first Christian martyr, and of the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury, Aelfheah.  Still arrayed in his pontifical robes, he set out for his last ride to the castle.  Of the forty clerks “most learned in the law,” who formed his household, only two ventured to follow him; but “an innumerable multitude” of people thronged round him as he passed bearing his cross in his right hand, and followed him to the castle doors with cries of lamentation, weeping and kneeling for his benediction, for it was spread abroad that he should that day be slain.  The gates were quickly closed in the face of the tumultuous crowd, and Thomas passed up the great hall, while the king, hearing of his coming in such dress and fashion, hastily withdrew to the upper chamber to take counsel with his officers.  “A fool he was, and a fool he always will be,” commented Foliot as Thomas entered with his uplifted cross.  “Lord archbishop, thou art ill-advised to enter thus to the king with sword unsheathed—­if now the king should take his sword, we shall have a well-armed king and a well-armed archbishop!” —­“That we will commit to God,” said Thomas.  Thus he passed to his seat, the troubled and perplexed bishops “sitting opposite to him both in place and in heart.”

Meanwhile the king and his inner council, to which the bishops were now summoned, were busy discussing what must be done.  Henry’s position was one of extreme difficulty, suddenly called on as he was to deal with a legacy of difficulties which had been left from the unsettled controversies of a hundred years.  By coming to the court in his pontifical dress Thomas had raised a claim that a bishop could only be tried dressed in full pontificals by his fellow-bishops also in full dress.  He had thrown aside the king’s jurisdiction by his appeal to Rome; and by his orders to the bishops to judge no further with the barons in this suit he had further violated the “customs” of the realm to which he had himself commanded the bishops to swear obedience at Clarendon.  None of the questions raised by Thomas indeed were raised for the first time.  William of St. Carileph, when charged by Rufus with treason, had asserted the privilege of a bishop to be tried in pontifical dress, and to be judged only by the canon law in an ecclesiastical court, and had claimed the right of appeal to Rome.  But such doctrines were in those days new and somewhat doubtful, not supported in any degree by the Church and quite outside the sympathy of nobles and people, and Lanfranc had easily eluded the Bishop of Durham’s claims.  Anselm himself had accepted a number of points disputed now by Thomas.  He frankly admitted the king’s authority in appointing him to the see of Canterbury; he submitted to the jurisdiction of the King’s Court; he made no claims to clerical privileges or special forms of trial.  He had indeed given the first example of a saving clause in his oath to keep the customs of the kingdom; but the clause he used, “according to God,”