the
election of the higher clergy free, nor allow their excommunication to
be valid without State control; he not only maintained the right of
the lay courts to try ecclesiastics for heinous offences, which else
often remained unpunished; but, even in the sphere of spiritual
jurisdiction, he claimed to hear appeals in the last instance without
regard to the Pope. In all this the lay and spiritual nobility agreed
with him; in a Council at Clarendon they framed 'constitutions,' in
which they declared these rules to be the law of the realm, as it had
always been observed, and ought to be observed henceforth.[24]

Becket did not possess the inflexible obstinacy which distinguishes
most of the champions of the hierarchy. As the accordant voice of
Europe moved him to take up the hierarchic principles, so now the
accordant voice of his country's rulers made an impression on him: he
listened to the ecclesiastics who entreated him not to draw the King's
displeasure on them, and to the laymen, who prayed him not to bring on
them the necessity of executing it on the ecclesiastics: he virtually
accepted the Constitutions of Clarendon. But then again he could not
prevail on himself to observe them. Only when his vacillation
endangered him personally, so that he could expect nothing else to
follow but a condemnation by a new assembly of the royal court, did he
come to a decision. Then he took the hierarchic side resolutely; in
contradiction to the Constitutions, he appealed to the Pope. It is a
remarkable day in English history, that 14th October 1164, on which
Thomas Becket, after reading mass, appeared before the court without
his archiepiscopal dress, but cross in hand. He forbade the earl, who
wished to announce the judgment to him, to speak, since no layman had
power to sit in judgment on his spiritual father;[25] he again put
himself under the protection of God and the Roman Church, and then
passed from the court, no man venturing to lay hands on him, still
armed with his cross, to a church close by, from whence he escaped to
the Continent. By this he brought into England the war of the two
powers, which had already burst into flame in Italy and Germany. The
archbishop and primate rejected the supreme judicial authority of the
Curia Regis; only in the chief pontiff at Rome did he recognise his
rightful judge: by undertaking to bring into full view the complete
independence of the spiritual principle on this ground also, he bro