On 23 January 1888, a skeleton was discovered in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. The bones were that of a tall man, over six feet, and the skull was crushed. Rumours swirled immediately that the body was that of Thomas Becket. Sceptics dismissed the rumours, stating that history demonstrated clearly that the bones of Becket had been burned in 1538 by the agents of Henry VIII. Their scepticism was met with a chorus of dissent, mainly from Catholics, claiming that the burning of Becket's bones had itself been a rumour, and that the monks of Canterbury Cathedral had hidden Becket's bones in advance of Thomas Cromwell's arrival to oversee the dismantling of the Becket shrine. The contents of the shrine had not been Becket's, they said, but were switched with those of a long-dead monk. What followed was a controversy in print involving newspapers, academic journals, and personal letters that addressed issues of religious toleration, historical memory, and scientific investigation. As scholars and churchmen wrote to and about each other they faced the possibility that one of the most defining events of the Reformation was not a matter of historical fact, but of legend. If such a thing were true, how could Britain be sure that the Reformation was remembered correctly? Those who believed that the bones were Becket's argued that the Reformation was not in fact, remembered correctly. If that was true, how confident could the Church of England be that history had been written by the victors? Many who supported Catholic Emancipation or who supported non-conformism argued that it had not. Writing in 1921, J.H. Pollen recalled the controversy, saying, ‘Every right-minded Englishman desired to know what became of the relics of Becket’.

The bones were discovered while the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral was being assessed for improvements. Specifically, the investigation into the crypt was meant to find the easternmost boundaries of an eleventh-century Norman church.