Murder in the cathedral

Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was famously murdered in Canterbury Cathedral exactly 850 years ago. John Goodall revisits this brutal event and considers its consequences

- John Goodall

AT sunset on December 29, 1170, four knights dressed in armour and with drawn swords burst into Canterbury Cathedral. They came as self-appointed agents of Henry II’s rage towards the Archbishop of Canterbury—once the King’s friend—Thomas Becket. ‘Where is the traitor?’ they shouted. With the noise of their arrival, all activity in the great church, where vespers had been in progress, came to an end. It was with a large crowd of onlookers, therefore, that they confronted the Archbishop near the Lady Chapel. No fewer than five contemporary eye-witness accounts of the ensuing drama, which must have taken place in lamp-lit darkness at about 4.30pm, survive.

‘Here I am,’ returned the defiant Archbishop. ‘No traitor to the King, but a priest of God. What do you want?’ After an exchange of insults, the knights attempted to drag him away. He responded by clinging to a pillar and, when one of them tried to detach him, the Archbishop mocked him as a ‘pimp’. Enraged and fearful that the growing crowd might intervene, one knight swung his sword and sliced off the top of Becket’s head. All but one of the Archbishop’s followers had already scattered. This remaining figure, Edward Grim, tried to shield his patron from the blow and almost lost his arm.