The first disappointment to Henry was the resignation of the chancellor’s seal.[12] It was clear to Thomas that he could no longer serve the crown and do the work of a Christian bishop at the same time, and he had accepted with full sense of responsibility the see of Canterbury. There was no room for the egotism that loves power, the vaulting ambition that o’erleaps itself, or even the self-deception that persuades a man holding to high position at sacrifice of principle that his motive is disinterested, in St. Thomas of Canterbury. More than once England was to see in later years men who strove vainly to serve with equal respect the Christian religion and the royal will--the service always ended in the triumph of the latter. Thomas was far too clearly-sighted to imagine such joint service possible, and for him, elected and consecrated to the primacy of the English Church, there was no longer any choice. As chancellor, keeping his conscience clear, he had done the best he could for law and order as the king’s right hand man. As Archbishop of Canterbury his duty, first and foremost, was to maintain the Christian religion and defend the cause of the poor and needy. But to Henry the resignation of the chancellorship was an act of desertion, a declared challenge to the royal supremacy. Henry II. was no more the man than his grandfather Henry I. had been to brook anything that threatened resistance to the king’s rule. Courtiers who hated Thomas were always at hand to poison the ears of the king by defaming the archbishop, and this, says William FitzStephen, was the first cause of the trouble. Another cause was the hatred of the king for the clergy of England, hatred provoked by the notoriously disreputable lives of more than one clerk in holy orders. The battle between Henry and Thomas began on this matter of criminous clerks.