Clarendon, Constitutions of

Clarendon, Constitutions of, name given to 16 articles presented by King Henry II of England in 1164 to the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas à Becket, and a council of bishops and barons at Clarendon, near Salisbury, England. The king sought to regulate certain relationships between the church and state according to established usage. Among the most important clauses were those which prohibited appeals to Rome without the king's consent and which asserted Henry's claim to try in the royal courts clerics who had already been convicted in the ecclesiastical courts, so abolishing the system known as benefit of clergy. Becket, however, saw this as state interference and repudiated the articles as contrary to canon law. A bitter dispute arose, ending in the murder of the archbishop in 1170. Although Henry conceded the benefit of clergy, other articles were enforced, thus influencing the development of English law and constituting permanent gains to the civil power.