or lounging in the straw and rushes that covered the floor.  For seven days the trial dragged on, as lawyers and bishops and barons anxiously groped their way through baffling legal problems which had grown out of legislation new and old.  Even the king himself, fiery, imperious, dictatorial, clung with a kind of superstition to the forms of legal process.  The archbishop asked leave to appeal to the Pope.  “You shall first answer in my court for the injury done to John the marshal,” said Henry.  The next day, Thursday, this matter was decided.  Bishops and barons alike, lacking somewhat of the king’s daring, shrank at first from the responsibility of pronouncing judgment.  “We are laymen,” said the barons; “you are his fellow-priests and fellow-bishops, and it is for you to declare sentence.”  “Nay,” answered the bishops, “this is not an ecclesiastical but a secular judgment, and we sit here not as bishops but as barons; if you heed our orders you should also take heed of his.”  The dispute was a critical one, leading as it did directly to questions about the jurisdiction of the Curia Regis over ecclesiastical persons, and the obligation asserted in the Constitutions of Clarendon, that bishops should sit with barons in the King’s Court till it came to a question of blood.  The king was seized with one of his fierce fits of anger, and the discussion “immediately ended.”  The unwilling Bishop of Winchester was sent to pronounce sentence of fine for neglect of the king’s summons.  Matters then moved quickly.  A demand was made for L300 which Thomas had received from Eye and Berkhampstead when he was chancellor; and in spite of his defence that it had been spent in building the palace in London and repairing the castles, judgment went against him.  The next day a further demand was made for money spent in the war of Toulouse, and this, too, Thomas agreed to pay, though it was now hard to find sureties.  Then the king dealt his last blow.  Thomas was required to account for the sums he had received as chancellor from vacant sees and abbeys.  “By God’s eyes,” the king swore, when the Primate and the bishops threw themselves in despair at his feet, he would have the accounts in full.  He would only grant a day’s delay for Thomas to take counsel with his friends.

By this time there was no doubt of the king’s purpose to force upon Thomas the resignation of his archbishopric.  The courtiers and lay barons no longer thought it expedient to visit him, and the prelates gave counsel with divided hearts.  “Remembering whence the king took you,” said Foliot, “and what he has bestowed on you, and the ruin which you prepare for the Church and for us all, not only the archbishopric but ten times as much, if it were possible, you should yield to him.  It may be that seeing in you this humility he may yet restore all.”  To this argument Thomas had curt answer.  “Enough—­it is well enough known how you, being consulted, would answer!” “You know the king better than