War was now publicly declared between the prerogative of the crown and the pretensions of the church. The same battle, which was fought between Henry IV. of Germany and Gregory VII., was to be fought over again on English ground by the King and the archbishop. Becket resigned the chancellorship and returned the seals of his office. He withdrew from the pleasures of the court, the chase, the banquet, the tournament, the war, and the board of council; and became all at once an austere and mortified monk. He wore a monk's frock, a haircloth shirt, and flogged himself with an iron scourge. All his fine establishments were broken up; he fasted on bread and water, lay on the hard floor, and every night with his own hands he washed the feet of thirteen beggars. This assumed unapproachable sanctity was his strength for battle. Secular hands may not touch the holy man of God—the Lord's anointed high priest. Becket knew his man; he had studied every fold of his character.
Henry was astonished, uneasy, disappointed. He had raised his favorite minister to the still higher position of Archbishop of Canterbury, that his services might be more effectual against the Romanizing party in England. It was no question, be it observed, as to the proper legal privileges of the church of England; Henry had shown no disposition to encroach upon them. But the church had shown, through the instructions of the pope, the most resolute purpose to encroach on the liberties of the crown and the whole people of England. And the King knew no man in all his dominions so able to contend in talent and acuteness with the emissaries of Rome as his gay chancellor and boon-companion.
Now, he thought, we have one at the head of the Church, as well as the State, who will do good battle for the liberties of the crown and the people of his native land. But it was not for these worthy objects that Becket had accepted the ring and crosier. From the moment that he touched his episcopal crucifix, he was the sworn vassal to death of the Roman See, and the avowed enemy of every man and principle that opposed the interests of the chair of St. Peter. And Henry soon found that his able and pliant chancellor, "from whom he had expected support and victory, had turned against him with the most ruthless animosity, and pushed the pretensions of Rome to a pitch they had never reached before."