had enjoyed for centuries, led to farther issues. The mysterious demand next made of them, that the bishops should promise to observe the royal customs, was fairly met, after deliberation, by the answer, that they would so promise, salvo ordine suo; an exception, as our author well remarks, which had ever been made in episcopal oaths of fealty, and which was "the victorious exorcism whereby the Church repelled whatever of the servile there might have been in the obedience." But the bishops, terrified at the anger of the king, in an evil hour forced St. Thomas to yield to their importunities; and, in the unhappy council of Clarendon, to promise upon his troth, "that he would observe the customs in good faith." The Constitutions of Clarendon, which incorporate the English Church with the feudal system, were signed and sealed by the prelates on the following day, but St. Thomas, during the delay which had been granted him for examination, confounded by the sturdy reproof of his crosier-bearer, Edward Grim, repented of his past weakness, and referred himself to the Pope. Alexander III condemned the Constitutions, and those who had sworn to them; but praised the repentance of à Becket, and encouraged him to perseverance. The exhortation was heard. Leaving the consequences to God, he set at nought the Constitutions, and continued to enforce, with all the energy of his soul, the high prerogatives of his jurisdiction. At the parliament of Northampton, he was cited to answer for his conduet. The cowardice of the greater number of his prelates, and his own immortal constancy in those days of sore trial, are matter of history. Seated in the vestibule of that council chamber, attired in full pontificals, he bore unmoved the insults of the menials, until the parliament had concluded its deliberations, and the Earl of Leicester, at the head of the barons, came to announce his sentence. Then raising himself, he broke silence. "Son Earl, hearken thou thyself. Thou art not ignorant, my son, how dear and faithful to the king I was when I governed the matters of this world. It was, therefore, that it pleased him to raise me to the Archiepiscopal See of Canterbury, in spite, God knoweth, of my resistance, for I knew my weakness, and I submitted myself rather for the love of my king than for the love of my God. * My son, hearken again: Forasmuch as the soul is more precious than the body, in so much ought I to obey God rather than earthly kings. Neither law, nor reason, permit the sons to judge their father. Wherefore I decline the king's judgment, and thine, and that of the rest, not being able to be judged by any one after God but the Pope. I appeal before you all to his tribunal, and I withdraw me under the protection

of the Apostolic See and of the Church universal.' He retired, calm and majestic, amid the vociferations of the courtiers, and no one dared to stay him." (p. 148.)

In the Council of Tours, before Alexander III, himself an exile for conscience' sake, Saint Thomas pleaded his cause in person against the emissaries of Henry, who sought his deposition. The archbishop was confirmed in his See by the Sovereign Pontiff; and, therefore, from his cell at Pontigny, he condemned canonically the Constitutions of Clarendon, and launched the anathema against all those who adhered to them. The royal vengeance wreaked itself in a novel manner. The friends of the Saint, in number about 400, were spoiled of their property, and bound by oath to visit their exiled patron in the place of his sojourn. "Behold a being who devises for a bishop a torture more cruel than death; and that torture is, to show him the poor whom he cannot succour-to surround him with heartrending lamentations which he cannot console !"

The rejection of an equivocal accommodation proposed to him by the tyrant, drew on him the displeasure even of his protector, Louis; and he was obliged to quit Pontigny for the "more free" country of the Lyonnais. From Lyons he addressed to the Pope, to his own suffragans, and to King Henry, those undying letters which have survived to our own days. We should but impair them by curtailment, and we have no space for a complete

extract.

From Lyons he was recalled to England, by the series of happy coincidences which restored to Rome her pontiff, and left him free to exercise his power. Warned by the fate of Frederick of Germany, Henry trembled in his turn for his continental possessions, even although the servility of his island subjects left him at ease with respect to England. In a meadow at Freitville, appropriately named the Traitor's Field," Saint Thomas was reconciled to his sovereign, and paid upon his bended knee the heartfelt obeisance of gratitude. Yet "that very morning Henry had sworn before some persons, that he never would give Thomas the kiss of peace. And in fact he did not give it."

St. Thomas returned to England; but the king had never designed to keep the word he had plighted. The dissolute and apostate seemed privileged to heap every insult upon the head of the primate, while the unruly bishops were countenanced openly by Henry. Great abuses and malversations had been introduced into every department of the Church; and St. Thomas applied himself unsparingly to root them out, and restore order to the sanctuary. His murder arrested his progress in this good work.

The venal prelates who refused him submission had carried their complaints to Henry; and the hint implied by the memorable words which followed, was not lost upon his slaves: "Cursed be those whom I nourish with my favour, if they cannot avenge me, and rid my realm of this turbulent priest!" Four knights undertook the deed. "Tradition reports, that the tree under which they met to conspire together, smitten with malediction, became withered up." They crossed to England, and on reaching Canterbury entered the chamber of the Archbishop, and made no secret to him of their intentions. His fortitude did not permit him the cowardice of flight. In the evening, when he went into the church where the monks were chanting their office, he refused to suffer the gates to be closed, saying, "That it was not a fit thing to make a stronghold of God's house." The murderers appeared, and demanded "the traitor Archbishop." At this moment all his clerks fled except three, among whom was Edward Grim, his honest crosier-bearer. One knight, laying his hands on him, ordered him to follow him, as his prisoner; but the saint, plucking his mantle from the soldier's grasp, replied, "What you would do to me you shall do here." They summoned him to absolve the excommunicated bishops; "Until that they have complied with the holy canons, I will not absolve them," was his answer. Placing himself then in a kneeling posture, he proffered his last prayer: "To God, to Blessed Mary, to the holy patrons of this place, and to the blessed martyr Saint Denys, I commend my soul and the cause of the Church." "Upon this, a sword-cut wounded the crosier-bearer's arm, which attempted to shield the Archbishop, and grazed the head of the Archbishop himself; a second blow stretched him on the ground; a third clove in a large portion of the skull. And one of the murderers, inserting his sword, protruded the brain, and scattered it over the pavement." (p. 196.) Their next step was, of course, the pillage of the monastery.

