"Enough--it is well enough known how
you, being consulted, would answer!" "You know the king better than we,"
urged Hilary of Chichester; "in the chancery, in peace and war, you
served him faithfully, but not without envy. Those who then envied now
excite the king against you. Who dare answer for you? The king has said
that you can no longer both be at one time in England--he as king, you
as archbishop." Henry of Winchester took his stand on the side of
Thomas. "If the authority of the king was to prevail," he argued, "what
remains but that nothing shall henceforth be done according to law, but
all things shall be disturbed for his pleasure--and the priesthood shall
be as the people," he concluded, with a stirring of the churchman's
temper. The Bishop of Exeter added another plea to induce Thomas to
stand firm: "Surely it is better to put one head in peril than to set
the whole Church in danger." Not so, thought the Bishop of Lincoln, "a
simple man and of little discretion;" "for it is plain," he said, "that
this man must yield up either the archbishopric or his life; but what
should be the fruit of his archbishopric to him if his life should
cease, I see not." The Bishop of Worcester, son of the famous Robert of
Gloucester, and Henry's own cousin and playmate in old days took an
eminently prudent course. "I will give no counsel," he said, "for if I
say our charge of souls is to be given up at the king's threats, I
should speak against my conscience, and to my own condemnation; and if I
should advise to resist the king, there are those here who will bring
him word of it, and I shall be cast out of the synagogue, and my lot
shall be with outlaws and public enemies." At last, by the advice of the
politic Henry of Winchester, Thomas offered to pay the king 2000 marks,
but this compromise was refused. He urged that he had been freed at
his consecration from all secular obligations, but the plea was
rejected on the ground that it was done without the king's orders. An
adjournment over Sunday was again granted; but on Monday Thomas was ill,
and unable to attend the Council. Three days had now passed in fruitless
negotiations, and the rising wrath of the king made itself felt. Rumours
of danger grew on all sides, and the archbishop prostrated himself
before the altar in an agony of prayer, "trembling in his whole body,"
as he afterwards confessed, less from fear of death than from the more
terrible fear of the savage blinding an