s never spoken. Thomas
sprang up, cross in hand, and passionately forbade Leicester to speak.
"How can you refuse to obey," said Leicester, "seeing you are the king's
man, and hold your possessions as a fief from him?" "God forbid!" said
Thomas; "I hold nothing whatever of him in fief, for whatever the Church
holds it holds in perpetual liberty, not in subjection to any earthly
sovereignty whatever.... I am your father, you princes of the palace,
lay powers, secular persons; as gold is better than lead, so is the
spiritual better than the lay power.... By my authority I forbid you to
pronounce the sentence." As the nobles retired the archbishop raised his
cross: "I also withdraw," he said, "for the hour is past." Cries of
"Traitor!" followed him down the hall. Knights and barons rushed after him
with bundles of straw and sticks snatched up from the floor, and a clamour
rose "as if the four parts of the city had been given to flames and the
assault of enemies." He made his way slowly through the weeping crowd
outside to the monastery of St. Andrews. That night he fled from
Northampton. The darkness was "as a covering" to him, and a terrible storm
and pelting rain hid the sound of his horse's feet as he passed at
midnight through the town, and out by an unguarded gate to the north. At
dawn of day the anxious Henry of Winchester came to ask for news. "He is
doing well," Thomas's servant whispered in his ear, "for last night he
went away from us, and we do not know whither he has gone." "By the
blessing of God!" cried the bishop, weeping and sighing. When the news was
brought to the king he stood speechless for some moments, choked by his
fury, till at last catching his breath, "We have not done with him yet!"
he exclaimed.

It seemed, indeed, as though the Council of Northampton had brought
nothing but failure and disaster. The king's whole scheme of reform
depended on the ruin or the submission of the Primate, who was its open
and formidable opponent. But Thomas was free and was now more dangerous
than ever. The Church was alarmed, suspicious, perplexed. It was not ten
years since Henry had made his first journey round the kingdom with
Archbishop Theobald at his side, as the king chosen and appointed by the
spiritual power to put down violence and repress a lawless baronage. But
now he could no longer look for the aid of the Church; all dream of
orderly legislation seemed over. Amid all his violence, however, the
king's s