Thomas Becket’s skull will be included in a British Museum exhibition on the murdered churchman after years of talks with Catholic school.

In 1170, Becket, then Archbishop of Canterbury, was martyred in the city's cathedral by four knights loyal to Henry II after he had clashed with the king over the extent of Church powers.

He was swiftly canonised as a Christian martyr and his shattered skull was preserved as a holy relic which eventually found its way into the care of the Stonyhurst College Catholic school in Lancashire.

After four years of discussions with the school, the British Museum has secured the skull as the focal point for its upcoming exhibition Thomas Becket:  Murder and the Making of a Saint.

The bone fragment, going on display in a secular setting for only the second time, will be used to demythologise the murder and remind visitors how “horrifyingly violent” Becket’s death was.

Curator Lloyd de Beer said:  “It is kept, as a precious relic, at Stonyhurst College.  We have been talking to them for some years about this.

“It will be the final exhibit in the show, a last moment of connection with the real man at the heart of the story.”

Becket’s skull was dashed by the sword of one of the knights that undertook to murder him, and his vestments, blood, and other bones became central to the cult of the saint which endured for centuries.

Canterbury became a key site of pilgrimage, central to Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury tales, and remained so until the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII.

The skull fragment has safely been held by the Jesuits at Stonyhurst since this period of upheaval in the 1500’s, and has only been displayed outside a religious setting once before for a British Museum exhibition in 2011.