"Becket" is the best and most ambitious of them, though not, as "Queen Mary" is, a play designed for the stage.

Becket was no sooner ordained priest and consecrated as archbishop than he changed his habits.

A yet more terrible scorn of the crime and vice which disgraced the Church inspired the Apocalypse and the Confession of Bishop Goliath, the work of Walter Map, Archdeacon of Oxford, king's chaplain ever since the days when Becket was chancellor, justiciar, ambassador, poet, scholar, theologian, satirist.

Becket may have been a dissembler, or a great change may have been wrought in his character.

If the Pope should take his side, and the King of France, and other temporal powers, Becket would be no unequal match for the King.

Becket was the champion of the clergy, even as Cromwell was the championat least at firstof the Parliament.

Becket the minister of a king, and only deacon, became Archbishop of Canterbury.

But although Becket was an exile, a fugitive, and a wanderer, he was still Archbishop of Canterbury.