In the case of Becket, as in that of his predecessor, there was a basis of historical fact on which to build up a legend.
The chroniclers Ralph de Diceto, Roger de Hoveden, and both William and Gervase of Canterbury,357 who record the murder of Becket, and whose proximity, in point of time, to the events that took place on those memorable December days of the year 1170, gives them indisputable authority, all agree in narrating, with such slight variations in matters of detail as serve to show that they did not merely repeat each other, an incident which happened to the Archbishop shortly before his death. They state that Robert Broc, a groom of the royal bedchamber, who, together with Nigel de Sacheville, incumbent of Harrow, was solemnly excommunicated by the Primate, on Christmas day, had cut off the tail of Becket's horse, as an insult to its owner. According to the two brother-monks, the Archbishop made direct reference to this indignity in his interview with the four conspirators, Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Moreville, William de Tracy, and Richard le Breton. "The tail of a mare in my service," he said, "has been shamefully cut off, as if I could be disgraced by the docking of a brute beast."358 It was not, however, for this cowardly and contemptible act of spite that Broc was excommunicated, but because, being a layman, he had appropriated ecclesiastical revenues. And, though William of Canterbury records that the very dogs refused to be fed by the hand of the man whom the Prelate had banned, neither he nor any of the other chroniclers refers to the infliction of tails on him or his posterity. It was only at a later date, and when Broc had been lost sight of, as the perpetrator of the outrage, that the miraculous punishment was thought of.
Although there is the evidence of Bower to show that, in his day, Becket's name had already begun to be connected with the legend of the tails, Augustine still continues to hold his own through the whole of the first half of the sixteenth century. It is he who figures as the hero, or the victim, in the account given by John Major, an account which is noteworthy by reason of the very cautious spirit in which it is written. It may be said to mark the beginning of a transition from unquestioning credulity to uncompromising scepticism. It also seems to imply that, so far as the author's reading of the chroniclers extended, he found the English, if not yet ready to deny the supernatural punishment of the insult offered to the saint, at least convinced that it had not been perpetuated through the ages. The chapter in which Major recapitulates the old story, is mainly devoted to the outward form and appearance of the English, and contains a great deal about "skiey influence". Thus, it comes of "skiey influence" that close by the Arctic pole people are of foul aspect. And, if in some parts of Africa men are born with the head of a dog, "this, too, is a matter of skiey influence and carries with it no other influence". After this preamble the author proceeds to relate the conversion of Kent – how Augustine laboured so strenuously that, in a short space of time, he brought to the faith the king himself and almost the whole people; how, passing on to Rochester, he began there, too, to preach the word of God; and how the common people derided him, and threw fish tails at the holy man. "Wherefore Augustine made his prayer to God that, for punishment of this sin, their infants should be born with tails, to the end they might be warned not to contemn the teachers of divine things. And, for this reason, as the English chroniclers relate, the infants were born with tails; but for a time only, and to the end that an unbelieving race might give credence to their teacher, was this punishment inflicted." The Scots and the Gauls, it is true, "assert the opposite". But, Major "cannot agree with them". And, further, the phenomenon having been only temporary, he gives it as his opinion that it had "very little to do with the skiey influence".359
Nicole Gilles whose "very elegant and copious annals of Gaul" were published in 1531, being a French chronicler, is one of those who believe that the divine anger has not ceased to manifest itself, and that the descendants of the men of Dorchester, who mocked and derided St. Augustine, still have "tails behind, like brute beasts, and are therefore called tailed Englishmen". It is worthy of notice that, owing, doubtless, to the misreading of some Latin text and to the intelligible confusion of raia or raria, both of which are used to translate "rayfish", with the more familiar rana, Gilles makes the impious Dorchestrians hang frogs – "des raynes ou grenouilles" – to St. Augustine's garments.360
Bellenden, who belonged to the next generation, took the liberty of introducing the Augustinian myth into his Scottish prose rendering of Hector Boece, although there was nothing in the Latin original to justify him in doing so.
