Excerpt from Thomas Becket: Archbishop of Canterbury This biography is the result of an endeavour to sift and restate what has long been known about the great Englishman whose life has been written, perhaps, more frequently than that of any other hero Of the Middle Age. Twenty-one years ago I published on the same subject a volume (5. Thomas of Canterbury, D. Nutt, second edition, 1899) of translated extracts from the contemporary biographers and other chroniclers. I have not now used the translations I then made, but have either translated the Latin anew or used, with revision, the translations made more than sixty years ago by Mr. R. H. Froude and Dr. J. A. Giles, to whom, (the latter in Spite of some unforgotten blunders), in the nineteenth century we owe the revival of interest in the great chancellor and archbishop. Perhaps the Early Victorian style of some of these versions may even be preferred to the Wardour Street English of a modern translator. The importance of the original biographies themselves is so great, second indeed only to that of their subject, that I have given to them a separate treatment at the end of this book. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.