At the opening of the council, October 13th, John of Oxford presided; Henry exercised the office of prosecutor.  The first charge regarded some act of contempt against the King, supposed to have been committed by Becket in his judicial capacity.  The Archbishop offered a plea in excuse; but Henry swore that justice should be done him; and the obsequious court condemned Becket to the forfeiture of his goods and chattels, a penalty which was immediately commuted for a fine of five hundred pounds.  The next morning the King required him to refund three hundred pounds, the rents which he had received as warden of Eye and Berkhamstead.  Becket coolly replied that he would pay it; more, indeed, had been expended by him in the repairs, but money should never prove a cause of dissension between himself and his sovereign.

Another demand followed of five hundred pounds received by the Chancellor before the walls of Toulouse.  It was in vain that the Archbishop described the transaction as a gift.  Henry maintained that it was a loan; and the Court, on the principle that the word of the sovereign was preferable to that of a subject, compelled him to give security for the repayment of the money.  The third day the King required an account of all the receipts from vacant abbeys and bishoprics which had come into the hands of Becket during his chancellorship, and estimated the balance due to the Crown at the sum of forty-four thousand marks.  At the mention of this enormous demand the Archbishop stood aghast.  However, recovering himself, he replied that he was not bound to answer:  that at his consecration both Prince Henry and the Earl of Leicester, the justiciary, had publicly released him by the royal command from all similar claims; and that on a demand so unexpected and important he had a right to require the advice of his fellow-bishops.

Had the Primate been ignorant of the King’s object, it was sufficiently disclosed in the conference which followed between him and the bishops.  Foliot, with the prelates who enjoyed the royal confidence, exhorted him to resign; Henry of Winchester alone had the courage to reprobate this interested advice.  On his return to his lodgings the anxiety of Becket’s mind brought on an indisposition which confined him to his chamber; and during the next two days he had leisure to arrange plans for his subsequent conduct.  The first idea which suggested itself was a bold, and what perhaps might have proved a successful, appeal to the royal pity.  He proposed to go barefoot to the palace, to throw himself at the feet of the King, and to conjure him by their former friendship to consent to a reconciliation.  But he afterward adopted another resolution, to decline the authority of the court, and trust for protection to the sacredness of his character.