England’s age of pilgrimage came to an end in 1538. On April 24, King Henry VIII—freshly and controversially divorced from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon—issued a formal summons to St. Thomas à Becket. Never mind that the onetime archbishop of Canterbury had been dead for nearly four centuries, martyred following a religious conflict with an earlier Henry, the Plantagenet monarch Henry II. Henry VIII charged the long-deceased Becket with a variety of crimes against the Crown and state, chief among them treason and rebellion. The charges were read out in Canterbury Cathedral, and Thomas was given thirty days’ right of response. When, as you might imagine, the late cleric failed to appear, the case was turned over to Westminster, and on June 10, Thomas was convicted.
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