In August 2023, one of the foremost newspapers in the United Kingdom exhumed an old contention from the dirt after it featured a curious storyentitled, rather simply, “Protestants added the ‘à’ to smear Thomas Becket”.
The article, published by TheTimes, revealed that late 16th-century Protestant partisans and propagandists had taken to the history books in an attempt to rewrite narratives surrounding St Thomas of Canterbury, a heretofore beloved hero and martyr of medieval Christendom.
One such tactic they deployed to undermine the enduring reputation of valour and prestige attached to the man was to insert a hitherto non-existent “à” in between his fore- and surnames. The aim was to both distance his person from the modern era in which the Protestant “reformers” were dealing and to fabricate associations to the rural ruffians found in tales about Robin Hood such as George-à-Green or Alan-à-Dale.
