dress, replied that he had not much of the appearance of an
archbishop; and that if the King were serious, he must beg permission
to decline the preferment, because it would be impossible for him to
perform the duties of the situation and at the same time retain the
favor of his benefactor. But Henry was inflexible; the legate Henry of
Pisa added his entreaties; and Becket, though he already saw the storm
gathering in which he afterward perished, was induced, against his own
judgment, to acquiesce.

He sailed to England (May 30); the prelates and a deputation of the
monks of Canterbury assembled in the king's chapel at Westminster;
every vote was given in his favor; the applause of the nobility
testified their satisfaction; and Prince Henry in the name of his
father gave the royal assent. Becket was ordained priest by the Bishop
of Rochester, and the next day, having been declared free from all
secular obligations, he was consecrated by Henry of Winchester. It was
a most pompous ceremony, for all the nobility of England, to gratify
the King, attended in honor of his favorite. That the known intentions
of Henry must have influenced the electors there can be little doubt;
but it appears that throughout the whole business every necessary form
was fully observed. Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford, a prelate of
rigid morals and much canonical learning, alone observed jeeringly
that the King had at last wrought a miracle; for he had changed a
soldier into a priest, a layman into an archbishop. The sarcasm was
noticed at the time as a sally of disappointed ambition.

That Becket had still to learn the self-denying virtues of the
clerical character is plain from his own confession; that his conduct
had always defied the reproach of immorality was confidently asserted
by his friends, and is equivalently acknowledged by the silence of his