Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln Part 1

Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln.

by Charles L. Marson.

INTRODUCTION

In a short biography the reader must expect short statements, rather than detailed arguments, and in a popular tale he will not look for embattled lists of authorities. But if he can be stirred up to search further into the matter for himself, he will find a list of authorities ancient and modern come not unacceptable to begin upon.

The author has incurred so many debts of kindness in this work from many friends, and from many who were before not even acquaintances, that he must flatly declare himself bankrupt to his creditors, and rejoice if they will but grant him even a second-cla.s.s certificate. Among the major creditors he must acknowledge his great obligations to the hospitable Chancellor of Lincoln and Mrs. Crowfoot, to the Rev. A. Curtois, Mr.

Haig, and some others, all of whom were willing and even anxious that the story of their saint should be told abroad, even by the halting tongues of far-away messengers. The same kind readiness appeared at Witham: and indeed everybody, who knew already about St. Hugh, has seemed anxious that the knowledge of him should be spread abroad. It has snowed books, pamphlets, articles, views, maps, and guesses; and if much has remained unsaid or been said with incautious brusqueness, rather than with balanced oppressiveness, the reader who carps will always be welcome to such material as the author has by him, for elucidating the truth. If he has been misled by a blind guide, that guide must plead that he has consulted good oculists and worthy spectacle-makers, and has had every good intention of steering clear of the ditch.

Though what a man is counts for more than what he does, yet the services of St. Hugh to England may be briefly summed up. They were (1) Spiritual. He made for personal holiness, uncorruptness of public and private life. He raised the sense of the dignity of spiritual work, which was being rapidly subordinated to civic work and rule. He made people understand that moral obligations were very binding upon all men.

(2) Political. He made for peace at home and abroad: at home by restraining the excesses of forestars and tyrants; abroad by opposing the constant war policy against France. (3) Const.i.tutional. He first encountered and checked the overgrown power of the Crown, and laid down limits and principles which resulted in the Church policy of John's reign and the triumph of Magna Carta. (4) Architectural. He fully developed--even if he did not, as some a.s.sert, invent--the Early English style. (5) Ecclesiastical. He counterbalanced St. Thomas of Canterbury, and diverted much of that martyr's influence from an irreconcileable Church policy to a more reasonable, if less exalted, notion of liberty.

(6) He was a patron of letters, and encouraged learning by supporting schools, libraries, historians, poets, and commentators.

Ancient authorities for his Life are:--(1) The Magna Vita, by Chaplain Adam (Rolls); (2) Metrical Life, Ed. Dimock, Lincoln, 1860; (3) Giraldus Cambrensis, VII. (Rolls); (4) Hoveden's Chronicle (Rolls); (5) Benedicti, Gesta R. Henry II. (Rolls); (6) for trifles, Matthew Paris, I. and II. (Rolls), John de Oxenden (ditto), Ralph de Diceto (ditto), Flores Histor. (ditto), Annales Monastici (ditto); (7) also for collateral information, Capgrave Ill.u.s.trious Henries (Rolls), William of Newburgh, Richard of Devizes, Gervase's Archbishops of Canterbury, and Robert de Monte, Walter de Mapes' De Nugis (Camden Soc). Of modern authorities, (1) Canon Perry's Life (Murray, 1879) and his article in the Dictionary of National Biography come first; (2) Vie de St. Hughues (Montreuil, 1890); (3) Fr. Thurston's translation and adaptation of this last (Burns and Oates, 1898); (4) St. Hugh's Day at Lincoln, A.D. 1900, Ed. Precentor Bramley (pub. by Clifford Thomas, Lincoln, N.D.); (5) Guides to the Cathedral, by Precentor Venables, and also by Mr.

