded regal munificence in those days,—even directing fresh straw to be laid for them on his ample mansion floor, that they might ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... size, & diuers other, as namely of shel-fish, Sea-hedge-hogs, Scallops & Sheath-fish. Of fat, Brets, Turbets, Dories, Holybut. Round, Pilcherd, Herring, Pollock, Mackrell, Gurnard, Illeck, Tub, Breame, Oldwife, Hake, Dogfish, Lounp, Cunner, Rockling, Cod, Wrothe, Becket, Haddock, Guilt-head, Rough-hound, Squary Scad, Seale, Tunny, and many ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... Longstaff, the second son, were a rakish, disorderly sort of people, and rambled from one place to another, till, in the time of Harry the Second, they settled in Kent, and were called Long-Tails, from the long tails which were sent them as a punishment for the murder of Thomas-a-Becket, as the legends say. They have been always sought after by the ladies, but whether it be to show their aversion to popery, or their love to miracles, I cannot say. The Wagstaffs are a merry, thoughtless sort of people, who have always been opinionated of their own wit; ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... exactly the land for the Dominican to turn to. Unhappy England! Dominic was born in the same year that Thomas a Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral; Francis in the year before the judgment of the Most High began to fall upon the guilty king and his accursed progeny. Since then everything seemed to have gone wrong. The last six years of Henry the Second's reign were ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... extract) "Surisberiensis (J.) Policraticus, &c., 8vo. L. Bat. 1595; very scarce, vellum 6s. This book is of great curiosity; it is stated in the preface that the author, J. of Salibury, was present at the murther of Thomas a Becket, whose intimate friend he was; and that 'dum pius Thomas ab impio milite cedetur in capite, Johannis hujus brachium fere simul percisum est,'" is from Lilly's Catalogue, and the passage relating to Becket was ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... Minor Canons now received their charter of corporation immediately after the death of Anne of Bohemia, wife of Richard II. Apparently when Becket's representative ventured on his dangerous errand, deed of excommunication in hand, the canons' vicars or vicars choral sang the services. In Braybroke's time we find a body intermediate between the canons and their vicars. They were twelve in number, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... instead. He had now a handsome income, and he understood the art of enjoying it. He moved about as he pleased—now to Cambridge, now to Oxford, and, as the humour took him, back again to Paris; now staying with Sir Thomas More at Chelsea, now going a pilgrimage with Dean Colet to Becket's tomb at Canterbury—but always studying, always gathering knowledge, and throwing it out again, steeped in his own mother wit, in shining Essays or Dialogues, which were the delight and the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... really were. The older men had short bushy beards, and large heads of almost woolly hair. Besides spears and bows, they carried large heavy carved clubs in their hands, of various shapes, some being very formidable-looking weapons. They had also darts with barbed edges, which they threw from a becket or sort of sling fixed to the hand. With these darts we saw them kill both birds and fish at a distance of eight or ten yards. The only tools we saw were composed of stone or shells. Their hatchets were in form like an axe, the pointed end being fixed to a ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hooper, and Jones. By his wife Bridget, he had but one child,—a daughter, Christian, born May 8, 1667. She married Thomas Mason, and died in 1693; leaving an only child, Susannah, born August 23, 1687. Edward Bishop was her guardian. She married John Becket in 1711, and by him had a son, John, and six daughters, as follows: Susannah, married to David Felt, Elizabeth to William Peele, Sarah to Nathaniel Silsbee, Rebecca to William Fairfield, Eunice to Thorndike Deland, and Hannah ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... started long ago Upon their journey to a-Becket's shrine, Were happy that a poet's pen divine Inspired by all a genial wit can know, Or sympathetic human heart bestow, Recorded in immortal rhythmic line, As sweet as breath of old Provencal wine, Their pilgrim tales and songs of ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... olden days caused the highest and lowest in the land to perform penance in public. A notable instance of a king subjecting himself to this humiliating form of punishment is that of Henry II. The story of the King's quarrels with Becket, and of his unfortunate expression which led four knights to enact a tragic deed in Canterbury Cathedral, is familiar to the reader of history. After the foul murder of Becket had been committed, the King was in great distress, and resolved to ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... political fact, arose the extra- national, and too often anti-national position, which the Roman clergy held for many ages, and of which the instinct, at