>rRQ 
the unwelcome news which he heard from them 
for the first time, is an imperfect legend in which 
the transactions of many days must have been 
epitomized, 
The bishops did not leave England til! the zoth 
or 21st of December,! and before their appearance 
tlıe king must have heard already not only of the 
excommunications and of the daring misuse of his 
own name, but of the armed progress to London, of 
the remarkable demonstration there, of the arch- 
bishop’s defiance of the government, of the mission 
of the Abbot of St. Albans, of the threats of the 
priest, andl of the imminent danger of a general 
rebellion. During the first three weeks of this 
December many an anxious council must have been 
held in the Norman court, and many a scheme 
talked over and rejected fort dealing with this 
impracticable firebrand. What could be done with 
him? No remedy was now available but a violent 
one. The law could not restrain a man who claimed 
to be superior to law, and whose claims the nation 
was not prepared directly to deny. Three centuries 
later the solution would have been a formal trial, 
with the block and axe as the sequel of a judielal 
1 Herbert says that they arrived at Bayeux apnucis diebus ante 
7 Ta Domini.