The next year both archbishops travelled to Rome for their palliums, where Thomas took advantage of the opportunity to ask Pope Alexander II to decree that the sees of Canterbury and York were equal. Thomas also sought to have the pope declare that the midland sees of Worcester, Dorchester on Thames, and Lichfieldall south of the River Humberwere part of the Archdiocese of York rather than Canterbury. The 12th-century chronicler Eadmer, a monk at Canterbury, wrote much later that Thomas had resigned and surrendered his archiepiscopal symbols, but they were promptly returned to him by Lanfranc on the pope's orders. The story's partisan source casts some doubt on its accuracy.