least, lingers among them in many countries. Out of it arose, too, all after struggles between the temporal and ecclesiastical powers. Becket, fighting to the death against Henry II., was not, as M. Thierry thinks, the Anglo-Saxon defying the Norman. He was the representative of the Christian Roman defying the Teuton, on the ground of rights which he believed to have existed while the Teuton was a heathen in the German ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... with a strangeness of adventure, in which a feeling for external nature, at least in its aspects of wonder, appears. The Celtic saints are not hermits of the desert, but travellers or pilgrims. Among the lives of contemporary saints, by far the most remarkable is that of our English Becket by Garnier de Pont-Sainte-Maxence. Garnier had himself known the archbishop; he obtained the testimony of witnesses in England; he visited the places associated with the events of Becket's life; his work has high value as an historical ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... have to say that when close-hauled in a light wind under all sail she required little or no weather helm. As the wind increased I would go on deck, if below, and turn the wheel up a spoke more or less, relash it, or, as sailors say, put it in a becket, and then leave ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... side of Cheapside, (between Ironmonger Lane and Old Jewry,) stood the Hospital of St. Thomas of Acon, founded by Thomas Fitz-Theobald de Helles, and his wife Agnes, sister to the turbulent Thomas Becket, who was born in the house of his father, Gilbert, situated on this spot. The mother of our meek saint was a fair Saracen, whom his father had married in the Holy Land. On the site of this house rose the hospital, built within twenty years after the murder of Thomas; yet such was the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... II. Sir Thomas de Colepeper, who was castellan of the castle, was hanged on the drawbridge for having refused admittance to Isabel, the Queen-consort, in her progress in performing a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas 'a Becket at Canterbury. The manor and castle were forfeited to the crown by his attainder, but restored to his son, sir Thomas Colepeper. By his Diary of May 8, 1666, it appears to have been hired by Evelyn for a prison. "Here," he says, "I flowed the dry moat, made a new drawbridge, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... there were to be found the precious labours of the chosen servants of the church down to the last pamphlet written in opposition to the consecration of Dr Hampden; and raised above this were to be seen the busts of the greatest among the great: Chrysostom, St Augustine, Thomas a Becket, Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... pilgrims, on their way to the shrine of Saint Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, met at the old Tabard Inn, later called the Talbot, in Southwark, and the host proposed that they should beguile the ride by each telling a tale to his fellow-pilgrims. This we all know was the origin of the immortal Canterbury Tales of our great fourteenth-century ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... midst of his great struggle with the Church, but William made no attempt to use the opportunity. He accepted the earldom of Huntingdon from Henry, and in 1170, when the younger Henry was crowned in Becket's despite, William took the oath of fealty to him as Earl of Huntingdon. But in 1173-74, when the English king's ungrateful son organized a baronial revolt, William decided that his chance had come. His grandfather, David, had made him ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... Theobald, second Butler, was Joane, eldest sister and co-heir of John de Marisco, a great baron in Ireland; and thirdly, Sir Bernard Burke, in his Extinct Peerage, makes his wife to be Maud, sister of Thomas a Becket. Which of these three accounts ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... wandered about in the court-yard and cloister. The towers looked beautifully grey and soft against the bright blue sky, and the view over Soissons, with all its churches and old houses, was charming. It seems that Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, lived at the Abbey when he was exiled from England and had ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... and sticks it was strewn with. He made many laws. One was that, if a priest or monk was thought to have committed any crime, he should be tried by the king's judge, instead of the bishop. