Thomas Becket

In 1156 Thomas Becket, a gifted administrator and a close friend of King Henry II, was installed as Archbishop of Canterbury. The king hoped this appointment would give him more power over the church. Until this assignation Becket had been a worldly patron of plays and anything that involved singing and dancing. However, once he was installed as Archbishop, Becket in an attempt to atone for his hedonistic past life and make a new beginning started following a life of austerity and asceticism. This involved him preserving his chastity, drinking sparingly, praying often at night, attending Masses at dawn and employing clerks to flog him as penance for his wrongdoings.
Soon after Becket was appointed Archbishop he realized that King Henry II was looking for a puppet, answerable to him whilst his loyalty was primarily to God and his church. The Archbishop and Henry had several disputes over ecclesiastical and royal matters and Becket constantly protested about the king interfering in church affairs. Henry got fed up with an Archbishop unwilling to be manipulated and feeling betrayed by a friend, cited him to appear before the king's court. Becket failed to respond so was found guilty of contempt of royal court. He was summoned to the Council of Northampton and seeing the king coaxing the bishops and barons for a guilty verdict, stormed out. In 1164 Becket fled to France disguised and the dispute remained unsettled.
In 1170 the final rift between Henry II and Becket occurs when the king's eldest son, who was also called Henry, was crowned as his heir by the Archbishop of York and six bishops, a violation of the Archbishop of Canterbury's traditional right. The angry exiled Becket proceeded to excommunicate the bishops and triumphantly returned to Canterbury, where the common people flocked to show their adulation. Meanwhile the king was spending Christmas near Bayeux in Normandy when a deputation of bishops came to tell him of Archbishop Becket's continuing refusal to release control of the church to the king. He was also informed that Becket still refused to absolve the Archbishop of York and his associates from excommunication for participating in the coronation and indeed had excommunicated some more. Exasperated by his archbishop's refusal to tow the line, Henry shouted in fury " Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" Four knights, members of his household, took their king at his word, crossed the Channel, rode post-haste to Canterbury and attacked him at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral whilst he was taking Evensong in front of a shocked congregation, in the north transept of the Cathedral. Becket struggled on in front of the Evensong congregation, before burying his head in prayer and dying. There was a great storm within an hour of the death of the Archbishop and when his clothes were removed from his dead body, it was discovered that, unbeknown to anyone, he was wearing a hairshirt riddled with lice and maggots, the skin on his chest ripped to shreds. Becket was immediately recognized as a saint and a martyr, and people flocked to the Cathedral to mourn him. The king was suitably shocked by the scandalous action his temper had provoked, as was Western Christendom who looked upon Henry as a blasphemous murderer.
In the the years following his death many miraculous cures were recorded at Becket's shrine. indeed 700 miracles were recorded in the decade after his assassination at his crypt. His tomb was a major attraction for English and European pilgrims bought offerings and returned with flasks of holy water and small glasses containing the martyr's diluted blood were distributed throughout western Europe.