Church and state in the nineteenth century and the revival of Thomas Becket

The legend of Thomas Becket was recovered in the nineteenth century in the context of debates after the Oxford Movement concerning the relation between Church and State. In the literature of the period Becket was, accordingly, either the saint or the villain. He featured largely in Robert Southey’s Book of the Church (1824) and in numerous novels and plays, including works by the High Churchman J.H. Neale, and the Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson. A hagiographical ‘biography’ by Robert Hugh Benson brings Becket into the twentieth century long before T. S. Eliot’s celebrated play