8. =The Constitutions of Clarendon. 1164.=--Between a king eager to assert the rights of the crown and an archbishop eager to assert the rights of the clergy a quarrel could not be long deferred. Thomas's first stand, however, was on behalf of the whole country. At a Great Council at Woodstock he resisted the king's resolution to levy the old tax of Danegeld, and in consequence Danegeld was never levied again. Henry had for some time been displeased because, without consulting him, the Archbishop had seized on lands which he claimed as the property of the see of Canterbury, and had excommunicated one of the king's tenants. Then a clerk who had committed a rape and a murder had been acquitted in an ecclesiastical court. On this, Henry called on the bishops to promise to obey the customs of the realm. Thomas, being told that the king merely wanted a verbal promise to save his dignity, with some reluctance consented. He soon found that he had been tricked. In =1164= Henry summoned a Great Council to meet at Clarendon, and directed some of the oldest of his barons to set down in writing the customs observed by his grandfather. Their report was intended to settle all disputed points between the king and the clergy, and was drawn up under sixteen heads known as the Constitutions of Clarendon. The most important of them declared that beneficed clergy should not leave the realm without the king's leave; that no tenant-in-chief of the king should be excommunicated without the king's knowledge; that no villein should be ordained without his lord's consent; that a criminous clerk should be sent to the ecclesiastical court for trial, and that after he had been there convicted or had pleaded guilty the Church should deprive him and leave him to the lay court for further punishment. It was for the _Curia Regis_ to determine what matters were properly to be decided by the ecclesiastical courts; and no appeal to Rome was to be allowed without its permission. To all this Thomas was violently opposed, maintaining that the sentence of deprivation, which was all that an ecclesiastical court was empowered to inflict, was so terrible, that one who had incurred it ought not to be sentenced to any further penalty by a lay court. After six days' struggle he left the Council, refusing to assent to the Constitutions.