Chapter 5

when I am presiding over them at the chapter, the smallest thing fires me with anger. But they, as they ought, know their man of their choice and bear with him. They turn necessity into virtue and give place to me. I am deeply grateful to them. They have never opposed a single word of mine since I first came to live among them. When they all go out and the chapter is over, not one of them, I think, but knows I love him, nor do I believe I am unloved by a single one of them." This fact and temper of mind it was which made it possible to work the large diocese, for, of course, the bishop did not act in any public matter without his clergy. But personally his work was much helped by his self-denial and simplicity of his life. He never touched flesh but often used fish. He would drink a little wine, not only for health, but for company's sake. He was a merry and jest-loving table companion, though he never was undignified or unseemly. He would allow tumblers and musicians to perform at banquets, but he then appeared detached and abstracted rather than interested; but he was most attentive when meals were accompanied by readings about martyrs' passions, or saints' lives, and he had the scriptures (except the four gospels, which were treated apart) read at dinner and at the nightly office. He found the work of a bishop obliged him to treat that baggage animal, the body, better than of yore. His earlier austerities were avenged by constant pains in the bowels and stomach troubles, but in dedications of churches, ordinations, and other offices he would out-tire and knock up every one else, as he went from work to work. He rose before dawn and often times did not break his fast till after midday. In hot summer weather, he would oblige his ministers (deacon, sub-deacon, acolytes, &c.) to take a little bread and wine lest they should faint at the solemn Mass. When they hesitated, he upbraided them with want of faith and of sense, because they could not obey orders or see the force of them. When he journeyed and crowds came to be confirmed themselves or to present their little ones, he would get off his horse at a suitable spot and perform that rite. Neither tiredness, weakness, haste, rough ground, nor rain would induce him to confirm from the saddle. A young bishop afterwards, with no possible excuse, would order the frightened children up among restive horses. They came weeping and whipped by insolent attendants at no small risk--but his lordship cared nothing for their woe and danger. Not so dear Father Hugh. He took the babes gently and in due order, and if he caught any lay assistants troubling them would reproach them terribly, sometimes even thrashing the rascals with his own heavy hand. Then he would bless the audience, pray for the sick, and go on with his journey.

He was passionately fond of children, not only because they were innocent, but because they were young: and he loved to romp with them--anticipating by nearly seven centuries the simple discovery of their charm, and he would coax half words of wondrous wit from their little stammering lips. They made close friends with him at once, just as did the mesenges or blue tits who used to come from woods and orchards of Thornholm, in Lindsey, and perch upon him, to get or to ask for food.{5}

There is a story of a six months' old infant which jumped in its mother's arms to see him, waved its armlets, wagged its head, and made mysterious wrigglings (hitherto unobserved by bachelor monks) to greet him. It dragged his hand with its plump palm to its mouth as if to kiss it, although truth compels biographer Adam to acknowledge the kiss was but a suck. "These things are marvellous and to be deeply astonished at," he says. Hugh gave the boy apples or other small apposites (let us hope it was not apples, or the consequences of such gross ignorance would be equally marvellous), but the child was too interested in the bishop to notice the gifts. The bishop would tell how while he was still Prior he once went abroad to the Carthusian Chapter and stopped with brother William at Avalon. There his nephew, a child who could not even speak, was laid down upon his bed and (above the force of nature) chuckled at him--actually chuckled. Adam expected these two to grow up into prodigies and heard good of the latter, but the former he lost sight of--a little low-born boy in Newark Castle. Hugh used to put his baby friends to school when they grew older. Benedict of Caen was one of these, and he slipped off Roger de Roldeston's horse into a rushing stream, but was miraculously not drowned: and Robert of Noyon was another whom he picked up at Lambeth in the archbishop's train and put to school with the nuns at Elstow.

These tender passages are to be contrasted with quite other sides to the man. Once an old rustic arrived late for a roadside confirmation. The bishop was in the saddle and trotting off to another place near, when the old fellow bawled after him that he, too, wished to be bishopped. Hugh more than once bade him hurry with the rest to the next place, but the man sat plump on the ground and said it was the bishop's fault and not his if he missed that Grace. The prelate looked back, and at last pulled up, turned his horse, rode back, and was off saddle again, and had the rite administered swiftly; but having laid holy hands upon him, he laid also a disciplinary one, for he boxed the old fellow's ears pretty smartly, which spanking some would have us to believe was a technical act of ritual, a sort of _accolade_ in fact. The same has been suggested about the flogging of forester Godfrey; for the mere resonance of these blows it seems, is too much for the tender nerves of our generation. Another bumpkin with his son once ran after the bishop's horse. The holy man descended, opened his chrism box, and donned his stole, but the boy had been confirmed already. The father wanted to change the boy's name; it would bring him luck. The bishop, horrified at such paganism, asked the boy's name. When he heard that it was John he was furious. "John, a Hebrew name for God's Grace. How dare you ask for a better one? Do you want him called 'hoe' or 'fork'? For your foolish request, take a year's penance, Wednesday's Lenten diet and Friday's bread and water."{6}