Kendrick; (6) Archaeological matter, Archaeological Inst.i.tute (1848), Somerset Archaeolog. x.x.xIV., Somerset Notes and Queries, vol. IV., 1895, Lincoln Topographical Soc., 1841-2; (7) Collateral information--_cf._ Miss Norgate's "England under Angevin Kings" (Macmillan), Robert Grosseteste, F. E. Stevenson (ditto), Stubbs' "Opera Omnia" of course, Diocesan History of Lincoln, Grande Chartreuse (Burns and Oates), "Court Life under Plantagenets" (Hall), "Highways in Normandy" (Dearmer);(8) of short studies, Mr. Froude's and an article in the _Church Quarterly_, x.x.xIII., and Mrs. Charles' "Martyrs and Saints" (S.P.C.K.) are the chief.

Of this last book it is perhaps worth saying that if any man will take the trouble to compare it with John Brady's _Clavis Calendaria_, of which the third edition came out in 1815, he will see how much the tone of the public has improved, both in courtesy towards and in knowledge of the great and good men of the Christian faith.

St. Hugh's Post-Reformation history is worth noting for the humour of it. He is allowed in the Primer Calendar by unauthorised Marshall, 1535; out in Crumwell and Hilsey's, 1539; out by the authorised Primer of King and Clergy, 1545; still out in the Prayer-books of 1549 and 1552; in again in the authorised Primer of 1553; out of the Prayer-book of 1559; in the Latin one of 1560; still in both the Orarium and the New Calendar of the next year, though out of the Primer 1559; in the Preces Privatas 1564, with a scornful _admonitio_ to say that "the names of saints, as they call them, are left, not because we count them divine, or even reckon some of them good, or, even if they were greatly good, pay them divine honour and wors.h.i.+p; but because they are the mark and index of certain matters dependent upon fixed times, to be ignorant of which is most inconvenient to our people"--to wit, fairs and so on. Since which time St. Hugh has not been cast out of the Calendar, but is in for ever.

In the text is no mention of the poor swineherd, G.o.d rest him! His stone original lives in Lincoln cloisters, and a reproduction stands on the north pinnacle of the west front (whereas Hugh is on the south pinnacle), put there because he h.o.a.rded a peck of silver pennies to help build the House of G.o.d. He lives on in stone and in the memories of the people, a little flouted in literature, but, if moral evidence counts, unscathedly genuine: honourable in himself, to the saint who inspired him, and to the men who hailed him as the bishop's mate--no mean builder in the house not made with hands.

CHAPTER I

THE BOY HUGH

St. Hugh is exactly the kind of saint for English folk to study with advantage. Some of us listen with difficulty to tales of heroic virgins, who pluck out their eyes and dish them up, or to the report of antique bishops whose claim to honour rests less upon the n.o.bility of their characters than upon the medicinal effect of their post-mortem humours; but no one can fail to be struck with this brave, clean, smiling face, which looks out upon us from a not impossible past, radiant with sense and wit, with holiness and sanity combined, whom we can all reverence as at once a saint of G.o.d and also one of the fine masculine Makers of England. We cherish a good deal of romance about the age in which St.

Hugh lived. It is the age of fair Rosamond, of Crusades, of lion-hearted King Richard, and of Robin Hood. It is more soberly an age of builders, of reformers, of scholars, and of poets. If troubadours did not exactly "touch guitars," at least songsters tackled verse-making and helped to refine the table manners of barons and retainers by singing at dinner time. The voice of law too was not silent amid arms. Our const.i.tutional government, already begotten, was being born and swaddled. The races were being blended. Though England was still but a northern province of a kingdom, whose metropolis was Rouen, yet that kingdom was becoming rather top-heavy, and inclined to s.h.i.+ft its centre of gravity northwards. So from any point of view the time is interesting. It is essentially an age of monks and of monasteries; perhaps one should say the end of the age of monastic influence. Pope Eugenius III., the great Suger and St. Bernard, all died when Hugh was a young man. The great enthusiasm for founding monasteries was just beginning to ebb. Yet a hundred and fifteen English houses were founded in Stephen's reign, and a hundred and thirteen in the reign of Henry II., and the power of the monastic bodies was still almost paramount in the church. It was to the monasteries that men still looked for learning and peace, and the monasteries were the natural harbours of refuge for valiant men of action, who grew sick of the life of everlasting turmoil in a brutal and anarchic world. Indeed, the very tumults and disorders of the state gave the monasteries their hold over the best of the men of action. As the civil life grew more quiet and ordered, the enthusiasm for the cloister waned, and with it the standard of zeal perceptibly fell to a lower level, not without grand protest and immense effort of holy men to keep the divine fire from sinking.

