Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln Part 3

{7} Plato's Aristocrat has a son, who is a great timocrat.

{8} "South-east of the Great Bar Gate between that and the little Bar Gate in the north-west angle of the Great South Common."

{9} Perhaps for both reasons chosen as the trysting-place.

CHAPTER VI

IN TROUBLES--

The king had before this time noticed a spot of immense military importance on the Seine between Rouen and Paris, the rock of Andelys.

Indeed he had once tossed three Frenchmen from the rock. It was, or might be, the key to Normandy on the French side, and he feared lest Philip should seize upon it and use it against him. Consequently he pounced upon it, and began to fortify it at lavish expense. Archbishop Walter of Rouen, and late of Lincoln, in whose ecclesiastical patrimony it lay, was furious, and obtained an Interdict, and Philip was chafed too.{10} The former was appeased by the gift of Dieppe, and the latter left to digest his spleen as best he might. The work was just about finished in May when a shower of red rain fell, to the horror of all except the dauntless king, who "would have cursed an angel" who had told him to desist from this his great delight. Here it was that the king lay waiting for the truce with France to expire.

The bishop arrived at the Rock castle in the morning of St. Augustine's day (Aug. 28th). The king was in the chapel hearing Ma.s.s, and thither the bishop followed him, and straightway saluted him. Now the king was in the royal das, near the outer door. Two bishops were standing just below him. (We must think of something like a small upstair college chapel for the theatre of this tale.) These two were old Hugh Pudsey, Bishop of Durham, and young Eustace, Bishop of Ely: the former a generous, loose-handed, loose-living old gentleman, the latter Longchamp's successor, a great scholar and revenue officer. Hugh looked past the shoulders of these two and saluted again. The king glared at him for a few seconds and then turned his face. The unabashed bishop put his face nearer: "Give me the kiss, lord king." The king turned his face further away, and drew his head back. Then the bishop clutched the king's clothes at the chest, vigorously shook them, and said again, "You owe me the kiss, for I have come a long way to you." The king, seemingly not astonished in the least, said, "You have not deserved my kiss." The strong hand shook him still harder, and across the cape which he still held taut, the bold suppliant answered confidently, "Oh yes, I have deserved it. Kiss me." The king, taken aback by this audacious importunity, smiled and kissed him. Two archbishops (Walter of Rouen most likely being one) and five other bishops were between the royal seat and the altar. They moved to make room for their uncourtly brother.

But he pa.s.sed through their ranks and went right up to the horn of the altar, fixed his looks firmly on the ground, and gave his whole attention to the celebration of the Divine mysteries. The king could hardly take his eyes off the bishop all through the service. So they continued until the threefold invocation of the Lamb of G.o.d that taketh away the sins of the world. Then the celebrant, the king's chaplain, gave the kiss of peace to a certain foreign archbishop, whose business it was, by court custom, to bring it to the king. Richard came from his place right up to the altar steps to meet him, received "the sign of the peace which we get from the sacrifice of the Heavenly Lamb," and then with humble reverence yielded the same to the Bishop of Lincoln by the kiss of his mouth. This respectful service, which the other archbishop was making ready to receive, as the custom was, and to pa.s.s on himself, was thus given direct to the holy man. The king stept quickly up to him, when Hugh was expecting nothing of the sort, but was wrapt in prayer.{11}

When the Ma.s.s was over, Hugh went to the king and spoke a few strong words of remonstrance against his unjustifiable anger, and explained his own innocence. The king could answer nothing to the purpose, but said that the Archbishop had often written suspicious suggestions against him. The bishop soon showed that these were groundless, and added, "G.o.d's honour apart, and the salvation of your soul and mine, I have never opposed your interests even in the least degree." The king immediately asked him to come next day to the recently constructed castle of Chateau Gaillard, and ordered the bishop to be given a big Seine pike, knowing that he would not eat meat. But before they left the chapel Hugh gripped him by the hand and led him from his high seat to a place near the altar. There he set him down and sat beside him. "You are our parishioner, lord king" (he was born in Oxford), "and we must answer at the tremendous judgment of the Lord of all for your soul, which He redeemed with His own blood. So I wish you to tell me how stands it with your soul in its inner state? so that I may be able to give it some effectual counsel and help, as the Divine breathing shall direct. A whole year has gone by since I last spoke with you."

The king answered that his conscience was clear, nearly in everything, except that he was troubled by hatred against the enemies whom he was apt to find doing him wrong, and wickedly attacking him. The reply was, "If in all things you please the grace of the Ruler of all, He will easily appease your enemies or give them into your hand. But you must beware with all your might, that you are not living against the laws of your Maker in any way (and G.o.d forbid you should) or even doing any wrong to your neighbours. The Scripture says that 'When a man's ways please the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.' On the other hand it says of others, 'The world shall fight with him, against the unwise,' and again the holy man saith of the Lord, 'Who hath hardened himself against Him and hath prospered?'

