Their leaders too looked coldly on the cause of the Primate. The Archbishop of York, Roger of Pont l'Evêque, once the companion of Thomas in Theobald's household, was now his personal enemy and rival. The two prelates inherited the secular strife as to which see should have the precedence. Moreover, while Canterbury represented the papal policy and always looked to Rome, York preserved some faint traditional leanings towards the liberties of the Irish and Scotch churches from whence the Christianity of the north had sprung. The Bishop of London, Gilbert Foliot, who, with the approval of Thomas, had been translated from Hereford only five months before, was, by his mere position, marked out as the chief antagonist of the archbishop, for St Pauls was at the head of the whole body of secular clergy throughout southern England, and to its bishop inevitably fell the leadership of this party against Canterbury, which was in the hands of a monastic chapter. The Bishop of Winchester, Henry of Blois, could well remember the struggle between Church and Crown under a far weaker king twenty six years before, when the bishops had wisely withdrawn from a contest where they had "seen swords unsheathed and knew it was no longer a joking matter, but a struggle of life and death," and with the prudence born of long political experience he was for moderate counsels. The Bishop of Chichester, Hilary, doubtless remembered the inconvenient part which Thomas as chancellor had played in his own trial a few years before, and might gladly recognize a poetic justice in seeing Thomas's old doctrines of the supremacy of the State now applied to himself. "Every plant," he once said with taunting reference to the king's part in Thomas's election, "which my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up." Thomas bitterly added another verse as he heard of the saying, "This man had among the brethren the place of Judas the traitor." There seems to have been a general impression that the position of the Primate was extremely critical, and he was besieged by advisers who urged submission, by messengers from pope and cardinals, by panic-stricken churchmen. Beset on all sides the Primate wavered, and at last promised to swear obedience to the "customs of the kingdom." Immediately the king summoned prelates and barons to witness his submission, and the famous Council of Clarendon met for this purpose in 1164.