Becket Leaves England
Becket denied the right of the assembly to judge him, appealed to the pope, and, feeling that his life was too valuable to the Church to be risked, went into voluntary exile on November 2, embarking in a fishing-boat which landed him in France. He went to Sens, where Pope Alexander was, while envoys from the king hastened to work against him, requesting that a legate should be sent to England with plenary authority to settle the dispute. Alexander declined, and when, the next day, Becket arrived and gave him a full account of the proceedings, he was still more confirmed in his aversion to the king.
Henry pursued the fugitive archbishop with a series of edicts, aimed at all his friends and supporters as well as Becket himself; but Louis VII of France received him with respect and offered him protection. He spent nearly two years in the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, until Henry's threats against the order obliged him to move to Sens again.
Becket regarded himself as in full possession of all his prerogatives and desired to see his position enforced by the weapons of excommunication and interdict. But Alexander, though sympathizing with him in theory, favored a milder and more diplomatic way of reaching his ends. Differences thus arose between pope and archbishop, which became even more bitter when legates were sent in 1167 with authority to act as arbitrators. Disregarding this limitation on his jurisdiction, and steadfast in his principles, Thomas treated with the legates at great length, still conditioning his obedience to the king by the rights of his order.
His firmness seemed about to meet with its reward when at last (1170) the pope was on the point of fulfilling his threats and excommunicating the king, and Henry, alarmed by the prospect, held out hopes of an agreement that would allow Thomas to return to England and resume his place. But both parties were really still holding to their former ground, and the desire for a reconciliation was only apparent.
Both, however, seem for the moment to have believed in its possibility, and the contrast was all the sharper when it became evident that the old irreconcilable opposition was still there. Henry, incited by his partisans, refused to restore the ecclesiastical property that he had seized, and Thomas prepared to issue the pope's sentence against the despoilers of the Church and the bishops who had abetted them. It had been already sent to England for promulgation when he himself landed at Sandwich, on December 3, 1170, and two days later entered Canterbury.
Becket Assassinated
The tension was now too great to be endured, and the catastrophe that relieved it was not long in coming. A passionate word (supposedly Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?, though this may be apocryphal) of the angry king was taken as authority by four knights -- Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Moreville, William de Tracey, and Richard le Breton -- who immediately plotted the murder of the archbishop, and accomplished it near the altar in his own Canterbury Cathedral on December 29.
The crime brought its own revenge. Becket was revered by the faithful throughout Europe as a martyr, and canonized by Alexander in 1173, while on July 12 of the following year Henry humbled himself to do public penance at the tomb of his enemy, which remained one of the most popular places of pilgrimage in England until it was destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. A shrine was later re-established there and remains popular with tourists today.
Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is set in a company of pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. The word "canter" came into the English language from the pace of the horses headed there, called the "Canterbury gallop."
Modern works based on the story of Thomas Becket include T. S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral and Jean Anouilh's play Becket, which was made into a movie with the same title. In the 19th century, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer wrote the novella Der Heilige (The Saint) about Thomas Becket.
W. J. Williams has suggested that the story of the murder of Thomas á Becket may have inspired the masonic legend of the death of Hiram Abiff. This theory included reference to a company of masons in the City of London making a procession to St Thomas's Chapel on his saint's day. He suggests that they may have been an emblematic performance concerning the death of Thomas on that day. They also supported St Thomas's Hospital, HQ, which was the headquarters of the Knights of St. Thomas, a military order during the crusades which was very close to the Templars.
