een
declared free from all secular engagements, he resigned that office
into the hands of the King.

This total change of conduct has been viewed with admiration or
censure according to the candor or prejudices of the beholders. By his
contemporaries it was universally attributed to a conscientious sense
of duty: modern writers have frequently described it as a mere
affectation of piety, under which he sought to conceal projects of
immeasurable ambition. But how came this hypocrisy, if it existed, to
elude, during a long and bitter contest, the keen eyes of his
adversaries? A more certain path would surely have offered itself to
ambition. By continuing to flatter the King's wishes, and by uniting
in himself the offices of chancellor and archbishop, he might in all
probability have ruled without control both in church and state.

For more than twelve months the primate appeared to enjoy his wonted
ascendency in the royal favor. But during his absence the warmth of
Henry's affection insensibly evaporated. The sycophants of the court,
who observed the change, industriously misrepresented the actions of
the Archbishop, and declaimed in exaggerated terms against the
loftiness of his views, the superiority of his talents, and the
decision of his character. Such hints made a deep impression on the
suspicious and irritable mind of the King, who now began to pursue his
late favorite with a hatred as vehement as had been the friendship
with which he had formerly honored him.

Amidst a number of discordant statements it is difficult to fix on the
original ground of the dissension between them; whether it were the
Archbishop's resignation of the chancellorship, or his resumption of
the lands alienated from his see, or his attempt to reform the
clergymen who attended the court, or his opposition to the revival of
the odious tax known by the name of the _danegelt_.[28] But that which
brought them into immediate collision was a controversy respecting the
jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. A rapid view of the origin
and progress of these courts, and of their authority in civil and
criminal causes, may not prove uninteresting to the reader.

From the commencement of Christianity its professors had been exhorted
to withdraw their differences from the cognizance of profane
tribunals, and to submit them to the paternal authority of their
bishops, who, by the nature of their office, were bound to heal the
wounds of dissension,