This engraving is from a drawing by Mr. Harding, who states that he made it from a very rare engraving. The drawing belongs to Mr. J. J. A. F., who favoured the editor by lending it for the present purpose. St. Thomas of Canterbury, bishop and martyr, attained the primacy during the reign of Henry II. He advanced the interests of the church against the interests of the kingdom, till a parliament declared his possessions forfeited, and Becket having left the kingdom, Henry seized the revenues of the see. It appears from an old tract that this churchman was a swordsman. He accompanied Henry in one of his campaigns with a retinue of seven hundred knights and gentlemen, kept twelve hundred horse VOL. 11.-82 in his own pay, and bore his dignity with the carriage of the proudest baron. "His bridle was of silver, his saddle of velvet, his stirrups, spurs, and bosses, double gilt. His expenses far surpassing the expenses of an earl. He' fed with the fattest, was clad with the softest, and kept company with the pleasantest. And the king made him his chancellor, in which office he passed the pomp and pride of Thomas [Wolsey] Cardinal, as far as the one's shrine passeth the other's tomb in glory and riches. And, after that, he was a man of war, and captain of five or six thousand men in full harness, as bright as St. George, and his spear in his hand; and encountered whosoever came against him, and overthrew the jollyest rutter that was in all the host of France. And out of the field, hot from blood-shedding, was he made bishop of Canterbury, and did put off his helm, and put on his mitre; put off his harness, and on with his robes; and laid down his spear, and took his cross, ere his hands were cold; and so came, with a lusty courage of a man of war, to fight another while against his prince for the pope; when his prince's cause were with the law of God and the pope's clean contrary." was After his disgrace by the king he wore a hair shirt, ate meats of the driest, excommunicated his brother bishops, and favoured with a revelation of his martyrdom," at Pontigni. Alban Butler says, "whilst he lay prostrate before the altar in prayers and tears, he heard a voice, saying distinctly, Thomas, Thomas, my church shall be glorified in thy blood.' The saint asked, 'Who art thou, Lord?' and the same voice answered, "I am Jesus Christ, the son of the living God, thy brother.'" He then returned to England, excited rebellious commotions, and on Christmas-day, 1170, preached his last sermon to his flock, on the text, " And peace to men of good-will on earth." These are the words wherein Alban Butler expresses the "text," which, it may be as well to observe, is a garbled passage from the New Testament, and was altered perhaps to suit the saint's views and application. Room cannot be afforded in this place for particulars of his preceding conduct, or an exact description of his death, which is well-known to have been accomplished by "four knights," who, from attachment to the king, according to the brutal manners of those days, revenged his quarrel by killing St. Thomas, while at prayers in Canterbury cathedral. The following interesting paper relates to one of the knights who slew Becket SIR WILLIAM DE TRACY. To the Editor of the Every-Day Book. June, 1826. Sir, I beg leave to transmit to you an account of the burial place of sir William de Tracy, one of the murderers of Thomas à Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of Henry the Second. I regret, at the same time, that distance from the spot precludes the possibility of my taking a drawing of the tomb, but I have by me its measurement, and the inscription, which I copied with as great care as possible when there. The parish church of Morthoe, probably built by Tracy himself, is situated on the bold and rocky coast of the north of Devon. It stands on an eminence, near the sea-shore, is sheltered by hills on the north and south, but open towards the west, on which side is the fine bay of Woolacombe. The interior of the church presents the humblest appearance; its length is near 80 feet, its breadth 18, excepting the middle, which, with an aisle, measures 30. On the west side is a recess, 15 feet by 14, in the centre of which is the vault, containing the remains of de Tracy. The rustic inhabitants of the parish can give no other account of the tomb than the traditionary one, that it contains the remains of a giant, to whom, in the olden time, all that part of the country belonged. The vault itself is 2 feet 4 in. high; 7 feet 6 in. long at the base; three feet and a half broad at one end of ditto, and two feet and a half, at the other. The large black slab covering the top of the vault is half a foot in thickness. Engraved on this slab is the figure of a person in robes, holding a chalice in one hand; and round the border is an inscription, which is now almost illegible. I had a drawing of the whole, which I have lost, but with the account I wrote at the time of visiting the place, I have preserved the inscription, as far as I was able to make it out.* On the east side of the vault are three armorial bearings, and the carved figures of two nuns; on the north is the crucifixion; on the west side, there is nothing but Gothic carving; and the south end is plain. An old and respectable farmer, residing at Morthoe, informed me that about fifty or sixty years ago a gentleman from London" came down to take an account of the tomb, and carried away with him the skull and one of the thigh bones of de Tracy. He opened and examined the vault with the connivance of a negligent Unfortunately it was not discovered that some not be represented by the usual Saxon types, till it of the letters, in the inscription referred to, could was too late to remedy the accident by having them engraven on wood; and hence the inscription is, of necessity, omitted.