day was Sunday; the Archbishop did not leave his lodgings. On Monday the agitation of his spirits had brought on an attack of a disorder to which he was subject: he was permitted to repose. On the morrow he had determined on his conduct. At one time he had seriously meditated on a more humiliating course: he proposed to seek the royal presence barefooted with the cross in his hands, to throw himself at the King's feet, appealing to his old affection, and imploring him to restore peace to the Church. What had been the effect of such a step on the violent but not ungenerous heart of Henry? But Becket yielded to the haughtier counsels more congenial to his own intrepid character. He began by the significant act of celebrating, out of its due order, the service of St. Stephen, the first martyr. It contained passages of holy writ (as no doubt Henry was instantly informed) concerning "kings taking counsel against the godly." The mass concluded; in all the majesty of his holy character, in his full pontifical habits, himself bearing the archiepiscopal cross, the Primate rode to the King's residence, and dismounting entered the royal hall. [SN: Becket in the King's hall.] The cross seemed, as it were, an uplifting of the banner of the Church, in defiance of that of the King, in the royal presence;[71] or it might be in that awful imitation of the Saviour, at which no scruple was ever made by the bolder churchmen--it was the servant of Christ who himself bore his own cross. "What means this new fashion of the Archbishop bearing his own cross?" said the Archdeacon Lisieux. "A fool," said Foliot, "he always was and always will be." They made room for him; he took his accustomed seat in the centre of the bishops. Foliot endeavored to persuade him to lay down the cross. "If the sword of the King and the cross of the Archbishop were to come in conflict, which were the more fearful weapon?" Becket held the cross firmly, which Foliot and the Bishop of Hereford strove, but in vain, to wrest from his grasp. The bishops were summoned into the King's presence: Becket sat alone in the outer hall. The Archbishop of York, who, as Becket's partisans asserted, designedly came later that he might appear to be of the King's intimate council, swept through the hall with his cross borne before him. Like hostile spears cross confronted cross.[72]