6. Archbishop Thomas. 1162.—Henry, who meditated great judicial reforms, foresaw that the clergy would be an obstacle in his way. He was eager to establish one law for his whole kingdom, and the clergy, having been exempted by the Conqueror from the jurisdiction of the ordinary law courts in all ecclesiastical matters, had, during the anarchy of Stephen's reign, encroached on the royal authority, and claimed to be responsible, even in criminal cases, only to the ecclesiastical courts, which were unable to inflict the penalty of death, so that a clerk who committed a murder could not be hanged like other murderers. As large numbers of clerks were only in the lower orders, and as many of them had only taken those orders to escape from the hardships of lay life, their morals were often no better than those of their lay neighbours. A vacancy occurring in the Archbishopric of Canterbury, Henry, who wished to make these clerks punishable by his own courts, thought that the arrangement would easily be effected if Thomas, who had hitherto been active as a reformer in his service, were Archbishop as well as Chancellor. It was in vain that Thomas remonstrated. "I warn you," he said to Henry, "that, if such a thing should be, our friendship would soon turn to bitter hate." Henry persisted in spite of the warning, and Thomas became Archbishop.
7. Breach between Henry and Thomas.—The first act of the new Archbishop was to surrender his Chancellorship. He was unable, he said, to serve two masters. It is not difficult to understand his motives. The Church, as the best men of the twelfth century believed, was divinely instituted for the guidance of the world. It was but a short step for the nobler spirits amongst the clergy to hold it necessary that, in order to secure the due performance of such exalted duties, the clergy should be exempted from the so-called justice of laymen, which was often only another name for tyranny, even if the exemption led to the infliction upon wicked clerks of lesser punishments than were meet. In this way the clergy would unconsciously fall into the frame of mind which might lead them to imagine it more to the honour of God that a wicked clerk should be insufficiently punished than that he should be punished by a layman. Of all men Archbishop Thomas was the most likely to fall into this mistake. He was, as Chancellor, prone to magnify his office, and to think more of being the originator of great reforms than of the great reforms themselves. As Archbishop he would also be sure to magnify his office, and to think less, as Anselm would have thought, of reconciling the true interests of the kingdom with the true interests of the Church, than of making the Archbishop's authority the centre of stirring movement, and of raising the Church, of which he was the highest embodiment in England, to a position above the power of the king. All this he would do with a great, if not a complete, sincerity. He would feel that he was himself the greater man because he believed that he was fighting in the cause of God.
A bishop ordaining a priest.
(From a MS. of the latter part of the twelfth century.)
8. The Constitutions of Clarendon. 1164.—Between a king eager to assert the rights of the crown and an archbishop eager to assert the rights of the clergy a quarrel could not be long deferred. Thomas's first stand, however, was on behalf of the whole country. At a Great Council at Woodstock he resisted the king's resolution to levy the old tax of Danegeld, and in consequence Danegeld was never levied again. Henry had for some time been displeased because, without consulting him, the Archbishop had seized on lands which he claimed as the property of the see of Canterbury, and had excommunicated one of the king's tenants. Then a clerk who had committed a rape and a murder had been acquitted in an ecclesiastical court. On this, Henry called on the bishops to promise to obey the customs of the realm. Thomas, being told that the king merely wanted a verbal promise to save his dignity, with some reluctance consented. He soon found that he had been tricked. In 1164 Henry summoned a Great Council to meet at Clarendon, and directed some of the oldest of his barons to set down in writing the customs observed by his grandfather. Their report was intended to settle all disputed points between the king and the clergy, and was drawn up under sixteen heads known as the Constitutions of Clarendon. The most important of them declared that beneficed clergy should not leave the realm without the king's leave; that no tenant-in-chief of the king should be excommunicated without the king's knowledge; that no villein should be ordained without his lord's consent; that a criminous clerk should be sent to the ecclesiastical court for trial, and that after he had been there convicted or had pleaded guilty the Church should deprive him and leave him to the lay court for further punishment. It was for the Curia Regis to determine what matters were properly to be decided by the ecclesiastical courts; and no appeal to Rome was to be allowed without its permission. To all this Thomas was violently opposed, maintaining that the sentence of deprivation, which was all that an ecclesiastical court was empowered to inflict, was so terrible, that one who had incurred it ought not to be sentenced to any further penalty by a lay court. After six days' struggle he left the Council, refusing to assent to the Constitutions.
9. The Persecution of Archbishop Thomas. 1164.—Unluckily for himself, Henry could not be content firmly and quietly to enforce the law as it had been declared at Clarendon. He had in his character much of the orderly spirit of his grandfather, Henry I., but he had also something of the violence of his great-uncle, William II. A certain John the Marshal had a suit against the archbishop, and when the archbishop refused to plead in a lay court, the king's council sentenced him to a fine of 500l. Then Henry summoned the archbishop to his castle at Northampton to give an account of all the money which, when he was Chancellor, he had received from the king—a claim which is said to have amounted to 30,000l., a sum equal in the money of these days to not much less than 400,000l. now. Thomas, with the crucifix in his hand, awaited in the hall the decision of Henry, who with the council was discussing his fate in an upper chamber. When the Justiciar came out to tell him that he had been declared a traitor he refused to listen, and placed himself under the Pope's protection. Hot words were bandied on either side as he walked out of the hall. "This is a fearful day," said one of his attendants. "The Day of Judgment," replied Thomas, "will be more fearful." Thomas made his way to the coast and fled to France. Henry in his wrath banished no less than four hundred of the archbishop's kinsmen and friends. Thomas found less help in France than he had expected. There were once more two rival Popes—Alexander III., who was acknowledged by the greater part of the clergy and by the kings of England and France, and Calixtus III., who had been set up by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Alexander was too much afraid lest Henry should take the part of Calixtus to be very eager in supporting Thomas. He therefore did his best to effect a reconciliation between Henry and Thomas, but for some years his efforts were of no avail.