Murders
often get reported in the news, especially
when someone famous or powerful is murdered.
There were no newspapers in medieval times,
but there were other ways of spreading news.
And just like today, big news spread very
quickly.
So
what was the news? In 1170 Thomas Becket,
the Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered
in his own cathedral by four knights. The
Archbishop of Canterbury was the second
most important person in England after the
king. Who could have done such a thing?
Well,
it was the King - in a way. The knights
who killed Becket thought that King Henry
II wanted them to kill him. The difficulty
is nobody really knows exactly what happened.
The evidence is confusing. Different people
have interpreted it in different ways.
Some
of the interpretations they have come up
with are:
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