Henry was horrified at the news of the Archbishop's death, and hastened to beg absolution from Rome for the rash words that had provoked the murder. In the presence of the Papal legate he promised to give up the Constitutions of Clarendon, nor in the remaining eighteen years of his reign did Henry make any fresh attempt to bring the Church under the subjection of the Crown. To the great bulk of English people Thomas was a saint and martyr, and numerous churches were dedicated in his name. More than three hundred years later Henry VIII. decided that St. Thomas was an enemy of princes, that his shrine at Canterbury must be destroyed, and his festival unhallowed. But the fame of Thomas a Becket has survived the censure of Henry VIII., and his name shines clearly across the centuries. Democracy has been made possible by the willingness of brave men in earlier centuries to resist, to the death, an absolutism that would have left England bound and chained to the king's throne. STEPHEN LANGTON AND JOHN Stephen Langton was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in June, 1207, on the nomination of Pope Innocent III.; the monks of Canterbury, who had proposed their own superior, consenting to the appointment, for Langton had a high reputation for learning and was known to be of exalted character. But King John, who had wanted a man of his own heart for the archbishopric--John of Gray, Bishop of Norwich, commonly spoken of as "a servant of Mammon, and an evil shepherd that devoured his own sheep"--was enraged, and refusing to acknowledge Langton, defied the Pope, drove the monks out of the country, and declared that anyone who acknowledged Stephen Langton as archbishop should be accounted a public enemy. So it came about that the great English statesman who broke down the foulest and worst tyranny the land had known, and won for England the Great Charter of its liberties, was a nominee of the Pope, and was to find himself under the displeasure of the Papal legate when the Charter had been signed! For six years John kept Stephen out of Canterbury, while England lay under an interdict, with its King excommunicate and outside the pale of the Church. Most of the bishops fled abroad, "fearing the King, but afraid to obey him for dread of the Pope," and John laid hands on Church property and filled the royal treasury with the spoils of churchmen and Jews. But in 1213 John's position had become precarious, for the northern barons were plotting his overthrow, and the Pope had absolved all his subjects from allegiance, and given sentence that "John should be thrust from his throne and another worthier than he should reign in his stead," naming Philip of France as his successor. John was aware that he could not count on the support of the barons in a war with France, and a prophecy of Peter, the Wakefield Hermit, that the crown would be lost before Ascension Day, made him afraid of dying excommunicate. Accordingly John decided to get the Pope on his side.