"Now there is a public report of you, and I grieve to say it, that you neither keep faithful to the marriage bed of your own wife, nor do you guard untouched the privileges of churches, especially in providing and choosing their rulers. Yes, it is said, and a huge piece of villainy it is, that moved by money or favour, you are used to promote some to the rule of souls. If this is true, then without any doubt, peace cannot be granted to you by G.o.d." When he had given this careful and timely admonition and instruction, the king excused himself on some points, on others asked earnestly for the bishop's intercession, and was sent off with a blessing. The bishop then went in gladness to his pike. Richard's opinion was that "if all the other bishops were like him, no king or prince would dare to rear his neck against them." Such salutary treatment now-a-days is the sole perquisite of the very poor. The higher up men get on the social scale, the less they need such honest dealing, it now appears.

But Hugh was not quite out of the toils. The king's counsellors suggested that he should carry back letters to the barons demanding aid and succour, letters which it was known would be well weighted by the authority of the postman, and would ensure their bearer continuance of the royal favour. The king's servants informed the bishop of this move, and his clerkly friends pointed out the great advantage to himself of this service. He answered: "That be far from me. It jumps neither with my intention nor my office. It is not my part to become the carrier of letters royal. It is not my part to co-operate in the least degree in exactions of this sort. Do not you know that this mighty man begs as it were with a drawn sword? Particularly this power (of the Crown), under guise of asking, really forces. Our English first attract with their gentle greetings, and then they force men with harshest compulsion to pay not what is voluntary but just what they choose to exact. They often compel unwilling folk to do what they know was once done spontaneously, either by this generation or the last. I have no cause to be mixed up in such dealings. These may please an earthly king at one's neighbour's expense, but afterwards they move the indignation of Almighty G.o.d." He asked the counsellors to arrange that this burden should not be laid upon him with its consequent refusal, conflict, and disfavour. Richard heard the tale and sent a message, "G.o.d bless you, but get away home, and do not come here to-morrow as we said, but pray for us to the Lord without ceasing," which message was most grateful to the bishop, and he soon set his face north. His exultant chaplains felt sure that all would turn out well, for on the steps of the chapel, when their hearts were all pit-a-pat, they had heard the chorus prose of St. Austin being chaunted, "Hail, n.o.ble prelate of Christ, most lovely flower," a lucky omen! And again when they reached chapel doors they heard the bishops and clerks within in unison continue the introit, "O blessed, O holy Augustine, help thou this company."

A month later Richard won a smart little victory near Gisors, where King Philip drank moat water, and nearly got knocked on the head. The king announced this in a letter, and asked for more prayers, and Adam, the biographer, felt that the heavenly triumph of his friend was complete.

He would have been less elate if he had known that all the bishops got a similar letter, even wicked old Hugh de Pudsey.

Lincoln by this time was the home of learned and reliable men. The canons, prebends, and placemen had been chosen with great care. Hugh had cast his net far and wide and enclosed some very edible fishes. We know of not a few. William of Leicester, Monta.n.u.s, has already been mentioned. Giraldus Cambrensis (a most learned, amusing, and malicious writer, on the lines of Anthony A. Wood, or even of Horace Walpole) was another. Walter de Map a third.{12} It was part of Hugh's high sense of duty which made him fight with all his weight for a worthy though a broad-minded use of patronage. He often upbraided the archbishop with his careless use of this power, who was immersed in worldly business and too given to bestow benefices for political or useful services. He said himself that the most grievous worldly misfortune he ever suffered was to find men whom he trusted and advanced turn out to be immoral sluggards. Yet another of his promotions was that of William de Blois, who afterwards succeeded him. In fact, like every great bishop of the time, he gathered his _eruditi_, his scholars, around him, and these were not looked upon as mere dreamers and impracticable bookworms. Lore and action went hand in hand. The men of affairs and the men of learning, in this age, were interchangeable persons. Consequently when Richard's attention was directed to Lincoln and its bishop, when he noticed that it was a centre for sound and steady clerks whose wallets were by no means unstuffed, and when he reflected that he had failed to lay hands upon the bishop's money, he resolved to have something at any rate from this fine magazine. He wrote to the archbishop to order, by letter, twelve eminent clerks, who had prudence, counsel, and eloquence, to serve at their own expense in the Roman Court, in Germany, Spain, and elsewhere. The post from Canterbury duly arrived with twelve sealed "pair of letters," to be directed to eminent men, and with a special letter to order the bishop to hasten and obey. The bearer found the bishop at his Buckden House, and dinner was just on the board. There was much buzz and hum among those present when the tale was told, but Hugh made no reply. He simply sat down to table. The clergy, a pavid flock, chattered their fears between the mouthfuls. They hoped rather hopelessly, that the answer would be all sugary and smiling; at any rate that their master would try a little ogling of the archbishop, who could, if he would, make things ever so much better. While they were exchanging their views upon expediency and the great propriety of saving one's skin, the stout-hearted bishop rose from table. He had consulted none of these scared advisers, so that he might not throw the responsibility upon their shivering backs. He turned to the messenger and said, "These are novelties, and hitherto unheard of, both the things which my lord has ordered on the king's authority and on his own.

