ABSTRACT
Some time in 1186, when all the dust had settled and a new generation of household clerks was gathered around Baldwin of Forde (1184-90), the new archbishop of Canterbury, Herbert of Bosham, one of Thomas Becket’s most loyal (and outspoken) supporters wrote a little panegyric on the intellectual distinction of Becket’s archiepiscopal household, which he called, simply, Eruditi sancti Thome - St Thomas’s learned men. 1 In it, he listed twenty clerks who had been associated with Becket’s service, among whom he counted the recently ordained Master Edward Grim, who had stood by Becket during the murder (although he had not been a member of the familia), 2 in addition to the archbishop himself. Herbert’s Eruditi is far from being a complete record of the men who served Becket -William FitzStephen, for example, who had been one of Becket’s legal staff and had written an excellent biography of the martyr in 1173-4, is conspicuously absent 3 - but it is a useful foundation for a discussion of the fate of men whose prospects seemed so bright when they joined the archbishop’s court.