He was hardly abreast of his very legal time in reverence for the feudal system. One of his tenants died and his bailiffs seized the best thing he had, to wit, an ox, as heriot due to the lord. The poor widow in tears begged and prayed for her ox back again, as the beast was breadwinner for her young children. The seneschal of the place chimed in, "But, my lord, if you remit these and similar legal dues, you will be absolutely unable to hold the land at all." The bishop heard him and leapt from his horse to the ground, which was very muddy. He dug both hands into the dirt. "Now I have got the land," he said, "and yet I do remit the poor little woman her ox," and then he flung the mud away, and lifting his eyes added, "I do not want the land down here; I want heaven. This woman had only two to work for her. Death has taken the better one and are we to take the other? Perish such avarice! Why, in the throes of such wretchedness, she ought to have comfort much rather than further trouble." Another time he remitted L5 due from a knight's son, at his father's death, saying it was unjust and mischievous that he should lose his money because he had lost his father too. "He shall not have double misfortune at any rate at our hands." Even in the twelfth century piety and business sometimes clashed.

Hugh had not been enthroned a year, when Christendom was aghast and alarmed at the news from the East. Saladin with eighty thousand men had met the armies of the Cross at Tiberias (or Hittin), had slaughtered them around the Holy Rood itself, in the Saviour's own country, had beheaded all the knights of the Temple and the Hospital who would not betray the faith. Jerusalem had fallen, and Mahomet was lord of the holy fields. "The rejoicing in hell was as great as the grief when Christ harrowed it," men said. The news came in terrible bursts; not a country but lost its great ones. Hugh Beauchamp is killed, Roger Mowbray taken. The Pope, Urban III., has died of grief. The Crusade has begun to be preached. Gregory VIII. has offered great indulgences to true penitents and believers who will up and at the Saracens. He bade men fear lest Christians lose what land they have left. Fasting three days a week has been ordered. Prince Richard has the cross (and is one, to his father). Berter of Orleans sings a Jeremiad. Gilbert Foliot (foe to St. Thomas) is dead. Peace has been made between France of the red cross and England of the white, and Flanders of the green. King Henry has ordered a tax of a tenth, under pain of cursing, to be collected before the clergy in the parishes from all stay-at-homes. Our Hugh is not among the bishops present at this Le Mans proclamation. The kingdom is overrun, in patches, with tithe collectors. Awful letters come from Christian remnants, but still there is no crusade; France and England are at war. The new Pope is dead. Now old Frederick Barbarossa is really off to Armenia. Prayers and psalms for Jerusalem fill the air. The Emperor is drowned. Archbishop Baldwin and Hugh of Durham, notwithstanding, quarrel with their monks. Scotland is always in a tangle. Great King Henry, with evil sons and failing health, makes a sad peace in a fearful storm, learns that son John too has betrayed him, curses his day and his sons, and refuses to withdraw his curse, dies at Chinon before the altar, houselled and anhealed, on the 6th of July, 1189. But when dead he is plundered of every rag and forsaken.

That last Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity, Hugh had been abroad with the poor king, and had been the only bishop who insisted upon keeping his festivals with full sung Mass and not a hasty, low Mass.

Hugh de Nonant, the new bishop of Coventry, one Confessor's Day had begun saying the introit, when his Lincoln namesake lifted up his voice and began the long melic intonation. "No, no, we must haste. The king has told us to come quickly," said the former. The answer was, "Nay, for the sake of the King of kings, who is most powerfully to be served, and whose service must bate nothing for worldly cares, we must not haste but feast on this feast," and so he came later, but missed nothing. Before the king died Hugh had gone back to his diocese again, and heard the sorrowful news there.

FOOTNOTES:

{3} The white.

{4} He was acting by a Canon of 1138, passed at Westminster.

{5} Thornholm is near Appleby, and is a wooded part of the county even to this day.

{6} From this and from various incidental remarks it may be concluded that Hugh knew Hebrew, which is not remarkable, because the learned just then had taken vigorously to that tongue and had to be restrained from taking lessons too ardently in the Ghetto. Some of his incidental remarks certainly did not come from St. Jerome, the great cistern of mediaeval Hebrew.