186 Bishops of Old Sarum. 
Bishop Jocelin as a termination of some of his troubles. But diffi- 
culties arose from another quarter. The same year in which Theobald 
Archbishop of Canterbury crowned Henry II. as King of England, 
he gave to Thomas Becket, his clerk, the archdeaconry of Canterbury. 
And within seven years from that time, in 1162, Jocelin, together 
with no less than thirteen other bishops, consecrated Thomas Becket 
to the metropolitical see of Canterbury. 
Jocelin had at this time been twenty years Bishop of Sarum. 
Now his troubles began anew; though arising from a different 
source. Of course the disputes between the king and his archbishop 
are matters of general history, and need only to be referred to here 
so far as they affected Bishop Jocelin. He was of course present at 
the council at Clarendon in 1164, at which were framed what are 
commonly termed the “ Constitutions of Clarendon,” the objects of 
which were to take away from the clergy the immunity they had 
hitherto enjoyed, or, at least, claimed, of being tried for offences, of 
whatever sort, by none save ecclesiastical judges. It was after one 
of these meetings, that, together with other trusty councillors, 
Jocelin came to the archbishop, and sought earnestly to reconcile 
him with the king, who in consequence of the archbishop’s tergiver- 
sation threatened him and his followers with exile and death. “They 
threw themselves” says Roger Hoveden “ at the feet of the arch- 
bishop, and with tears besought him that he would, for the sake of 
the king’s dignity, come to him, and in the presence of the people 
declare that he would observe his laws.” 
The archbishop was unbending. From his place of exile he pub- 
lished his sentence, first of all of suspension, and afterwards of ex- 
communication, against Bishop Jocelin. The latter sentence was 
also passed on John of Oxford, then Dean of Sarum, who had 
taken part with Joceline in seeking to induce the archbishop to 
submit to the king’s demands. In no measured terms did Becket 
in a letter to his suffragans denounce these two dignitaries of our 
Church—and this too in defiance of the protest of the bishops them- 
selves who state in a letter to the archbishop—* It is a subject of 
concern to us all that such unjust measure has been meted out against 
our brother the Bishop of Salisbury and his dean. In following 
