I have been more for the King than the Church in this
matter--yea, even for the sake of the Church: for, truly, as the case
stood, you had safelier have slain an archbishop than a she-goat: but
our recoverer and upholder of customs hath in this crowning of young
Henry by York and London so violated the immemorial usage of the
Church, that, like the gravedigger's child I have heard of, trying to
ring the bell, he hath half-hanged himself in the rope of the Church,
or rather pulled all the Church with the Holy Father astride of it
down upon his own head.
HERBERT.
Were you there?
WALTER MAP.
In the church rope?--no. I was at the crowning, for I have pleasure in
the pleasure of crowds, and to read the faces of men at a great show.
HERBERT.
And how did Roger of York comport himself?
WALTER MAP.
As magnificently and archiepiscopally as our Thomas would have done:
only there was a dare-devil in his eye--I should say a dare-Becket. He
thought less of two kings than of one Roger the king of the occasion.
Foliot is the holier man, perhaps the better. Once or twice there ran
a twitch across his face as who should say what's to follow? but
Salisbury was a calf cowed by Mother Church, and every now and then
glancing about him like a thief at night when he hears a door open in
the house and thinks 'the master.
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