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Thomas a Becket: God rest his soul.
King Henry II: He will, He will. He'll be much more use to God than he ever was to me.
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Thomas a Becket: Honor is a private matter within; it's an idea, and every man has his own version of it.
King Henry II: How gracefully you tell your king to mind his own business.
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Empress Matilda: Oh, if I were a man!
King Henry II: Thank God, madam, He gave you breasts! An asset from which I derived not the slightest benefit.
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King Henry II: Am I the strongest or am I not?
Thomas a Becket: You are today, but one must never drive one's enemy to despair; it makes him strong. Gentleness is better politics, it saps virility. A good occupational force must never crush. It must corrupt.
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King Henry II: Don't be nervous, Bishop. I'm not asking for absolution. I've something far worse than a sin on my conscience: a mistake.
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King Henry II: Let us drink, gentlemen. Let us drink, till we roll under the table in vomit and oblivion.
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King Henry II: Have you any idea how much trouble I took to make you noble?
Thomas a Becket: I think so; I recall, you pointed a finger and said, "Thomas Becket, you are noble." The Queen and your mother became very agitated.
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Thomas a Becket: England is a ship. The king is captain of the ship.
King Henry II: That's neat. I like that.
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King Henry II: Your body, madam, was a desert that duty forced me to wander in alone. But you have never been a wife to me!
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King Henry II: He's read books, you know, it's amazing. He's drunk and wenched his way through London but he's thinking all the time.
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King Henry II: So what in most people is morality, in you it's just an exercise in... what's the word?
Thomas a Becket: Aesthetics.
King Henry II: Yes, that's the word. Always "aesthetics."
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King Henry II: There. That's the Great Seal of England. Don't lose it; without the seal, there's no more England, and we'll all have to pack up and go back to Normandy.
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King Henry II: I'm suddenly very intelligent. It probably comes from making love to that French girl last night.
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King Henry II: Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?
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King Henry II: [laughing in both amusement and anger] It's funny! It's too funny! Becket is the only intelligent man in my kingdom, and he's against me!
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Baron: Becket! You are a liar. You are a traitor!
[draws his sword on Becket]
Thomas a Becket: Sheathe your sword, Morville, before you impale your soul upon it!
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King Henry II: Are you mad? You're Chancellor of England; you're mine!
Thomas a Becket: I am also the Archbishop, and you have introduced me to deeper obligations.
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Thomas a Becket: Nobility lies in the man, my prince, not in the towel.
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Thomas a Becket: Tonight you can do me the honor of christening my forks.
King Henry II: Forks?
Thomas a Becket: Yes, from Florence. New little invention. It's for pronging meat and carrying it to the mouth. It saves you dirtying your fingers.
King Henry II: But then you dirty the fork.
Thomas a Becket: Yes, but it's washable.
King Henry II: So are your fingers. I don't see the point.
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King Henry II: Here's my royal foot up your royal buttocks!
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Empress Matilda: You have an obsession about him that is unhealthy and unnatural!
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King Henry II: [isolating one of his brawling sons from the rest] Which one are you?
Prince Henry: Henry the Third.
King Henry II: NOT YET, SIR!
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Thomas a Becket: There, Lord - I'm ready: adorned for Your festivities.
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Thomas a Becket: Lord Gilbert, Baron of England by the grace of his majesty, King Henry II, seized upon the person of a priest of the Holy Church and unlawfully did hold him in custody. Furthermore, in the presence of Lord Gilbert, and by his command, his men seized upon this priest when he tried to escape and put him to death. This is the sin of murder and sacrilege. In that Lord Gilbert has rendered no act of contrition or repentance, and is at the moment, at liberty in the land, we do, here and now, separate him from the precious body and blood of Christ, and from the society of all Christians. We exclude him from our Holy Mother Church and all her sacraments, in heaven, or on Earth. We declare him excommunicate and anathema. We cast him into the outer darkness. We judge him damned with the devil and his fallen angels and all the reprobate, to eternal fire and everlasting pain!
[slams candle to the ground]
Monks: [chanting] So be it.
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Brother John: I don't mind if I am just a grain of sand in a machine. Because I know by putting more and more grains of sand in a machine, one day it'll come grinding to a stop.
Thomas a Becket: And on that day - what then?
Brother John: Well, we'll have a fine, new, well-oiled machine in the place of the old one. And this time we'll put the Normans into it instead. That's what justice means, doesn't it?
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King Henry II: Do you ever think?
Baron: Never, sire! A gentleman has better things to do!
[Henry and the four barons giggle drunkenly]
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Thomas a Becket: We must manage the church. One can always come to a sensible little arrangement with God.
King Henry II: Becket, you are a monster.
Thomas a Becket: You flatter me, My Lord.
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Thomas a Becket: Yes, we have soldiers disguised in the crowd to encourage enthusiasm.
King Henry II: Why must you destroy all my illusions?
Thomas a Becket: Because you should have none, My Prince.
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King Louis VII of France: The King of England and his Ambassadors can drown themselves in what they are impertinent enough to call their English channel.
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Thomas a Becket: We are both aware of the delicacy of my position. Let us trust that God will find a solution for it.
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Brother John: You betrayed your Saxon race, now you betray God.
Thomas a Becket: Perhaps you will succeed in teaching me humility, it's a virtue I've never really mastered.
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King Henry II: The die is cast, Thomas, make the most of it. And if I know you, I'm sure you will.
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King Louis VII of France: My dear man, crowned heads are free to play a little game of courtesy, but nations owe one another none.
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Thomas a Becket: Oh Lord, how heavy thy honor is to bear.
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Thomas a Becket: Don't do this!
