d cruel punishments of those days.

But he showed no signs of yielding when on Tuesday morning, the last day
of the Council, the bishops again gathered round him beseeching him
to yield to the king's will. With a fierce outbreak of passionate
reproaches he solemnly forbade them to take part in any further
proceedings against him, and gave formal notice of an appeal to Rome.
Then kneeling before the altar of St. Stephen he celebrated mass, using
the service for St. Stephen's Day with its psalm, "Princes sat and spake
against me,"--"a magical rite," said Foliot, "and an act done in contempt
of the king"-and commended himself to the care of the first Christian
martyr, and of the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury, Aelfheah. Still
arrayed in his pontifical robes, he set out for his last ride to the
castle. Of the forty clerks "most learned in the law," who formed his
household, only two ventured to follow him; but "an innumerable
multitude" of people thronged round him as he passed bearing his cross
in his right hand, and followed him to the castle doors with cries of
lamentation, weeping and kneeling for his benediction, for it was spread
abroad that he should that day be slain. The gates were quickly closed in
the face of the tumultuous crowd, and Thomas passed up the great hall,
while the king, hearing of his coming in such dress and fashion, hastily
withdrew to the upper chamber to take counsel with his officers. "A fool
he was, and a fool he always will be," commented Foliot as Thomas entered
with his uplifted cross. "Lord archbishop, thou art ill-advised to enter
thus to the king with sword unsheathed--if now the king should take his
sword, we shall have a well-armed king and a well-armed archbishop!"
--"That we will commit to God," said Thomas. Thus he passed to his seat,
the troubled and perplexed bishops "sitting opposite to him both in place
and in heart."

Meanwhile the king and his inner council, to which the bishops were
now summoned, were busy discussing what must be done. Henry's position
was one of extreme difficulty, suddenly called on as he was to deal
with a legacy of difficulties which had been left from the unsettled
controversies of a hundred years. By coming to the court in his pontifical
dress Thomas had raised a claim that a bishop could only be tried dressed
in full pontificals by his fellow-bishops also in full dress. He had
thrown aside the king's jurisdiction by his appeal to Rome; and by his
or