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket, did not think it right to consent to this law; and, though he and the king had once been great friends, Henry was so angry with him that he was forced to leave England, and take shelter with the King of France. Six years ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... English, and the ballads, that first exercised our memories, stored the mind with the traditions of our forefathers; their literature was our literature, their religion our religion, their history our history. The battle of Hastings, the murder of Becket, the signature of Runymede, the execution at Whitehall; the divines, the poets, the orators, the heroes, the martyrs, each and ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... good features. I managed to get a word or two with her, and I liked her way of speaking. Well, I was sufficiently interested to say to myself that I might as well spend a week or two at Stockholm and keep up the acquaintance of these people; Becket, their name was. I'm not exactly the kind of fellow who goes about falling in love with nursery governesses, and at that time (perhaps you recollect?) I had somebody else in mind. I dare say it was partly the contrast between that shark of a woman and this modest girl; at all events, ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... were Squire, Bang Bang, and Mr. Whitehouse's Pax and Priam, all winners of field trials. There have been several very good black and whites. Mr. Francis's, afterwards Mr. Salter's, Chang was a field trial winner of this colour. A still better one was Mr. S. Becket's Rector, a somewhat mean little dog to look at, but quite extraordinary in his work, as he won the Pointer Puppy Stake at Shrewsbury and the All-Aged Stake three years in succession. Mr. Salter's Romp family were quite remarkable in colour—a white ground, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... diameter fully equal to the length of our ship; and, after testing the matter through the whole afternoon, we all came to the conclusion that our boats would live in such a patch, and that the experiment was quite worth trying. Wherefore three bags were made, one for each boat, and attached by a becket to a length of line measuring about twenty fathoms. Then, when night had set in, and the darkness had become deep enough to conceal our movements, the bags were filled and dropped overboard, the other end of the line being made fast to the ringbolt in the stern of the boat for the use of which ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... Porter, K.C.B. First Lord of the Admiralty. Captain Corcoran Commanding H.M.S. Pinafore. Ralph Rackstraw Able seaman. Dick Deadeye Able seaman. Bill Bobstay Boatswain's mate. Bob Becket Carpenter's mate. Tom Tucker Midshipmate. Sergeant of marines Josephine The Captain's daughter. Hebe Sir Joseph's first cousin. Little Buttercup A Portsmouth bumboat woman. First Lord's sisters, his cousins, ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... was a most remarkable day with Thomas Becket, Arch Bishop of Canterbury, as Weever, 201, observes from Mat. Paris: "Mars Secundum Poetas, Deus Belli nuncupatur. Vita Sancti Thomae (secundum illud Job, Vita hominis militia est super terram) tota fuit contra hostem bellicosa, &c". The life of St. ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... Mr. Becket Denison and Lord Villiers had ridden the horse to prove it, and it had met the bands and the omnibuses without shying, so that no apprehension was entertained that Sir Robert's deficient horsemanship would be of any serious consequence with so quiet an animal; he had also ridden it regularly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... whip-poor-will, seclusive as flowers which haunt the woodland shadows—yet those reading him must know how accurately he reads the human heart; and his characterization of Guinevere, Pelleas, Bedivere, Enid, the lover in Maud, a Becket, the Princess, Philip, Enoch Arden, and ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... is that of Thomas a Becket. The sudden transformation of this man of the world into an ascetic priest (it is true, on the occasion of his nomination as archbishop), from this devoted friend and servitor of the king of England into his most violent adversary, and into a champion ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Cluniac monk, who, owing his position to his relative Milo, Earl of Hereford, was consecrated in 1139. He was made Bishop of Hereford in 1148, and was translated thence to London. Though he owed much to Becket, his patron and tutor, he is said to have taken the king's side in the quarrels with Becket, and to have been instrumental in the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... the Roman supremacy pressed both on the clergy and laity of England during the reign of Henry II. Even the attempt of that wise and courageous monarch to make a stand for the independence of his throne in the memorable case of Thomas a Becket, had such an unhappy issue, that, like a suppressed rebellion, it was found to add new strength to the domination of the Church. Since the submission of the king in that ill-fated struggle, the voice of Rome had double potency whenever ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... than Bale denounced him in a fierce reply as "a beastly belly-god and damnable dung-hill." With a spirit worthy of the "bloody bitesheeps" whom he attacked, the ex-Bishop of Ossory regretted that when Henry plucked down Becket's shrine he had not burned the idolatrous priests upon it. It probably mattered little to Bale that at the moment when he wrote not a single Protestant had as yet been sent to the stake; but language such as this was hardly likely to stir Mary to a spirit of moderation. The ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... and gathering around me the