Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/175

 entertaining it seems to have been merely to gain time. On 18 Nov. 1169, at Montmartre, he received a petition from Thomas, requesting that the archbishop himself and his adherents might be reinstated in the king's favour and in the enjoyment of their rights and their property. To this petition he gave a verbal assent. Thomas and the pope vainly insisted on his confirming it by giving to the archbishop the kiss of peace, and early in 1170 they learned that he was planning to have his eldest son crowned by the archbishop of York, Thomas's old rival, Roger of Pont l'Evêque. This was a clear proof that Henry had no real intention of letting the archbishop of Canterbury return home, and also a flagrant insult both to him and to his see, to which alone, save in case of absolute necessity, the right of crowning a king of England was held to appertain. The coronation was performed by Roger on 14 June, although prohibitions of it from both Thomas and Alexander had reached him on the previous day. Henry, however, seems to have felt that he had gone too far, for he hurried back to France, and met Thomas at Fréteval on 22 July. Not a word passed between them about the customs; the king promised complete restitution to the archbishop and his friends, and, after a long argument, declared himself willing ‘to be guided by the archbishop's counsel’ as to the amends due to the see of Canterbury for the violation of its rights in the matter of the coronation. The plea which he put forth in his own behalf on this last point was certainly irrelevant; it consisted in his possession of a papal brief authorising him, indeed, to have his son crowned by any bishop whom he might choose, but only during the vacancy of Canterbury, the brief having been granted for that special purpose in 1161–2, during the interval between Theobald's death and Thomas's appointment. Still worse than the king's offence was that of Roger of York, who had crowned the boy in the teeth of a direct prohibition from the pope as well as from the primate of all England. The pope's wrath was increased by a report that a very offensive change had been made in the coronation oath. On 16 Sept. he therefore suspended and censured in the severest terms Roger himself and all the bishops who had assisted him in the ceremony. These letters of suspension were sent to Thomas for transmission to England. Thomas, however, having learned that the report as to the oath was false, thought them too severe, and asked Alexander to soften their terms. Meanwhile two more meetings took place between the archbishop and the king. Henry proposed that they should go to England together, and there exchange the kiss of peace; but when the appointed time came for their voyage he sent word that he was unavoidably detained, and requested Thomas to go under the escort of John of Oxford [q. v.], who had been one of his most active and unscrupulous opponents.

Exasperated by these delays and shifts, and still more by tidings of a plot which was hatching between Roger of York, the bishops of London and Salisbury, and the sheriff of Kent, to intercept him on his landing, and seize any papal letters that he might bring with him, Thomas, on 29 Nov., sent over to England the pope's letters of 16 Sept., and they were delivered next day to Roger and the two bishops who were at Canterbury with him. On that day, 30 Nov., Thomas sailed from Wissant; on 1 Dec. he landed at Sandwich, and proceeded, amid much popular rejoicing, to Canterbury. Here he was met by a demand from some of the king's officers for the immediate and unconditional absolution of the suspended bishops. Thomas, expecting that by the amended papal letters, which he knew to be on the way, he would be empowered to deal at his own discretion with all except York, offered to absolve London and Salisbury if they would in his presence swear to obey the pope's orders. They refused, and, with Roger, went over sea to complain to the king.

Thomas set out for the court of the younger Henry at Woodstock or Winchester, but was stopped in London by an order, in the boy's name, to ‘go and perform his sacred ministry at Canterbury.’ He went back to find the long-promised restoration of his property apparently as far off as ever, and the De Broc family, one of whom had had the custody and the enjoyment of the archiepiscopal estates for many years past, occupying his castle of Saltwood, and turning it into a den of thieves. On Christmas day he again publicly excommunicated these robbers. In the afternoon of Tuesday, 29 Dec., he was visited by four knights, Hugh de Morville (d. 1204) [q. v.], William de Tracy [q. v.], Reginald Fitzurse [q. v.], and Richard le Breton, who, in the name of the elder king, from whose court they had come, again bade him absolve the bishops. He repeated his former answer to this demand, saying he could not go beyond the pope's instructions. A violent altercation ended in the withdrawal of the knights, to return at the head of an armed force supplied by the De Brocs. The archbishop's attendants dragged him into the church, and then, all save three, hid themselves in its furthest and darkest recesses, as they heard