Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/174

 forty-four thousand marks. Thomas's protest against the injustice of this demand, his offer of two thousand marks as a compromise, and his plea that at his consecration he had been released by the child Henry and the justiciars, in the king's name, from all secular obligations, were successively rejected. A two days' adjournment followed, owing to Sunday and the illness of the primate. On Tuesday morning, 13 Oct., all the bishops came to him, and begged him to submit himself unreservedly to the king's will. Thomas forbade them to take part in any further proceedings against him, their father and metropolitan, and warned them that if they did so he appealed against them to the pope. After celebrating the mass of St. Stephen, with its significant introit, ‘Princes did sit and speak against me,’ he rode to the castle and, followed only by two clerks, entered the council-hall, cross in hand. It was usual for the archbishop's cross to be borne before him by an attendant, and in thus holding it in his own hands Thomas was thought to be lifting up the symbol of his spiritual authority in declared rivalry with the temporal authority of the king. When Henry, who was in another room, heard of these proceedings, he sent down a message to the primate, bidding him withdraw his threat of appeal against the bishops, and submit to the council's judgment as to the chancery accounts. On Thomas's refusal the whole council, now gathered in the king's chamber, was bidden to pass sentence on him as a traitor; but the bishops obtained leave to appeal to Rome against him instead. The justiciar was sent down to deliver the sentence of the lay barons. Thomas checked him at the outset by appealing to the pope, and with uplifted cross made his way through the mob of angry courtiers, some of whose insults he did not scruple to return, out of the castle. As Henry refused to answer till the morrow his request for a safe-conduct out of England, he fled secretly in the night.

On 2 Nov. Thomas sailed in disguise from Sandwich; next morning he landed in Flanders; a fortnight later he was welcomed at Soissons by Louis of France; and a week later still he laid at the feet of Alexander III, at Sens, first the constitutions of Clarendon, on which he besought the pope's judgment, and next his own pontifical ring, in token of his desire to relinquish an office into which he had been intruded by the royal power, and in which he considered himself to have failed. Alexander pronounced six of the constitutions individually ‘tolerable,’ but condemned them as a whole, and he bade the archbishop take back his ring and his office. On 30 Nov. Thomas went to live in the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny (Burgundy). At Christmas Henry confiscated the property of his see, and banished all his relatives, friends, and servants. The pope himself, an exile, driven from Rome by the anti-pope, who was backed by the emperor, feared that any strong measures might provoke the English king into joining this schismatic alliance. It was therefore not till the spring of 1166 that he gave Thomas leave to take against Henry whatever steps he might choose. Thomas wrote to Henry two letters of remonstrance which were not answered. He then, in a third letter, threatened him with excommunication, and prepared, by spending three nights (31 May to 2 June) in vigil before three famous shrines at Soissons, to fulfil his threat on Whit-Sunday, 12 June, at Vézelay; but hearing that Henry was dangerously ill, he contented himself with publicly repeating his threat, anathematising the royal customs, and excommunicating seven of Henry's counsellors. Henry's announcement in September of his resolve to expel all Cistercians from his dominions if the order continued to shelter Thomas compelled the latter to remove (November) from Pontigny to Ste. Colombe at Sens, a Benedictine abbey under the special protection of the French king. Henry himself now asked the pope to send legates to settle the dispute. This Alexander could not do without overriding a commission as legate for England which he had given to Thomas at Easter (24 April 1166). His envoys were therefore empowered merely to act as arbitrators; and neither party in the case would submit to their arbitration. Negotiations dragged on till 6 Jan. 1169, when Thomas suddenly presented himself before the two kings in conference at Montmirail, and, falling at Henry's feet, offered to be reconciled to him at his discretion; but he added, ‘saving God's honour and my order,’ i.e. he refused to pledge himself to acceptance of the customs, and Henry on this drove him angrily away. He excommunicated two of his disobedient suffragans and eight usurpers of church property on Palm Sunday, 13 April, at Clairvaux, and six other persons on Ascension day, 29 May. He also proclaimed that if Henry did not amend before 2 Feb. 1170, England should then be placed under interdict.

At last a project was devised for effecting a personal reconciliation between Thomas and Henry without any mention of the customs. Thomas, somewhat unwillingly, yielded to this scheme for the sake of getting back to England. Henry's object in