Henry, bursting with anger, swore, “By God’s Eyes” it should be given as revenue, and enscrolled as a king’s tax. The archbishop replied with quiet determination, “aware lest by his sufferance a custom should come in to the hurt of his successors,” that, “by the reverence of those Eyes,” by which the king had sworn, not one penny should be paid from his lands, or from the rights of the Church. The king was silenced, no answer was forthcoming to the objector, and the tax was paid as before to the sheriffs. But “the indignation of the king was not set at rest,” and in October came the Council of Westminster. The king at once demanded that criminous clerks should not only be punished in the Church Courts by the sentence of deprivation, but should further be handed over to the King’s Courts for greater penalties, alleging that those who were not restrained from crime by the remembrance of their holy orders would care little for the loss of such orders. The archbishop replied quietly that this proposed new discipline was contrary to the religious liberty of the land, and that he would never agree to it. The Church was the one sanctuary against the barbarities of the law, and Thomas to the end would maintain the security it offered. More important it seemed to him that clerical offenders should escape the king’s justice, than that all petty felons who could claim the protection of the Church should be given over to mutilation by the king’s officers. The bishops silently supported the primate in this matter, though they told him plainly, “Better the liberties of the Church perish than that we perish ourselves. Much must be yielded to the malice of the times.” Thomas answered this pitiful plea by admitting the times were bad. “But,” he added, “are we to heap sin upon sin? It is when the Church is in trouble, and not merely when the times are peaceful, that a bishop must cleave to the right. No greater merit was there to the bishops of old who gave their blood for the Church than there is now to those who die in defence of her liberties.” But the bishops were wavering, fearful of defying the king’s will. And when Henry, defeated for the moment by the archbishop’s stand, angrily called upon them to take an oath to observe in future “the royal customs” of the realm as settled by his grandfather, Henry I., they all agreed to do so, adding the clause “saving the rights of their order.” The king objected, calling for the promise to be made “absolutely and without qualifications,” until Thomas reminded him that the fealty the bishops swore to give the crown “in life and limb and earthly honour” was sworn “_salvo ordine suo_,” and that the “earthly honour” promise, which included all the royal “customs” of Henry I., was not to be given by bishops in any other way. It was now late at night, and the king broke up the council in anger, leaving the bishops to retire as they would.