Hugh of Avalon was born in Avalon Castle in 1140, a year in which the great tempest of Stephen's misrule was raging. In France, Louis VII. has already succeeded his father, Louis VI.; the Moors are in Spain, and Arnold of Brescia is the centre of controversy. Avalon Castle lies near Pontcharra, which is a small town on the Bredo, which flows into the Isere and thence into the Rhone. It is not to be confused with Avallon of Yonne. The Alpine valleys about Pontcharra are lovely with flowers and waters, and have in them the "foot-prints of lost Paradise."

Burgundy here owed some loyalty to the empire rather than to France, and its dukes tried to keep up a semi-independent kingdom by a balanced submission to their more powerful neighbours. The very name Hugh was an old ducal name, and there is little doubt that William de Avalon, Hugh's father, claimed kin with the princes of his land. He was a "flower of knighthood" in battles not now known. He was also by heredity of a pious mind. Hugh's mother, Anna, a lovely and wealthy lady, of what stock does not appear, was herself of saintly make. She "wors.h.i.+pped Christ in His limbs," by constantly was.h.i.+ng the feet of lepers, filling these wretched outcasts with hope, reading to them and supplying their wants. She seems to have been a woman of intellectual parts, for though she died before Hugh was ten, he had already learned under her, if not from her, to use language as the sacrament of understanding and understanding as the symbol of truth. He had some grip of grammar and logic, and though he did not brood over "Ovid's leasings or Juvenal's rascalities," rather choosing to ponder upon the two Testaments, yet we may gather that his Latin cla.s.sics were not neglected. The spiritual life of Gren.o.ble had been nourished by a n.o.ble bishop, also Hugh, who had seen the vision of seven stars resting upon a certain plot of ground, which induced him to grant the same to St. Bruno, the founder of the Grande Chartreuse. Here he served himself as a simple monk, laying aside his bishop's robes, not a score of miles from Avalon. This Hugh was a religious and free thinking man, who, though he found evil a great metaphysical stumbling block to faith, yet walked painfully by the latter. He died in 1132 or thereabouts, and his life was most probably the occasion of our Hugh's name, and of much else about him.

The De Avalons had two other boys both older than Hugh: William, who inherited the lands, and Peter, who was settled by his brother Hugh at Histon, in Cambridge, but he does not seem to have made England his home. Hugh had also at least one cousin, William, on his mother's side, who attended upon him at Lincoln, and who (unless there were two of the same name) developed from a knight into an holy Canon after his great relative's decease. These relatives were always ready to lend a hand and a sword if required in the good bishop's quarrels. The last particularly distinguished himself in a brawl in Lincolns.h.i.+re Holland, when an armed and censured ruffian threatened the bishop with death. The good Burgundian blood rose, and William twisted the sword from the villain's hand, and with difficulty was prevented from driving it into his body.

When the Lady Anna died, her husband, tired of war, power, and governance, distributed his property among his children. Under his armour he had long worn the monk's heart, and now he was able to take the monk's dress, and to "labour for peace after life, as he had already won it in life." So he took Hugh and Hugh's money with him, and went off to the little priory of Villarbenoit (of seven canon power), which bordered upon his own lands, and which he and his forbears had cherished. This little priory was a daughter of Gren.o.ble (St. Hugh of Gren.o.ble being, as we infer, a spiritual splendour to the De Avalons), and, not least in attraction, there was a canon therein, far-famed for heavenly wisdom and for scholars.h.i.+p besides, who kept a school and taught sound theology and cla.s.sics, under whom sharp young Hugh might climb to heights both of ecclesiastical and also of heavenly preferment.

