primate's ruin. Becket, however, made his escape, and fled to France (Nov. 1164). During the six years that he lived in exile his cause was espoused by Louis VII., and less vigorously by the pope Alexander III., while Henry treated his adherents in England with great severity. Louis's protection of Becket caused a war with France (1167), in which Henry gained some advantages, but peace was made on January 6, 1169; and in the following year Louis effected a reconciliation between the king and the archbishop, who had an interview at Fretville, in Touraine, July 22, 1170.

But even before Becket returned to England he found a new cause for quarrel. Henry, fearing that his kingdom might be placed under a papal interdict, had thought it prudent to associate his son Henry in the kingdom, and had caused him to be crowned by the archbishop of York, June 15, 1170. Becket held that the primate alone could perform the ceremony of a coronation; and Henry had promised its repetition. But Becket could not wait for the fulfilment of this promise. On his return to England in December, he met the archbishop of York, on his way to join the king in Normandy, and pronounced against him a sentence of deprivation, which he had previously obtained from the pope. By the same authority he excommunicated the bishops of London and Salisbury, who accompanied the archbishop of York. But this was his last act of arrogant authority.

While Becket continued his journey in state, welcomed with acclamations and hymns by the people, who came out in procession to meet him, the prelates just named arrived at Bayeux, and informed the king of the sentence pronounced against them. "What!" cried the king, "this man, who has eaten my bread, who came to my court on a lame horse, insults me to my face, and there is none of the servants who eat at my table that will avenge me!" These words were probably but the vague expression of unbridled anger; but they found only too willing hearers. Four gentlemen of the king's household, Reginald Fitz-Urse, William de Tracy, Hugh de Moreville, and Richard Brito (the Breton), agreed with each other to execute his supposed wishes. They departed secretly, but not until they had dropped some expressions which induced the king to send after them a messenger, charging them to do nothing against the primate's person; but this messenger arrived too late.

Meanwhile Becket had found himself surrounded, at Canterbury, with danger, even to his life; but, maintaining his haughty bearing, he preached in the cathedral on Christmas-day, and afterwards excommunicated Ranulf and Robert de Broc, who had been the sequestrators of the see during his absence.

It was at the house of this same Ranulf, at Saltwood, that the conspirators met three days later (December 28), having travelled from Normandy by different routes. The day after they proceeded to Canterbury, and, being joined by certain assassins, they went to the palace, and, with many threats, required Becket to absolve the prelates. His alarmed attendants hurried him into the church, whither the assassins followed, after arming themselves. Becket met them at the door of the chapel of St. Benedict. Fitz-Urse approached him, battle-axe in hand, exclaiming, "Where is the traitor?" and Becket replied, "Reginald, here I am; no traitor, but the archbishop and priest of God; what do you wish?" They again demanded that he should revoke the excommunication, which he still steadfastly refused. Then began the scene of violence: they tried to drag him out to unconsecrated ground; he resisted, and flung Tracy on the pavement. Fitz-Urse struck off his cap with his sword: then Tracy aimed at him a blow which was intercepted by the arm of Grim, a monk of Cambridge, but still it grazed Becket's head and wounded his shoulder. Wiping away the trickling blood, he said, "Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit." Another stroke from Tracy brought him to his knees; and, having gently murmured, "For the name of Jesus and the defence of the church I am willing to die," he fell motionless on his face; and one more tremendous blow from Richard the Breton cleft his skull and finished the deed of murder. This fearful crime was perpetrated on Tuesday, the 29th of December, 1170, and the mangled corpse was buried hastily in the crypt on the 31st. Becket was canonized, as a saint and martyr, by pope Alexander III., March 3, 1173; and the anniversary of his death became a marked day in the Anglican calendar. His body was removed, in 1220, to a magnificent shrine behind the high altar, which was enriched with presents from all Christendom, and visited by troops of pilgrims, the number of whom amounted in one year to 100,000. The shrine was destroyed, and the celebration of the martyrdom of St. Thomas was abolished, by Henry VIII., but his story still forms one of the most interesting "Memorials of Canterbury;" his name is borne by sixty-four English churches; and the genius of Chaucer has given to the "Canterbury Pilgrims " another immortality than that which they sought at Becket's shrine.

Never, could a name attain such eminence by party prejudice or mere fanaticism: there must have been real greatness to command such fame. Becket was an intrepid champion of what he deemed a sacred cause; and neither the object he pursued nor the means he employed should be judged by the notions of our age. Neither Becket nor his adversaries thought of the cause of the church as

spiritual, or of worldly power and ambition as opposed to it; and doubtless the feelings of the Englishman against the Norman inflamed the opposition of the prelate to the king. But in no age can violence and perjury be excused; and both Becket and his murderers must bear their burthen,--the former of reproach, but the latter of execration. Nor can Henry's memory be cleared of the blame of extreme harshness in what was mainly the cause of good government, even if he could be acquitted of all share in the final deed of blood.

The storm of indignation which might have been expected to burst forth from Rome was averted, for the present, by Henry's excusing himself from participation in the deed, and by the pope's sense of the impolicy of breaking with England; and Henry was left at liberty to carry on the schemes which he had already commenced for subjugating Ireland.

The four knights who had slain Becket were suffered to expiate their crime by a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where they all died.

