“Tails” of Masculinity: Knights, Clerics, and the Mutilation of Horses in Medieval England

Abstract

In the days preceding the murder of Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury (29 December 1170), members of the Broc family—servants of King Henry II (r. 1154–89), who fought with Becket over the Canterbury estates during his exile (since 1167)—invaded the archbishop's park, butchered his deer, and stole his hunting dogs. On Christmas Eve, either Robert de Broc or his nephew, John, went so far as to dock, or cut off the tail of, a horse (or horses) in Becket's service carrying household provisions; the horse was brought before the archbishop for him to see. Contemporaries suggest that Becket understood the overt message of terror, defamation, and emasculation that the knights communicated through attacking his animals. Indeed, no fewer than five of Becket's biographers made it a point to mention the equestrian mutilation at the hands of the Brocs and to employ, to quote Hugh Thomas, “the rich Latin vocabulary of shame: ‘dedecus, contemptus, ignominia, dehonestatio, opprobrium’” in their descriptions of the tail excision. One chronicler insists that when news of the carnage reached the archbishop he exclaimed that “a mare in my service has in contempt of my name had its tail cut off—as though I could be put to shame by the mutilation of a beast!” Yet Becket suffered sufficient embarrassment to conclude Christmas Mass at Canterbury Cathedral by excommunicating Robert de Broc, among others. Four days later, a band of Henry II's knights—having crossed over from France, rendezvoused at the Brocs' castle, and been led to the archbishop by none other than Robert de Broc—spilled Becket's brains onto the cathedral floor. Predictably, the archbishop's martyrdom has shifted focus away from the violence directed against his animals in the days preceding his death. Nevertheless, these incidents reveal power struggles between secular and ecclesiastical authorities and provide opportunities to explore the roles that prized beasts played in conflicts between powerful men in the Middle Ages. By terrorizing Becket's deer, dogs, and horse, the Broc family and their supporters waged symbolic war against the archbishop via his living possessions, targeting the very creatures that represented Becket's secular—and masculine—presence and influence as archdiocesan overlord.