Still he may know that I never was, nor will be, a letter carrier of his epistles; and I never have, nor will now, oblige our clergy to undertake royal service. I have often stopped even clerks of other parts, beneficed in our bishopric, from daring to make themselves beholden to secular patronage in public offices, such as forest diversion, and other like administrations. Some, who were less obedient on this point, we have even chastened by long sequestration of their livings. On what reasonable count, then, ought we to pluck men from the very vitals of our Church, and send them by order on the royal service? Let it be enough for our lord the king that (certainly a danger to their soul's salvation) the archbishops, neglecting the duty of their calling, are already utterly given over to the performance of his business. If that is not enough for him, then this bishop will come with his people. He will come, I say, and hear his orders from the king's own lips. He will come ready to carry out what is right next after those same orders.

"But as for you, take the bundle of twelve letters which you say you have brought to us, and be off with them and make just what use you please of them. But every single word which I speak to you, be sure to repeat to our lord the archbishop: and do not fail to end with the message that if the arrangement holds that our clergy are to go to the king, I myself likewise will go with them. I have not gone before without them; and they will not go without me now. This is the right relation between a good shepherd and good sheep: he must not scatter them by foolishly letting them out of his ken. They must not get into trouble by rash escape from him."

The letter carrier, a court cleric, was finely indignant. He was a man careful-chosen, haughty by nature, but still more haughty as royal envoy. He was bridling up for a volley of threats when the bishop cut him short, and ordered him off at the double. He slunk away abashed. A deputation, of weight, from Lincoln next waited upon the archbishop to expostulate with him for playing chuck taw with the immunity of the church, and franking with his authority such messages. He smiled graciously, after the manner of his kind, and hid his spleen. He meant no harm, of course: if harm there were, he was glad to be disobeyed, and he would make all quiet and right. Of course in reality he took care to twist the Lion's tail with both hands, and the next thing was a public edict, that all the goods of the bishop were to be taken care of by the king's collectors. The good man heard and remarked, "Did I not tell you truly of these men: their voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau?" It was easier to order than to execute. The anathema counted for much, but the public conscience no doubt for more. The officers balked and remonstrated. Richard insisted, but his tools bent in his hand. "Those English are scared at shadows," he said; "let us send Mercadier. He will know how to play with the Burgundian fellow."

This amiable man was the captain of the Routiers, whose playful habits may be guessed from the fact that he is the gentleman who afterwards skinned Bertrand de Gourdon for shooting the king. One of the king's friends answered, "Mercadier is necessary, my lord the king, to your war. We should lose our pains and also his services if the Lincoln bishop's anathema should take effect." The king agreed that the risk was too heavy, so he ordered Stephen de Turnham to take charge of the bishop's goods, as he loved his life and limbs. This man had been seneschal of Anjou under the king's father, and was well affected to the bishop; but he was between the devil and the deep sea. With some heaviness and nervousness Stephen moved upon Sleaford. Between Peterborough and Market Deeping, whom should he fall in with but the bishop and his party! The uneasy disseizers fetched a compa.s.s, halted, and got hold of some of the clergy. They were as humble as Ahaziah's third captain before Elijah. They were obliged to do it, but, poor lambs, they would not hurt so much as a swan's feather. And would the bishop, by all that was invokeable, kindly defer his anathema? or else the king would be royally angry, and they would get more than they deserved. The bishop answered the clergy, "It is not their parts to keep our things whole. Let them go. Let them finger and break in upon the goods, as they think fit. They are not ours but our Lady's, the holy Mother of G.o.d." He then brought out the end of his linen stole from his cloak (which stole he always wore, ready for confirmation and excommunication) shook it and added, "This little bit of stuff will bring back to the last halfpenny whatever they reeve away." He then pa.s.sed on to Buckden (near Huntingdon), where he issued orders to all the archdeacons and rural deans, that so soon as the officers should arrive they should clang bells, light candles and solemnly ban all who should violently and unrighteously touch the property of their Church.

The flutter in the clerical dovecot was immense, but the bishop simply said good-night to his excited chaplains and was soon in the sweetest slumber. Except that he said Amen in his sleep a few more times than usual, and more earnestly, they saw no trace of neural tremours about his sedate carriage. He seems to have been well aware of the gravity of the struggle, for he had already announced at Lincoln that he would have to go abroad. He had gathered his children at the Ma.s.s, where he added the priestly blessing from the law of Moses,{13} had commended himself to their prayers, given them the kiss of peace and commended them to G.o.d, and was already on the way to the archbishop. He stayed a few days at Buckden. Thence he slowly made his way to London. On the road a rural dean consulted him upon the case of a girl with second sight and a terrific tongue. This damsel would prophetically discover things stolen or lost, and she had a large following. If any discreet and learned man tackled her she would talk him down, and put him to rout. She was brought to meet Hugh by the roadside, amid a crowd of confirmation candidates. He addressed her, chiding not so much the damsel as the demon within her, "Come now, unhappy girl, what can you divine for us?

