e
of the lay courts, and further claimed exclusive criminal jurisdiction
over all clerks whether in holy or minor orders, with the result that
criminous clerks, though degraded by a spiritual court, escaped temporal
punishment. Henry II., finding ecclesiastical privileges an obstacle to
administrative reform, demanded that the bishops should agree to observe
the ancient customs of the realm. These customs were, he asserted,
expressed in certain constitutions to which he required their assent at
a council at Clarendon in 1164. In spirit they generally maintained the
rights of the crown as they existed under the Conqueror. One provided
that clerks convicted of temporal crime in a spiritual court and
degraded should be sentenced by a lay court and punished as laymen.
Archbishop Becket (see BECKET) agreed, repented and refused his assent.
The king tried to ruin him by unjust demands; he appealed to Rome and
fled to France. A long quarrel ensued, and in 1170 Henry was forced to
be reconciled to Becket. The archbishop's murder consequent on the
king's hasty words shocked Christendom, and Henry did penance publicly.
By agreement with the pope he renounced the Constitutions, but the
encroachments of the church courts were slightly checked, and the king's
decisive influence on episcopal elections and some other advantages were
secured. The church in Wales had become one with the English Church by
the voluntary submission of its bishops to the see of Canterbury in 1192
and later. The Irish Church remained distinct, though the conquest of
Ireland, which was sanctioned by the English pope Adrian IV. (Nicholas
Breakspear), brought it into the same relations with the crown as the
English Church and into conformity with it. Under the guidance of
ecclesiastics employed as royal ministers, the church supported the
crown until, in 1206, Innocent III. refused to confirm the election of a
bishop nominated by King John to Canterbury; and representatives of the
monks of Christ Church, in whom lay the right of election, being at his
court, the pope bade them elect Stephen Langton whom he consecrated as
archbishop. John refused to receive Langton and seized the estates of
Christ Church. Innocent laid England under an interdict in 1208; the
king confiscated the property of the clergy, banished bishops and kept
sees vacant. Papal envoys excommunicated him and declared him deposed in
1211. Surrounded by enemies, he made his peace with the pope in 1