The chancellor was ordained priest, and on the following day was consecrated archbishop, and appointed to the vacant see. Immediately a change took place in him so remarkable that those who saw him found a difficulty in recognising him as the same man. He threw off his gorgeous apparel, removed the splendid furniture from his house, gave up the intimacy with the gay nobles, who had been his friends, and became the friend of the poor, the beggars, and the English. He even affected poverty, and amidst unbounded wealth, and in the possession of power second only to that of the throne, lived the life of an anchorite. He was clothed in a coarse gown, allowed himself only herbs and water for sustenance, and assumed a deportment of the utmost gravity and humility. Thus Becket at once kicked down from him the ladder by which he had risen, and now, no longer obsequious towards his sovereign, he determined to maintain to the utmost the privileges of the Church. Never was there a change of life more sudden, or one that excited so much indignation, on the one hand, or so much admiration on the other. The new archbishop became the idol of the poor, and especially of his own countrymen, while the king and his favourites regarded him with the deepest anger and aversion. Under these circumstances it was evident that a rupture must soon take place. Becket began the struggle; he claimed a number of estates and castles, including that of Rochester, from the king, and that of Tunbridge from the Earl of Clare, on the ground that they had originally belonged to the see of Canterbury. Had such restitution been given it would have tended to overthrow the legal claim of many of the barons to their estates; great alarm was, therefore, excited, and the demand met with a determined resistance. The barons urged their prescriptive rights, but Becket replied briefly that there could be no prescription for injustice, and that the estates wrongly obtained must be restored. The archbishop proceeded to follow up his attack by appointing a priest to a benefice on the lands of a Norman baron, named William de Eynsford. William, like the rest of the Normans, assumed the right of disposing of the churches on his manor, and he expelled the priest sent by Becket. The baron was immediately excommunicated by the archbishop in defiance of a law passed by Henry, that no vassal of the crown should be excommunicated without the royal consent. The king ordered the sentence to be remitted, and after some delay Becket yielded, though with evident reluctance. The king's animosity was rather increased than appeased by a consent so reluctantly given.