along with bowed head scattering alms on
every side. His old pupil Henry refused, however, to receive him, and
Thomas returned to Canterbury.

News of all these things travelled fast to the king in Normandy. The
excommunicated bishops, falling at his feet, told him of the evil done
against his peace; rumour, growing as it crossed the sea, said that the
archbishop had travelled through the country with a mighty army of paid
soldiers, and had sought to enter into the king's fortresses, and that
he was ready to "tear the crown from the young king's head." Henry,
"more angry than was fitting to the royal majesty," was swept beyond
himself by one of his mad storms of passion. "What a pack of fools and
cowards," he shouted aloud in his wrath, "I have nourished in my house,
that not one of them will avenge me of this one upstart clerk!" A
council was at once summoned. Thomas, the king said, had entered as a
tyrant into his land, had excommunicated the bishops for obedience to
the king, had troubled the whole realm, had purposed to take away the
royal crown from his son, had begged for a legation against Henry, and
had obtained from the Pope grants of presentations to churches, which
deprived knights and barons as well as the king himself of their
property. The council fell in with the king's mood. Thomas was worthy of
death. The king would have neither quiet days nor a peaceful kingdom
while he lived. "On my way to Jerusalem," said one sage adviser, "I
passed through Rome, and asking questions of my host, I learned that a
pope had once been slain for his intolerable pride!"

But while the king was still busied in devising schemes for the punishment
or ruin of Thomas, came news that he was rid of his enemy, and that the
archbishop had won the long looked-for crown of martyrdom. Four knights
who had heard the king's first outburst of rage had secretly left the
Court, and travelling day and night, had reached Canterbury on the 29th,
and had there in the cathedral slain the archbishop. Henry was at Argentan
when the news of the murder was brought to him. So overwhelming was his
despair that those about him feared for his reason. For three days he
neither ate nor spoke with any one, and for five weeks his door was closed
to all comers. The whole flood of difficulties against which he had so
long fought desperately was at once let loose upon him. In England the
feeling was indescribable. All the religious fervour of the people was