was soon to become the most frequently invoked of all the calendar of
saints, and the King himself, finding that his submission to the Papal
legate at Avranches, two years after the crime, was not sufficient to
avert the wrath of Heaven, which seemed to be visiting him in the form
of rebellions and disasters in every part of his dominions, came to
Canterbury in 1174 and went through a penance of extreme severity.
Landing at Southampton, he came by the Pilgrims' Way to Harbledown,
and so entered the ancient city. At the church of St. Dunstan, outside
the walls, he took off his ordinary dress and walked barefoot through
the streets to the monastery of Christ Church. It was a wet day, but
being in the month of July the wearing of a shirt only with a cloak to
keep off the rain could not have been the cause of very great physical
discomfort apart from the cutting of his feet by stones on the road.
At the Cathedral they took Henry to the tomb of the man whose death he
had caused, and there he knelt and shed bitter tears, groaning and
lamenting. After again regretting his rash words in an address read by
Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, and promising to restore the rights
and property of the Church, the King, kneeling at the tomb, wearing a
hair-shirt with a woollen one above it, placed his head and shoulders
in one of the openings in the tomb and there received five strokes
with a monastic rod from each of the bishops and abbots present, and
afterwards the eighty monks each administered three strokes. Henry was
now quite absolved, but he remained for the whole night with his bare
feet still muddy and in the same penitential garb.

[Illustration: THE SCENE OF THE MARTYRDOM IN THE NORTH-WEST TRANSEPT
OF THE CATHEDRAL.
Since the tragic death of Becket in 1170 practically everything in this
portion of the Cathedral has been re-constructed.]