Since the Council of Clarendon Becket stood alone. All the higher clergy, the great prelates of the kingdom, were now either his open adversaries or were compelled to dissemble their favor towards him. Whether alienated, as some declared, by his pusillanimity at Clarendon, bribed by the gifts or overawed by the power of the King, whether conscientiously convinced that in such times of schism and division it might be fatal to the interests of the Church to advance her loftiest pretensions, all, especially the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of London, Salisbury and Chichester, were arrayed on the King's side. Becket himself attributed the chief guilt of his persecution to the bishops. "The King would have been quiet if they had not been so tamely subservient to his wishes."[64] [SN: Parliament at Northampton. Oct. 6, 1164.] Before the close of the year Becket was cited to appear before a great council of the realm at Northampton. All England crowded to witness this final strife, it might be between the royal and the ecclesiastical power. The Primate entered Northampton with only his own retinue; the King had passed the afternoon amusing himself with hawking in the pleasant meadows around. The Archbishop, on the following morning after mass, appeared in the King's chamber with a cheerful countenance. The King gave not, according to English custom, the kiss of peace. The citation of the Primate before the King in council at Northampton was to answer a charge of withholding justice from John the Marshall employed in the king's exchequer, who claimed the estate of Pagaham from the see of Canterbury. Twice had Becket been summoned to appear in the king's court to answer for this denial of justice: once he had refused to appear, the second time he did not appear in person. Becket in vain alleged an informality in the original proceedings of John the Marshall.[65] The court, the bishops, as well as the barons, declared him guilty of contumacy; all his goods and chattels became, according to the legal phrase, at the king's mercy.[66] The fine was assessed at 500 pounds. Becket submitted, not without bitter irony: "This, then, is one of the new customs of Clarendon." But he protested against the unheard-of audacity that the bishops should presume to sit in judgment on their spiritual parent; it was a greater crime than to uncover their father's nakedness.[67] Sarcasms and protests passed alike without notice. But the bishops, all except Foliot, consented to become sureties for this exorbitant fine. [SN: Demands on Becket.] Demands rising one above another seemed framed for the purpose of reducing the Archbishop to the humiliating condition of a debtor to the King, entirely at his disposal. First 300 pounds were demanded as due from the castles of Eye and Berkhampstead. Becket pleaded that he had expended a much larger sum on the repairs of the castles: he found sureties likewise for this