Tell me please, if you can, what this hand holds in it?" He held out his right hand closed over his stole end. She made no reply, but fell at his feet in a sort of faint. After a pause he bade them lift her up and asked through the dean (for he was ignorant of the country woman's talk) how she had learnt to divine? "I cannot divine. I implore the mercy of this holy bishop," she replied, and knelt at his feet. He laid his hands upon her head, prayed, blessed her, and sent her to the Prior of Huntingdon, the penitentiary priest of the district, to hear her confession. She not only gave up witchcraft, but ceased to be brazen-faced and a shrew: so that people bruited this matter as a miracle, and a handsome one it was. The bishop probably saved her from the vengeance of this rural dean, for witch-burning was not unknown even then, as Walter de Map witnesses. This was not the first essay of our bishop in witch-laying. When he was still Prior of Witham, Bartholomew, Bishop of Exeter, a learned and pious man, and one of St. Thomas'

opposers, consulted him upon a sad case. Bishop Bartholomew was interested in spiritualism (which shews the same face in every century, and never adds much to its phenomena), as Matthew Paris recounts. A poor girl was the prey of a most violent and cruel Incubus, whom no fasts or austerities could divorce from her. Hugh suggested united prayer on her behalf, which was made, but not answered. A rival Incubus, however, came upon the scenes, of a softer mood, and wooed with mild speeches. He promised to deliver her, and pointed out the perforated St. John's wort as a herb odious to devils. This the artful woman put in her bosom and her house, and kept both suitors at bay.{14} The bishop was much struck with this story, as well he might be, and used often to tell it. A monk told him another similar tale from Ess.e.x; but enough of such fables.

When he left Huntingdon the bishop went on to St. Albans, seemingly in a leisurely way, and as he drew near to this place, he met a crowd of provost's men dragging a condemned thief to the gallows. The poor creature's arms were braced behind his back. The word went round quickly that it was Hugh of Lincoln, and there was the usual rush to beg for his blessing, police craft and piety being wedded in those officers. The captive by some acrobatics managed to rush too, and came against the horse's neck, was knocked down, and in the dust cried for mercy. The bishop drew rein and asked who the man was and what he wanted. His attendants, who knew the language, answered him, "It is not your part, my lord, to ask more about the fellow. Indeed, you must let him just pa.s.s." They feared lest the bishop, already in deep water, should fall into still deeper by some chivalrous audacity. But he would know the tale and why the man cried him mercy: and when he knew it, he cried, "Lackaday! G.o.d be blessed!" and turning to the hangmen, he said, "Come back, my sons, with us to St. Albans. Hand the man over to us, and tell your masters and the judges that we have taken him from you. We will see that you take no harm." They did not dare to resist, but gave up their victim. He was quickly untied and given to the almoner. When they reached the abbey the clergy and attendant came to the bishop and begged him most earnestly to allow the civil magistrates to do their office.

"Up till now, my lord, neither the king nor any other man who lay in wait for you, could bring a just or a just-seeming charge against you.

But if when the legal judges have pa.s.sed sentence and handed the case to the executive, you quash that sentence by your pontifical authority, your ill-wishers will call it a blow against the king's crown, and you will fall into the condemnation of flat treason." "I am a.s.sured of your kindness," he answered; "but let these judges come in to us and you shall hear what we have to say to each other." The judges were already tapping at the doors, for a word with the audacious bishop. "Gentlemen, you are wise enough to know that your holy Mother the Church has everywhere this prerogative: all who are falling into any danger of condemnation and fly to her, may get freedom, and be kept unhurt." This they well knew and believed to be quite right. "If you know this, you ought to know that where the bishop is, united to the faithful in Christ, there too is the church. He who is used by his ministry to dedicate the material stones of the church to the Lord; who also has the work of sanctifying the living stones, the real stuff of the church, by each of the Sacraments, to rear from them the Lord's temple, he by right must enjoy the privileges of ecclesiastical dignity, wherever he be, and succour all who are in danger, according to his legal order."

The judges gratefully agreed, remembered that this was so expressed in ancient English law, but now obsolete, thanks to bishops' sloth or princes' tyranny. They summed up by this politeness, "My lord, we are your sons and parishioners. You are our father and pastor. So it will not be ours to run counter to your privilege or to dispute it: nor yours, by your leave, to bring us into any hazard. If you decide upon the man's release, we offer no opposition; but by your leave we trust you to see that we incur no danger from the king." "Well and rightly spoken," said he, "and on these terms I take him from your hands. For this infraction, I will make answer where I must." So the man escaped the gallows, and was set free again when they reached London.

Two remarks are worth making here. First, that the right of sanctuary, both for accused and of guilty persons, were guaranteed by the old Laws Ecclesiastical of King Edward the Confessor, as collected by William the First in the fourth year of his reign, which laws were romantically dear to the English people. The stretch came in where the Church was interpreted to mean the bishop and faithful. Secondly, Saint Nicholas similarly rescued two men from the scaffold, but not at a moment so inopportune for himself. If the rescue had law behind it, and it might be so defended, it was a very awkward moment to choose to champion a hangdog. But this was the age of chivalry, and without such innate chivalry Hugh would never have cast the spell he did over King Richard's England.

FOOTNOTES:

{10} "I will take it, though it were built of iron," he said; to which Richard replied, "And I will defend it, though it were of b.u.t.ter."

{11} There is no osculatory to be found in the records. This is a slightly later invention, and no one seems to kneel in this picture.

{12} Whom some wish to acquit of writing that jovial drinking song,

"I intend to end my days, In a tavern drinking."

{13} "The Lord bless thee and keep thee," &c. Numbers, vi., 24.

