However, at the first meeting all was smooth. On the return of the court the Archbishop brought his pupil, Prince Henry, to meet his father at Southampton, and was received with great affection. The King embraced him eagerly, and spent much time apart with him, discussing all that had taken place in his absence. CAMEO XX. THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON. (1163-1172.) _King of England_. 1151. Henry II. _King of Scotland_. 1165. William. _King of France_. 1137. Louis VII. _Emperor of Germany_. 1152. Friedrich II. _Pope_. 1159. Alexander III. The strife between the Crown and the Mitre was not long in breaking out again. The former strife had been on the matter of investiture; the strife of the twelfth century was respecting jurisdiction. We sometimes hear the expression, “Without benefit of clergy,” and the readers of the “Lay of the Last Minstrel” cannot have forgotten William of Deloraine’s declaration, “Letter or line know I never a one, Were’t my neck-verse at Harribee.” These are witnesses of the combat between Henry II. and Thomas à Becket. The Church, as bearing the message of peace, claimed to be exempt from the sword of the State. Her sacred buildings protected the criminal, the inhabitants of her lands were spared in war, and offences committed either by an ecclesiastic or against one, were not liable to be punished by the temporal power. This protection was extended not only over actually ordained clergymen, but all who held any office in connection with ecclesiastical affairs--all students, nay, all who were clerks enough to read and write. Thus the wild borderers, when made prisoners, escaped the halter by pretending to read a verse of the _Miserere_, which they had learnt by heart in case of such an emergency, and called their neck-verse; and “without benefit of clergy” was added to new laws, to prevent education from exempting persons from their power. But this arose long after the battle had been fought and won; and it is not to be supposed, that the Church left offenders unpunished. Imprisonment, loss of rank, and penance, fell heavily on them, and it was only very hardened and desperate men who would die under excommunication rather than endure all that was required before they could be reconciled to the Church. Henry II. had found the course of justice seriously impeded by these privileges of the clergy, and convoking a council at Westminster, in 1163, called on the bishops to consent that, as soon as a clerk should be proved guilty of a crime, he should be deprived of his orders, and handed over to receive punishment as a layman, at the hands of the King’s officer.