He depressed the power of the feudal nobles; he appointed the most deserving people to office; he repaired the royal palaces, increased the royal revenues, and promoted agricultural industry.  He seems to have pursued a peace policy.  But he was unscrupulous and grasping.  His style of life when chancellor was for that age magnificent:  Wolsey, in after times, scarcely excelled him.  His dress was as rich as barbaric taste could make it,—­for the more barbarous the age, the more gorgeous is the attire of great dignitaries.  “The hospitalities of the chancellor were unbounded.  He kept seven hundred horsemen completely armed.  The harnesses of his horses were embossed with gold and silver.  The most powerful nobles sent their sons to serve in his household as pages; and nobles and knights waited in his antechamber.  There never passed a day when he did not make rich presents.”  His expenditure was enormous.  He rivalled the King in magnificence.  His sideboard was loaded with vessels of gold and silver.  He was doubtless ostentatious, but his hospitality was free, and his person was as accessible as a primitive bishop.  He is accused of being light and frivolous; but this I doubt.  He had too many cares and duties for frivolity.  He doubtless unbent.  All men loaded down with labors must unbend somewhere.  It was nothing against him that he told good stories at the royal table, or at his own, surrounded by earls and barons.  These relaxations preserved in him elasticity of mind, without which the greatest genius soon becomes a hack, a plodding piece of mechanism, a stupid lump of learned dulness.  But he was stained by no vices or excesses.  He was a man of indefatigable activity, and all his labors were in the service of the Crown, to which, as chancellor, he was devoted, body and soul.

Is it strange that such a man should have been offered the See of Canterbury on the death of Theobald?  He had been devoted to his royal master and friend; he enjoyed rich livings, and was Archdeacon of Canterbury; he had shown no opposition to the royal will.  Moreover Henry wanted an able man for that exalted post, in order to carry out his schemes of making himself independent of priestly influence and papal interference.

So Becket was made archbishop and primate of the English Church at the age of forty-four, the clergy of the province acquiescing,—­perhaps with secret complaints, for he was not even priest; merely deacon, and the minister of an unscrupulous king.  He was ordained priest only just before receiving the primacy, and for that purpose.

Nothing in England could exceed the dignity of the See of Canterbury.  Even the archbishopric of York was subordinate.  Becket as metropolitan of the English Church was second in rank only to the King himself.  He could depose any ecclesiastic in the realm.  He had the exclusive privilege of crowning the king.  His decisions were final, except an appeal to Rome.  No one dared disobey his mandates, for the law of clerical obedience was one of the fundamental ideas of the age.  Through his clergy, over whom his power was absolute, he controlled the people.  His law courts had cognizance of questions which the royal courts could not interfere with.  No ecclesiastical dignitary in Europe was his superior, except the Pope.