"Quhen this haly man, Sanct Austine, wes precheand to the Saxonis in Miglintoun," he says, "thay wer nocht onlie rebelland to his precheing, but in his contemptioun thay sewit fische talis on his abilyements. Otheris alliegis thay dang him with skait rumpillis. Nochtheless, this derisioun succedit to thair gret displesoure: for God tuke on thaim sic vengeance, that thay and thair posteritie had lang talis mony yeris eftir. In memorie heirof, the barnis that are yit borne in Miglintoun hes the samin deformite, but the wemen havand experience thairof fleis out of this toun in the time of thair birth and eschapis this malediction be that way."361
Bower and the prose Brut are obviously the authorities for Bellenden's statements, and it is not without interest to note that whilst drawing from the latter his knowledge of the subterfuge by means of which cunning mothers might secure for their children immunity from the consequences of the saint's vindictiveness, it is from his Scottish predecessor that he takes the name of the town which witnessed the affront, and in which the punishment was perpetuated. And the question arises whether the chronicler's apparently deliberate choice of Miglinton is to be taken as evidence that a place bearing that name, or rather nickname, really existed.
Though Dunbar's brief reference to the insult offered to St. Augustine proves nothing beyond his acquaintance with the legend, it may be quoted, for the sake of completeness. It occurs in the Flyting with Kennedy, at whom his adversary flings the jeer,
"he that dang Sanct Augustine with an rumple
Thy fowll front had".362
The Frenchman Génébrard is the last of those who, as long as the story continued to be accepted or, at least, not openly scouted, connected it with Augustine. He confines himself to recording the outrage, and to stating, with due caution, that, because of it, the people of Dorchester "are said to have had tails like beasts". His own belief in the prodigy does not appear to have been very firm.363
Of those who, after Bower, present St. Thomas as the central figure in the incident, the first in date is a foreigner, Wilwolt of Schaumburg. This German gentleman errant visited England about the end of the fifteenth century, and an account of his travels was published in 1507. He appears to have been greatly impressed by the story of St. Thomas of Candlwerg, as he calls him, and relates how "he left behind him a wonderful token which will perhaps endure to the day of judgment". On one occasion, he says, riding like a pious and upright man, on his little ass, the holy man came to a certain village where he stopped to take some food. Here the country folk made fun of his lowly mount, and cut off the poor ass's tail. Thereupon, the dear saint complained to Almighty God, and prayed to such purpose that, even to this very day, all the boys that are born in that village bring with them into the world little tails rooted to their hinder parts. From this circumstance has arisen the byword which so greatly annoys the English: "Englishman, show your tail!" And continues Wilwolt, "I should like to see the foolhardy man who dared to call out, 'English tailard' in that same village. He would have to take himself off very quickly if he did not wish to be beaten to death." The German traveller also learnt how, at the right moment, women could avert from the expected child the grievous consequences of its forefathers' fault. They only had to cross the water and go into the next village.364
Another and better known foreigner, no less a personage, indeed, than Polydore Vergil, continues, at the same time that he considerably restricts, the legend of the tails. As narrated by him in the Anglica Historia, published in 1534, Becket's misadventure appears to have been one of the minor incidents in the quarrel between him and the king. It had become known that Henry had been moved to exclaim, "Wretched me! Can I not have peace in my own kingdom because of one priest? Is there none of all my subjects who will rid me of that annoyance?" And there were not wanting evil men who understood this to mean that, in his heart, he desired the death of the Archbishop who, in consequence, began to be generally neglected, despised, and hated. Such was the position of affairs when Thomas one day came to Stroud, on the Medway, near Rochester. There, the inhabitants, anxious to inflict some insult on the good father, now that he was in disgrace, did not hesitate to cut off the tail of the horse on which he was riding. By this act, however, it was on themselves that they brought lasting shame. For, by the judgment of God, it happened that the descendants of the men who had perpetrated this outrage were born with tails, like brute beasts. But if the learned Italian was superstitious enough to believe in the miraculous punishment of an offence which, at its worst, involved far less moral guilt than was incurred by the murderers of Becket, against whom no divine retribution was recorded, he was too intelligent not to see the absurdity of making it perpetual, and of inflicting it on the community at large, as earlier chroniclers had done. He admitted that the mark of infamy had not survived the family of the immediate offenders.365