{14} If the reader disbelieves this story, let him read Bede upon Luke viii., 30, says the narrator.

CHAPTER VII

--AND DISPUTES

When Hugh, under this new cloud, did at last reach London the archbishop had no counsel to give, except that he should shear his clergy rather tight and send their golden fleeces to appease the king. "Do not you know that the king thirsts for money as a dropsical man does for water, my lord bishop?" To this the answer was, "Yes. He is a dropsical man, but I will not be water for him to swallow." It was plain that the archbishop was no friend in need, and back they went towards Lincoln. At Cheshunt he found a poor, mad sailor triced up in a doorway by hands and feet. Hugh ran to him, made the holy sign, and then with outstretched right hand began the Gospel, low and quick, "In the beginning was the Word." The rabid patient cowered, like a frightened hound; but when the words "full of grace and truth" were reached, he put out his tongue derisively. Hugh, not to be beaten, consecrated holy water, sprinkled him, and bade folk put some in his mouth. Then he went on his way; and the mad man, no longer mad, sanely went on pilgrimage, men said, and made a fine end at the last. His own bishop, who had met him, had clapped spurs to his horse and bolted. It may be suspected that this bolting bishop was the newly elect of London, who was William de Santa Maria, an ex-Canon of Lincoln, Richard's secretary, Giraldus' opponent, better known than loved in his late Chapter.

Matters being settled at Lincoln, he set out again for London and paused to ask the Barons of the Exchequer most kindly to see to the indemnities of his church while he was away. They rose to greet him and readily gave their promises. They prayed him to take a seat among them even for a moment. So pleased were they to have the archfoe of clerical secularism in this trap, that they called it a triumph indeed, to see the day when he sat on the Treasury bench. He jumped up, a little ashamed, kissed them all, and said, "Now I, too, can triumph over you if after taking the kiss you allow in anything less than friendly to my church." They laughingly said, "How wonderfully wise this man is! Why, he has easily laid it upon us, that whatever the king orders, we cannot without great disgrace trouble him at all." He blessed them all and was soon in Normandy. But Richard was following hot-foot the two half-brother Ademars, lords of Limoges and Angouleme, who had been playing into the hands of the French enemy. There was nothing to do but wait patiently, which he did at St. Nicholas' Monastery, Angers, from February to the beginning of March, 1199. Pope Innocent III.'s legates were also there, and they pa.s.sed three weeks together. He conferred ordinations near here in the Abbey of Grandmont; refusing to ordain one of Walter Map's young friends, who afterwards became a leper. The king, it was reported, was full of huge threats and savage designs against his despisers, and if the clergy trembled before, they now shook like aspen leaves. The story of Hugh's predicament had got wind. The Hereford Canons wanted to choose the witty Walter Map to be bishop. He was already Archdeacon of Oxford, Canon of Lincoln, and Prebend of Hereford, but alas! he was also a friend of the disfavoured bishop. This fact is worth some emphasis, as it ill.u.s.trates the large-mindedness of the saint. Walter was not only a vigorous pluralist, much stained by non-residence, but he was a whipster, whose lash was constantly flicking the monks, then in their decline. If any one considers his description of the Cistercians; of the desert life wherein they love their neighbour by expelling him; of their oppression whereby they glory not in Christ's Cross but in crucifying others; of their narrowness who call themselves Hebrews and all others Egyptians; of their sheep's clothing and inward ravening; of their reversals of Gospel maxims and their novelties; he will see that the lash for Cistercians must have fallen a good deal also upon Carthusian shoulders. Then Master Walter was towards being a favourer of Abelard and of his disciple Arnald of Brescia, whose ascetic mind was shocked at the fatal opulence of cardinals. Altogether Walter was a man who feared G.o.d, no doubt, but hardly showed it in the large jests which he made, which to our ears often sound rather too large. But Hugh recognised in the satirist a power for righteousness, and certainly loved and favoured him. Consequently the Hereford Canons with those of Angers and of the Lincoln Chapter laid their heads together to compose the strife between king and bishop: and the readiest way was of course for the latter to compound with a round sum and get off home.

The wars made the whole country dangerous for travelling, and it was neither safe to stay at home nor to move afield. But Job was not more persistent against his three friends than Hugh against the three unanimous Chapters, and his main argument was that the peace of the church must never be bought with money or this would endow its disturbers. His wisdom was well evidenced by events in the next reign.

With this advice he urged them to sleep over the matter and discuss it next day. But the struggle to avoid compromising principles in order not only to serve the hour, but to save the love and, perhaps, the lives of friends was a very severe strain to him. When they had gone out he was dismally cast down and acknowledged that he had rarely compressed so much grief into so little s.p.a.ce. Then he sat in silence, thought, and prayer that the tangle might be so unknotted, that G.o.d not be offended nor his own friends and sons slighted and alienated. Upon this he slept and dreamed sweet dreams of lovely sights and heard the roll of the Psalm of Divine Battle chaunted by heavenly voices, "O G.o.d, wonderful art Thou in Thy holy places, even the G.o.d of Israel; He will give strength and power unto His people; blessed be G.o.d."{15} He woke up refreshed, and at his weekly Sat.u.r.day Confession deeply blamed himself for some hesitation he had felt, when baleful advice was given him.

