by Thomas.  The answer shows the nobler influence of the Church in maintaining the rigid rule of law as opposed to arbitrary government, and its large sense that general order was to be preferred to private good.  He laid down that an archbishop’s spiritual rights are indestructible; that in all cases submission to law was the highest duty; and that it was better humbly to accept even a harsh sentence than to set an evil example of disobedience by which others might be led to their ruin.  In 1167 the clergy had been called to London to swear fealty to the anti-Pope; but “as the bishops refused to take so detestable an oath against God and the Pope, this unlawful and wicked business came to an end.”  The bishops had obeyed the excommunication of Foliot by the Primate; they had refused to join in his appeal to Rome or to hold communion with him.  It now seemed as though in this last decree of 1169 Henry had reached the limits of his authority over the Church, and it may be that some sense of peril induced him at the Pope’s orders to summon Thomas to Normandy to renew negotiations for the peace of Montmartre.  But the meeting never took place.  Before Thomas could reach Caen he was stopped by news that Henry had suddenly left for England.  In the midst of a terrible storm the king crossed the Channel on the 3rd of March 1170, and barely escaping with his life, landed at Portsmouth after four years’ absence.

So sudden was his journey that a rumour spread that he had fled over sea to avoid the interdict proclaimed by Thomas.  But during his absence trouble had been steadily growing in England.  In his sore straits for money during these last years, Henry could not always be particular as to means.  Jews were robbed and banished; the bishopric of Lincoln was added to the half-dozen sees already vacant, and its treasure swept into the royal Hoard; an “aid” was raised for the marriage of his daughter, and a terrible list of fines levied under the Assize of Clarendon.  The sums raised told, in fact, of the general increase of wealth.  The national income, which at the beginning of Henry’s reign had been but L22,000, was raised in the last year to L48,000, and an enormous treasure had been accumulated said to be equal to 100,000 marks, or, by another account, to be worth L900,000.  The increase of trade was shown by the growing numbers of Jews, the bankers and usurers of the time.  At the beginning of Henry’s reign they were still so few that it was possible to maintain a law which forbade their burial anywhere save in one cemetery near London.  Before its close their settlements were so numerous that Jewish burial-grounds had to be established near every great town.  Their banking profits were enormous, and Christians who saw the wages of sin heaped up before their eyes, looked wistfully at a business forbidden by the ecclesiastical standard of morals of that day.