, "the king knowing
nothing." A new access of panic seized the bishops. "If he should be
captured or slain what remains to us but to be cast out of our offices
and honours to everlasting shame!" With faces of abject terror they
surrounded Thomas, and the Bishop of Winchester implored him to resign
his see. "The same day and the same hour," he answered, "shall end my
bishopric and my life." "Would to God," cried Hilary, "that thou wert
and shouldst remain only Thomas without any other dignity whatever!"
But Thomas refused all compromise; he had not been summoned to answer
in this cause; he had already suffered against law for men of Kent and
of the sea-border charged with the defence of the coast might be fined
only one-third as much as the inland men; at his consecration, too, he
had been freed from any responsibility incurred as chancellor; he asserted
his right of appeal; and he had meanwhile forbidden the bishops to judge
him in any charge that referred to the time before he was Primate.
Silently the king's messenger returned with his answer. "Behold, we have
heard the blasphemy of prohibition out of his mouth!" cried the barons
and officers, and courtiers turning their heads and throwing sidelong
glances at him, whispered loudly that William who had conquered England,
and even Geoffrey of Anjou, had known how to subdue clerks.

On hearing the message the king at once ordered bishops and barons to
proceed to the trial of the Primate for this new act of contempt of the
King's Court. "In a strait place you have put us," Hilary broke out
bitterly to Thomas, "by your prohibition you have set us between the
hammer and the anvil!" In vain they again entreated Thomas to yield; in
vain they begged the king's leave to sit apart from the barons. Even the
Archbishop of York and Foliot sought anxiously for some escape from
obeying Henry's orders, and at the head of the bishops prayed that they
might themselves appeal to Rome, and thus deal with their own special
grievances against Thomas, who had ordered them to swear and then to
forswear themselves. To this Henry agreed, and from this time the
prelates sat apart, no longer forced to join in the proceedings of the
lay lords; while Henry added to the Council certain sheriffs and lesser
barons "ancient in days." The assembly thus remodelled formally condemned
the archbishop as a traitor, and the earls of Leicester and of Cornwall
were sent to pronounce judgment. But the sentence wa