A little after this the Abbess of Fontevrault came to see him. The King's mother Eleanor, her guest, had been sent for in a hurry. The king had been hurt. A serf of Achard of Chalus had ploughed up a golden relic, an emperor with his family seated round a golden table. Ademar of Limoges had seized it. Richard demanded the whole and was after it sword in hand. The holders were in Castle Chalus, short of weapons but not of valour, and held out gallantly armed with frying-pans and whatnot. The place was undermined. Richard, without his hauberk, was directing the crash, when a man pulled an arrow from the mortar; aimed it and hit him on the neck and side. He went to his tent, and plucked at it, broke it off; was operated upon; would not keep quiet. The wound turned angry and then black, and the Lion lay dying. He made his will, a generous and charitable one, confessed his sins, was houselled and anhealed, and died on Pa.s.sion Tuesday, April 6th. His brain and bowels were buried at Charroux, his heart at Rouen, and his body at his father's feet, in penitence, in the nunnery of Fontevrault. Hugh was on his way to the Cathedral at Angers to take duty the next day, Palm Sunday, when Gilbert de Lacy, a clerk, rode up to him and told him of the king's death and of the funeral next day in Fontevrault. Hugh groaned deeply and announced at Angers that he should set out at once for that place. Every one begged and prayed that he would do no such thing. The mere rumour of the king's death had as usual let loose all the forces of disorder. Robbery, violence, and general anarchy were up. His own servants had been held up and robbed of forty silver marks, and the interregnum was more dreadful than any tyranny. What is the use of such charitable designs if you merely get left in the wilds by robbers, bare of carriage and clothes?

they asked. His answer was worthy of a man who lived in holy fear and no other. "_We_ are all well aware what things can happen--fearful to the fearful--on this journey. But I think it a thing much more fearful that I should be coward enough to fail my late lord and king, by being away at such a crisis, by witholding my faith and grace from him in death, which I always showed him warmly in his life. What of the trouble he gave us, by giving in too much to the evil advice of those who flattered him? Certainly when I was with him, he never treated me but most honourably, never dismissed me unheard, when I made him some remarks face to face upon my business. If he wronged me when I was away, I have put it down to the spite of my detractors, not to his wickedness or malice. I will, therefore, pay him back to my power the honours he so often bestowed upon me. It will not be my fault if I do not help warmly at his obsequies. Say robbers do meet me on the road, say they do take the horses and carry off the robes, my feet will travel all the fleeter, because they are lightened from the vestment baggage. If they really tie my feet and rob me of the power of moving, then and then only will be a real excuse for being absent in the body, for it will be caused not by vice but by outside obstacles." He left his friends in the city and almost all his stuff, took one minor clerk, one monk, and a tiny train and set out. On the way he heard that the poor Queen Berengaria was at Castle Beaufort, so he left the doubtful highway for a dangerous forest track to visit her. He soothed her almost crazy grief, bid her bear grief bravely and face better days cautiously, said Ma.s.s for her, blessed her and her train, and went back at once. He got to Saumur the same day, where he was greeted with a sort of ovation by the townsfolk and was entertained by Gilbert de Lacy, who was studying there. Next day, Palm Sunday, he sped on to Fontevrault and met the bearers just at the doors. He paid all the royal honours he could to his late Master and was entertained at the Monastery. For three days he ceased not to say Ma.s.s and the Psalms for the kings lying there, as for all the faithful who lay quiet in Christ, prayed for their pardon and the bliss of everlasting light. A beautiful picture this of the brave old bishop in the Norman Abbey Church, where two kings, his friend and his forgiven foe, lay "shrouded among the shrouded women" in that Holy Week of long ago!

This compa.s.sion was not only a matter of honour, but of faith. It was one of the principles of his life and conduct that hereby was set forth the love of G.o.d, and applied to the needs of man. He used often to say that countless other things manifested the boundless love of G.o.d to men, but of those we know, these surpa.s.s the greatness of all the rest, which He ceases not to bestow before man's rise and after his setting.

"To touch lightly a few of these in the case of men who rise and set: G.o.d the Son of G.o.d gave for each man before he was born the ransom of His own death. G.o.d the Father sent His own same Son into the world to die for the man: G.o.d the Holy Ghost poured Himself out an earnest for him. So together the whole Trinity, one G.o.d, together set up the Sacraments by which he is born, cleansed, defended, and strengthened, gave the props of His own law to rule and teach him, and generously made provision for his good by other mysterious means. When man's fitful life is past and its course cut off by death, when his once dearest look on him now with aversion, when parents and children cast him forth with anxious haste from the halls once his, G.o.d's most gracious kindness scorns not what all others despise. Then straightway He ordains not only angelic spirits to the ward of the soul at its return to its Maker, but He sends for the burial service those who are first and foremost of His earthly servants, to wit the priests and others in the sacred orders.