Great was the delight of the canons at their powerful postulant and his son, and great the pains taken over the latter's education. The schoolmaster laid stress upon authors such as Prudentius, Sedulius, and Fulgentius. By these means the boy not only learnt Latin, but he also tackled questions of Predestination and Grace, glosses upon St. Paul, hymns and methods of frustrating the Arian. Above all, he was exercised in the Divine Library, as they called the Bible, taught by St. Jerome.

Hugh was of course the favourite of the master, who whipt him with difficulty, and kept him from the rough sports of his fellow scholars, the future soldiers, and "reared him for Christ." The boy had a masterly memory and a good grip of his work, whether it were as scholar, server, or comrade. The Prior a.s.signed to him the special task of waiting upon his old father. That modest, kind-hearted gentleman was getting infirm, and the young fellow was delighted to be told off to lead him, carry him, dress and undress him, tie his shoes, towel him, make his bed, cook for him and feed him, until the time of the old knight's departure arrived.

The dates of St. Hugh's life and ministrations must be taken with a grain of salt. The authorities differ considerably, and it is impossible to clap a date to some of the saint's way-marks without first slapping in the face some venerable chronicler, or some thought-worn modern historian. If we say with the Great Life that Hugh was ordained Levite in his nineteenth year, we upset Giraldus Cambrensis and the metrical biographer, who put it in his fifteenth; and Matthew Paris and the Legend, who write him down as over sixteen. Mr. Dimock would have us count from his entry into the canonry, and so counts him as twenty-four; Canon Perry and Father Thurston say "nineteenth year," or "nineteen."

The Canons Regular of Villarbenoit seem to have been rather liberal in their interpretation of church regulations, but it is hardly likely that the bishop of Gren.o.ble would so far stretch a point as to ordain a lad much below the canonical age, even if he were of a great house and great piety. Anyhow it is hardly worth while for the general reader to waste time over these ticklish points. It is enough to say that Hugh was ordained young, that he looked pink and white over his white stole and broidered tunic, and that he soon preached vigorously, warmly, and movingly to the crowd and to his old acquaintances. Sinners heard a very straightforward message, and holy persons were edified by the clever way in which he handled difficult topics, and in him they "blessed the true Joseph, who had placed his own cup in the mouth of his younger brother's sack." Indeed, he must have been a captivating and interesting young man, and since he was so strikingly like Henry II. of England that folks' tongues wagged freely about it, we may picture him as a young man of moderate height, rather large in the brow, with red brown hair, bright grey eyes, large chest, and generally of an athletic build and carriage. He had a face which easily flushed and told both of anger and a lively sense of humour.

He was the delight of his house, and of the people about, who welcomed him with enthusiasm when he came back after nearly forty years' absence.

But most of all he was the apple of the eye to his old scholarly father prior, who loved him as his own soul. It is not wonderful that when one of the scanty brotherhood was called upon to take charge of a small country living, the "cell of St. Maximin," the zealous deacon was chosen to administer the same. The tiny benefice could hardly support one, with small household, but Hugh insisted upon having an old priest to share the benefice. A little parcel of glebe and a few vines, tended by honest rustics, were his. They were able by pious frugality to nourish the poor and grace the rich. The paris.h.i.+oners grew in holiness. The congregation swelled from many sources, and the sermons (of life and word) were translated into sound faith and good conversation. This experience of parish work must have been of the greatest value to the future bishop, for the tragedy and comedy of life is just as visible in the smallest village as it is in the largest empire. The cloister-bred lad must have learnt on this small organ to play that good part which he afterwards was called upon to play upon a larger instrument. One instance is recorded of his discipline. A case of open adultery came under his notice. He sent for the man and gave him what he considered to be a suitable admonition. The offender replied with threats and abuse. Hugh, gospel in hand, pursued him first with two and then with three witnesses, offering pardon upon reform and penance. No amendment was promised. Both guilt and scandal continued. Then Hugh waited for a festival, and before a full congregation rebuked him publicly, declared the greatness of his sin, handed him over to Satan for the death of his flesh with fearful denunciations, except he speedily came to his senses.

