by Deana Chadwell, All News Pipeline:

In 1170 King Henry II and Thomas a’ Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury, got into an intense argument. In the Middle Ages the Church and the Crown had almost equal power. Either entity could arrest, try, imprison, or execute. Either could own property, confiscate property, or stand an army. Basically, Henry and Beckett argued over who could do what to whom. The fact that the two men had once been good friends didn’t soften the argument any. In one heated discussion Beckett stormed out of the throne room, and Henry uttered the following words, “Would someone please rid me of this pesky priest.” No one knows if he shouted those words like a command in battle or if he just muttered them sotto voce in quiet frustration. It didn’t matter what he meant, what he thought. The four knights who had been in the throne room at the time knew that they had to take it as a command and so, off to Canterbury they rode. They found Beckett kneeling before the altar in the Cathedral there and there they hacked him to death. That Beckett was subsequently canonized made little difference to the archbishop, but it did bring up the issue of whether or not the king was above the law. Hmm… where have we heard that before?