196 THE DOVER ROAD 



Arthur not died, how very differently things might 

 have been fashioned ! 



Archbishop Warham could, as it happened, afford 

 to look upon the ways of Providence with approval, 

 for these events had made him Primate, and he 

 celebrated his accession to the Primacy with a banquet 

 whose details seem to belong to the Arabian Nights 

 rather than to sober history. Courses innumerable 

 (and nasty, too, according to modern ideas) graced 

 the festive board on this occasion, and the guests 

 who partook of them made pigs of themselves over 

 what the contemporary historian of these things calls 

 the " subtylties " that bulked so largely at the feast. 

 To the Duke of Buckingham, the high steward, fell 

 the honour, or the duty, of serving the Archbishop 

 with his own hands ; and, partly in recognition of 

 his services, and partly, no doubt, in consideration 

 of his being so great a gourmand, he was accorded the 

 privilege of staying three days at the new Archbishop's 

 nearest manor, in order that he might be bled. That 

 seems to have been the necessary performance after 

 partaking of too many " subtylties." 



But all this while I have been keeping His Most 

 Christian Majesty, Henry the Eighth, waiting ; and, 

 having done so, it is well for me I am not his con- 

 temporary, for men did things so derogatory to his 

 dignity only at the peril of losing their heads. 



Well, eighteen years later, the King, who had knelt 

 before Becket's bones, was engaged in uprooting the 

 ancient faith, and his fury was naturally felt more 

 acutely here, on this the most sacred spot of English 

 soil. Becket was proclaimed a traitor, and in April, 

 1538, the martyr, dead three hundred and sixty-eight 

 years, was summoned to appear in Court to show 

 reason why his shrine should not be destroyed and 

 his name blotted out from the records of the English 

 Church. Thirty days were allowed " Thomas Becket " 

 (thus the Royal Proclamation styled him, without 

 title or handle of any sort to his name) to appear. 



