The Origin of the Phrase ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’

Extract

As far as a large proportion of the history-reading public is concerned, Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 after King Henry II had euphemistically ordered his assassination with the words, ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ It is well known among scholars that the only contemporary record of the king’s words (Edward Grim’s monastic chronicle) reports them as follows: ‘What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and promoted in my household, who allow their lord to be treated with such shameful contempt by a base-born clerk?’¹ Early modern chroniclers stuck quite closely to this wording, with Raphael Holinshed recording the outburst in the hearty vernacular: ‘In what miserable state am I, that can not be in rest within mine owne realme, by reason of one onelie préest? Neither is there any of my folkes that will helpe to deliuer me out of such troubles.’² Why did the form of words change so dramatically in modern times? The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations argues that the famous version is an ‘oral tradition, conflating a number of variant forms, including G. Lyttelton, History of the Life of King Henry the Second (1769) pt. 4: “so many cowardly and ungrateful men in his court, none of whom would revenge him of the injuries he sustained from one turbulent priest”’.³ No alternative view has ever been offered.