Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

186 LOSS OF EOYAL FAVOUR.
sheriffs on condition that they should defend the
contributors from the exactions of their subordinates.
The king demanded that it should be paid into the
royal treasury. None, excepting the Archbishop,
ventured to observe that the tax was a voluntary
offering, which the sheriffs should receive as long as
they v did their duty, */ ' and not otherwise. Again, O * the
Archbishop had to defend the rights of priests to be
judged in ecclesiastical courts, in the fewr unfortunate
instances in which some of their number rendered
themselves guilty of crime.
Meanwhile the Council of Westminster, the vestibule
of Clarendon, was called at the close of 1163.
It was summoned by the king, ostensibly to declare
the primatial rights of Canterbury over York ; in
reality to lay down the royal law on the points at
issue between the king and Thomas. Having declared
that his thoughts were " thoughts of peace,"
Henry summoned the Archbishop to deliver up
clerics, taken in crime, to the secular arm without
the intervention of the Church. The Archbishop
consulted his suffragans, but their attitude soon convinced
him that he would have to stand alone against
the royal demand. It was a question of the liberty
of the Church, he said : then, " let the liberty of the
Church perish," answered these weak advisers. The
firmness of St. Thomas wron the point; but the king
proceeded to something farther, and required a promise
that they would observe his royal customs.
This the Archbishop granted, with the clause