[Sidenote:  A.D. 1164.]

Becket, who had punished the ecclesiastic for his crime by ecclesiastical law, refused to deliver him over to the secular judges for farther punishment, on the principle of law, that no man ought to be twice questioned for the same offence.  The king, provoked at this opposition, summoned a council of the barons and bishops at Clarendon; and here, amongst others of less moment, the following were unanimously declared to be the ancient prerogatives of the crown.  And it is something remarkable, and certainly makes much for the honor of their moderation, that the bishops and abbots who must have composed so large and weighty a part of the great council seem not only to have made no opposition to regulations which so remarkably contracted their jurisdiction, but even seem to have forwarded them.

1st.  A clerk accused of any crime shall appear in the king’s court, that it may be judged whether he belongs to ecclesiastical or secular cognizance.  If to the former, a deputy shall go into the bishop’s court to observe the trial; if the clerk be convicted, he shall be delivered over to the king’s justiciary to be punished.

2nd.  All causes concerning presentation, all causes concerning Frankalmoign, all actions concerning breach of faith, shall be tried in the king’s court.

3rd.  The king’s tenant in capite shall not be excommunicated without the king’s license.

4th.  No clerk shall go out of the kingdom without giving security that he will do nothing to the prejudice of the king or nation.  And all appeals shall be tried at home.

These are the most material of the Constitutions or Assizes of Clarendon, famous for having been the first legal check given to the power of the clergy in England.  To give these constitutions the greater weight, it was thought proper that they should be confirmed by a bull from the Pope.  By this step the king seemed to doubt the entireness of his own authority in his dominions; and by calling in foreign aid when it served his purpose, he gave it a force and a sort of legal sanction when it came to be employed against himself.  But as no negotiation had prepared the Pope in favor of laws designed in reality to abridge his own power, it was no wonder that he rejected them with indignation.  Becket, who had not been prevailed on to accept them but with infinite reluctance, was no sooner apprised of the Pope’s disapprobation than he openly declared his own; he did penance in the humblest manner for his former acquiescence, and resolved to make amends for it by opposing the new constitutions with the utmost zeal.  In this disposition the king saw that the Archbishop might be more easily ruined than humbled, and his ruin was resolved.  Immediately a number of suits, on various pretences, were commenced against him, in every one of which he was sure to be foiled; but these making no deadly blow at his fortunes, he was called to account for thirty thousand pounds