Henry the Second 14

Henry the Second 14

Meanwhile the king and his inner council, to which the bishops were

now summoned, were busy discussing what must be done. Henry's position

was one of extreme difficulty, suddenly called on as he was to deal

with a legacy of difficulties which had been left from the unsettled

controversies of a hundred years. By coming to the court in his pontifical

dress Thomas had raised a claim that a bishop could only be tried dressed

in full pontificals by his fellow-bishops also in full dress. He had

thrown aside the king's jurisdiction by his appeal to Rome; and by his

orders to the bishops to judge no further with the barons in this suit

he had further violated the "customs" of the realm to which he had himself

commanded the bishops to swear obedience at Clarendon. None of the

questions raised by Thomas indeed were raised for the first time. William

of St. Carileph, when charged by Rufus with treason, had asserted the

privilege of a bishop to be tried in pontifical dress, and to be judged

only by the canon law in an ecclesiastical court, and had claimed the

right of appeal to Rome. But such doctrines were in those days new and

somewhat doubtful, not supported in any degree by the Church and quite

outside the sympathy of nobles and people, and Lanfranc had easily

eluded the Bishop of Durham's claims. Anselm himself had accepted

a number of points disputed now by Thomas. He frankly admitted the king's

authority in appointing him to the see of Canterbury; he submitted to the

jurisdiction of the King's Court; he made no claims to clerical privileges

or special forms of trial. He had indeed given the first example of a

saving clause in his oath to keep the customs of the kingdom; but the

clause he used, "according to God," was radically different from that of

Thomas, and asserted no different law of obedience for clerk and

for layman. In the reign of Stephen the question of ecclesiastical

jurisdiction ad been raised at the trial of Bishop Roger of Salisbury; but

in this case too the difficulty had been evaded by a temporary expedient,

and the real principle at issue was left untouched. Thomas had in fact

taken up a position which had never been claimed by any great churchman

of the past. The rising tide of ecclesiastical feeling had swept him on

far beyond any of his predecessors. Not even in Anselm's time had the

people in an ecstasy of religious fervour pressed to the gate of the

judgment hall and knelt for the blessing of the saint with a passion of

sympathy and devotion. No problem of such proportions in the relations of

Church and State had ever before presented itself to a king of England.

 

Henry's first step was to send orders to the archbishop to withdraw his

appeal to Rome and his prohibition to the bishops to proceed in the

trial, and to submit to the King's Court in the matter of the chancery

accounts. Secret friends in the Council sent the archbishop strange

warnings. Henry, some said, was planning his death; according to others

the royal officers were laying plots for it secretly, "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 was never spoken. Thomas

sprang up, cross in hand, and passionately forbade Leicester to speak.

"How can you refuse to obey," said Leicester, "seeing you are the king's

man, and hold your possessions as a fief from him?" "God forbid!" said

Thomas; "I hold nothing whatever of him in fief, for whatever the Church

holds it holds in perpetual liberty, not in subjection to any earthly

sovereignty whatever.... I am your father, you princes of the palace,

lay powers, secular persons; as gold is better than lead, so is the

spiritual better than the lay power.... By my authority I forbid you to

pronounce the sentence." As the nobles retired the archbishop raised his

cross: "I also withdraw," he said, "for the hour is past." Cries of

"Traitor!" followed him down the hall. Knights and barons rushed after him

with bundles of straw and sticks snatched up from the floor, and a clamour

rose "as if the four parts of the city had been given to flames and the

assault of enemies." He made his way slowly through the weeping crowd

outside to the monastery of St. Andrews. That night he fled from

Northampton. The darkness was "as a covering" to him, and a terrible storm

and pelting rain hid the sound of his horse's feet as he passed at

midnight through the town, and out by an unguarded gate to the north. At

dawn of day the anxious Henry of Winchester came to ask for news. "He is

doing well," Thomas's servant whispered in his ear, "for last night he

went away from us, and we do not know whither he has gone." "By the

blessing of God!" cried the bishop, weeping and sighing. When the news was

brought to the king he stood speechless for some moments, choked by his

fury, till at last catching his breath, "We have not done with him yet!"

he exclaimed.

