any real subjection. A great ferment ensued on this appeal. The
courtiers advised that he should be thrown into prison, and that his
temporalities should be seized. The bishops, willing to reduce Becket
without reducing their own order, proposed to accuse him before the
Pope, and to pursue him to degradation. Some of his friends pressed him
to give up his cause; others urged him to resign his dignity. The king's
servants threw out menaces against his life. Amidst this general
confusion of passions and councils, whilst every one according to his
interests expected the event with much anxiety, Becket, in the disguise
of a monk, escaped out of the nation, and threw himself into the arms of
the King of France.

Henry was greatly alarmed at this secession, which put the Archbishop
out of his power, but left him in full possession of all his
ecclesiastical weapons. An embassy was immediately dispatched to Rome,
in order to accuse Becket; but as Becket pleaded the Pope's own cause
before the Pope himself, he obtained an easy victory over the king's
ambassadors. Henry, on the other hand, took every measure to maintain
his authority: he did everything worthy of an able politician, and of a
king tenacious of his just authority. He likewise took measures not only
to humble Becket, but also to lower that chair whose exaltation had an
ill influence on the throne: for he encouraged the Bishop of London to
revive a claim to the primacy; and thus, by making the rights of the see
at least dubious, he hoped to render future prelates more cautious in
the exercise of them. He inhibited, under the penalty of high treason,
all ecclesiastics from going out of his dominions without license, or
any emissary of the Pope's or Archbishop's from entering them with
letters of excommunication or interdict. And that he might not supply
arms against himself, the Peter-pence were collected with the former
care, but detained in the royal treasury, that matter might be left to