Thomas, however, was determined
to return, and to return with uncompromising defiance. He sent before him
letters excommunicating the bishops of London and Salisbury, and
suspending the Bishop of Durham and the Archbishop of York, for having
joined in the coronation; and on the following day, under the protection
of John of Oxford as the king's officer, he landed at Sandwich. The
excommunications had set the whole quarrel aflame again, and John of
Oxford with difficulty prevented open fighting. The royal officers
demanded absolution for the bishops. Thomas flatly refused unless they
would swear to appear at his court for justice, an oath which the bishops
in their terror of the king dared not take. They fled to Henry's court in
Normandy; while on the 1st of December Thomas passed on to Canterbury. The
men of Kent were stout defenders of their customary rights; they clung
tenaciously to their special privileges; they had their own views of
inheritance, their fixed standard of fines, their belief that the Crown
had no right to the property of thief or murderer, who had been
hanged--"the father to the bough, the son to the plough," said they, in
Kent at least. They were a very mixed population, constantly recruited
from the neighbouring coasts. They held the outposts of the country as the
advanced guard formally charged with the defence of its shores from
foreign invasion, which was a very present terror in those days. Lying
near the Continent they caught every rumour of the liberties won by the
Flemish towns or French communes; commerce and manufacture were doing
their work in the ports and among the iron mines of the forests; and it
seems as though the shire very early took up the part it was to play
again and again in medieval history, and even later, as the asserter and
defender of popular privileges. From such a temper Thomas was certain to
find sympathy as he passed through the country in triumph. At Canterbury
the monks received him as an angel of God, crying, "Blessed be he that
cometh in the name of the Lord." "I am come to die among you," said
Thomas in his sermon. "In this church there are martyrs," he said again,
"and God will soon increase their number." A few days later he made a
triumphant progress through London on his way to visit the young king;
his fellow-citizens crowded round him with loud blessings, while a
procession of three hundred poor scholars and London clerks raised a
loud Te Deumas Thomas rode