A.D. 1164. ] ACCUSATIONS AGAINST BECKET. 543 How the king decreed that the clergy should receive punishment from the laity. The same year king Henry, wishing always, as he asserted, to punish crimes with due severity, and that the dignity of all orders should be treated fairly, asserted it was unreasonable that his justices should be obliged to hand over clerks, when convicted of crimes, to the bishop of the diocese, without punishment ; and he ordered that all clerks whom their bishops found guilty, should be deprived of their orders, in presence of the king's justiciary, and afterwards be delivered over for punishment to the king's court. The archbishop maintained the opposite opinion, that none, who were deprived of their order for a crime by their bishop, should receive any further punishment from a lay tribunal, which would look like inflicting a double punishment for a single offence. This controversy owed its origin to Philip de Broc, canon of Bedford, who, when arraigned on a charge of murder, used contumelious language towards the judge. This he was ULable to deny when he was had up before the archbishop, wherefore he was deprived of his prebend, and banished the kingdom for two years. This was the ninth cause of bad feeling between the king and the archbishop.* How the blessed Thomas was insulted by the king at Northampton and left ' the kingdom. The archbishop, therefore, seeing that the liberties of the church were now utterly extinct, took ship, without the king's knowledge, at Romney, intending to go to Rome ; but the wind was contrary, and he was driven back to England, and by this act added a tenth cause to the enmity between him and the king. For this reason he was now summoned before the king's tribunals, to answer to a complaint of John Mareschal concerning a certain manor, which the archbishop, it was said, had held, without being disturbed in the possession of it, for a very long time ; and at last, after a long debate, the formulary sentence was reversed, and the fine to the king being adjudged at five hundred pounds, the archbishop immediately gave security for its payment on the spot. This * Matthew Paria adds:—" Pope Octavian died, and the emperor Frederic substituted another in his place. Reading abbey was dedicated this year by the archbishop, in presence of the king and the bishops."