customs of England were doubtless better known to Thomas than they were to Henry; and Henry, with his mind full of his imperial models, may really have been surprised at an act which to Thomas seemed a mere matter of course. But again I must remark that, although there is no reason to suppose that Thomas at all deceived Henry in the matter, we must not expect from him, or from any one. else in those days, that delicate sensitiveness of feeling to which it would seem a matter of duty to take every possible means to undeceive him. The feeling of Thomas might very well be that he was going to do what he had a right to do, what was usual to do in such a case, and that, if the King chose to expect him to do something different, it was no concern of his. It is singular that Thomas' biographers tell us next to nothing about his resignation of the chancellorship. As Mr. Robertson says, it is not very clear when it took place; but it must have been very soon after his consecration. It would save some trouble if we could accept Mr. Froude's version of the matter. He makes the resignation of the chancellorship take place at the time when Thomas was declared free from all secular responsibilities. "The first public intimation which Becket gave of his intentions was his resignation of the chancellorship. He had been made Archbishop that the offices might be combined; he was no sooner consecrated than he informed the King that the duties of his sacred calling left him no leisure for secular business. He did not even wait for Henry's return from Normandy. He placed the Great Seal in the hands of the Chief Justice, the young Prince, and the Barons of the Exchequer, demanding and receiving from them a hurried discharge of his responsibilities. The accounts, for all that appears, were never examined."* This version would make matters very plain indeed; only unluckily the release of Thomas from all secular responsibilities took place before his consecration; while it is shown by a most curious little bit of evidence that he remained Chancellor for some time, though seemingly for a very short time, after his consecration. The release is described by several of the biographers, but most fully by Edward Grim, who gives us the speech made by or for Bishop Henry of Winchester. From the Justiciar, Richard of Lucy, whom Mr. Froude cuts down into a Chief Justice-the name may possibly be justified, but it has a strangely modern sound-from Henry the son and heir of King Henry, whom both Mr. Froude and Mr. Robertson have made into a "Prince," while Roger of Pontigny more excusably has exalted him into the "Rex junior" which he was afterwards; § and from others of the * Nineteenth Century, July, 1877, p. 843. + Edw. Grim, 15. Cf. Roger, 107, 108; Will. Fil. Steph, 202; Herbert, i. 30; Garnier, 19; Jo. Sarisb. Ep. ii. 11. "Per filium hæredemque regis Henrici Secundi Henricum," is the careful description of William Fitz-Stephen, 202. We lost our last Ætheling in the White Ship, and we are still a long way from any "Princes." Garnier (15) calls him "L'enfaunt," which might have become a title in England, as it did in Spain. § 107: "Ad regis junioris præsentiam." So, directly after, "Rex pater," the style of a few years later. Edward Grim (15) calls him "Regis filius coronandus adhuc." VOL. XXXII. 2 K great men of England-seemingly Mr. Froude's Barons of the Exchequer Thomas received the release which declared him free from all secular charges. This would certainly seem to imply that his resignation of the chancellorship was a thing which was fully expected to follow. The Church, it was said, received him free; but, if he was to go on being Chancellor, he would soon again cease to be free. But his formal resignation did not take place till after he was consecrated. This is shown by a story, in which we get deep indeed into the atmosphere of legend, but which is none the less trustworthy as a piece of incidental evidence. The newly-consecrated Archbishop appeared in the choir of Christ Church, not in the monastic dress which became the abbot of that house, but in the dress of a canon regular, which Benedictine strictness looked on as no better than a secular habit. One of his intimate friends saw a terrible vision which warned him to go to the Chancellor-he who was so clad was unworthy of the name of Archbishop-and tell him to appear for the future in a more becoming garb.† The Archbishop changed his dress, and also his manners; for want of any better date, we may suppose that he resigned the chancellorship at the same time. But, however this may be, the legend could never have arisen if he had resigned the chancellorship before his consecration. And now for a second time Thomas has become a new man. The Chancellor is changed into the Archbishop. The man who had played his natural part so well, so zealously, as a great royal official, is going, as a confessor and martyr of the Church, to play an artificial part, no less sincerely, no less zealously, but in the awkward and overdone fashion of one who is playing an artificial part. I must confess that, at this point, where with many the history of Thomas begins, for me it loses its main personal interest. From this point, as far as my immediate feelings are concerned, I am tempted to look at him mainly as the man who withstood the Danegeld-if Danegeld it was-the "sort of Hampden" as even Mr. Robertson is forced to call him, and as the man who, even while striving in the cause of Rome, sent forth not a few hearty English denunciations against her corruptions. I demand truth and justice for him, as for every man, from his birth to Edw. Grim, ibid: “Ministri regis, Ex ore, inquiunt, regis liberum eum clamamus ab omni calumnia et exactione nunc in omne tempus." So all the others. Mr. Robertson (337) discusses the value of this release at length. My chief point is one on which I think that Mr. Robertson will agree with me, namely, that it had nothing to do with burnings and manslayings. + The story is told by Edward Grim (16), Roger (111), mentions the habit of the canon regular. Roger says, oribus ut prius, splendida scilicet, pretiosa, et honesta." Garnier (19, 20). Edward alone "Va tost al chanceler: di li ke jo lui maunt So Edward: "Die cancellario, (tacito nomen archiepiscopi præ nimia indignatione).” P. 73. his death; but from the time when he ceases to be Chancellor, I feel no longer called on to strive for him as one of his own following. On many points that are to come I could be satisfied to sit by and look on at what, if it