Murder in the Cathedral.

IN THE FOUR MONTHS between their settlement at Freteval in late July 1170 and Thomas Becket's return to England, he and Henry II met twice. At one meeting they argued vociferously. The other was a social call, where Becket was received amicably.

There are few records of these conversations. Herbert of Bosham, Becket's assistant and subsequent biographer, reports that Henry told Becket: "Why don't you do what I want you to do, for, if you would, I would entrust everything to you." According to Herbert, the archbishop said he was reminded of the devil's temptation to Christ, from Matthew 4:9: "All these things will I give thee, if thou will fall down and worship me."

This exchange encapsulates the institutional conflict that had become personified in these two men. On the one hand, the king sought recognition of his ultimate authority. Henry expected submission without the qualification in the form that had so infuriated him before the exile--that is, without the words "saving my order". As a practical, though not a formal matter, he would give Becket and the church the degree of independence it wished, subject to his ultimate authority.

On the other hand, Becket, not least by comparing Henry's position to Satan's temptation, manifested the strength of his own view that the church was the ultimate authority. The independence of the church had a spiritual foundation that could not be compromised.

Becket's preoccupation during this period was the restoration of the institutional authority of the see of Canterbury. His first priority was the restoration of the property of the see, so much of which had been dissipated during the six years of his exile. His predecessor as archbishop, St Anselm, had similarly demanded of Henry I, as a condition of accepting the office, that the see of Canterbury would have its property restored as it had been at the time of his predecessor, Lanfranc. For Becket, as for Anselm, it was a sin to permit anything which had once been dedicated to God or the saints to be withdrawn or diminished.

The second matter requiring early attention was the pernicious precedent that had been set with respect to Canterbury's most distinctive authority--the coronation of the king. The coronation of the young Henry as Henry II's successor, in which so many of the senior figures of the English church had participated, could not be accepted as a precedent. It was not, however, only the coronation that had mattered in this regard. That could be fixed by a second coronation conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was what the incident represented about the loss of the practical authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury over the other bishops of England who, save for York, swore obedience to Canterbury pursuant to the law and practice of the church.

It had been the policy of the English crown since William the Conqueror to recognise this submission for secular as well as spiritual purposes. It had long been regarded as in the interests of a centralised monarchy to have a centralised church. The restoration of such a relationship was the core of the temptation that Henry offered to Becket.