That strife, so impetuous might seem the combatants to join issue, broke out, during the next year, in all its violence. Both parties, if they did not commence, were prepared for aggression. The first occasion of public collision was a dispute concerning the customary payment of the ancient Danegelt, of two shillings on every hide of land, to the sheriffs of the several counties. The king determined to transfer this payment to his own exchequer: he summoned an assembly at Woodstock, and declared his intentions. All were mute but Becket; the archbishop opposed the enrolment of the decree, on the ground that the tax was voluntary, not of right. "By the eyes of God," said Henry, his usual oath, "it shall be enrolled!" "By the same eyes, by which you swear," replied the prelate, "it shall never be levied on my lands while I live!"[41] On Becket's part, almost the first act of his primacy was to vindicate all the rights, and to resume all the property which had been usurped, or which he asserted to have been usurped, from his see.[42] It was not likely that, in the turbulent times just gone by, there would have been rigid respect for the inviolability of sacred property. The title of the Church was held to be indefeasible. Whatever had once belonged to the Church might be recovered at any time; and the ecclesiastical courts claimed the sole right of adjudication in such causes. The primate was thus at once plaintiff, judge, and carried into execution his own judgments. The lord of the manor of Eynsford in Kent, who held of the king, claimed the right of presentation to that benefice. Becket asserted the prerogative of the see of Canterbury. On the forcible ejectment of his nominee by the lord, William of Eynsford, Becket proceeded at once to a sentence of excommunication, without regard to Eynsford's feudal superior the king. [SN: Claims of Becket.] The primate next demanded the castle of Tunbridge from the head of the powerful family of De Clare; though it had been held by De Clare, and it was asserted, received in exchange for a Norman Castle, since the time of William the Conqueror. The attack on De Clare might seem a defiance of the whole feudal nobility: a determination to despoil them of their conquests, or grants from the sovereign. [SN: Immunities of the clergy.]