Shortly afterwards Becket fled abroad, hoping to win the support of Rome, but the Pope to whom he appealed did not wish to quarrel with the King of England, and used his influence to patch up an agreement that was far too vague to have any binding strength. Thomas Becket returned to Canterbury, but exile had not modified his opinions, and he had hardly landed before he once more appeared in open opposition to Henry’s wishes, excommunicating those bishops who had dared to act during his absence without his leave. The rest of the story is well known--the ungovernable rage of the Angevin king at an obstinacy as great as his own, his rash cry, ‘Is my house so full of fools and dastards that none will avenge me on this upstart clerk?’ and then his remorse on learning of the four knights who had taken him at his word and murdered the Archbishop as he knelt, still undaunted, on the altar steps of Canterbury Cathedral. So great was the horror and indignation of Europe, even of those who were devoted to Henry’s cause, that the King was driven to strip and scourge himself before the tomb of Thomas the Martyr, as a public act of penance, and all question of the supremacy of the state over the Church was for the time dropped. One of the many pilgrims who in the next few years visited the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury in the hope of a miracle was Louis VII of France, and the miracle that he so earnestly desired was the recovery of his son and heir, Philip Augustus, from a fever that threatened his life. With many misgivings the old king crossed the Channel to the land of a ruler with whom he had been at almost constant war since Eleanor of Aquitaine’s remarriage; but his faith in the vision of the Martyr that had prompted his journey was rewarded. Henry received him with ‘great rejoicing and honour’ after the manner of a loyal vassal, and when the French king returned home he found his son convalescent. The sequel to this journey, however, was the sudden paralysis and lingering death of Louis himself, and the coronation of the boy prince in whom France was to find so great a ruler. When the bells of Paris had rung out the joyous tidings of his birth one hot August evening fourteen years before, a young British student had put his head out of his lodging window and demanded the news. ‘A boy,’ answered the citizens, ‘has been given to us this night who by God’s grace shall be the hammer of your king, and who beyond a doubt shall diminish the power and lands of him and his subjects.’ One-half of the reign of Philip Augustus, _le Dieu-donné_, or ‘God-given’, was the fulfilment of this prophecy.