Direction via indirection

Sometimes plausible deniability isn't plausible.

Me, via Nightcafe AI.

Thomas à Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury when he got cross-threaded with King Henry the Second in 1170 AD, regarding what Becket considered over-reach by the English king; said king being used to previous holders of the office who meekly submitted to his authority.

The prime sticking point in the Becket v. Hank brouhaha was regarding secular court authority over the clergy — English custom up until that time was that clergy would be tried under the joint supervision of a bishop and a secular magistrate. Henry thought the various local courts didn’t really need the interference help of a bishop and that secular magistrates¹ were perfectly in the right to solely judge² the various priests and clergy.

As one might expect, Becket firmly disagreed.

As Archbishop, Thomas à Becket had a considerable ability to throw up roadblocks when the king got kittenish, up to excommunicating several of the king’s loyal aides and servants after the king used them in a dominance play against the Archbishop.

When you get down to brass tacks, neither Henry the Two, nor Archbishop Thomas à Becket was actually in the right — both of them were acting like idiots, and throwing their weight around, but for the king this was a new sensation: someone was defying him, and he had no real power to touch him.

So. During Christmas of 1170, King Hank the Two announced at his castle, in open court, something along the lines of: "Will none of these lazy insignificant persons, whom I maintain, deliver me from this turbulent priest?”³

As anyone with a licence to adult might expect, four of his household knights murmured something along the lines of, “Aight”, went to the church where Archbishop Becket was getting ready for services, and cut him to doll rags⁴.

This episode, while possibly apocryphal, is used as a lesson on the limits of plausible deniability, and the dangers of “direction via indirection”, because Henry the Second got a quick and vicious lesson: As soon as the Pope found out that Henry had his representative whacked, the Pope changed gears from trying to be a neutral arbitrator on the matter to immediately — and firmly — breaking his foot off in Henry’s butt. Not only was King Henry the Second forced to perform public penance⁵ — and by “public” I mean in front of God, the court, and the hoi polloi — but he immediately lost most — if not all — of the fights he was having with Becket.

After the murder, privilegium clericale⁶ was firmly written into English law, outright removing any secular judicial authority, and directing clergy be tried in ecclesiastical courts under canon law.

It also set the precedent in English common law⁷ that firmly hinting at murder, hoping that someone else would do the deed for you, does not — in fact — keep your hands clean; does not absolve you of some measure of culpability, liability, and/or responsibility — and can be actionable.

Something that some folks might ought to bear in mind these turbulent days.

Nothing but love,

Ian

1. With him being firmly in control of the magistrates, of course.

2. I’d say something about “kangaroo courts” here, but Australia was still to be discovered at the time.

3. Hank probably said something closer to: “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and promoted in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born clerk!” but since he only spoke Latin and French, the later folks who translated his words into English did their best.

4. Quite honestly, had Hank picked up a mace and clonked the Archbishop in the head personally, instead of whinging about the whole thing to his idiot knights, he probably would have gotten better PR. Anyhoo.

5. He was made to dress in sackcloth, and walk barefoot three miles through the public streets of Canterbury, knelt and confessed his part in the murder while being whipped by the monks of the priory, before spending the night in “prayer and vigil”.

6. “Benefit of clergy”.

7. The basis for American jurisprudence at the Federal level, and at most State levels. If you were taught “what to think” instead of “how to think”, this part Is Significant..