e. It soon caused him to be more talked about as an
Archbishop than he had been as a Chancellor.

The King was very angry; and was made still more so, when the new
Archbishop, claiming various estates from the nobles as being rightfully
Church property, required the King himself, for the same reason, to give
up Rochester Castle, and Rochester City too. Not satisfied with this, he
declared that no power but himself should appoint a priest to any Church
in the part of England over which he was Archbishop; and when a certain
gentleman of Kent made such an appointment, as he claimed to have the
right to do, Thomas a Becket excommunicated him.

Excommunication was, next to the Interdict I told you of at the close of
the last chapter, the great weapon of the clergy. It consisted in
declaring the person who was excommunicated, an outcast from the Church
and from all religious offices; and in cursing him all over, from the top
of his head to the sole of his foot, whether he was standing up, lying
down, sitting, kneeling, walking, running, hopping, jumping, gaping,
coughing, sneezing, or whatever else he was doing. This unchristian
nonsense would of course have made no sort of difference to the person
cursed--who could say his prayers at home if he were shut out of church,
and whom none but GOD could judge--but for the fears and superstitions of
the people, who avoided excommunicated persons, and made their lives
unhappy. So, the King said to the New Archbishop, 'Take off this
Excommunication from this gentleman of Kent.' To which the Archbishop
replied, 'I shall do no such thing.'

The quarrel went on. A priest in Worcestershire committed a most
dreadful murder, that aroused the horror of the whole nation. The King
demanded to have this wretch delivered up, to be tried in the same court
and in the same way as any other murderer. The Archbishop refused, and
kept him in the Bishop's prison. The King, holding a solemn assembly in
Westminster Hall, demanded that in future all priests found guilty before
their Bishops of crimes against the law of the land should be considered
priests no longer, and should be delivered over to the law of the land
for punishment. The Archbishop again refused. The King required to know
whether the clergy would obey the ancient customs of the country? Every
priest there, but one, said, after Thomas a Becket, 'Saving my order.'
This really meant that they would only obey those customs when