SHORT STUDIES. 
Church benefices. He was Provost of Beverley, he 
was Archdeacon of Canterbury, he was rector of an 
unknown number of parishes, and had stalls im 
several cathedrals. It is noticeable that afterwards, 
in the heat of the battle in which he earned his 
saintship, he was so far from looking back with regret 
on his accumulation of preferments that he paraded 
them as an evidence of his early consequence.! A 
greater rise lay immediately before him. Henry IT, 
was twenty-two years old at his accession. At this 
time ho was the most powerful prince in Western 
Europe. He was Duke of Normandy and Count of 
Anjou. His wife Eleanor, the divorced queen of 
Lewis of France, had brought with her, Aquitaine 
and Poitou. "The reigning pope, Adrian IV,, was 
an Englishman, and, to the grief and perplexity o0£ 
later generations of Irishinen, gave the new king 
permission to add the Island of the Saints to his 
already vast dominions. Few English princes have 
commenccd their carcer with fairer prospeets than 
the second Henry. , 
$ Foliot, Bishop of London, 
told him that he owed his rise 
in life to the king. DBecket 
roplied ; ‘© Ad fempus quo me Tex 
ministerio suo preestitit, archidi- 
aconatus Cantuariensis, preposi- 
turn Beverlaei, plurime ecelesige, 
prabendae nonnulle, alia etiam 
non patca qua nominis mei erant 
possessio tunc temporis, adeo 
tennem ut dieis, quammtum ad ca 
que mundi sunt, contradieunt 
me fnisse.”