Thus died the martyr, and thus, too, terminates the parallel between the saints of heaven and the Antæi of earth. For as M. Ozanam well expresses it,

"The history of St. Thomas is that of many among the saints; it is that of many myriads of martyrs before the proconsuls, of Athanasius before Julian, of Ambrose before Theodosius, of Chrysostom before Arcadius, of Gregory VII before Henry IV, of Nepomucene before Wenceslas, of Bishop Fisher and Thomas Morus before Henry VIII; and also (why should I not say it?) of Pius VII before Napoleon. For at that time, we learned by a great example, that, in God's Church, the traditions of a just and religious independence were not destroyed."-p. 249.

We cannot better conclude this portion of our paper, than in the last words of the volume before us. "And now you have before you two great figures. Rationalism has made the one, Catholicism has made the other; it is for you to see to which of the two you will surrender your soul."

The influence of the middle ages upon the very frame-work of society, extended itself into the times which succeeded them. It would astonish the self-seeking generation of scorners, if they but knew to what amount they themselves are indebted to the opinions and institutions at which they love to rail, for much of that modern enlightenment which they are wont to praise, more in disparagement of the "dark ages," than from any seemly estimation of its worth. It required more than the rapine of the Tudors, or the falsehood of the Stuarts, could possibly effect, to destroy the manly and athletic character of the English mind; for the germ was first planted there by the hands of men in whom was the spirit of God, inspiring the soul with freedom; and it had been fostered for ages by kindly watchers, who scrupled not to pour forth their saintly life-blood for its sake when it lacked nourishment; and when its enemies at the last had slain the keepers, and sought to subdue to themselves this fruit of their long watchings, they found its roots closely entwined and strongly embedded in the deep heart of the soil; so that, though it were easy to dishonour it, and shear it for a while of its loveliness, to eradicate it altogether was impossible. For the genuineness of freedom is understood by none but the faithful man; it is in the name of religion alone that he invokes her presence; his respect for the laws knows a better principle than the state-idolatry of the ancient empire, or the monstrous legalism of modern jurists. His fortitude is not insolent, nor his independence licentious; he is a citizen, because he is a Christian. The earliest writer upon our English constitution, the illustrious Fortescue, the Chancellor of Henry VI, has recorded the principles, which in his day were entertained upon the mutual duties and rights of the governors and the governed; than which, as Mr. Amos observes, "The sentiments of Algernon Sidney were not more inimical to the power of tyrants, or more repugnant to the abject language of the Oxford Decree, or that which disturbed the last moments of Russell."* The flag of our liberties was blessed by the anointed hands of bishops, and was spread to the breeze before the porch of the sanctuary.

We have no intention to detract one jot from the value of the praise, which is due to the book before us. We regret, however,

"Fortescue de Laudibus," &c. By A. Amos, Esq., p. 43, n.

that our author's attention has not directed itself to the elucidation of one important point on which he has lightly touched, and which would have proved of most admirable service in this great work of love and justice-we mean the political supremacy over Christendom, which was, by the constitution of that magnificent commonwealth, swayed by the Popes during the whole period of the middle ages. Wherever this subject has been treated by those who know how to inspire themselves with the spirit of its epoch, the best results have never failed to follow. The warmest partisan of Right Divine on the one hand, and the sternest upholder of democracy upon the other, have reason to join in commendation of that marvellous scheme of international jurisprudence, which preserved order from the threatenings of anarchy, by uniting the civil into one common cause with the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and, at the same time, effectually forbade the tyranny of the rulers, by reminding them, as well as their people, that the abuse of that power which was of God, to purposes of impiety or injustice, at once determined its duration, and left the subject free to accept the dispensation from his natural allegiance, which, in such cases, was never withheld by the head of the Christian commonwealth. We are not to be scared by names. In our days, we hardly know the Tory who will deny to the subject the right of resistance in the extreme case of a tyrannical executive, but here the subject is reduced to decide for himself the moment at which his allegiance is cancelled and rebellion ceases to be treason, and at his own peril must he so decide. We do not mean to dispute the fitness of this state of things, but, we will ask, what would have been the state of Christendom, in the infancy of constitutions and constitutional ideas, and amid the general dearth of these means of improvement, in their regard, with which we are now readily and liberally furnished, if the decision of these important points of ethics had been entrusted to the indiscriminating multitude, and not rather vested in the Church, their faithful and enlightened guardian, from whom too they were wont to receive instruction in all their duties, and spiritual aids to discharge them. So, on the other hand, while the duty of obedience to the righteous ruler was carefully preached to the people, the presence of a superior in the palace of the prince, to warn him from injustice and irreligion, and to temper the sword of justice with the sweetness of mercy, and to soften the harshness of the latter by interpretation of the spirit, must undoubtedly be regarded by every unbiassed judgment, to have been of incalculable usefulness in every body politic. The mediation of the sovereign Pontiff between belligerent states, was always desirable to humanity in