All Sunday was spent in consultations. On Monday the archbishop was too ill to attend the council, but on Tuesday his mind was made up, and when he entered the council it was with the full dignity of an archbishop, carrying the cross of the archbishop in his hand. The bishops were in despair. There were all sorts of rumours in the air. It was known the king was full of anger, and it was said that the archbishop’s life was in danger. The bishops implored him to resign, or else to promise complete submission to the councils of Clarendon. They said he would certainly be tried and condemned for high treason for disobedience to the king, and asked him what was the use of being archbishop when he had the king’s hatred. Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, declared contemptuously of Thomas, when someone asked him why he did not carry the archbishop’s cross for him, “He always was a fool, and always will be.” Thomas had now only one answer to the bishops. He forbad them to take any part in the proceedings against him, announced that he had appealed to “our Mother, the Church of Rome, refuge of all the oppressed,” to prevent any of them taking part, and ordered them to excommunicate any who should dare lay secular hands upon the primate. Then, holding his cross, the archbishop took his usual place in the council-chamber, while the king sat in an inner room. In the face of personal danger all the strength and courage of Thomas Becket were aroused. He had yielded at Clarendon for the sake of peace, and no good had come of it. He had submitted to be fined rather than be involved in a miserable dispute about money, and now he was threatened with demands for money which were beyond his resources. There was nothing to prevent the king piling up greater and greater sums against him, till hopeless ruin had been reached. He was powerless to withstand such an onslaught. To Rome, “the refuge of all the oppressed,” would Thomas appeal, and then, if it seemed well to the pope, he would retire from Canterbury. But he would not surrender his post, however great the wrath of the king, unless it were for the welfare of the Christian Church. In the council-chamber Thomas sat alone, with one or two clergy attending him, including Herbert of Bosham and William FitzStephen, while the bishops went in to the king’s chamber. Among the nobles the cry was going up that the archbishop was a perjurer and a traitor, because, after signing at Clarendon, he now, in violation of those constitutions, forbad bishops to give judgment in a case that did not involve bloodshed, and had further made appeal to Rome. Then the king sent to know whether the archbishop refused to be bound by the Constitutions of Clarendon, and whether he would find sureties to abide by the sentence of the court regarding the accounts of his chancellorship.