were not a strife between the living and the long dead, one might call the Theban strife of the elder and the younger Froude. In the times which we have thus far gone through my interest is nearer. Here is a great and representative man of the generation in which the descendants of the Norman settlers in England became Englishmen, the generation which beheld the anarchy and the restoration of peace, each of which events, in its own way, helped to carry out the work of fusion yet more fully. Norman by descent, English by birth and feeling, proud of England as his native land, of London as his native city,-trained by travel and study in other lands, but never losing his love for his native soil,-trusted by the Angevin King, beloved by the English people,-Thomas of London is the very embodiment of that blending together of Normans and English on English ground which was the great work of the twelfth century, and of which we feel the blessings in the nineteenth. And here is a man who comes forward to write his Life and Times, but who shows at once that this, the most instructive aspect of his life and times, has never once entered his mind; a man who, instead of the true history of the birth and parentage of him of whom he writes, has nothing to give us but old wives' fables which scholars have cast aside for years, fables at which his own forgotten brother had years ago dealt the first blow. Here is the great minister of one of our greatest Kings, the fellowworker of that King in his great work, the man who brought back peace after the anarchy, the man who has left his mark on the law and constitution of England for all later time, the man who by his device of scutage dealt a blow to feudalism second only to the blow which William the Great had dealt at Salisbury, the man who gave to the great post of Chancellor the dignity which it has kept to our own times, the man who, if he cast away the duties of his proper calling for the cares of state and for the storm of battle, still lived a life, just, pure, devout, a life which, if it had been usual to canonize ministers of state as easily as Kings and Bishops, might have won him the honours of saintship without any exile at Pontigny or any martyrdom at Canterbury. And here is a man calling himself a historian, professing to report and to balance the statements of contemporary writers, but who, instead of the statements of contemporary writers, instead of any inference which can be fairly drawn from these statements, gives us a monstrous fabric of pure fiction, consistent in one thing only, that everything is turned to the discredit of the man who gave England light and peace after her blackest day of darkness and anarchy. I have done my best to undo the wrong, and to set up the true Chancellor Thomas of history against the purely imaginary Chancellor Thomas of Mr. Froude's fantastic, but somehow always slanderous, dreams. I have further tested him, not only by the witness of the contemporary writers as it appears to me, but also by their witness as it appears to a writer many of whose ideas are very different from my own, whose estimate of Thomas is only a little more favourable than that of Mr. Froude himself, but who knows, what Mr. Froude seems not to know, what truth and accuracy are. My inferences from the facts will often be found widely different from the inferences of Mr. Robertson; but I believe that my facts and Mr. Robertson's facts will be found to be on all essential points the same. What pass for facts with Mr. Froude will be found to be altogether different from either. All this could be done only at some detail, and at some detail I have done it. Those who have followed me thus far have perhaps learned what Thomas of London was as a maker of history, what Mr. Froude is as a writer of it. If so, my main object has been gained, and we may pass over what remains at a swifter pace. Mr. Froude, Mr. Robertson, every other writer of the Life and Times of Thomas, has naturally given a much greater space to Thomas the Archbishop than to Thomas the Chancellor. I should do the same, if I were either writing a formal life or dealing with the subject in its place in a formal history. For my present immediate objects it will better serve to reverse the proportion. Three papers have been needed to bring me to the consecration of Thomas; I trust that one more will be enough to bring me to his martyrdom.* EDWARD A. FREEMAN. Owing to complete separation from books, I have been unable to verify my refer ences and extracts on the proof-sheet. It is possible therefore that some slips of pen or press may have crept in, especially in the French of Garnier, where it is not easy to carry the exact spelling in the memory. ARE THE WORKING CLASSES IMPROVIDENT? NEW subjects are more deserving of close study and careful exami nation than the question proposed to be discussed in the following pages. Many good and philanthropic persons, some of them distinguished for ability and liberality, have expended time and money for the purpose of drawing attention to it, more especially with a view of showing the great advantages which would accrue to the working people if they cultivated provident and thrifty habits. Such men have spared no pains in order to ascertain the facts in connection with the life of those who are the most deeply concerned, and also their bearing upon the social and industrial well-being of all sections of the community, and particularly on those who are dependent on weekly wages for their subsistence. In numerous instances the results of the investigations thus made have been published, with the avowed intention of trying to impress on the minds of working men the conclusions arrived at by the writers, and the significant meaning which they attach to them. Although these inquiries have, for the most part, been conducted with care, and the reports and pamphlets written thereon have displayed considerable ingenuity and marked ability, yet there has not been at all times that wisdom or tact, in manner or matter, which one had a right to expect after an expenditure of so much money, time, and thought. Hence it has very often happened that the lessons which the writers attempted to convey have left no permanent impression on the minds of those for whose special benefit all the trouble was undertaken, for the simple reason that they were often wide of the mark, or they were presented in a form which was unpalatable, and in tone objectionable. Sometimes the working class leaders have been charged with apathy |