office until he had received the Pope's absolution from his hasty promise. The Constitutions, which were founded on the relations existing between the Church and the State in the reign of Henry I., were an attempt to bring matters back to a stage which had now been passed, to define relations that had hitherto been continually changing, and to establish a system which, however generally excellent, was contrary to the spirit of the age. [Sidenote: Council of Northampton.] Archbishop Thomas twice tried to flee to the Pope, and failed through stress of weather or because the sailors were afraid of the king's anger. In October he was summoned to appear before the king's council at Northampton, and there an effort was made to crush him by multiplied suits. At last the king demanded an account of all the sums that had passed through his hands during his chancellorship, though he had already received a quittance. At Westminster and at Clarendon the bishops had sided, though timidly, with their primate, for the nature of the dispute forced them to do so. Now, when the whole business was reduced to a personal attack upon him, they sided with the king, just as their predecessors had done when Rufus attacked Anselm and Henry disputed with him. For though the pretensions of the Church limited the power of the Crown, and though Anselm and Becket each in his own day struggled for those pretensions, the bishops as a body were always on the king's side, for he had given them their office either because they had served him well, or because he expected them to be useful to himself. Accordingly Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, a churchman of considerable worldly wisdom, who held that a quarrel with the king would injure the interests of the Church, advised the archbishop to submit to Henry, and other bishops said much the same. Thomas forbade them to sit in judgment on him, and appealed from his lay judges to the Pope. Before long he escaped from England, sorely against the king's will, and went to Pope Alexander III. at Sens, who at once condemned the Constitutions. [Sidenote: The archbishop in exile.]