The King summoned the bishops, on their allegiance as barons, to join in sentence against Becket. But the inhibition of their metropolitan had thrown them into embarrassment, and perhaps they felt that the offence of Becket, if not capital treason, bordered upon it. It might be a sentence of blood, in which no churchman might concur by his suffrage--they dreaded the breach of canonical obedience. They entered the hall where Becket sat alone. The gentler prelates, Robert of Lincoln and others, were moved to tears; even Henry of Winchester advised the archbishop to make an unconditional surrender of his see. The more vehement Hilary of Chichester addressed him thus: "Lord Primate, we have just cause of complaint against you. Your inhibition has placed us between the hammer and the anvil: if we disobey it, we violate our canonical obedience; if we obey, we infringe the constitutions of the realm and offend the King's majesty. Yourself were the first to subscribe the customs at Clarendon, you now compel us to break them. We appeal, by the King's grace, to our lord the Pope." Becket answered "I hear." They returned to the King, and with difficulty obtained an exemption from concurrence in the sentence; they promised to join in a supplication to the Pope to depose Becket. The King permitted their appeal. Robert Earl of Leicester, a grave and aged nobleman, was commissioned to pronounce the sentence. Leicester had hardly begun when Becket sternly interrupted him. "Thy sentence! son and Earl, hear me first! The King was pleased to promote me against my will to the archbishopric of Canterbury. I was then declared free from all secular obligations. Ye are my children; presume ye against law and reason to sit in judgment on your spiritual father? I am to be judged only, under God, by the Pope. To him I appeal, before him I cite you, barons and my suffragans, to appear. Under the protection of the Catholic Church and the Apostolic See I depart!"[75] He rose and walked slowly down the hall. A deep murmur ran through the crowd. Some took up straws and threw them at him. One uttered the word "Traitor!" The old chivalrous spirit woke in the soul of Becket. "Were it not for my order, you should rue that word." But by other accounts he restrained not his language to this pardonable impropriety--he met scorn with scorn. One officer of the King's household he upbraided for having had a kinsman hanged. Anselm, the King's brother, he called "bastard and catamite." The door was locked, but fortunately the key was found. He passed out into the street, where he was received by the populace, to whom he had endeared himself by his charities, his austerities, perhaps by his courageous opposition to the king and the nobles, amid loud acclamations. They pressed so closely around him for his blessing that he could scarcely guide his horse. He returned to the church of St. Andrew, placed his cross by the altar of the Virgin. "This was a fearful day," said Fitz-Stephen.