Note 7 — Chapter I

Resistance to autocracy is often more needed against a strong and just king than it is against an unprincipled profligate. Henry II.'s love of order and peace, the strength and energy he spent in curtailing the power of the barons, and in making firm the foundations of our national system of petty sessions and assize courts have made for him an enduring fame. Henry II. was a great lawyer; he was "the flower of the princes of his world," in contemporary eyes; but it was as an autocrat he would rule. Against this autocracy Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, protested, and the protest cost him five years of exile, and finally his life. The manner of his death earned for the Archbishop the title of martyr, and popular acclamation required him to be canonised as a saint,[7] and his name to be long cherished with deep devotion by the English people. Both Henry and Thomas stand out honourably, but the former would have brought all England under one great centralised authority, with the Crown not only predominant but absolute in its supremacy, and the Archbishop contended for the great mass of poor and needy people to mitigate the harshness of the law, and to maintain the liberties of the Church against the encroachments of sovereignty. "Nothing is more certain," as the old writer put it, "than that both strove earnestly to do the will of God, one for the sake of his realm, the other on behalf of his Church. But whether of the two was zealous in wisdom is not plain to man, who is so easily mistaken, but to the Lord, Who will judge between them at the last day."