One thing alone was now lacking to the completion of Henry’s scheme: the crowning of his heir. There can be no doubt that when he sent Thomas and the child to England together--the one to be chosen king and the other to be made primate--he intended the coronation to take place as soon as he himself could rejoin them. Its performance, delayed by his own continued absence on the continent, had however been made impossible by his quarrel with Thomas. That the archbishop of Canterbury alone could lawfully crown a king of England was a constitutional as well as an ecclesiastical tradition so deeply rooted in the minds of Englishmen that nothing short of absolute necessity had induced Henry I. to set it aside in his own case; and still less could Henry II. venture to risk such an innovation in the case of his son.[254] Yet the prospect of a reconciliation with the primate seemed at this moment further off than ever. [254] The historical arguments on this subject may be seen in Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 110, and Ep. dclxxxiv. (_ib._ vol. vii.), pp. 328–330. Henry was once said to have projected getting the Pope himself to crown the child; Ep. lv. (_ib._ vol. v.), p. 100. Against this, of course, Canterbury could have had nothing to say. Thomas’s first impulse on entering Pontigny had been to give himself up to a course of study, devotion and self-discipline more severe than anything which he had yet attempted. He secretly assumed the habit of the “white monks,”[255] and nearly ruined his delicate constitution by a rash endeavour to practise the rigorous abstinence enjoined by the rules of the order.[256] He grew more diligent than ever in prayer, meditation, and study of Holy Scripture.[257] But his restless, impetuous nature could not rise to the serene heights of more than worldly wisdom urged upon him by John of Salisbury, who truly insisted that such occupations alone were worthy of a true confessor.[258] In spite of John’s warnings and pleadings, he still kept all his friends--John himself included--ceaselessly at work in his behalf; and while he sought out in every church and convent in Gaul every rare and valuable book that he could hear of, to be copied for his cathedral library, he was also raking together for the same collection all the privileges, old or new, that could be disinterred from the Roman archives or extorted from the favour of the Pope.[259] Until Easter 1166 Alexander restrained him from any direct measures against the king;[260] then, unable to keep silence any longer, Thomas again took the matter into his own hands and wrote to Henry himself, earnestly imploring him to consider his ways and to grant his old friend a personal interview.[261] Henry was inexorable; Thomas wrote again, this time a torrent of mingled warnings, intreaties and remonstrances,[262] and with just as little effect. Then, towards the end of May, as the