Henry's first step was to send orders to the archbishop to withdraw his appeal to Rome and his prohibition to the bishops to proceed in the trial, and to submit to the King's Court in the matter of the chancery accounts. Secret friends in the Council sent the archbishop strange warnings. Henry, some said, was planning his death; according to others the royal officers were laying plots for it secretly, "the king knowing nothing." A new access of panic seized the bishops. "If he should be captured or slain what remains to us but to be cast out of our offices and honours to everlasting shame!" With faces of abject terror they surrounded Thomas, and the Bishop of Winchester implored him to resign his see. "The same day and the same hour," he answered, "shall end my bishopric and my life." "Would to God," cried Hilary, "that thou wert and shouldst remain only Thomas without any other dignity whatever!" But Thomas refused all compromise; he had not been summoned to answer in this cause; he had already suffered against law for men of Kent and of the sea-border charged with the defence of the coast might be fined only one-third as much as the inland men; at his consecration, too, he had been freed from any responsibility incurred as chancellor; he asserted his right of appeal; and he had meanwhile forbidden the bishops to judge him in any charge that referred to the time before he was Primate. Silently the king's messenger returned with his answer. "Behold, we have heard the blasphemy of prohibition out of his mouth!" cried the barons and officers, and courtiers turning their heads and throwing sidelong glances at him, whispered loudly that William who had conquered England, and even Geoffrey of Anjou, had known how to subdue clerks.