-Editor. and eccentric minister, then resident in the parish, who has left behind him a fame by no means to be envied. " The gentleman alluded to by the worthy yeoman was no doubt the celebrated antiquary Gough, who, in his "Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain," has given a long account of the life and burialplace of Tracy. In his introduction to that laborious and very valuable work, page ciii. he says:-"The instances of figures cut in the slab, and not inlaid with metal, nor always blacked, are not uncommon.' Among the instances which he cites to illustrate this remark, he mentions the slab on the vault of "William de Tracy, Rector of Morthoe, Devon, 1322."-Here we find the gigantic knight dwindled to a parson; and the man whose name should be for ever remembered with gratitude by his countrymen, the hero who happily achieved a far more arduous enterprise, a work of greater glory than did the renowned but fabled saint, over the devour ing dragon-forgotten beneath the robe of an obscure village rector! The parish of Morthoe is, however, not a rectory, but what is called a "perpetual curacy," and the living is at present not worth much more than seventy pounds per annum. Since I have, by the merest accident, got hold of Gough, I will extract what he records of the forgotten Tracy, as it may not be unentertaining to the lover of history to peruse a detail of the ultimate fate of one of the glorious four, who delivered their country from perhaps the greatest pest that was ever sent to scourge it. "William de Tracy, one of the murderers of Becket, has been generally supposed, on the authority of Mr. Risdon, (p. 116.) to have built an aisle in the church of Morthoe, Devon; and to have therein an altar-tomb about 2 feet high, with his figure engraven on a grey slab of Purbeck marble, 7 feet by 3, and 7 inches thick, and this inscription, [in Saxon capitals,] "SYRE [Guillau] ME DE TRACY [gist icy, Diu de son al] ME "On the upper end of this tomb is carved in relief the crucifixion, with the virgin and St. John, and on the north side some Gothic arches, and these three coats; I. Az. 3 lions passant guardant, Arg. 2. Arg. 3. two bars, G. Az. a saltire, Or.- -The first of these is the coat of William Camville, formerly patron of this church: the second, that of the Martins, formerly lords of Barnstaple, who had lands in this neighbourhood: the third, that of the Saint Albins, who had also estates in the adjoining parish of Georgeham. "The figure on the slab is plainly that of a priest in his sacerdotal habit, holding a chalice between his hands, as if in the act of consecration.--Bishop Stapledon's register, though it does not contain the year of his institution, fixes the date of his death in the following terms, Anno, 1322, 16 Decr. Thomas Robertus præsentat. ad eccles. de Morthoe vacantem per mortem Wilhelmi de Traci, die dominic. primo post nativ. Virginis per mortem Will. de Campvill.' "The era of the priest is therefore 140 years later than that of the knight. It does not appear by the episcopal registers that the Tracies were ever patrons of Morthoe, except in the following in stances: "Anno, 1257, Cal. Junii, John Allworthy, presented by Henry de Traci, guardian of the lands and heirs of Ralph de Brag. Anno, 1275. Thomas Capellanus was presented to this rectory by Philip de Weston. In 1330, Feb. 5, Henry de la Mace was presented to this rectory by William de Camville. 1381, Richard Hopkins was presented by the dean and chapter of Exeter, who are still patrons. In "It is probable that the stone with the inscription to William de Tracy did not originally belong to the altar-tomb on which it now lies; but by the arms seems rather to have been erected for the patron William de Camville, it being unusual in those days to raise so handsome a monument for a priest, especially as the altartomb and slab are of very different materials, and the benefice itself is of very inconsiderable value. It is also probable the monument of Traci lay on the ground, and that when this monument was broken open, according to Risdon, in the last century, this purbeck slab was placed upon the altar-tomb though it did not at first belong to it. "The Devonshire antiquaries assert that sir William de Tracy retired to this place after he had murdered Becket. But this tradition seems to rest on no better au thority than the misrepresentation of the inscription here given, and because the family of Traci possessed the fourth part of a fee in Woolacombe within this parish, which is still called after their name. But the Tracies had many possessions in this country, as Bovey Traci, Nymett Traci, Bedford Traci, &c. William de Traci held the honor of Barnstaple, in the beginning of Henry the Second's reign. King John granted the Barony of Barnstaple to Henry de Traci, in the 15th of his reign; and the family seem to have been possessed of it in the reign of Henry III. I am indebted to the friendship of the present Dean of Exeter for the above observations, which ascertain the monument in question. "I shall digress no farther on this subject than to observe of sir William de Traci, that four years after the murder of Becket he had the title of Steward, i. e. Justice of Normandy, which he held but two years. He was in arms against King John in the last year of his reign, and his estate was confiscated; but on his return to his allegiance, 2 Henry III. it was restored He was living, 7 Henry III. (Dugd. Bar. i. 622.) consequently died about or after 1223, having survived Becket upwards of 57 years."