A Turbulent Reputation
Michael Staunton considers how Thomas Becket, a controversial figure even in his own lifetime and ever since, was described by his earliest biographers.
In 2001 Thomas Becket (1120?-70) was named by the Daily Mail as one of history’s 100 ‘Great Britons’. Four years later he came runner-up to Jack the Ripper in a BBC History magazine poll of ‘Worst Britons’. Such a disparity of opinion is nothing new. Becket’s brutal murder in Canterbury Cathedral in December 1170 unleashed an outpouring of grief and outrage which quickly developed into an extraordinarily successful and dynamic cult of St Thomas. But even as crowds flocked to his tomb, hailing him as the greatest saint of his age, or even the greatest in Christian history, criticism lingered. Not everyone had revised their impression of Becket as an arrogant troublemaker whose life had shown little evidence of sanctity and whose actions had been harmful not only to the King but to the interests of the Church he claimed to represent. In 1538, Henry VIII ordered the destruction of Canterbury’s shrine to their martyr, and since then opinion on Thomas has often divided along Catholic/Protestant lines. But criticism and support for Becket have not always come from predictable quarters, or for the reasons one might expect.
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