The next and last writer of what may be called the period of credulity, though that credulity had begun to wane long before it reached its vanishing phase in him, was Guillaume Paradin, of Cuiseaux. He confesses to a suspicion that what tradition has handed down concerning the tails of Englishmen is mere nonsense, and apologizes for reproducing it, on the score that English chroniclers themselves report it quite seriously. The Becket legend which he thus introduces affords him an opportunity of adapting to the English the words of the Royal prophet, "He smote them in the hinder parts and put them to a perpetual shame"; and of perpetrating, at their expense, some doggerel lines of which he has the good sense not to acknowledge the authorship: —
Of old, some Britons docked the tail
Of Becket's nag, they say,
And that is why all Englishmen
Have short tails to this day.366
By the middle of the sixteenth century, saints had ceased to command the same popular reverence as before, and their alleged miracles were put by many on the same level as the myths of antiquity. There is, consequently, from that date onwards an absolute change in the tone and temper of those who allude to the legend of the tails. Most of them, indeed, do so for the sole purpose of denying the miracle and of sneering at those who superstitiously gave it credence. The first and not least indignant of the denunciators is John Bale, Bishop of Ossory. After indicating the discrepancy between John Capgrave and Alexander of Esseby – that is, Ashby – who record that, "for castynge of fyshe tayles at thys Augustine, Dorsett shyre men had tayles ever after", and Polydore Vergil, who "applyeth it unto Kentysh men at Stroude, by Rochester, for cuttynge of Thomas Beckett's horse's tayle", the author of the Actes of Englysh Votaryes says: "Thus hath England, in all other landes, a perpetual dyffamy of tayles by their wrytten legendes of lyes, yet can they not wele tell where to bestowe them trulye".367 In another passage he inveighs still more bitterly against "the Spiritual Sodomytes" who "in the legends of their sanctyfied sorcerers", have "dyffamed the Englyshe posteryte with tayles", and to whom it is due "that an Englishman now cannot travayle in any other lande by way of merchandyce or anye other honest occupyenge, but yt ys most contumelyousslye throwne in his teeth, that all Englishmen have tayles". And concludes the Bishop in his wrath, "that uncomlye note and report have the nacyon gotten without recover, by these laysye and idell lubbers, the munkes and the prestes, whiche coulde fynde no matters to advance their canonysed Cayns by, or their Sayntes (as they call them) but manyfest lyes and knaveryes".368
Bale's Actes appeared in 1546. Seventy years later, William Lambarde published a Perambulation of Kent. Coming to Stroud, in this topographical and historical account of his native county, he eagerly avails himself of the opportunity offered him to record his protest against the attribution of tails, not only to the natives of that locality, but to the Kentish men generally, and that – unkindest cut of all – by their own fellow countrymen. He is evidently acquainted with several versions of the story; but whilst denouncing the authors of all of them, he is particularly incensed against Polydore, whom he quite unjustly accuses of "lashing out further" than his authorities, and of endeavouring "to outly the lowdest Legendaries". It is bad enough that "the whole English nation should be earnestly flowted" with the "dishonourable note" of having tails; but what Lambarde obviously finds it more difficult to bear, and makes Polydore responsible for, is that "Kentish men be heere at home merily mocked". In his most entertaining contribution to the history of the legend, the Kentish apologist says:
"A name, or family of men, sometime inhabiting Stroude (saith Polydore) had tailes clapped to their breeches by Thomas Becket, for revenge and punishment of a dispite done to him, in cutting of the taile of his horse. The author of the new Legend saith, that after St. Thomas had excommunicated two Brothers (called Brockes) for the same cause, that the Dogges under the table would not once take bread at their hands. Such (belike) was the vertue of his curse, that it gave to brute beasts, a discretion and knowledge of the persons, that were in danger of it. Boetius (the Scotishe chronicler) writeth, that the lyke plague lighted upon the men of Midleton in Dorsetshire: who because they threwe Fish tailes in great contempt at Saint Augustine, were bothe themselves and their posteritie, stricken with tailis, to their perpetual infamy and punishment. All whiche their reportes (no doubt) be as true, as Ovides Historie of Diana, that in great angre bestowed on Actæon a Deares head with mighty anthlers.