And this is His command to them: 'Behold,' He says, 'My priests and caretakers of My palaces in the world, behold My handiwork. I have always loved it. I spared not My only Son for it but made Him share in its mortality and its death. Behold, I say, that is now become a burden to its former lovers and friends. They crowd to cast it out and drive it forth. Away, then, speed and help My refugee: take up the Image of My Son, crucified for it: take instruments for incense and wax. Ring out the signals of My Church for a solemn a.s.sembly; raise high your hymnal voices, open the doors of My house and its inner shrines: place near to the altar, which holds the Body of My Son, what is left of that brother or sister; finally, cover him a bier with costly palls, for at last he triumphs: crowd it with lamps and candles, circle round him, overthrown as he is, with helping crowds of servants. Do more. Repeat the votive offering of My Son. Make the richest feast, and thus the panting spirit, restless and weary with the jars of the wonted mortality it has just laid by, may breathe to strength: and the flesh, empty for the while of its old tenant, and now to be nursed in the lap of the Mother Earth, may be bedewed with a most gracious holiness, so that at the last day when it is sweetly reunited to its well-known companion, it may gladly flower anew and put on with joy the everlasting freshness." This was no sudden seizure and pa.s.sing emotion at the romance of funerals. He issued a general order in his diocese forbidding parish priests to bury the bodies of grown persons, if he were by to do it. If it were a case of good life, the more need to honour; if of an evil life, such would all the more yearn for greater succour. So he went to all, and if they were poor he ordered his almoner to find the lights and other requirements.

Any funeral would bring him straight from his horse to pray at the bier.

If he had no proper book wherein he might read without halting (and his eyes waxed dim at the last) he would stand near the officiant, chaunt the psalms with him, say the amens, and be clerk, almost a laic. If he had the right book, he would be priest, say the prayers, use the holy water, swing the censer, cast on the mould, then give shrift and benison and go on his way. If the place were a large city and many bodies came for burial he did just the same until all were finished. Potentates expecting to eat bread with him were often vexed and complained at these delays; but, host or guest, he had more appet.i.te for holy than for social functions. King Richard at Rouen, like his father before him, with all the Court and the Royal Family, when they invited Hugh to table, had to keep fasting while Hugh performed these higher duties without clipping or diminishing the office. When the king's servants chafed, and would have spurred him on, he would say, "No need to wait for us. Let him eat in the Lord's name;" and to his friends, "It is better for the king to eat without us, than for our humility to pa.s.s the Eternal King's order unfulfilled." Near Argentan, in Normandy, he once found a new grave by the roadside and learnt that a beggar-boy lay there. The priest had let him lie there, because there was no fee and no one would carry him to the church-yard. Hugh was deeply grieved, said the office himself, and rattled that priest pretty smartly to his bishop for denying Christian burial to the penniless and needy.

Once while the cathedral works were being carried on, a mason engaged on the fabric asked him for pontifical shrift for a brother who had just died. It was winter, and the feast of St. Stephen. Hugh promptly gave the absolution, and then asked if the body were yet buried. When he learnt that it was only being watched in a somewhat distant church, he ordered three horses instantly, one for himself, one for his outrider, and one for his chaplain; but as only two were to be had he sent the chaplain on ahead, himself followed with a monk and a couple of servers, and devoutly buried not only the mason's brother, but five other bodies.

Another time, when the Archdeacon of Bedford gave a large and solemn feast to the dignified clergy--who, by the way, seldom shine in these narratives--the bishop so wearied them by his funereal delays that they explained their impatience to him not without some tartness of reproof.

His only reply was, "Why do you not recall the voice of the Lord, who said with His holy lips, My meat is to do the will of My Father in heaven?" Another time, again, one hot spring when there was a general meeting of magnates, he heard that one of the prelates was dead.{16} The man was an outrageous guzzler and toper, but Hugh prayed earnestly for him, and then asked where he was to be buried. The now unromantic spot of Bermondsey was to be the burying ground, and the funeral was on the very day and hour of the Westminster gathering, in which matters deeply interesting to Lincoln were to be handled. No one of the bishops or abbots would stir out for their detected dead fellow, but "to desert him in his last need" was impossible to his saintlier brother. He must be off to bury the man, council or no council. The body had been clad in an alb and chasuble. Its face was bare and black, and the gross frame was bursting from its clothes. Every one else had a gum, an essence or incense; but Hugh, who was peculiarly sensitive to malodours, showed nothing but tenderness for the corrupt mortality, and seemed to cherish it as a mother a babe. The "sweet smelling sacrifice" shielded him in his work of mercy, they said.

William of Newburgh, a writer much given to ghost stories, tells a Buckingham tale of a certain dead man who would walk. He fell violently upon his wife first, and then upon his brothers, and the neighbours had to watch to fend him off. At last he took to walking even in the day, "terrible to all, but visible only to a few." The clergy were called; the archdeacon took the chair. It was a clear case of Vampire. The man must be dug up, cut to bits, and burnt. But the bishop was very particular about the dead, and when they asked his leave he was indignant at the proposal. He wrote instead a letter with his own hand, which absolved the unquiet spirit. This was laid upon the dead man's breast, and thenceforward he rested in peace, as did his alarmed neighbours. Whatever we think of the tale, the tender reverent spirit of the bishop is still a wonder. Although greatly given to an enthusiasm for the saints, a puzzling enthusiasm for their teeth, nails, plaisters, and bandages, Hugh was looked upon as an enemy to superst.i.tion, and was an eager suppressor of the worship of wells and springs, which still show how hard the Pagan religion dies. He found and demolished this "culture" at Wycombe and Bercamstead.{17}