thousand recollections of scenic splendor, of terror, of bigotry, and superstition which were acted in sight of the very walls by which I was surrounded. Here the murder of Thomas a Becket was perpetrated; there was his miracle-working shrine, visited by pilgrims from all parts of Christendom, and enriched with the most costly jewels that the wealth of princes could purchase and lavish upon it; the very steps, worn into deep cavities by the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... by the Virgin on St. Thomas a Becket, (according to a MS. in the Cotton Library,) he received from our Lady's own hands, at Sens, in France, a golden eagle, and a small phial of stone or glass, containing an unction, on whose virtues ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... "that is quite sufficient. Chalk down two, Nigger: one for Becket and one for the bad family. How many does ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... revelry, or the tones of the solemn organ, echoed along its vaulted roof; a humbler but not less interesting trait marks its history. It was here that the zealous pilgrim, strong in bigot faith, rested his weary limbs, when the inspiring name of Becket led him from the rustic simplicity of his native home, to view the spot where Becket fell, and to murmur his pious supplication at the shrine of the murdered Saint; how often has his toil-worn frame been sheltered beneath that hospitable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... spite of all efforts at compromise, do not really agree. In 1529, before the meeting of Parliament, Campeggio had appealed to Henry to prevent the ruin of the Church; he felt that without State protection the Church could hardly stand. In 1531 Warham, the successor of Becket and Langton, excused his compliance with Henry's demands by pleading (p. 271) Ira principis mors est.[746] In the draft of a speech he drew up just before his death,[747] the Archbishop referred to the case of St. Thomas, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... understanding with the Crown; and this was the case in the first half of the 12th century, if not on all points, yet, at least on all leading questions. Far-reaching differences did not appear until the higher ecclesiastics embraced the party of the Papacy, which happened in England through Thomas Becket. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... to the following story. I was staying at the house of an old friend, a wealthy Hebrew, while another of the guests was Arthur A'Becket. As will sometimes happen when you are in good spirits, the conversation took a religious turn. We drifted into it unconsciously, and our worthy host was telling us that he was in the habit of praying night and morning. ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... special interest excepting the church, which is dedicated to St Thomas a Becket. The arches dividing the aisles from the nave are high and rather pointed, giving an impression of loftiness. There is a beautiful carved screen, with painted figures on the panels; and the font is a very early one. Of the infants baptized in it, one at least obtained a rather ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Winchester and that St. Thomas at Canterbury was killed but did not die. It is at least as possible for a Philadelphian to feel the presence of Penn and Franklin as for an Englishman to see the ghosts of Alfred and of Becket. Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... worthy merchant of London, named GILBERT A BECKET, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was taken prisoner by a Saracen lord. This lord, who treated him kindly and not like a slave, had one fair daughter, who fell in love with the merchant; and who told him that she wanted to become a Christian, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... us to invest it with some legend, such as belongs to every robber's nest on that famous river. No hawk-eyed baron ready to pounce on the traveler, is recorded as having lived here; all that seems to be remembered of it is, that the murderers of Thomas A Becket lay secreted here for a time after that deed of blood, ere they ventured forth on their pilgrimage, haunted by the accursed memory of it all their lives. This is something, to be sure, in the way of historic incident, but the real interest of this immediate region arises from the fact of its being ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... which once were a great forest, stretching in a ring round the north of London, full of deer and boar, and of wild bulls too, even as late as the twelfth century, according to the old legend of Thomas a Becket's father and the fair Saracen, ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... April 24, 1538, that a writ of summons was sent forth in the name of Henry VIII., "To thee, Thomas Becket, some time Archbishop of Canterbury"—who had then been dead for 368 years—"to appear within thirty days to answer to a charge of treason, contumacy, and rebellion against his sovereign lord, King Henry II." But the days passed, and no spirit having stirred ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... commensurate with his original powers of reasoning or invention. He was quite