IRELAND, the Iërne of the Greeks and Hibernia of the Romans, and the Erin of its own musical tongue, was probably peopled from Britain, but by a different branch of the Celtic race from that which inhabited the greater part of our island, and more akin to those of Scotland; the Britons being Cymry, the Scotch and Irish Gael. The tribes nearest to Scotland maintained close relations with that country, sharing in their wars and festivals. The island received Christianity through the preaching of Palladius in the 4th century, and of St. Patrick about the middle of the 5th; and, while Britain was plunged back into heathen barbarism by the Saxon conquest, Ireland was celebrated as the seat of learning and religion, and was called the Island of the Saints. Foreigners resorted to her schools and she sent forth missionaries, of whom the most celebrated was St. Columban, the apostle of the Hebrides (540– 615). The Northmen extended their ravages to Ireland; but from this evil she had begun to recover; and the cities and kingdoms of Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick, founded by these invaders on the coast, were now rising into importance. The country was divided into five principal kingdoms,-Munster, Leinster, Meath, Ulster, and Connaught; and one of the five chieftains (riaghs) generally held a sort of supremacy over the rest (ard-riagh). This dignity was now held by Roderick O'Connor, king of Connaught, but he had little real power beyond his own province.

In fact, thus early in their history, the Irish seem to have displayed those generous infirmities, in which the virtues and vices of the Celtic character were both exaggerated; and their brave enthusiasm was neutralized by the want of power to apply them

selves steadfastly to one object. The division into clans combined with the law of tanistry, that is, the succession of an elective instead of an hereditary chieftain, to create endless broils and petty wars. The tenure of property was rendered uncertain by the law of gavelkind, under which each estate returned, on its owner's death, into a common stock, and was redistributed among the clansmen, a custom incompatible with any advance in agriculture.

Henry had early formed the design of adding Ireland to his dominions; and he had recourse to the convenient doctrine that, under an alleged donation of Constantine, the pope could dispose of outlying countries, and especially of islands. Adrian IV. (Breakspear), the only English pope of the whole line of pontiffs, was equally disposed to aggrandize his country, and to subject the Irish church to the authority of Rome, which she had always resisted. He issued a bull in 1156, granting the sovereignty over the island to the king of England, but it was some years before Henry was prepared to make the acquisition.

The desired occasion at length arose out of a quarrel among the Irish chieftains. Dermot Macmorrogh, king of Leinster, being expelled from his kingdom for an outrage he had committed, sought the aid of Henry, whose vassal he offered to become (1167). Henry, who was fully engaged, as above related, in France, granted Dermot letters patent, empowering any English subjects to give him aid. In the south-west of Wales Dermot found certain Norman adventurers willing to undertake his cause, among whom were Robert Fitz-Stephens, Maurice Fitz-Gerald, and especially Richard de Clare, of Chepstow, surnamed Strongbow, son of the earl of Pembroke. In 1169 Fitz-Stephens crossed the Channel and took Waterford, and Fitz-Gerald followed him. In the next year Strongbow took Dublin, and having married Eva, the daughter of Dermot, he inherited the kingdom of Leinster (1170). The native princes, headed by Roderick, now leagued against him, and besieged Dublin with 30,000 men; but a charge of ninety Norman knights, on their war-horses, and in their full armour, routed the whole army of wild kernes with immense slaughter; and the terror of the English name spread over the whole island.

It was now time for Henry to interfere, unless he wished to see Ireland an independent kingdom. He recalled to England all his subjects in Ireland. But on full submission made to his authority by Strongbow and the other adventurers, who gave up to him the principal cities, he suffered them to retain their possessions as fiefs of the crown; and he appointed Strongbow as Seneschal of Ireland. He visited the island in person, and received the homage of the people of the south, who offered no resistance; but Roderick of

Connaught and the king of Ulster refused submission. The English power in Ireland was long bounded by a line drawn from the mouth of the Boyne to that of the Shannon. A synod assembled at Cashel united the church of Ireland to the see of Rome.

With this acceptable offering Henry met the papal legates on his return to Normandy in 1172; and having sworn on sacred relics that he had neither compassed nor desired the death of Becket, he received full absolution from the pope.

But now began the worst troubles of Henry's life and reign, in the unnatural rebellion of his children. His wife, Eleanor of Poitou, was a disgraced woman when he married her; and he had offended her, in turn, by his infidelities. She now incited his children to defy his authority, notwithstanding his having given all of them splendid establishments. Henry, the eldest (since the death of his brother William), had, besides the inheritance of the English crown, Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Touraine; his second surviving son, Richard, was duke of Guienne and count of Poitou ; Geoffrey, the fourth son, possessed the duchy of Brittany in right of his wife; and for John, the youngest, the king destined the splendid appanage of Ireland. But, instigated by their mother, and encouraged, at least in part, by the French king, the three eldest fled to the court of France, and announced to Henry their claim to be invested with full sovereignty in their respective appanages. They were supported by many of the Norman, Breton, and Gascon nobility, but these Henry easily defeated. The great danger was in England, where revolts broke out, while William king of Scotland invaded the northern counties, and the Flemings made a descent on Suffolk.

Aware that the murder of Becket still rankled in the minds of his people, Henry resolved to conciliate them, and the clergy at the same time, by a full and public penance. He came over from Normandy, and reached Canterbury on the 12th of July, 1174. He entered the city barefoot, worshipped at the shrine of St. Thomas, and, assembling a chapter of the monks, submitted to be scourged by them at the martyr's tomb. The next day he received full absolution from the clergy of Canterbury.

On his return to London, he was greeted by news which seemed to add the sanction of Heaven to his penance, for on the very day of his absolution his generals had gained a great victory over the Scots at Alnwick, in which king William (the Lion) himself was taken prisoner. The Scotch king only regained his liberty by ceding Berwick and Roxburgh to Henry, doing homage to him, with all the Scottish barons and prelates, in the cathedral of York, and placing the castle of Edinburgh in his hands for a limited time ENG.

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