The great theological question of Hugh's time was certainly the Eucharistic one. Eucharistic doctrine grew, as the power of the Church grew; as the one took a bolder tone so did the other. The word Transubstantiation (an ambiguous term to the disputants who do not define substance) had been invented by Peter of Blois, but not yet enjoined upon the Church by the Lateran Council of 1215. The language of the earlier fathers, of St. Bernard, did not suffice. Peter Lombard's tentative terms had given way to less reserved speech. Thomas Aquinas, not yet born, was to unite the rival factions which forked now into Berengarius, who objected to the very terms Body of Christ, &c., always used for the Sacrament; and now into some crude cannibal theories, which found support in ugly miracles of clotted chalices and bleeding fingers in patens. Abelard had tried to hush the controversy by a little judicious scepticism, but the air was full of debate. If learned men ignored the disputes the unlearned would not. Fanatical monks on the one side and fanatical Albigenses on the other, decried or over-cried the greatest mysteries of the faith, and brawled over the hidden manna.

Hugh's old Witham monk Ainard had once preached a crusade against the blasphemers of the Sacraments, and is mentioned with honour for this very thing by Hugh's intimate and biographer. The saint's conspicuous devotion at the Ma.s.s, the care with which he celebrated and received, of themselves would point to a peculiarly strong belief in the Invisible Presence. Christians are, and have always been, lineally bound to believe in the supreme necessity of the Lord's Marriage Supper to the soul's health and obedience. They are bound to use the old language, "This is My Body." In earlier days, when Church thinkers were all Platonists, or at least Realists, the verity of the Sacrament was the Idea behind it. The concrete veils of that Idea were hallowed only by their use, a.s.sociation, and impact. But when after the crusades Aristotle was no longer the Bishop of Arians, but now the supreme philosopher, the language hitherto natural to piety had either to be changed or infused by violence with new senses, or both. The latter half of the twelfth century saw this unhappy deadlock between history and reason, and made strenuous efforts to compose the strife. So far as we may judge, upon a difficult question, where little must be written and much would be required to express an exact opinion, Hugh seems to have held that by mystic sanctification the host is turned into Christ's Body; that this conversion is not a sudden but a gradual one, until the Son offers Himself anew, and hence the Sacrifice may be said to be repeated. The story which ill.u.s.trates this position best is that of the young clerk who came to him at Buckden. The bishop had just been dedicating a large and beautiful chalice and upbraiding the heavily-endowed dignitaries for doing nothing at all for the poorly served churches from which they drew their stipends. Then he said Ma.s.s, and the clerk saw Christ in his hands, first as a little child at the Oblation, when "the custom is to raise the host aloft and bless it"; and again when it is "raised to be broken and consumed in three pieces," "as the Son of the Highest offering Himself to the Father for man's salvation." The clerk tells him of the double vision--the voucher of a message sent by his late crusading father, who warned him to tell the archbishop, through the Bishop of Lincoln, that the evil state of the church must be amended. The message and the messenger seem to answer exactly to the monk of Evesham, whose Dantesque revelations{18} are here almost quoted. The wrath of G.o.d was incurred by the unchaste living priests, who so behaved that the Sacraments were polluted, and by the manner in which archdeacons and others trafficked in bribes. Hugh heard the story at the altar, wept, dried the eyes of both, kissed the young man and brought him into the meal afterwards, and urged him to become a monk. This he did, and became the Monk of Evesham aforesaid. There is no necessary advance in Eucharistic doctrine in this story, for a similar vision was given to King Edward the Confessor, and Hugh was so reticent about such things that his chaplain Adam never dared to ask him, although he dreamed that he asked him and was snubbed for his pains.

"Although then, when you say, and more often, the Lord deigned to reveal this and other things to me, what do you want in the matter?" In his last journey to Jouay,{19} an old, feeble and withered priest, who would not dine with him as the parish priest was wont, came to ask him to see a wonder and to beg for his prayers. His story was that he, being in mortal sin, blind and weak in faith and practices, was saying Ma.s.s, and doubting whether so dirty a sinner could really handle so white and stainless a glory. When the fraction took place, blood dripped from the host and it grew into flesh. He dropped the new thing into the chalice, covered it up, dismissed the people, and got papal absolution, and now would fain show the wonder. The lesser men were agape for the sight, but Hugh answered, "In the Lord's name let them keep the signs of their infidelity to themselves. What are they to us? Are we to be astonished at the partial shows of the Divine gift, who daily behold this heavenly sacrifice whole and entire with most faithful gaze of mind? Let him, who beholds not with the inner sight of faith the whole, go and behold the man's little sc.r.a.ps with his carnal vision." He then blessed the priest and dismissed him, and rebuked his followers for curiosity, and gave them a clear Eucharistic lesson not repeated for us, upon what faith lays down in the matter. From his speech then and elsewhere the good Adam gathered that Hugh often saw what others only believed to be there, the "bared face of the inner Man."