conscious of it, and did his best to fill up the gap in his intellectual equipment. He showed what he might have done under more favouring circumstances in a very interesting volume on Becket's history and letters. But circumstances were hopelessly against him; he had not time, he had not health and strength, for the learning which he so needed, which he so longed for. But wherever he could, he learned. He was quite ready to submit his ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... management of public affairs was Thomas Becket, whom he made chancellor of the kingdom. Becket was fond of pomp and luxury, and lived in a more magnificent manner ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... royal king was very wroth at the earl's evasion, and swore by Saint Thomas-a-Becket (whom he had himself translated into a saint by having him knocked on the head), that he would give the castle and lands of Locksley to the man who should bring in the earl. Hereupon ensued a process of thought in the mind of the knight. ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... poor of this world, rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom." "If thou wilt be perfect, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor." To this must be added the undeniable fact that the Church, when purest and when most powerful, has depended for its influence on its consideration with the many. Becket's letters, lately published,[363] have struck me not a little; but of course I now refer, not to such dark ages as most Englishmen consider these, but to the primitive Church—the Church of St. Athanasius ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... settlers in Canterbury, New Zealand, were so called in allusion to the pilgrims to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket. Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' were told by such pilgrims. The name was given probably by Mr. William Lyon, who in 1851 wrote the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... In 1168, Becket had written to De Turbe from Vezelay, a town on the borders of Burgundy and Nivernois, and ordered him, by the Pope's authority, to publicly excommunicate Hugh Bigot, Earl of Norfolk. He had robbed the Priory of Pentnay, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... in a most venomous speech, attacked the Archbishop, whose mildness was stimulated into an angry reply; but Exeter gained his point, for both Brougham and the Duke were for postponing the Bill. Phillpotts would have made a great bishop in the days of Bonner and Gardiner, or he would have been a Becket, or, still better, a Pope either in the palmy days of papal power or during the important period of reaction which succeeded the Reformation. He seems cast in the mould ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... largely in the early history of England. Within a mile of our camp was Saltwood Castle, built in 499 by the Romans and enlarged by the Normans. It was here that the conspirators met to plan the assassination of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, only sixteen miles away, and which we had ample opportunities to visit. Hythe, one of the ancient "Cinque Ports," was but a mile or so distant, with its old church dating from the time of Ethelbert, King of Kent. In its crypt are the bones of several hundred ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... upon this evening's banquet.—De Bigot," he added to his seneschal, "thou wilt word this our second summons so courteously, as to gratify the pride of these Saxons, and make it impossible for them again to refuse; although, by the bones of Becket, courtesy to them ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... left we see Walsingham, an ancient town, famous for the old ruins of a monastery of note there, and the Shrine of our Lady, as noted as that of St. Thomas-a-Becket at ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... that there are great souls among them; Beckets, and Hugh Grostetes, and Elizabeths of Hungary. But you are the last people to praise them, for you don't understand them. Thierry honours Thomas a Becket more than all Canonisations and worshippers do, because he does see where the man's true greatness lay, and you don't. Why, you may hunt all Surius for such a biography of a mediaeval worthy as Carlyle ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... well know what I write, for I hear a caravan on my stairs, that are come to see the house; Margaret is chattering, and the dogs barking; and this I call retirement! and yet I think it preferable to your visit at Becket. Adieu! Let me know something more of your motions before you go to Ireland, which I think a strange journey, and better compounded for: and when I see you in town I will settle with you another visit to Park-place. