been in a position to disappoint the King.
He could take up that proud stand now, as
head of the Church; and he determined that it
should be written in history, either that he subdued
the King, or that the King subdued him.

So, of a sudden, he completely altered the
whole manner of his life. He turned off all
his brilliant followers, ate coarse food, drank
bitter water, wore next his skin sackcloth
covered with dirt and vermin, (for it was
then thought very religious to be very dirty,)
flogged his back to punish himself, lived
chiefly in a little cell, washed the feet of
thirteen poor people every day, and looked
as miserable and humble as he possibly could.
If he had put twelve hundred monkeys on
horseback instead of twelve, and had gone in
procession with eight thousand wagons instead
of eight, he could not have astonished
the people half so much as by this great
change. It soon caused him to be more
talked about as an Archbishop than he had
been as a Chancellor.

The King was very angry, and was made
still more so, when the new Archbishop,
claiming various estates from the nobles as
being rightfully Church property, required
the King himself to give up Rochester Castle,
and Rochester City too, for the same reason.
Not satisfied with this, he declared that no
power but himself should appoint a priest to
any church in the part of England over which
he was Archbishop; and when a certain
gentleman of Kent made such an appointment,
as he claimed to have the right to do, Thomas
à Becket excommunicated him.

Excommunication was, next to the Interdict
I told you of at the close of the last
chapter, the great weapon of the clergy. It
consisted in declaring the person who was
excommunicated, an outcast from the Church
and from all religious offices, and in cursing
him all over, from the top of his head
to the sole of his foot, whether he was standing
up, lying down, sitting, kneeling, walking,
running, hopping, jumping, gaping, coughing,
sneezing, or whatever else he was doing.
This unchristian nonsense would of course
have made no sort of difference to the person
cursed—who could say his prayers at home if
he were shut out of church, and whom none
but GOD could judge—but for the fears and
superstitions of the people, who avoided
excommunicated persons, and made their lives
unhappy. So, the King said to the New
Archbishop, "Take off this Excommunication
from this gentleman of Kent." To which the
Archbishop replied, "I will do no such thing."

The quarrel went on. A priest in Worcestershire
committed a most dreadful murder,
that aroused the horror of the whole nation.
The King demanded to have this wretch
delivered up, to be tried in the same court
and in the same way as any other murderer.
The Archbishop refused, and kept him in the
Bishop's prison. The King, holding a solemn
assembly in Westminster Hall, demanded that
in future all priests found guilty before their
Bishops of crimes against the law of the land,
should be considered priests no longer, and
should be delivered over to the law of the
land for punishment. The Archbishop again
refused. The King required to know whether
the clergy would obey the ancient customs of
the country? Every priest there, but one,
said, after Thomas à Becket, " Saving my
order." This plainly meant that they would
only obey those customs when they did not
interfere with their own arrogant claims; and
the King went out of the Hall in great wrath.

Some of the clergy began to be afraid, now,
that they were going too far. Though Thomas
à Becket was otherwise as unmoved as
Westminster Hall itself, they prevailed upon him,
for the sake of their fears, to go to the King
at Woodstock, and promise to observe the
ancient customs of the country, without saying
anything about his order. The King
received this submission favorably, and
summoned a great council of the clergy to meet
at the Castle of Clarendon, by Salisbury. But
when this council met, the Archbishop again
insisted on the words "saving my order;"
and he still insisted, though lords entreated
him, and priests wept before him and knelt to
him, and an adjoining room was thrown open,
filled with armed soldiers of the King, to
threaten him. At length he gave way, for
that time, and the ancient customs (which
included what the King had demanded in
vain) were stated in writing, and were signed
and sealed by the chief of the clergy, and
were called the Constitutions of Clarendon.

The quarrel went on, for all that. The
Archbishop tried to see the King. The King
would not receive him. The Archbishop tried
to escape from England. The sailors on the
coast would launch no boat to take him away.
Then, he again resolved to do his worst in
opposition to the King, and began openly to
set the ancient customs at defiance.

The King summoned him before a great
council at Northampton, where he accused
him of high treason, and made a claim against
him, that was not a just one, for an enormous
sum of money. Thomas à Becket was alone
against the whole assembly, and the very
Bishops advised him to resign his office and
abandon his contest with the King. His
great anxiety and agitation stretched him on
a sick-bed for two days, but he rose
undaunted. He went to the adjourned council,
carrying a great cross in his right hand, and
sat down holding it erect before him. The
King angrily retired into an inner room. The
whole assembly angrily retired and left him
there. But there he sat. The Bishops came
out again in a body, and renounced him
as a traitor. He only said, "I hear," and
sat there still. They retired again into
the inner room, and his trial proceeded
without him. By-and-by, the Earl of
Leicester, heading the barons, came out to
read his sentence. He refused to hear it