All about
were still grouped the tombs of Princes; Edward, the Black Prince, the
hero of Crecy, Henry IV., the usurper, Cardinal Chatillon; but of the
shrine itself, of the body it held up to love and honour and worship
there was nothing, no word even, no sign at all to tell that ever such
a thing had been, only an emptiness and a space and a silence that
could be felt.
Later I was led down into that north-west transept, once known as the
Martyrdom, where St Thomas laid down his life; and left alone there, I
remember I tried in all that dumbness and silence to recollect myself,
to pray, at least to recall, something of that great sacrifice which
had so moved Christendom that for centuries men flocked here to
worship--where now no man kneels any more for ever.
I remember very well how it came to me in that tingling and icy silence
that St Thomas died for the liberty of the Church, that here in England
she might not become the king's chattel or anyway at all the creature
of the civil power. I was too young to smile when I remembered that in
the very place where St Thomas laid down his life in that cause, there
sits to-day in his usurped place one who eagerly acknowledges the king
as the "Supreme Governor of the Church within these realms.
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