his victim. The
strictest orders were issued that every passenger from beyond the sea
should be searched; that all letters from the Pope or the Archbishop
should be seized; that the bearers should suffer the most severe and
shameful punishments; and that all freemen, in the courts to which
they owed service, should promise upon oath not to obey any censure
published by ecclesiastical authority against the King or the kingdom.
But it was for his Continental dominions that he felt chiefly alarmed.
There the great barons, who hated his government, would gladly embrace
the opportunity to revolt; and the King of France, his natural
opponent, would instantly lend them his aid against the enemy of the
Church. Hence for some years the principal object of his policy was to
avert or at least to delay the blow which he so much dreaded.

As long as the Pope was a fugitive in France, dependent on the bounty
of his adherents, the King had hoped that his necessities would compel
him to abandon the Primate. But the antipope was now dead; and though
the Emperor had raised up a second in the person of Guido of Crema,
Alexander had returned to Italy, and recovered possession of Rome.
Henry therefore resolved to try the influence of terror, by
threatening to espouse the cause of Guido. He even opened a
correspondence with the Emperor; and in a general diet at Wuerzburg
his ambassadors made oath in the name of their master, that he would
reject Alexander, and obey the authority of his rival. Of this fact
there cannot be a doubt. It was announced to the German nations by an
imperial edict, and is attested by an eye-witness, who from the
council wrote to the Pope a full account of the transaction.

Henry, however, soon repented of his precipitancy. In 1167 his bishops
refused to disgrace themselves by transferring their obedience at the
nod of their prince; and he was unwilling to involve himself in a new
and apparently a hopeless quarrel. To disguise or excuse his conduct
he disavowed the act, attributed it to his envoys, and afterward
induced them also to deny it. John of Oxford was despatched to Rome,
who, in the presence of Alexander, swore that at Wuerzburg he had done
nothing contrary to the faith of the Church or to the honor and
service of the Pontiff.

His next expedient was one which had been prohibited by the
Constitutions of Clarendon. He repeatedly authorized his bishops to
appeal in their name and his own from the judgment o