He might be reproached by a monk for that he, being an archdeacon, lived so secular a life, wearing the dress of a courtier, and charging on the field with knights in France, but it could not be alleged that church or realm suffered neglect from the chancellor. “By divine inspiration and the counsel of Thomas, the lord king did not long retain vacant bishoprics and abbacies, so that the patrimony of the Crucified might be brought into the treasury, as was afterwards done, but bestowed them with little delay on honourable persons, and according to God’s law.” (W. FitzStephen.) The close friendship and warm affection of the king for his chancellor were known to all. When the day’s business was done “they would play together like boys of the same age.” They sat together in church and hall and rode out together. “Never in Christian times were there two men more of one mind or better friends.” It was natural on the death of Archbishop Theobald, in 1161, that people should point to Thomas as his successor, though the chancellor shrank, as Anselm had done, from the post. “I know three poor priests in England any one of whom I would rather see advanced to the archbishopric than myself,” he declared earnestly, when his friend the prior of Leicester (who also remonstrated with him for his unclerical dress) told him the rumours of the court. “For as for me, if I was appointed, I know the king so through and through that I should be forced either to lose his favour or, which God forbid, to lay aside the service of God.” Thomas uttered the same warning to Henry when the king proposed the primacy to him. “I know certainly,” he said, “that if God should so dispose that this happen, you would soon turn away your love, and the favour which is now between us would be changed into bitterest hate. I know that you would demand many things in Church matters, for already you have demanded them, which I could never bear quietly, and the envious would take occasion to provoke an endless strife between us.”