policy. Neither Pope nor people had any share in their
election. Their estates were granted them by the same titles, and with the
same obligations as those of feudal barons; the king could withhold their
temporalities, sequestrate their lands, confiscate their personal goods,
and burden them with heavy fines; they lay absolutely at his mercy without
appeal. Every tie of feudal duty, of official training, of prudent
self-interest, forced them into subjection to the Crown. Their Roman
sympathies were quenched as they watched the growing independence of the
monasteries, and saw Church endowments taken to enrich the new religious
houses of every kind which were springing up all over England. They feared
the new authority claimed by legates, which threatened to withdraw the
clergy, if they chose to assert their claims, from regular episcopal
jurisdiction. They were thrown on the side of the king in ecclesiastical
questions, drawn together by a common cause, both alike found their
interest in the defence of national tradition as opposed to foreign
custom.

Their leaders too looked coldly on the cause of the Primate. The
Archbishop of York, Roger of Pont l'Eveque, once the companion of Thomas
in Theobald's household, was now his personal enemy and rival. The two
prelates inherited the secular strife as to which see should have the
precedence. Moreover, while Canterbury represented the papal policy and
always looked to Rome, York preserved some faint traditional leanings
towards the liberties of the Irish and Scotch churches from whence the
Christianity of the north had sprung. The Bishop of London, Gilbert
Foliot, who, with the approval of Thomas, had been translated from
Hereford only five months before, was, by his mere position, marked out
as the chief antagonist of the archbishop, for St Pauls was at the head
of the whole body of secular clergy throughout southern England, and to
its bishop inevitably fell the leadership of this party against
Canterbury, which was in the hands of a monastic chapter. The Bishop of
Winchester, Henry of Blois, could well remember the struggle between
Church and Crown under a far weaker king twenty six years before, when
the bishops had wisely withdrawn from a contest where they had "seen
swords unsheathed and knew it was no longer a joking matter, but a
struggle of life and death," and with the prudence born of long political
experience he was for moderate counsels. The Bishop of Chichester,