GROWTH OF THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH 297 "criminous clerks"; gave the royal courts the right to determine whether cases concerning ecclesiastical lands land persons should be tried in the church courts or the king's courts; stated that the king's tenants-in-chief or his officials or the men on his own estates could not be excom- municated without his consent ; forbade the clergy to leave the realm without his permission ; and did not allow appeals to the papal court. After a vigorous protest Thomas un- willingly accepted the "Constitutions," but immediately after repented of his action and appealed to the pope to absolve him from the oath which he had taken to observe them. Becket then fled from the wrath of Henry to the domains |of Louis VII of France, where Pope Alexander III had also Itaken refuge from the hostile emperor, Frederick Becket !Barbarossa, and an anti-pope. The pope was inexile shocked by the tenor of the Constitutions of Clarendon, and absolved Thomas from observing such as infringed upon the Irights of the Church and of the clergy. But the pope did not wish to make an enemy of Henry, who controlled half of France as well as all England, and who had thus far supported him against the anti-pope set up by the emperor. The pope therefore left it to Becket to carry on a struggle for six years, in which Thomas excommunicated many of the king's followers and threatened Henry himself with the jsame treatment. Meanwhile the papal legates made re- peated efforts to bring about a reconciliation between the king and his archbishop. Finally Becket agreed to return to England, but as soon as he arrived issued a fresh batch of excommunications. When news of this reached Henry in Normandy, The murc j er he flew into such a fit of rage and used such Ian- ?f Becket: its results guage that four of his knights crossed the Channel and murdered the archbishop in the cathedral at Canterbury. This was a disastrous event for Henry and turned public opinion quite against him. Becket was re- garded as a martyr who had died for the Church, within three years the pope canonized him, and his shrine at Can-
