While these clouds were gathering in the sky Henry was preparing a measure fatal to the good understanding between himself and his favorite. The priests and all those who depended, directly or indirectly, on the Church, had the right of being judged exclusively by ecclesiastical tribunals; and clerical justice was accused of great partiality. {155} Its very laws forbade the shedding of blood. Thus a servant of the Church could not be condemned to death even for murder, and this assurance often led to the most odious crimes, the repression of which was uncertain. The king had resolved to remedy this inconvenience by requiring that every priest degraded for his misdeeds should be given up to the civil tribunals, who should judge him in their turn. Becket maintained that it would be unjust to judge and punish twice the same culprit. The greater number of the bishops were of his opinion. The king shifted the question: "Will you," he asked the assembly of prelates, "swear to maintain the ancient customs of the realm?" "Save the honor of our order," replied all the bishops, with the exception of Hilary of Chichester. The king was furious. He convoked a great council at Clarendon (January 25, 1164), where he presented to the bishops a series of decrees and laws regulating the relations of the civil and ecclesiastical tribunals, which have since been known under the name of "The Constitutions of Clarendon." He had striven to intimidate the bishops by stripping Becket of the castles and the titles which he had given to him long before. Alternately threatening and yielding, the archbishop had arrived at Clarendon: he had consented to sign the Constitutions; the act was complete, and it only remained now to affix the seals when Becket was seized with remorse. "I will never affix my seal to this," he said, and without listening to the representations of his colleagues, or the counsels of the Grand Master of the Templars, or taking heed of the anger of the king, who had left the hall of council in a fit of rage, he remounted his horse and returned gloomily to Canterbury, lamenting over his sins as the cause of the enslavement of the Church in England. "I was taken from the court to become a bishop--vain and proud as I was--not from the school of the Saviour, but from the palace of Cæsar. {156} I was a feeder of birds, and I was suddenly called on to be the pastor of men; I was the patron of of mummers and took delight in following the hounds. I have become the keeper of many souls. I neglected my own vineyard, and now I am entrusted with the vineyard of others." He fasted and prayed, refusing to ascend the steps of the altar; and he found no rest until the Pope had sent him absolution for his failings. The pontiff had not ratified the Constitutions of Clarendon.