But the growing estrangement between the king and the archbishop did not come to a full head till the end of 1163, when they engaged in a desperate quarrel on the question of the rights and immunities of the clergy. We have mentioned in an earlier chapter how William the Conqueror had established separate courts for the trial of clerical offences, and had put them under the control of the bishops. Since his day, these courts had been steadily growing in importance, and putting forth wider and wider claims of jurisdiction. The anarchical reign of Stephen, when all lay courts of justice came to a standstill, had been especially favourable to their growth. The last development of their demands had been the extraordinary assertion that they ought to try, not only all ecclesiastical offences, but all offences in which ecclesiastics were concerned. That is, not only were such crimes as bigamy or heresy or perjury to come before them, but if a member of the clerical body committed theft or assault or murder, or, again, if a layman robbed or assaulted or murdered a cleric, the cases were to be taken out of the king's court, and to be brought before the bishop's. The most monstrous absurdity of this claim was that the ecclesiastical tribunal had no power to impose any but ecclesiastical punishments, that is to say, penance, excommunication, or deprivation of orders. So if a clergyman committed the most grievous crimes, he could not receive any greater penalty than suspension from his clerical duties, or penances which he might or might not perform. It had come to be a regular trick with habitual criminals to claim that they were in holy orders--which included not only the priesthood, but sacristans and sub-deacons and other minor church officers--and so to exchange death or blinding for the milder ecclesiastical punishments. [Sidenote: =The Constitutions of Clarendon.=] A very bad case of murder by a priest, which Becket punished merely by ordering the murderer to abstain from celebrating the Sacraments for two years, called King Henry's attention to the usurpation of the Church courts. When he found that their claims were quite modern, and had been unknown to the old English law, he resolved at once to take in hand the settlement of the whole question of the ecclesiastical courts. At a Great Council held at Westminster, he proposed to appoint a committee to investigate the matter, and to draw up a statement of the true law of the land with regard, not only to "criminous clerks," but to all the disputes between lay and clerical personages which could arise. Becket opposed the proposal as an invasion of the rights of the Church, and by his advice the other bishops, when asked if they would undertake to abide by the decision of the committee, replied that they would do so in so far as it did not impugn their rights--which meant not at all.