The restless Primate was determined to keep alive the popular fervor, enthusiastically, almost fanatically, on his side. [SN: Goes to London.] On a pretext of a visit to the young King at Woodstock, to offer him the present of three beautiful horses, he set forth on a stately progress. Wherever he went he was received with acclamations and prayers for his blessings by the clergy and the people. In Rochester he was entertained by the Bishop with great ceremony. In London there was the same excitement: he was received in the palace by the Bishop of Winchester in Southwark. Even there he scattered some excommunications.[206] The Court took alarm, and sent orders to the prelate to return to his diocese. Becket obeyed, but alleged as the cause of his obedience, not the royal command, but his own desire to celebrate the festival of Christmas in his metropolitan church. The week passed in holding sittings in his court, where he acted with his usual promptitude, vigor, and resolution against the intruders into livings, and upon the encroachments on his estates; and in devotions most fervent, mortifications most austere.[207] His rude enemies committed in the mean time all kinds of petty annoyances, which he had not the loftiness to disdain. Randulph de Broc seized a vessel laden with rich wine for his use, and imprisoned the sailors in Pevensey Castle. An order from the court compelled him to release ship and crew. They robbed the people who carried his provisions, broke into his park, hunted his deer, beat his retainers; and, at the instigation of Randulph's brother, Robert de Broc, a ruffian, a renegade monk, cut off the tail of one of his state horses. On Christmas day Becket preached on the appropriate text, "Peace on earth, good will towards men." The sermon agreed ill with the text. He spoke of one of his predecessors, St. Alphege, who had suffered martyrdom. "There may soon be a second." He then burst out into a fierce, impetuous, terrible tone, arraigned the courtiers, and closed with a fulminating excommunication against Nigel de Sackville, who had refused to give up a benefice into which, in Becket's judgment, he had intruded, and against Randulph and Robert de Broc. The maimed horse was not forgotten. He renewed in the most vehement language the censure on the bishops, dashed the candle on the pavement in token of their utter extinction, and then proceeded to the mass at the altar.[208] [SN: The bishops with the King.]