ecclesiastical
privileges, of which he affected to be the champion. There were many
other reasons which procured his countenance and protection in foreign
countries. Philip, Earl of Flanders [t], and Lewis, King of France
[u], jealous of the rising greatness of Henry, were well pleased to
give him disturbance in his government; and, forgetting that this was
the common cause of princes, they affected to pity extremely the
condition of the exiled primate; and the latter even honoured him with
a visit at Soissons, in which city he had invited him to fix his
residence [w]. The pope, whose interests were more immediately
concerned in supporting him, gave a cold reception to a magnificent
embassy which Henry sent to accuse him; while Becket himself, who had
come to Sens in order to justify his cause before the sovereign
pontiff, was received with the greatest marks of distinction. The
king, in revenge, sequestered the revenues of Canterbury; and, by a
conduct which might be esteemed arbitrary, had there been at that time
any regular check on royal authority, he banished all the primate's
relations and domestics, to the number of four hundred, whom he
obliged to swear, before their departure, that they would instantly
join their patron. But this policy, by which Henry endeavoured to
reduce Becket sooner to necessity, lost its effect: the pope, when
they arrived beyond sea, absolved them from their oath, and
distributed them among the convents in France and Flanders: a
residence was assigned to Becket himself in the convent of Pontigny,
where he lived for some years in great magnificence, partly from a
pension granted him on the revenues of the abbey, partly from
remittances made him by the French monarch.
[FN [t] Epist. St. Thom. p. 35. [u] Ibid. p. 36, 37. [w] Hist. Quad.
p. 76.]

[MN 1165.] The more to ingratiate himself with the pope, Becket
resigned into his hands the see of Canterbury, to which, he affirmed,
he had been uncanonically elected by the authority of the royal
mandate; and Alexander, in his turn, besides investing him anew with
that dignity, pretended to abrogate, by a bull, the sentence which the
great council of England had passed against him. Henry, after
attempting in vain to procure a conference with the pope, who departed
soon after for Rome, whither the prosperous state of his affairs now
invited him, made provisions against the consequences of that breach
which impended between his kingdom an