"Much are the Western men bound (as you see) to Polydore, who taking the miracle from Augustine, applieth it to S. Thomas, and removing the infamous revenge from Dorsetshire, laieth it upon our men of Kent. But little is Kent, or the whole English nation beholding, either to him, or his fellowes, who (amongst them) have brought upon us this ignominie and note with other nations abrode, that many of them believe as verity, that we have long tailes and be monsters by nature, as other men have their due partes and members in usual number. Polydore (the wisest of the companye) fearing that issue might be taken upon the matter, ascribeth it to one speciall stocke and family, which he nameth not, and yet (to leave it the more uncertain) he saith, that, that family is worne out long since, and sheweth not when; he goeth about in great earnest (as in sundrie other things) to make the world beleave he cannot tell what: he had forgotten the Lawe whereunto an Hystorian is bound, 'Ne quid falsi audeat, ne quid veri non audeat'. That he should be bold as to tell the trueth, and yet not so bolde as to tell a lye."
To his credit, however, Lambarde does Polydore the justice of admitting that his history, "without all doubt", is "a worthy work", in places not blemished with such follies. But, seeing that he does insert them often and without discretion, he must be read with great suspicion and wariness. "For, as he was by office Collector of the Peter pence to the Popes gaine and lucre, so sheweth he himselfe throughout by profession, a coveteous gatherer of lying fables, fained to advance the Popish religion, kingdome and myter."369
In the seventeenth century, the story of the tails, which, by that time, however, had ceased to be attributed to Englishmen at large and were humorously regarded as distinctive of Kentish men alone, was incidentally referred to by several poets. It supplied Sir John Mennis, the author of Musarum Deliceæ, with a coarse joke. Andrew Marvel, in his Loyal Scot, cites it in illustration of the danger incurred by provoking the anger of a prelate: —
"There's no 'Deliver us' from a Bishop's wrath:
Never shall Calvin pardoned be for sales,
Never, for Burnet's sake, the Lauderdales;
For Becket's sake, Kent always shall have tails."370
In Drayton's Polyolbion, the "Blazons of the Shires", as set forth by Helidon, open with the lines:
"Kent first in our account, doth to itself apply
(Quoth he) this Blazon first, 'Long tails and Liberty!'"371
Butler, in his Hudibras, has a couplet which declares that:
tails by nature sure were meant
As well as beards, for ornament.
According to an annotator, "Mr. Butler here alludes to Dr. Bulwer's Artificial Changeling", where, besides the story of the Kentish men, near Rochester, who had tails clapped to their breeches by Thomas à Becket, he gives an account, on the authority of "an honest young man of Captain Morris's company in Lieutenant-General Ireton's company", of how "at Cashell in the County of Tipperary, in the province of Munster, in Carrick Patrick church, seated on a hill or rock, stormed by the Lord Inchequine, and where were neare 700 put to the sword and none saved but the Mayor's wife and his son, there were found among the slain of the Irish, when they were stript, divers with tailes near a quarter of a yard long. The relator being very diffident of the truth of this story, after enquiry was ensured of the certainty thereof by forty souldiers, that testified upon their oaths that they were eyewitnesses, being present at the action." With such testimony in support of his assertion that "the rump bone among brutish and strong-docht nations doth often spread out with such an excrescence or beastly emanation", Dr. Bulwer is not disinclined to believe in the possession of tails by the inhabitants of Stroud.
