I'm reading The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England by Dan Jones, and he makes a claim in the section about Thomas's murder:
On receiving the news, [Henry II] uttered a phrase now among the most infamous in history: "What miserable drones and traitors have I nurtured and promoted in my household who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a lowborn clerk!" (This is often rendered incorrectly as, "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?")
The parenthetical statement is what has me hung up. First of all, this claim is made without any citation whatsoever. The "Further Reading" section contains no information about any contemporary source material. Second, I was under the impression that the quote was just part of the oral tradition of the circumstances surrounding the murder. Where would Jones have found this "original" quote that makes it more credible than the traditional variation(s)? I looked through Fordham University's Internet History Sourcebook, and only found one direct reference to the meeting in which the phrase was supposedly uttered:
In the year of the incarnation of the Lord 1170, Henry king of the English, son of Empress Matilda, held his court in Normandy at Bur, keeping the day of the Lord's Nativity, saddened and troubled greatly because the archbishop of Canterbury did not wish to absolve the English bishops whom he had bound with the chain of excommunication. And since the above-mentioned king thus angry was in ire, four knights of his household, on account of the disturbed spirits which they saw in him, desiring to defend him, secretly, without the knowledge of the king, hurried to the sea to cross the channel to England. And when they had crossed the channel, they seized their journey with hastened course toward Canterbury.
But, as you can see, there is no quotation. Simply a mention of Henry's anger.
So, I then became curious as to when any of these quotes entered into popular tradition. Was it a contemporary story? Or did it come about later? Are any of them really credible?
The earliest I can find it is in the Life of Thomas Becket of Canterbury, Archbishop and Martyr by Edward Grim (BHL 8182). Grim was an eyewitness to Becket's murder and was wounded in the attack, and his account was written ca. 1180.
Grim's Latin reads (my translation):
Inertes ac miseros homines enutrivi et erexi in regno meo, qui nec fidem ferunt domino suo quem a plebeo quodam clerico tam probrose patiuntur illudi. (Patrologia Latina 190.042A)
I have reared and raised helpless and miserable men in my kingdom, who do not consider their loyalty to their lord whom they now allow so shamefully to be mocked by a common cleric.
Grim was not in a position to hear the pronouncement by Henry, so this must be a hearsay account. The question thus remains: why include the quote? I think the reason is most clear if we give Grim's following sentence (my translation):
Quod verbum milites quatuor genere quidem conspicui et de domestica regis familia excipientes, funeste illud, et alia prorsus quam a rege prolatum fuerat intentione interpretati sunt. (ibid)
Hearing these words - oh those deadly words! - four knights of conspicuous birth and from the private household of the king indeed interpreted something entirely different than was intended by the king.
In other words, it gives Henry an out - he did not intend to order Becket's murder. Whether or not Henry actually said these words or something like them (and the cynic in me says he did not), it's certainly a pretty good spin to put on events if you support the king.
This solves the first question and raises another: why would Grim, wounded in the attack, support the king? This is more murky. I'm sure Grim was made to see that it was in his best interest by both the Church and Henry, who each had a vested interest in reconciliation at the time Grim was writing. Indeed, the hagiography of a martyr was often a means of reconciling the two parties, so this would scarcely be unusual.
However, if Henry did say those words, then we still have an attempt at reconciliation. Notice how the Chronicle you quote above, written by a partisan of Henry's, excludes even the mention of a possibly-murderous utterance by the king while emphasizing the independent action of the knights. That the Chronicle, written at approximately the same time, would try to remove any culpability from Henry suggests that he had said something like the words which Grim reported. Grim's following explanation would thus serve to balance the truth and propaganda.