the kingdom” should be written down, so that no question might ever arise as to the laws which Thomas had sworn to observe; and “wise men” passed into the next room to write according to the king’s will.  They returned with a draft of sixteen articles, the famous “Constitutions of Clarendon.”  To these the king commanded that the Primate should set his seal; but Thomas, agitated by fear and anxiety, was no longer of the same mind.  “By the omnipotent God,” he cried, “while I live, I will never set my seal to it!” Whether he finally submitted it is impossible now to say.  But he left the court with a last protest.  A copy of the writing was torn down the middle, and one half, after the fashion of the “tallies” of the day, was given to Thomas in token of his promise, while the other was laid up in the royal treasury.  “I take this,” said the archbishop, “not consenting nor approving,” and turning to the clergy:  “By this we may know the malice of the king, and those things which we must beware of.”  He left the council and retired to Winchester, where in sackcloth and penance, shut out from the services of the Church, he condemned himself to wait in deepest humiliation till he should receive the Pope’s absolution for his momentary betrayal of duty.  For years to come a furious battle was to rage round the sixteen articles drawn up at Clarendon.  According to Thomas, the Constitutions were a mere act of arbitrary violence, a cunning device of tyranny.  He asserted that they were the sole deed of the justiciar De Lucy, and of Jocelyn de Bailleul, a French lawyer.  In any case he frankly denied the authority of “custom,” that tyrannous law of medieval times.  “God never said,” writes one of his defenders, “I am Custom, but I am Truth.”  Thomas rested his case not on the customary law of the land, but on the code of Rome; to English tradition he opposed the Italian lawyers.  Henry, on his part, declared that the Constitutions were drawn up by the common witness of bishops, earls, barons, and wise men; that they were, in fact, part of a system actually in operation, and which had been administered by Thomas himself when he was chancellor.  It was certainly a startling novelty to have the customs of the realm drawn up in a written code to which men were required to swear obedience; but still the “Constitutions” professed to be no new legislation, but to be simply a statement of recognized national tradition.  The changes that had followed on the Conquest had modified older customs profoundly.  The conditions, not only of England but of Europe, had changed with confusing rapidity, and it was no longer easy to say exactly what was “custom” and what was not.  To Henry the Constitutions did fairly represent the system which had grown up with general consent under the Norman kings.  Thomas, on the other hand, might argue with equal conviction that he was asked to sign as “customs” what was practically a new code; and he had neither the wisdom nor the temper to reconcile the dispute by a reasonable compromise.