them formidable advantages.  The English Church was no longer as in earlier times distinct from the rest of Christendom, but was brought directly under Roman influence.  The clergy were more and more separated from their lay fellow citizens; their rights and duties were determined on different principles; they were governed by their own officers and judged by their own laws, and tried in their own courts; they looked for their supreme tribunal of appeal not to the King’s Court, but to Rome; they became, in fact, practically freed from the common law.

No king, and Henry least of all, could watch unmoved the first great body which threatened to stand wholly outside the law of the land; and the ecclesiastical pretensions of the time were perhaps well matched by the pretensions of the State.  The king had prepared for the coming conflict by a characteristic act of high-handed imperiousness in the election of the chancellor-archbishop to carry out his policy.  But all such schemes of imperative despotism were vain.  No sooner was Thomas consecrated than it became plain that his ecclesiastical training would carry the day against the influence of Henry.  As rapidly as he had “thrown off the deacon” to become the chancellor, so he now went through the sharper change of throwing off the chancellor to become the archbishop.  With keen political sagacity he at once sought the moral support of the religious party who had so vehemently condemned his appointment.  The gorgeous ostentation of his old life gave way to an equally elaborate scheme of saintliness.  He threw away with tears his splendid dress to put on sackcloth and the black cloak of the monk.  His table was still covered with gold and silver dishes and with costly meats, but the hall was now crowded with the poor and needy, and at his own side sat only the most learned and holy among the monks and clergy.  Forty clerks “most learned in the law” formed his household.  He visited the sick in the infirmary, and washed the feet of thirteen poor men daily.  He sat in the cloister like one of the monks, studying the canon law and the Holy Scriptures.  He joined their prayers in the Church and took part in their secret councils.  The monks who had suffered under the heavy hand of Theobald, when their dainty foods were curtailed and their cherished privileges sharply denied them, hailed joyfully the unexpected attitude of their new master.  “This is the finger of God,” men said, “this, indeed, is the work of the right hand of the Most High.”  “As he had been accustomed to the pre-eminence over others in worldly glory,” commented another observer, “so now he determined to be the foremost in holy living.”