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Thomas a Becket: [Looking on in reverence at the Holy Crucifix] I wonder Lord, are you laughing at me.
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Archbishop of Canterbury: Those violent days are over. The priest is back in his sanctuary. It is peacetime now.
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Thomas a Becket: [bleeding from a cut on his hand from an attacking peasant] My horse bit me.
King Henry II: Hahaha! It's too funny! My lord here makes us all look silly at the jousts with his fancy horsemanship, he goes to his saddlebags, and gets bitten like a groom. You look quite shaken, little Saxon. Funny, I can't bear the thought of you in pain. All this, just to get me a drink?
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Thomas a Becket: [returning the Lord Chancellor's ring] Forgive me.
King Henry II: You give the lions of England back to me like a little boy who doesn't want to play anymore. I would have gone to war with all England's might behind me, and even against England's interests, to defend you, Thomas. I would have given away my life laughingly for you. Only I loved you and you didn't love me. That's the difference.
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King Henry II: [plotting Becket's arrest] Oh, Thomas!
Bishop Folliot: You love him, don't you? You still love him! That imposter - that Saxon guttersnipe, that mitred hog!
King Henry II: Hold your tongue, priest! All I confided to you was my hate, not my love. For England's sake you'll help me get rid of him. But don't ever insult him to my face!
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[first title card]
Title card: In the year 1066, William the Conqueror crossed from France with his Norman army and conquered the Saxons of Britain at the Battle of Hastings. Henry II, his great grandson, continued to rule over the oppressed Saxon peasants, backed by the swords of his Barons and by the power of his imported Norman clergy.
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[first lines]
King Henry II: Well, Thomas Becket. Are you satisfied? Here I am, stripped, kneeling at your tomb, while those treacherous Saxon monks of yours are getting ready to thrash me. Me - with my delicate skin. I bet you'd never have done the same for me. But - I suppose I have to do this penance and make my peace with you. Hmm. What a strange end to our story. How cold it was when we last met - on the shores of France. Funny, it's nearly always been cold - except at the beginning, when we were friends. We did have a few - fine summer evenings with the girls. Did you love Gwendolen, Archbishop? Did you hate me the night I took her from you, shouting "I am the king"? Perhaps that's what you could never forgive me for. Look at them lurking there, gloating. Oh, Thomas, I'm ashamed of this whole silly masquerade. All right, so I've come here to make my peace with their Saxon hero because I need them now, those Saxon peasants of yours. Now I will call them my sons, as you wanted me to. You taught me that, too. You taught me everything. Those were the happy times. You remember, at the peep of dawn, when as usual we'd been drinking and wenching in the town. You were even better at that than I was.
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[last lines]
King Henry II: Is the honor of God washed clean enough? Are you satisfied now, Thomas?
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King Henry II: I can do nothing. I'm as useless as a woman.
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Thomas a Becket: [chanting] Deus, in adjutorium meum intende.
["O God, come to my assistance."]
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Thomas a Becket: It is here now, the supreme folly, this is its hour.
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King Henry II: [after a peasant is too intimidated to reply to his question] Odd the number of dumb people I meet when I set foot out of my palace, I rule over a kingdom of mutes.
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King Henry II: [Henry is doing public penance for Becket's death] The honour of God, gentlemen, is a very good thing, and all things considered one gains by having it on one's side. Thomas Becket, our friend, always used to say so...
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King Henry II: [Thomas comes to Henry's bedchamber to find the King nursing a hangover] French wine. I had a little too much last night.
Thomas a Becket: It's their major contribution to civilization.
King Henry II: Here's another.
[he pulls back the blankets to reveal a naked young woman]
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Thomas a Becket: One does not carry arms into God's house. What do you want?
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Brother Philip: Your Grace, there are armed men at the doors. I bolted the doors, but...
Thomas a Becket: It's time for Vespers. Does one bolt the doors during Vespers? I've never heard of it.
Brother Philip: But, your Grace...
Thomas a Becket: Open them. Everything must be as it should be for divine service.
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Cardinal 1: [in papal waiting hall] That man Becket smacks of too much sincerity. A practice that is most disconcerting.
Cardinal 2: Fiddlesticks. Sincerity is a form of strategy just like any other. In a pinch I have been known to use it myself.
Cardinal 3: The trouble is, if your opponent starts being sincere at the same time you do, then the game becomes horribly confusing.
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Louis' Servant: Your Majesty, the English ambassadors extraordinary insist that I convey their compliments.
King Louis VII of France: They've already done that. I'll see them when I'm ready. That's my job.
Louis' Servant: But they wish respectfully, Sire, to call your attention to the fact that they have been waiting for three days!
King Louis VII of France: Let them wait. That's *their* job.
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the Pope: Zabelli, if you start outmaneuvering yourself to no purpose, we'll be here all night.
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Thomas a Becket: My Lord Jesus, I find it difficult to talk to you. What can I say, I who have turned away from you so often with indifference? I have been a stranger to prayer, undeserving of your friendship and your love. I've been without honor and feel unworthy. I am a weak and shallow creature, clever only in the second-rate and worldly arts, seeking my comfort and pleasure. I gave my love, such as it was, elsewhere, putting service to my earthly king before my duty to you. But now, they have made me the shepherd of your flock and guardian of your church. Please, Lord, teach me now how to serve you with all my heart, to know at last what it really is to love, to adore, so that I worthily administer your kingdom here upon earth and find my true honor in observing your divine will. Please, Lord, make me worthy.
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King Louis VII of France: Why does he hate you so?
Thomas a Becket: He's never forgiven me for preferring God to him.
Becket Quotes
Extended Reading