* Another slight mention is made of Tracy in p. 26. In describing Becket's shrine he quotes Stowe to this effect,"The shrine of Thomas à Becket (says Stowe) was builded about a man's height, all of stone, then upward of timber plain, within which was a chest of iron, containing the bones of Thomas Beckett, skull and all, with the wound of his death, and the piece cut out of his scull laid in the same wound." Gough remarks:-"He should have added the point of Sir William Traci, the fourth assassin's sword, which broke off against the pavement, after cutting off his scull, so that the brains came out. 'In thulke stede the verthe smot, yt the other adde er ydo, This long extract, Mr. Editor, has, I confess, made me rather casuistical on the subject of Tracy's tomb. I shall, however, search some of the old chroniclers and see if they throw any light upon the biography of our knight. Hume mentions Tracy, and his three companions, but is perfectly silent with respect to the cutting off the top of the churchman's skull. His words are, "they followed him thither, attacked him before the altar, and having cloven his head with many blows, retired without meeting any opposition." Should you, in the mean time, insert this, you will shortly hear again from (Robert of Glouces. p. 476.) THE TOMB At MORTHOE. R. A. R.'s letter, submitted to me through the kindness of Mr. Hone, certainly conveys much interesting miscellaneous information, although it proves nothing, and leaves the question, of who is actually the tenant of this tomb, pretty much where he finds it. In my humble opinion, the circumstance of technical heraldic bearings, and those moreover quartered, being found upon it, completely negatives the idea of its being the tomb of Becket's assassin. It is well known that the first English subject who ever bore arms quarterly is Hastings, earl of Pembroke, who died in the reign R. A. R. of Edward III. and is buried in Westminster abbey. Your obedient servant, Distrusting his own judgment on the subject of the preceding letter, the editor laid it before a gentleman whose erudition he could rely on for the accuracy of any opinion he might be pleased to express, and who obligingly writes as follows: Family arms seem not to have been continuedly adopted, till towards the time of Edward I. W. P. Gough's Sepul. Mon. vol. i. p. 39, 40. The death of Becket appears to have been sincerely deplored by Henry II., inasmuch as the pope and his adherents visited the sin of the four knights upon the king, and upbraided him with his subjects by ecclesiastical fulminations. He endeavoured to make peace with the church by submitting to a public whipping. A late biographer records his meanness in the following sentences: In 1174 king Henry went on a pilgrimage to the tomb of the late archbishop Becket, with the fame of whose miracles the whole realm was now filled, and whom the pope, by a bull dated in March the year before, had declared a saint and a martyr, appointing an anniversary festival to be kept on the day of his death, in order (says the bull) that, being continually applied to by the prayers of the faithful, he should intercede with God for the clergy and people of England. Henry, therefore, desiring to obtain for himself this intercession, or to make others believe that the wrath of an enemy, to whom it was supposed that such power was given, might be thus averted from him, thought it necessary to visit the shrine of this new-created saint; and, as soon as he came within sight of the tower of Canterbury cathedral, (July 10,) at the distance of three miles, descended from his horse, and walked thither barefoot, over a road that was full of rough and sharp stones, which so wounded his feet that in many places they were stained with his blood. When he got to the tomb, which was then in the crypt (or under-croft) of the church, he threw himself prostrate before it, and remained, for some time, in fervent prayer; during which, by his orders, the bishop of London, in his name, declared to the people, that "he had neither commanded, nor advised, nor by any artifice contrived the death of Becket, for the truth of which, he appealed, in the most solemn manner, to the testimony of God; but, as the murderers of that prelate had taken occasion from his words, too inconsiderately spoken, to commit this offence, he voluntarily thus submitted himself to the discipline of the church." After this he was scourged, at his own request and command, by all the monks of the convent, assembled for that purpose, from every one of whom, and from several bishops and abbots there present, he received three or four stripes. This sharp penance being done, he returned to his prayers before the tomb, which he continued all that day, and all the next night, not even suffering a carpet to be spread beneath him, but kneeling on the hard pavement. Early in the morning he went round all the altars of the church, and paid his devotions to the bodies of the saints there interred; which having performed, he came back to Becket's tomb, where he staid till the hour when mass was said in the church, at which he assisted. During all this time he had taken no kind of food; and, except when he gave his naked body to be whipped, was clad in sackcloth. Before his departure, (that he might fully complete the expiation of his sin, according to the notions of the church of Rome,) he assigned a revenue of forty pounds a year, to keep lights always burning in honour of Becket about his tomb. The next evening he reached London, where he found it necessary to be blooded, and rest some days.* |