Banner
titles titles titles
titles titles titles

Back to the Mainly The Normans calendar



Title
Timeline

Henry felt he needed to exert his authority over the church and so, in 1162, he appointed his friend Thomas Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury, the most powerful person in the church in England. Big mistake by Henry. Pretty soon he and Becket began to argue about what land the church owned, taxation and other things. It got worse and Henry made Becket and the bishops agree to new rules about the church. Becket refused and left the country for 5 years.

Eventually, after most bishops agreed, things got better and Becket came back. Henry didn’t want there to be an argument when he died so he arranged to have his eldest surviving son, also Henry, crowned as a co-ruler. Sadly he asked the Archbishop of York to do this and Becket got cross again. Then Becket took revenge on all the priests who had supported Henry by cutting them off from the church. On hearing this Henry got cross, shouted out “will no one get rid of this cleric”, and four knights overheard him and did just that, killing the Archbishop in his cathedral at Canterbury. Henry said he didn’t mean it but there is the danger of saying things you don’t mean.

Almost overnight Becket became a saint. Henry reconciled himself with the church, but royal control over the church changed little. As a penance, Henry walked barefoot into Canterbury Cathedral, where he was severely whipped by monks. A penance is a bit like doing a good deed after you have done something wrong. If you visit Canterbury Cathedral today, or any day actually, you can see a lot more about Thomas Becket. His tomb became a shrine for pilgrims.

Four years after the murder of Thomas Becket, Canterbury Cathedral was partly destroyed by fire. The eastern end had to be rebuilt. The man put in charge was a Frenchman called William Sens but it would seem that he fell off some scaffolding and was replaced by another William, known as William the English.

William the English added the Trinity Chapel for the shrine which would be home to Becket’s relics, shown in the picture on the right. It was quite common in these times for relics of important people to be put on show and pilgrims would come and visit. The relics could be bones or other parts of the body as well as objects associated with the person.

Fire was fairly common in these times with so many wooden buildings plus the fact that most fires used to warm places were open and sparks could fly out and ignite any material nearby that could burn.

Back to 1154AD
Forward to 1189AD