chment of
bishops and clergy to watch the trial. They returned with the news that
the court had refused to reconsider the charge of manslaughter, and had
merely condemned Philip for insolence; he was ordered to make personal
satisfaction to the sheriff, standing (clerk as he was) naked before
him, and submitting to a heavy fine; his prebend was to be forfeited to
the king for two years; for those two years he was to be exiled and his
movable goods were confiscated.

The punishment might seem severe enough, but Henry would accept no
compromise. With a burst of fury he declared that just judgment for
murder was refused because the offender was in orders. Resolute that the
question should once for all be settled, he summoned a council at
Westminster on October 1. There he demanded, "for love of him and for
safety of the kingdom," that accused clerks should be tried by the
common law, and that if proved guilty, they should be degraded by the
bishops, and given up to the executioner for punishment. He complained
of the exactions of the ecclesiastical courts, and urged that in all
matters concerning these courts or the rights of the clergy, the bishops
should return to the customs of Henry the First. Such a course would
have left them at the king's mercy, and the prelates wavered in their
sore distress. The king's friends contended that a guilty clerk deserved
punishment double that of a layman, and urged the need of submission at
this moment when the Church was torn asunder by schism; and the bishops
frankly admitted a yet more pressing consideration: "For if we do not
what the king wishes," they said, "flight will be cut off from us, and
no man will seek after our souls; but if we consent to the king, we
shall own the sanctuary of God in heredity, and shall sleep safely in
the possession of our churches." On the other hand, the archbishop had
no mind to resign without a contest all the results of the great tide of
feeling which had swept the Church onward far past its old landmarks.
For him there was no going back to a traditional past from which the
Church had shaken itself free, and in which, though king and barons
might see the freedom of the State, he saw the enslaving and degradation
of the clergy. He vehemently asserted that the "customs" of the Church
were of greater authority than any "customs" of the kingdom, that its
canon law claimed obedience as against all traditional national law
whatever; and with keen politi