[q. v.] (Materials, i. 133). After some further altercation the knights determined to drag Thomas out of the church. Tracy was the first to approach him for that purpose, but Thomas seized him by the hauberk and shook him with such force that, as he himself owned afterwards, he fell nearly prostrate on the pavement (ib. iii. 492–3), whereupon he threw off his hauberk, ‘to be lighter’ (Garnier, p. 194). According to William of Canterbury (Materials, i. 133), FitzStephen (ib. iii. 141), Garnier (l. c.), and the Saga (i. 543), it was Tracy who struck the first blow which wounded the archbishop, and which nearly cut off the arm of Edward Grim [q. v.]; but there is some confusion on this point, for Grim himself (Materials, ii. 437) seems to imply that the blow was struck by Fitzurse, as is actually stated by another contemporary (ib. iv. 77); while Garnier adds that Tracy, by his own account afterwards, thought it was John of Salisbury whose arm he had cut off. Tracy certainly struck the archbishop twice, and his last blow cleft the crown of Thomas's head (Garnier, l. c.)
After the murder Tracy went and confessed himself to his diocesan bishop, Bartholomew (d. 1184) [q. v.] of Exeter (Materials, iii. 512–13; Gir. Cambr., Vita S. Remigii, c. xxviii). Gerald of Wales says his confession included a statement that he and his three comrades had been compelled by the king to bind themselves by an oath sworn in Henry's presence to slay the primate. The story, however, is doubtful. Tracy shared the adventures of his fellow-murderers in Scotland and at Knaresborough [see Fitzurse, Reginald and Morville, Hugh de, d. 1204]. He was first of the four to surrender himself to the pope's mercy (Materials, iv. 162), but last to set out for Holy Land (ib. iii. 536; Thomas Saga, ii. 39), where Alexander III bade them serve under the Templars for fourteen years, in addition to a lifelong penance of fasting and prayer. The last dated notice of him as living is in 1172, when he was at the papal court (Materials, vii. 511). The statement which some modern writers have adopted from Dugdale, that he was steward or seneschal of Normandy from 1174 to 1176, is founded on two passages of the so-called Bromton (Twysden, cols. 1105 and 1116), where ‘Tracy’ is a scribe's blunder for ‘Courcy’ (Gesta Hen. i. 99, 124, 125; Rog. Hov. ii. 82). Equally baseless are the legends which tell either that Tracy never started on his pilgrimage at all, or that he returned secretly and lived for many years hidden in some lonely spot on the Devonshire coast. A letter written between 1205 and 1230 relates the history of a grant made to Christ Church, Canterbury, by one William de Thaun, ‘when he was setting out for Holy Land with his lord, William de Tracy’ (Stanley, Memorials of Canterbury, App., note F). Tracy, however, got no further than Cosenza in Sicily. There he was smitten with a horrible disease, his flesh decaying while he was yet alive, so that he could not refrain from tearing it off with his own hands, and he died in agony, praying incessantly to St. Thomas. Herbert of Bosham [q. v.] relates this on the authority of the bishop of Cosenza, who had been Tracy's confessor during his sickness (Materials, iii. 536–7; cf. Thomas Saga, ii. 39–41). By a charter without date of place or time, William de Tracy granted the manor of Doccombe (Devon) to the chapter of Canterbury ‘for the love of God, the salvation of his own soul and his ancestors' souls, and for love of the blessed Thomas, archbishop and martyr, of venerable memory.’ The first witness is the abbot of ‘Eufemia,’ i.e. doubtless Santa Eufemia, a monastery some eighteen miles from Cosenza; and the grant was confirmed by Henry II in a charter whose date must lie between July and October 1174 (Stanley, note F). Evidently Tracy's charter was drawn up at or near Cosenza during his fatal illness, and brought home by his followers after his death, which a comparison of dates thus shows to have occurred, as Herbert says (Materials, iii. 537), within three years of his crime, i.e. in 1173.
[Authorities cited; cf. Dr. E. A. Abbott's Death and Miracles of Thomas à Beckett, 1898.]
TRADESCANT, JOHN (d. 1637?), traveller, naturalist, and gardener, is said by Anthony à Wood to have been a Fleming or a Dutchman, but this is doubtful. The name is neither Flemish nor Dutch, but probably English (cf. Notes and Queries, 1st ser. iii. 391; Sir J. E. Smith in Rees's Cyclopædia, s.v. ‘Tradescant’). It occurs as Tradeskin or Tredeskin at Walberswick, Suffolk, in 1661 (Notes and Queries, 1st ser. v. 367), at Wenhastone in the same county in 1664 (ib. vi. 198), and at Harleston, Norfolk, from 1682 to 1721 (ib. v. 474). Tradescant himself had a lease of property at Woodham Walter, Essex; and he has been somewhat dubiously identified by Dr. Joseph von Hamel with a certain John Coplie, described in a manuscript now at the Bodleian Library (Ashmole MS. No. 824, xvi.) as a ‘Wustersher’ man (Hamel, England and Russia, translated by J. S. Leigh, London, 1854).
