Anselm and finished in 1115, when Conrad was Prior of Christ Church.

It was this church with Lanfranc's short Norman nave, western façade
and towers, and Conrad's glorious great choir high up over the crypt,
a choir broader than the nave and longer too, and with two transepts,
the western of Lanfranc's time, the eastern of St Anselm's, that St
Thomas knew and that saw his martyrdom in 1170.

Materials for the life of St Thomas are so plentiful that his modern
biographers are able to compose a life fuller perhaps in detail and
fact than would be possible in the case of any other man of his time.
But no account ever written of his martyrdom is at once so simple and
so touching as that to be found in the Golden Legend. It was this
account which the man of the Middle Age knew by heart, and which
brought him in his thousands on pilgrimage to Canterbury, and
therefore I give it here.

"When the King of France had made accord between St Thomas and King
Henry, the Archbishop," Voragine tells us, "came home to Canterbury,
where he was received worshipfully, and sent for them that had
trespassed against him, and by the authority of the Pope's Bull openly
denounced them accursed, unto the time they came to amendment. And
when they heard this they came to him and would have made him assoil
them by force; and sent word over to the King how he had done, whereof
the King was much wroth and said: If he had men in his land that loved
him they would not suffer such a traitor in his land alive.

"And forthwith four knights took their counsel together and thought
they would do to the King a pleasure and emprised to slay St Thomas
and suddenly departed and took their shipping toward England. And when