Editor's Preface Life of Thomas à Becket Footnotes...

Perhaps the chapter of English history fullest of romantic interest, is that containing the life of Thomas à Becket. In fact, the great struggle between Becket and Henry II.,—between individual genius and sovereign power, between a subject and his king, between religion and the sword, between the Church and the State, is scarcely equaled in the annals of the world. And nowhere do we find a parallel to the strange story of Becket's life, beginning in Oriental legend, ending in heroic tragedy. By

Popular poetry, after the sanctification of Becket, delighted in throwing the rich colors of marvel over his birth and parentage. It invented, or rather interwove with the pedigree of the martyr, one of those romantic traditions which grew out of the wild adventures of the crusades, and which occur in various forms in the ballads of all nations. That so great a saint should be the son of a gallant champion of the cross, and of a Saracen princess, was a fiction too attractive not to win general a