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... erected here, and bricks manufactured by a convict of the name of Becket, who came out in the last fleet, and has fifty-two people to work under him. He makes 25,000 bricks weekly. He says that they are very good, and would sell at Birmingham, where he worked about eighteen months ago, at more ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... said the knight of Malta, flourishing Excalibur. "By St. Thomas a Becket, we'll have as fine a scene as I myself ever furnished to ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... eastern part of Canterbury Cathedral, consisting of Trinity Chapel and the circular adjunct called Becket's Crown. The building of these commenced the year following the fire which occurred A. D. 1174, and was carried on without intermission for several successive years. Gervase, a monk of the cathedral, and an eyewitness of this re-edification, wrote a long and detailed description ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... Plains, and I saw a son of his when I was taking care of Miss West last spring through that lung fever—looked like his father. I wish I'd thought to tell him about that Sunday. I heard he was waiting on that pretty Becket girl, the orphan one that lives with Nathan Becket. Her father and mother was both lost at ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... was gloating over the very ancient history of Amboise, Walter and I were glad to connect it with a later time when Louis VII met Thomas a Becket here with a view to bringing about a reconciliation between the proud prelate and his lord and master, Henry II of England. This meeting seemed comparatively recent, after the shadowy traditions of Caesar ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... must often have thought of, would have been pleased. Come to think of it, I shall put this book upon the Hazlitt shelf. You have acquired a manner that I can only call august; otherwise, I should have to call it such amazing impudence. The BAUBLE SHOP and BECKET are examples of what I mean. But ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... combination of spiritual and political power in South Wales in the hands of two able, ambitious, and energetic kinsmen, such as he knew Gerald and the Lord Rhys to be. Gerald had made no secret of his admiration for the martyred St. Thomas e Becket. He fashioned himself upon him as Becket did on Anselm. The part which Becket played in England he would like to play in Wales. But the sovereign who had destroyed Becket was not to be frightened by the canons of St. David's and the Archdeacon of Brecon. He summoned the chapter ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... of attending the services in the Cathedral. Mr. Murray then took charge of the small Unitarian chapel of Blackfriars, at Canterbury. Thus Murray's early youth was passed in the mingled influences of Unitarianism at home, and of Cathedral services at York, and in the church where Becket suffered martyrdom. A not unnatural result was a somewhat eclectic and unconstrained religion. He thought but little of the differences of creed, believing that all good men held, in essentials, much the same faith. His view of essentials was generous, ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... friend to me. Now, do you think I am the sort of man to think I hear things where there isn't anything to hear, or to think I see things when there is nothing to see? No, you don't. Thank you. Well now, I had passed the last becket, and I sang out to the men to sway away, and I was standing on the jaws of the spanker-gaff, with my left hand on the bolt-rope of the trysail, so that I could feel when it was board-taut, and I wasn't thinking of anything ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... account of this complaint, to prevent greater evils, he was obliged to cause the nobility satisfy both the avarice and arrogance of the clergy, who had now resolved upon and begun a journey to Rome, with a view to raise as great commotions in Scotland, as Thomas Becket ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... were suspected of laughing in secret at the sacraments which they administered, and of believing no more of the Gospel than of the Morgante Maggiore. Men of a very different class now rose to the direction of ecclesiastical affairs, men whose spirit resembled that of Dunstan and of Becket. The Roman Pontiffs exhibited in their own persons all the austerity of the early anchorites of Syria. Paul the Fourth brought to the Papal throne the same fervent zeal which had carried him into the Theatine convent. Pius the Fifth, under his gorgeous vestments, wore day and night ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... before him, and like Chancellor Wolsey in a later time, Chancellor Becket was a royal tutor;[35] and like Swithin, who still remains the pluvious saint of humid England, and unlike Wolsey, who just missed the glory of canonization, Becket became a widely venerated saint. But less kind to St. Thomas of Canterbury than to St. Swithin, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... conjectured that he might in some access of his morbid and changeful humour have uttered reproachful words against his Minister in the favourite's ear—even expressed a wish to be rid of him, as did our first Plantagenet when tired of the despotism of Thomas a Becket—and had perhaps listened to strange proposals for effecting such object. But the Cardinal knew right well also to what extent Louis was a king and a Frenchman, and devoted by self-interest to their common system. He despatched, therefore, Chavigny ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... brush clothes with. Well, sir, I'd about give up lookin' when I happened to look on the wall of the settin'-room and there was one hangin' up. And, say, Cap'n Sears, I wisht you could have seen it! 