 

It seemed, indeed, as though the Council of Northampton had brought

nothing but failure and disaster. The king's whole scheme of reform

depended on the ruin or the submission of the Primate, who was its open

and formidable opponent. But Thomas was free and was now more dangerous

than ever. The Church was alarmed, suspicious, perplexed. It was not ten

years since Henry had made his first journey round the kingdom with

Archbishop Theobald at his side, as the king chosen and appointed by the

spiritual power to put down violence and repress a lawless baronage. But

now he could no longer look for the aid of the Church; all dream of

orderly legislation seemed over. Amid all his violence, however, the

king's sincere attempt to maintain the outward authority of law made of

the Council of Northampton a great event in our constitutional history.

It showed that the rule of pure despotism was over. A new step was taken

too in the political education of the nation. Thrown back on the support

of his own officials and of the baronage, Henry used the nobles as he

had once used the Church. Greater and lesser barons sat together in the

King's Council for the first time when Henry summoned sheriffs and

knights from the hall of Northampton Castle to the inner council

chamber. He taught the nobles their strength when he called the whole

assembly of his barons to discuss questions of spiritual jurisdiction.

It was at Northampton that he gave them their first training in political

action--a training whose full results were seen half a century later in

the winning of Magna Charta.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VI

 

 

THE ASSIZE OF CLARENDON

 

The flight of the archbishop marked the opening of a new phase in the

struggle. Thomas sought refuge at the Papal Court at Sens. There

kneeling at Alexander's feet, and surrounded by weeping cardinals, he

delivered into the Pope's hands the written "customs" which had been

forced upon him at Clarendon, and resigned the see of Canterbury to

receive it back again with all honour. Alexander had indeed but limited

sympathy with the fiery zealot, but he had practically no choice of

action in face of the resistance with which the clergy would have met

any sacrifice of ecclesiastical to secular authority. For two years at a

monastery in Pontigny then for four at Sens, the archbishop lived the

life of an austere Cistercian monk, edifying the community with his

fastings, scourgings, and prayers. The canon law again became his

constant study, and throughout the churches of Gaul he sought for books

which might be copied for the library at Canterbury. He was soon

fortified with visions of martyrdom, and prepared himself fitly to

fulfil this glorious destiny. Nor did he forget the uses of political

intrigue; it was easy to enlist on his side the orthodoxy of the French

king and of the house of Blois; and the intimate knowledge which he had

of his master's continental policy was henceforth at the disposal of the

hereditary enemies of Henry. A tumult of political alarms filled the

air. Ambassadors from both sides hurried to every court, to the Emperor,

the Pope, the King of France, the Count of Flanders, the Empress Matilda

at Rouen. It was the beginning of six years of incessant diplomatic

intrigue, and of almost ceaseless war. The conflict, transferred from

England to France, rapidly widened into a strife, not now for the

maintenance of the king's authority in England, but for his actual

supremacy over the whole empire. Instead of the great questions of

principle which had given dignity to the earlier stages of the dispute,

the quarrel sank into a bitter personal wrangle, an ignoble strife which

left to later generations no great example, no fruitful precedent, no

victory won for liberty or order, for Church or State.

 

The Constitutions of Clarendon two years before had lain down the

principles which were to regulate the relations in England of Church and

State. The Assize of Clarendon laid down the principles on which the

administration of justice was to be carried out. Just as Henry had

undertaken to bring Church courts and Church law under the king's

control, so now he aimed at bringing all local and rival jurisdictions

whatever into the same obedience. In form the new law was simple enough.

It consisted of twenty-two articles which were drawn up for the use of

the judges who were about to make their circuits of the provinces. The

first articles described the manner in which criminals were to be

"presented" before the justices or sheriff. The accusation was to be

made by "juries," composed of twelve men of the hundred and four men of

the township; the "presentment" of a criminal by a jury such as this