[330] _Ib._ p. 113. [331] Herb. Bosh. (_ibid._), pp. 472–476. We may put aside at once all the wild talk of the archbishop’s biographers about plots against his life in which the king had a share. Even if Henry’s sudden willingness for his return was really suggested by words said to have been uttered by one of his counsellors--“Why keep the archbishop out of England? It would be far better to keep him in it”--there is no need to assume that those words bore even in the speaker’s mind, far less in that of the king, the horrible meaning which they were afterwards supposed to have covered;[332] for they were true in the most literal sense. The quarrel of king and primate would have mattered little had it been fought out on English ground; it was the archbishop’s exile which rendered him so dangerous. Thomas had dealt his most fatal blow at Henry by flying from him, and Henry, as he now perceived, had made his worst blunder in driving Thomas into France. Of the infinitely greater blunder involved in the archbishop’s murder--setting the criminal aspect of the deed altogether aside--it is enough to say that Henry was wholly incapable. The same may be said of Roger of York and Gilbert of London, although, like the king himself, they were urged by dread of the archbishop into making common cause with men of a very different stamp:--men who hated the primate with a far more intense personal hatred, and who were restrained by no considerations either of policy or of morality:--men such as Ralf de Broc, a ruffian adventurer who had served as the tool of Henry’s vengeance upon the archbishop’s kinsfolk, had resumed the custody of the archiepiscopal estates when it was resigned by Gilbert Foliot, had been for the last four years at once fattening upon the property of Thomas and smarting under his excommunication, and was ready to commit any crime rather than disgorge his ill-gotten gains.[333] It was known that Thomas had letters from the Pope suspending all those bishops who had taken part in the coronation of the young king, and replacing Gilbert of London, Jocelyn of Salisbury, and all whom Thomas had excommunicated under the sentences from which they had been irregularly released by some of the Papal envoys.[334] Gilbert, Jocelyn and Roger of York now hurried to Canterbury, intending to proceed to Normandy as soon as Thomas set foot in England; while Ralf de Broc, Reginald de Warren and Gervase of Cornhill the sheriff of Kent undertook to catch him at the moment of landing, ransack his baggage, search his person, and seize any Papal letters which he might bring with him. Thomas, however was warned; he sent the letters over before him, and the three prelates at Canterbury read their condemnation before their judge quitted Gaul.[335] Next day he sailed from Wissant, and on the morning of December 1 he landed at Sandwich.[336] His enemies were ready to receive him; but at the sight of John of Oxford they stopped short, and