The Third Crusade, Richard I, with the Affairs of Henry II and Thomas Becket

What it is

This is a book by William Harris Rule, published in 1854, titled The Third Crusade, Richard I, with the affairs of Henry II and Thomas Becket. The copy in the archive is a scanned PDF from the Internet Archive. Its contents list has chapters on Becket, including Becket made Archbishop, Becket condemned and fugitive, and Becket is murdered. Most of the book is about Richard I and the Crusades, with Becket's story placed inside the wider history of Henry II's reign.

Why it matters

Books like this one show how writers in the nineteenth century retold medieval events for their own readers. Rule wrote about Becket about 700 years after his death, so the book reflects the views and interests of its own time. It helps students compare how the conflict between Becket and Henry II was understood in the 1850s with the earlier sources on which it was based.

Look closer

• Which events in Becket's life does the author choose to highlight, and which does the contents list leave out?
• Does the author describe Becket as a hero, a villain or something else? What words show this?
• How might a book written in 1854 for a general reader differ from a medieval account of the same events?