In the Church History of Britain by Dr. Bulwer's contemporary, Thomas Fuller, modern scepticism again asserts itself. Quoting from Hierome Porter, in the Flowers of the Lives of the Saints, to the effect that when the villagers in Dorsetshire beat Augustine and his fellows, and in mockery fastened fish tails at their backs, in punishment hereof, "all that generation had that given them by nature, which so contemptibly they fastened on the backs of these holy men", Fuller adduces this to show that "most of the miracles assigned unto Augustine, intended with their strangeness to raise and heighten, with their levity and absurdity do depress and offend, true devotion". In equal contempt of those who relate such a story as that of the Dorsetshire folk and of those who accept it, the author exclaims, "Fie for shame! He needs an hard plate on his face that reports it, and a soft place in his head that believes it".372
In his Worthies of England, the same writer discusses at some length the origin of the nickname applied to the Kentish men. "Let me premise," he says, "that those are much mistaken, who first found the proverb on a miracle of Austin the Monk, for the scene of this lying wonder was not laied in any part of Kent, but pretended many miles off, nigh Cerne in Dorsetshire." His own opinion is that the saying is "first of outlandish extraction and cast by Forrainers as a note of disgrace on all the English, though it chanceth to stick only on the Kentish men at this day". In support of this view, Fuller relates the incident of the quarrel "betwixt Robert, Brother of Saint Louis, King of France and our William Longspee, Earle of Salisbury". Continuing his disquisition he says: —
"Some will have the English so-called from wearing a pouch or poake (a bag to carry their baggage in) behind their backs, whilst probably the proud Monsieurs had their lacquies for that purpose; in proof whereof, they produce ancient Pictures of the English Drapery and Armory, wherein such conveyances doe appear. If so, it was neither sin nor shame for the common sorte of people to carry their own necessaries; and it matters not much whether the pocket be made on either side, or wholly behind. If any demand how this nickname (cut off from the rest of England) continues still entailed on Kent. The best conjecture is, because that County lieth nearest to France, and the French are beheld as the first founders of this aspersion. But if any will have the Kentish men so-called from drawing and dragging boughs of trees behind them, which afterwards they advanced above their heads, and so partly cozened, partly threatened, King William the Conqueror to continue their ancient customes; I say, if any will impute it to this original, I will not oppose."373
The incident upon which Fuller bases the explanation which he considers most plausible, without, however, expressing himself dogmatically with regard to it, is related by the chronicler Willam Thorne, and also forms the subject of an old ballad quoted by Thierry. So modern an historian as Lappenberg thinks that "perhaps the tradition is not unfounded, that the Kentish army, advancing under the covering of branches from the trees, might have appeared to the enemy as a wood, until, standing in face of them and casting down their leafy screen, they at once appeared threatening with sword and spear". Freeman rejects the story altogether. But even its truth, which Fuller may be excused for accepting, would hardly support his theory. The only credit which it deserves is perhaps the negative one of being a little less fanciful than that put forward by Fynes Moryson, who states that "the Kentish men of old were said to have tayles, because trafficking in the Low Countries, they never paid full payments of what they did owe, but still left some part unpaid".374
The author of the early sixteenth-century Mad Pranks and Merry Jests of Robin Goodfellow, contributes no less than three other explanations, of which one bears considerable resemblance to that favoured by Fuller. After relating how he dropped into an alehouse, whilst travelling in "that noble county of Kent", he continues: —
"The ale being good, and I in good company, I lapt in so much of this nappy liquor, that it begot in mee a boldnesse to talk and desire of them to know what was the reason that the people of that country were called Long-tayles. The hoast said, all the reason that ever he could heare was, because the people of that country did use to goe in side-skirted coates. There is (sayd an old man that sat by) another reason that I have heard: that is this. In the time of the Saxons' conquest of England there were divers of our countrymen slaine by treachery, which made those that survived more carefull in dealing with their enemies, as you shall heare. After many overthrowes that our countrymen had received by the Saxons, they dispersed themselves into divers companies into the woods, and so did much damage by their suddaine assaults to the Saxons, that Hengist, their king, hearing the damage that they did (and not knowing how to subdue them by force) used this policy. Hee sent to a company of them and gave them his word for their liberty and safe returne, if they would come unarmed and speake with him. This they seemed to grant unto, but for their more security (knowing how little hee esteemed oaths or promises) they went every one of them armed with a shorte sword, hanging just behind under their garments, so that the Saxons thought not of any weapons they had: but it proved otherwise, for when Hengist his men (that were placed to cut them off) fell all upon them, they found such unlooked a resistance that most of the Saxons were slain, and they that escaped, wond'ring how they could do that hurt, having no weapons (as they saw), reported that they strucke downe men like lyons with their tayles; and so they, ever after, were called Kentish Long-tayles. I told them this was strange, if true, and that their countries honor bound them more to believe in this, than it did me. Truly, Sir, said my hoastesse, I thinke we are called Long-tayles, by reason our tales are long, that we use to passe the time withall, and make ourselves merry."
Du Cange considered the problem more seriously, without, however, being able to find a satisfactory solution. He suggests that the epithet "tailed" may have been applied to Englishmen because of the excess to which they carried the fashion of wearing toes of extravagant length to their shoes, but admits that the explanation does not greatly appeal to him. With still more diffidence he hints at the possibility of considering the Latin "caudatus" as equivalent to either "foppish" or "cowardly". But whilst none of the cited instances of its use justifies the former of these interpretations, there are only a very few of them that can be strained into imparting even slight plausibility to the latter. Neither does there appear to be anything to support Professor Wattenbach's suggestion that Englishmen may have been called "tailed" because of the way in which they wore their hair. Finally, a work entitled England under the Normans has a chapter on the measurement of land, in which the author states that "there was a mile peculiar to Kent, as well as a customary field admeasurement", and that "these 'long tales' are possibly the 'long tails' of which the county used to be so proud". The history of the medieval myth does not lead to the belief that either Englishmen generally, or, as here stated, Kentishmen in particular, ever looked upon the nickname otherwise than as an insult.
The attempts that have been made to fix upon some actual fact as originating the attribution of tails to Englishmen seem as uncalled for as most of them are fanciful and absurd.375 They are all based on the hypothesis that the epithet "caudatus", "coué", and "tailard" was first applied for some reason other than the belief in the existence of a tail, and that only subsequently, if, indeed, ever, was it taken literally. But our investigation has proved that there is nothing to warrant this assumption. It has been shown that, on the contrary, the actual monstrosity was accepted as a fact from the outset. Nor does it seem impossible to explain how this came about. Given the insult offered to St. Augustine, about which there is no room for scepticism, it only requires a knowledge of the medieval spirit to account for the sequel. Impressed by the sanctity of the apostle of England and by the greatness, or, indeed, the divinity of his mission, the early biographer looked upon it as inevitable that the sacrilege of those who dishonoured him should draw down upon them the wrath of Heaven. Was not the disrespect of the children who called the Prophet "bald head" visited upon them? The conviction that this should be the case easily led to the assumption that it was. And a very slight effort of imagination sufficed to devise a punishment suited to the offence. It was suggested by the very nature of the impious deed. And what, to the chronicler, seemed the application of an obvious principle – that the transgression should fall back upon the transgressor – was accepted by the credulity of the age. Then there was the animosity of other nations, of France in particular, and of Scotland, her ally. If, at home, the manifestation of divine anger and of saintly power was thought to be limited to the kith and kin of the offenders, such nicety of distinction was ignored abroad. It suited the enemies of England that all Englishmen should be "tailards", and "tailards" they were universally and indiscriminately called.