To complete the king's schemes, however, one dignity yet remained to be conferred on Thomas. He was eager, in view of his proposed reconstruction of Church and State, to adopt the Imperial system of a chancellor-archbishop. The difficulties in the way were great, for ancient custom limited the technical supremacy of the king's will in the choice of the Primate. No archbishop since the Conquest had been chosen for other reasons than those of piety and learning; no secular primate had been appointed since Stigand, and before Stigand there had never been one at all; no deacon had ever been chosen for this high office; and never had a king's officer been made archbishop, however common it may have been to put chancellor or treasurer in less important sees. Amid the anxiety and questioning which followed the death of Theobald in 1161, Thomas himself clearly saw the parting of the ways: "Whoever is made archbishop," he said, "must quickly give offence to God or to the king." Henry alone knew no hesitation. Fresh from his triumphs abroad, master of his great empire, clear and decided in his projects for the ordering of his dominions, eager with the force and determination of twenty-eight years, recognizing no check to his imperious will and the dictates of his friendship, he chose Thomas as archbishop, "Matilda dissuading, the kingdom protesting, the whole Church sighing and groaning." The king, who was then in France, sent his envoy, Richard de Lucy, to Canterbury to press the essential problem home in plain words: "If," he said, "the king and the archbishop are joined together in affection, the state of the Church will still be quiet and happy; but if the thing should fall out otherwise, what strife may come from it, what difficulties and tumults, what loss and peril to souls, I cannot hide from you." The argument prevailed, and in London, in the presence of the king's little son Henry, then seven years old, Thomas was chosen archbishop, "the multitude acclaiming with the voice of God and not of man." The deacon-chancellor was ordained priest on the 2d of June 1162, and the next day consecrated archbishop by Henry of Winchester. Two months later John of Salisbury brought him the pall from Pope Alexander at Montpellier, and for the first time since the Norman Conquest, a man born on English soil was set at the head of the English Church. CHAPTER V THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON