 Theobald’s court attracted many clerics with training and experience similar to John’s own, so he could continue to indulge his intellectual pursuits in a sympathetic environment during the 1140s and 1150s. John was counted a member of a circle of learned clerics, among whom was Thomas Becket (the future archbishop and martyr), who was a trusted servant of Theobald before he was appointed King Henry II’s Chancellor in late 1154 (Nederman and Bollermann 2020). John’s activities on behalf of Theobald brought him into contact with some of the most powerful and prominent men of twelfth-century Europe. He was present at the Roman curia for many crucial occurrences during the pontificate of Eugenius III (1145–1153), the final four years of which he later chronicled in his Historia Pontificalis (HP) (written during the early period of his Becket-related exile, likely early 1164 to early 1166). He enjoyed a warm friendship with his fellow countryman Nicholas Breakspear, who ascended the papal throne as Adrian IV in 1154. John was also well-acquainted with important figures in twelfth-century secular life, in France as well as England, most especially Henry II. John had supported Henry’s side in the struggle against the partisans of King Stephen during the period of English history known as the Anarchy. John was, however, sufficiently vocal in his opposition to Henry’s policies toward the English church to be banished from the royal court during 1156 and 1157. Although he ultimately recovered favor, he acquired a lingering skepticism about Henry’s motives that was to be confirmed by later events. As busy as John seems to have been with Canterbury administration in the final years of Theobald’s archiepiscopacy, this was also the period (late 1156 through late 1159) in which John produced the two works for which he is best known and esteemed: the Metalogicon, which presents a survey of the scholastic curriculum and a defense of the study of the trivium; and, the Policraticus, a work of moral and political philosophy grounded in a Ciceronian moderate skepticism and replete with exempla drawn from Biblical, patristic, and classical sources.