Who Will Rid Me Of This Troublesome...

The Archbishop of Canterbury was a troublesome man to the King. He consolidated Church holdings and took revenue from the King, King Henry II, to support the activities of the church.

Taking money from the King is rarely a good idea. Henry, in order to control the Church in England, largely to finally reduce corruption amongst the clergy, made the clergy subject to the secular court, meaning that the Church was no longer supreme over everything (but, perhaps, the King). The conflict came to a head at the Constitution of Clarendon, where the independence of the clergy was to be tamed and the link to Rome weakened. While the Archbishop of Canterbury didn't reject the reforms, he didn't sign on to them either. Because he failed to sign the 16 Constitutions of Clarendon, he was convicted of contempt of the court and fled the country.

He did return when the King backed down some under threat of excommunication from Rome. A diplomatic solution was found: however, the young King was coronated by the Archbishop of York, in defiance of tradition, and the Archbishop of Canterbury excommunicated the Archbishop of York, as well as the Bishops of London and Salisbury, and didn't stop there: he was on a roll, excommunicating his opponents.

The King was sick, but rose and cried thus:

What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?

This is a tad long, so it's been shortened in the popular history to "Who shall rid me of this troublesome priest?"


Which brings me to this.

Dr. Phil Jones, infamously now of the leaked emails, wrote this regarding an editor:

I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.


Well, that puts a lot into perspective, doesn't it?

The arrogance, the theological nature of discussion, the extreme intolerance of those behind AGW is now clear and visible to everyone.

Let us be thankful that the fate of the skeptics is not that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered in the Church for his transgressions agains the King.


History, thankfully (and despite probably how the AGW folks now feel about the skeptics), doesn't always repeat.