'Twas triced up in a—a kind of becket, as you might say, made out of velvet—yes, sir, by creepin', velvet! And the velvet had posies and grass painted on it. And, I don't know as you'll believe it, but it's a fact, the handle of that brush broom was gilded! Yes sir, by Henry, gilded! 'Well,' thinks I to myself, 'if this ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... particular (and clerical) example of Thomas Becket: the story of St. Thomas of Canterbury. I defy any man to read the story of Thomas a Becket in Stubbs, or in Green, or in Bright, or in any other of our provincial Protestant handbooks, and to make head or tail ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... outlet under Norman feudalism. What we note is that three Archbishops of Canterbury were strong enough and brave enough to stand up against the unchecked rule of kings, and the names of these great Archbishops—Anselm, Thomas a Becket, and Stephen Langton—are to be honoured for all time for the services they rendered in the making of English liberties. Not one of the three was in any sense a democrat. It is not till the latter part of the fourteenth century that we find John Ball, a wandering, revolutionary ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... Acts of the Apostles (c. XXIV. v. 10), was what actually misled Bracciolini; the more so, as when he was in this country, he discharged what Dean Hook called "the heavenly occupations of a parish priest" (Life of Becket, p. 359), and for the very reason that he was a consecrated man he must have taken a much greater interest and placed far more trust in St. Paul, than Tacitus or any other heathen among the ancient Romans was likely to have done; but an error so extraordinary about the contemporary ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... deal of light upon his skill in making characters delineate themselves, and they reveal incidentally some of his methods of dramatic narrative. For this paper, however, please confine your criticism to "Queen Mary," "Harold," "Becket," "The Cup," "The Falcon," "The Promise of May," and "The Foresters." In studying "Becket," compare Irving's stage version ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... refusing to confirm his appointments. Apostle, they were ready to allow the Pope to be: sovereign or legislator, never. Doctrine they would accept at his hands; but he should not rule over their secular or ecclesiastical liberties. The quarrel between Henry the Second and Becket was entirely on this point. No wonder that Rome canonised the man who thus exalted her. The Kings who stood out most firmly for the liberties of England were Henry the Second, John, Edward the First and Second, and Richard ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... to meet her husband on his return from Denmark in the year 1029, and to have been the temporary residence of Archbishop Lanfranc whilst his palace was being rebuilt in 1070. There is a legend, too, that the four knights who murdered Thomas a Becket made this house their rendezvous. Moreover, "The Fountain" can boast of a testimonial to its excellence as an inn written six hundred years ago, for, when the marriage of Edward the First to his second queen, Margaret ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... Whatever opinion we may entertain of the character or principles of Thomas Becket, we must acknowledge that he suffered death with a constancy not unworthy of the primitive martyrs. See Lord Lyttleton's History of Henry II. vol. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... course. There is no other woman so far as I can see. Why are you pulling my roses to pieces like that? Do you know that that rose tree was planted a hundred years ago by Thomas a Becket after the battle of Agincourt? My dear, I am so happy that I could talk nonsense all ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... and "being happy yet").—"To church with my new tenant, who is delightful company: Lady Lucre. says he is a 'refined duck,' a 'gentlemanly angel,' and a 'manly poppet:' to which I made answer, that I thought so too; and that she was a 'seraphine concert.' Sermon, by the Rev. Loyalla a Becket, 'in aid of funds for supplying the poor, during this inclement but festive season, with food for the mind.' Captain de Camp did borrow a sovereign of me, to put in the plate; and I was told by my fellow-churchwarden, Mr. Flyntflayer, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... people of high rank had just arrived on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, or rather to the place where the shrine had stood in past ages. King Henry the Eighth had destroyed the shrine, and a soldier had "rattled down proud Becket's glassy bones," but the spot where it had been was considered holy, and the poor deluded people even yet sometimes came to worship there, and to make their painful way up the Pilgrims' Stairs, which they had to ascend on their ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt |
