Ben Stephens reflects on the life, death, and afterlife of Thomas Becket, who rose to be Henry II’s Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury, but who after years of tension between the Crown and the Church was murdered on this day in 1170.
Each new age calls for new heroes; perhaps it calls for new patron saints, too. If so, I’d like to nominate St Thomas of Canterbury to become responsible for those who have been “cancelled” for transgressing the new (although seemingly ever-shifting) social mores to which we now find ourselves apparently beholden if we want to keep our places on the cocktail-party circuit, the Rotary Club committee, or even our very jobs.
