In his account to the Pope of this meeting, Becket suppresses his own tergiversation on this point.
The tergiversation of Becket, and his attempt thus to violate one of the Constitutions of Clarendon, to which he had sworn, showed that he was not to be bound by oaths.
His was not the tergiversation of one who seeks to effect his object by fraud and deception: it was rather the hesitation of a mind oscillating between the decision of his own judgment and the opinions and apprehensions of others.
He was the very antipodes of the hideous revolutionary tergiversation of Fontainebleau.
