Henry II was luckier than his successors when it came to getting away with murder

Patrick Cockburn reflects on state assassinations past and present and is immediately struck by the comparisons between the death of Thomas Becket and the even more grisly fate of Jamal Khashoggi

Becket was killed in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 (Getty)

I look through the window of my house in Canterbury at the medieval church of St Dunstan’s, 40 yards away on the other side of the road. This makes me think about the murder of the Archbishop, Thomas Becket, by four knights of Henry II in Canterbury on 29 December 1170 – the 850th anniversary of which is this year. The king admitted later that his furious tirades directed at his retainers for not having done anything by way of revenge against Becket, his former protege tuned bitter opponent, had inspired the killers to commit the crime, but he adamantly denied that he had personally ordered the assassination.

The link between the death of Becket – certainly the most famous political murder in English history – and St Dunstan’s is simple: it was from this church on the outskirts of medieval Canterbury that three-and-a-half years later, on 12 July 1174, a barefoot Henry, the formidable founder of the Plantaganet dynasty known for his fierce personal pride, dressed in a hairshirt worn beneath a smock, began his penitential walk towards Canterbury Cathedral, half a mile away inside the city walls.

The king walked down what is now St Dunstan’s Street through West Gate, a gateway today flanked by two huge medieval towers built 200 years after Henry passed this way. It would be interesting to know more about how the people of Canterbury reacted to the sight of a much-feared monarch, ruler of an empire that included all of England and half of France, as he endured self-inflicted ritual humiliation before their eyes.