It seemed, indeed, as though the Council of Northampton had brought nothing but failure and disaster.  The king’s whole scheme of reform depended on the ruin or the submission of the Primate, who was its open and formidable opponent.  But Thomas was free and was now more dangerous than ever.  The Church was alarmed, suspicious, perplexed.  It was not ten years since Henry had made his first journey round the kingdom with Archbishop Theobald at his side, as the king chosen and appointed by the spiritual power to put down violence and repress a lawless baronage.  But now he could no longer look for the aid of the Church; all dream of orderly legislation seemed over.  Amid all his violence, however, the king’s sincere attempt to maintain the outward authority of law made of the Council of Northampton a great event in our constitutional history.  It showed that the rule of pure despotism was over.  A new step was taken too in the political education of the nation.  Thrown back on the support of his own officials and of the baronage, Henry used the nobles as he had once used the Church.  Greater and lesser barons sat together in the King’s Council for the first time when Henry summoned sheriffs and knights from the hall of Northampton Castle to the inner council chamber.  He taught the nobles their strength when he called the whole assembly of his barons to discuss questions of spiritual jurisdiction.  It was at Northampton that he gave them their first training in political action—­a training whose full results were seen half a century later in the winning of Magna Charta.

CHAPTER VI

THE ASSIZE OF CLARENDON

The flight of the archbishop marked the opening of a new phase in the struggle.  Thomas sought refuge at the Papal Court at Sens.  There kneeling at Alexander’s feet, and surrounded by weeping cardinals, he delivered into the Pope’s hands the written “customs” which had been forced upon him at Clarendon, and resigned the see of Canterbury to receive it back again with all honour.  Alexander had indeed but limited sympathy with the fiery zealot, but he had practically no choice of action in face of the resistance with which the clergy would have met any sacrifice of ecclesiastical to secular authority.  For two years at a monastery in Pontigny then for four at Sens, the archbishop lived the life of an austere Cistercian monk, edifying the community with his fastings, scourgings, and prayers.  The canon law again became his constant study, and throughout the churches of Gaul he sought for books which might be copied for the library at Canterbury.  He was soon fortified with visions of martyrdom, and prepared himself fitly to fulfil this glorious destiny.  Nor did he forget the uses of political intrigue; it was easy to enlist on his side the orthodoxy of the French king and of the house of Blois; and the intimate knowledge which he had of his master’s continental policy was henceforth at the disposal of