The words were no sooner out of their mouths than Thomas learned how just his suspicions had been. A question was instantly raised--what were these customs? It was too late to discuss them that night; next morning the king bade the oldest and wisest of the barons go and make a recognition of the customs observed by his grandfather and bring up a written report of them for ratification by the council.[115] Nine days later[116] the report was presented. It comprised sixteen articles, known ever since as the Constitutions of Clarendon.[117] Some of them merely re-affirmed, in a more stringent and technical manner, the rules of William the Conqueror forbidding bishops and beneficed clerks to quit the realm or excommunicate the king’s tenants-in-chief without his leave, and the terms on which the temporal position of the bishops had been settled by the compromise between Henry I. and Anselm at the close of the struggle for the investitures. Another aimed at checking the abuse of appeals to Rome, by providing that no appeal should be carried further than the archbishop’s court without the assent of the king. The remainder dealt with the settlement of disputes concerning presentations and advowsons, which were transferred from the ecclesiastical courts to that of the king; the treatment of excommunicate persons; the limits of the right of sanctuary as regarding the goods of persons who had incurred forfeiture to the Crown; the ordination of villeins; the jurisdiction over clerks accused of crime; the protection of laymen cited before the Church courts against episcopal and archidiaconal injustice; and the method of procedure in suits concerning the tenure of Church lands. [115] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 37. Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 18. E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 382. Herb. Bosh. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 279. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 37. Anon. II. (_ibid._), p. 102. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 178. [116] On the chronology see note B at end of chapter. [117] Will. Cant. (as above), pp. 18–23; Gerv. Cant, (as above), pp. 178–180; Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 137–140.