V. Appeals lay from the archdeacon to the bishop, from the bishop to the Archbishop. On failure of justice by the Archbishop, in the last resort to the King, who was to take care that justice was done in the Archbishop's Court; and no further appeal was to be made without the King's consent. This was manifestly and avowedly intended to limit appeals to Rome.
All these statutes, in number sixteen, were restrictions on the distinctive immunities of the clergy; one, and that unnoticed, was really an invasion of popular freedom; no son of a villein could be ordained without the consent of his lord.
Some of these customs were of doubtful authenticity. On the main question, the exorbitant powers of the ecclesiastical courts and the immunity of the clergy from all other jurisdiction, there was an unrepealed statute of William the Conqueror. Before the Conquest the bishop sate with the alderman in the same court. The statute of William created a separate jurisdiction of great extent in the spiritual court. This was not done to aggrandize the Church, of which in some respects the Conqueror was jealous, but to elevate the importance of the great Norman prelates whom he had thrust into the English sees. It raised another class of powerful feudatories to support the foreign throne, bound to it by common interest as well as by the attachment of race. But at this time neither party took any notice of the ancient statute. The King's advisers of course avoided the dangerous question; Becket and the Churchmen (Becket himself declared that he was unlearned in the customs), standing on the divine and indefeasible right of the clergy, could hardly rest on a recent statute granted by the royal will, and therefore liable to be annulled by the same authority. The Customs, they averred, were of themselves illegal, as clashing with higher irrepealable laws.
To these Customs Becket had now sworn without reserve. Three copies were ordered to be made—one for the Archbishop of Canterbury, one for York, one to be laid up in the royal archives. To these the King demanded the further guarantee of the seal of the different parties. The Primate, whether already repenting of his assent, or under the vague impression that this was committing himself still further (for oaths might be absolved, seals could not be torn from public documents), now obstinately refused to make any further concession. The refusal threw suspicion on the sincerity of his former act. The King, the other prelates, the nobles, all but Becket,[60] subscribed and sealed the Constitutions of Clarendon as the laws of England.
April 1.
As the Primate rode from Winchester in profound silence, meditating on the acts of the council and on his own conduct, one of his attendants, who has himself related the conversation, endeavored to raise his spirits. "It is a fit punishment," said Becket, "for one who, not trained in the school of the Saviour, but in the King's court, a man of pride and vanity, from a follower of hawks and hounds, a patron of players, has dared to assume the care of so many souls."[61] De Bosham significantly reminded his master of St. Peter, his denial of the Lord, his subsequent repentance. On his return to Canterbury Becket imposed upon himself the severest mortification, and suspended himself from his function of offering the sacrifice on the altar. He wrote almost immediately to the Pope to seek counsel and absolution from his oath. He received both. The absolution restored all his vivacity.
But the King had likewise his emissaries with the Pope at Sens. He endeavored to obtain a legatine commission over the whole realm of England for Becket's enemy, Roger Archbishop of York, and a recommendation from the Pope to Becket to observe the "customs" of the realm. Two embassies were sent by the King for this end: first the Bishops of Lisieux and Poitiers; then Geoffrey Ridel, Archdeacon of Canterbury (who afterwards appears so hostile to the Primate as to be called by him that archdevil, not archdeacon), and the subtle John of Oxford. The embarrassed Pope (throughout it must be remembered that there was a formidable Antipope), afraid at once of estranging Henry, and unwilling to abandon Becket, granted the legation to the Archbishop of York. To the Primate's great indignation, Roger had his cross borne before him in the province of Canterbury. On Becket's angry remonstrance, the Pope, while on the one hand he enjoined on Becket the greatest caution and forbearance in the inevitable contest, assured him that he would never permit the see of Canterbury to be subject to any authority but his own.[62]
Becket secretly went down to his estate at Romney, near the sea-coast, in the hope of crossing the straits, and so finding refuge and maintaining his cause by his personal presence with the Pope. Stormy weather forced him to abandon his design. He then betook himself to the King at Woodstock. He was coldly received. The King at first dissembled his knowledge of the Primate's attempt to cross the sea, a direct violation of one of the constitutions; but on his departure he asked with bitter jocularity whether Becket had sought to leave the realm because England could not contain himself and the King.[63]
The tergiversation of Becket, and his attempt thus to violate one of the Constitutions of Clarendon, to which he had sworn, showed that he was not to be bound by oaths. No treaty could be made where one party claimed the power of retracting, and might at any time be released from his covenant. In the mind of Henry, whose will had never yet met resistance, the determination was confirmed, if he could not subdue the Prelate, to crush the refractory subject. Becket's enemies possessed the King's ear. Some of those enemies no doubt hated him for his former favor with the King, some dreaded lest the severity of so inflexible a prelate should curb their license, some held property belonging to or claimed by the Church, some to flatter the King, some in honest indignation at the duplicity of Becket and in love of peace, but all concurred to inflame the resentment of Henry, and to attribute to Becket words and designs insulting to the King and disparaging to the royal authority. Becket, holding such notions as he did of Church power, would not be cautious in asserting it; and whatever he might utter in his pride would be embittered rather than softened when repeated to the King.
Since the Council of Clarendon Becket stood alone. All the higher clergy, the great prelates of the kingdom, were now either his open adversaries or were compelled to dissemble their favor towards him. Whether alienated, as some declared, by his pusillanimity at Clarendon, bribed by the gifts or overawed by the power of the King, whether conscientiously convinced that in such times of schism and division it might be fatal to the interests of the Church to advance her loftiest pretensions, all, especially the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of London, Salisbury and Chichester, were arrayed on the King's side. Becket himself attributed the chief guilt of his persecution to the bishops. "The King would have been quiet if they had not been so tamely subservient to his wishes."[64]