Henry II was luckier than his successors when it came to getting away with murder

I look through the window of my house in Canterbury at the medieval church of St Dunstan’s, 40 yards away on the other side of the road. This makes me think about the murder of the Archbishop, Thomas Becket, by four knights of Henry II in Canterbury on 29 December 1170 – the 850th anniversary of which is this year. The link between the death of Becket – certainly the most famous political murder in English history – and St Dunstan’s is simple: it was from this church on the outskirts of medieval Canterbury that three-and-a-half years later, on 12 July 1174, a barefoot Henry, the formidable founder of the Plantaganet dynasty known for his fierce personal pride, dressed in a hairshirt worn beneath a smock, began his penitential walk towards Canterbury Cathedral, half a mile away inside the city walls. It was through the artful manipulation of public opinion by his melodramatic acts of penitence and repeated declarations of over-whelming grief, that Henry was able to achieve exoneration Soon after, a dumb man called William, who spent the night beside Becket’s tomb, was not cured on the spot but recovered the power of speech on his return to London. The murder of Becket and Henry II’s role in it was one of the great set pieces of English history, the melodramatic culmination of a quarrel between Becket and the king, and between church and state At first, he made a determined effort to blame Becket for having brought his death on himself through his provocative actions.