The man was thunderstruck, and brought to his knees at a blow. With groans and tears he confessed, did penance (probably at the point of the deacon's stick), was absolved and received back to the fold; so irresistible was this young administrator who knew St. Augustine's advice that "in reproof, if one loves one's neighbour enough, one can even say anything to him."

But Hugh was ill at ease in his charge, and his heart burned towards the mountains, where the Grande Chartreuse had revived the austerities of ancient monasticism. It seemed so grand to be out of and above the world, in solitary congregation, with hair s.h.i.+rt, hard diet, empty flesh pot, and full library, in the deep silence and keen air of the mountains. Here hands that had gripped the sword and the sceptre were turned to the spade and lifted only in prayer. There were not only the allurements of hards.h.i.+p, but also his parents' faith and his own early lessons tugging at his heart strings. He found means to go with his prior into the awful enclosure, and the austere pa.s.sion seized him. He told his heart's desire to an old ex-baron, who probably felt some alarm that a young gentleman who had campaigned so slightly in the plains of active life should aspire to dwell upon these stern hills of contemplation. "My dear boy, how dare you think of such a thing?" he answered, and then, looking at the refined young face before him, warned the deacon against the life. The men were harder than stones, pitiless to themselves and to others. The place dreary, the rule most burdensome.

The rough robe would rake the skin and flesh from young bones. The harsh discipline would crush the very frame of tender youth.

The other monks were less forbidding. They warmly encouraged the aspiration, and the pair returned to their home, Hugh struggling to hide the new fire from his aged friend. But the old man saw through the artless cloakings and was in despair. He used every entreaty to save Hugh for the good work he was doing, and to keep his darling at his side. Hugh's affectionate heart and ready obedience gave way, and he took a solemn oath not to desert his canonry, and so went back to his paris.h.i.+ng.

But then came, as it naturally would come to so charming and vigorous a lad, the strong return of that Dame Nature who had been so long forked forth by his cloistral life. A lady took a liking to this heavenly curate. Other biographers hint at this pathetic little romance, and cover up the story with tales of a wilderness of women; but the metrical biographer is less discreetly vague, and breaks into a tirade against that race of serpents, plunderers, robbers, net weavers, and spiders--the fair s.e.x. Still, he cannot refrain from giving us a graphic picture of the presumptuous she-rascal who fell in love with Hugh, and although most of his copyists excise his thirty-nine graphic lines of Zuleika's portrait, the amused reader is glad to find that all were not of so edifying a mind. Her lovely hair that vied with gold was partly veiled and partly strayed around her ivory neck. Her little ear, a curved sh.e.l.l, bore up the golden mesh. Under the smooth clear white brow she had curved black eyebrows without a criss-cross hair in them, and these disclosed and heightened the clear white of the skin. And her nose, too--not flat nor arched, not long nor snub, but beyond the fineness of geometry, with light, soft breath, and the sweet scent of incense. Such s.h.i.+ning eyes too: like emeralds starring her face with light! And the face, blended lilies and roses in a third lovely hue that one could not withdraw one's eyes from beholding. The gentle pout of her red lips seemed to challenge kisses. s.h.i.+ning as gla.s.s, white as a bell flower, she had a breast and head joined by a n.o.ble poised throat, which baited the very hook of love. Upon her lily finger she wore a red and golden ring. Even her frock was a miracle of millinery. This lovely creature, complete to a nail, much disturbed the mind of Hugh, and played her pretty tricks upon her unexercised pastor: now demure, now smiling, now darting soft glances, now reining in her eyes. But he, good man, was rock or diamond. At last the fair creature actually stroked his arm, and then Hugh was startled into a panic. His experience and training had not been such as to fit him to deal with situations of this sort. He fled. He cut out the skin of the arm where her rosy fingers had rested. He found it impossible to escape from the sight of many fair maids of Burgundy. Zuleika was fascinating enough, but his original Adam within (whom he called Dalilah) was worse. He forsook his post, broke his vow, and bolted to the Grande Chartreuse.

One modern biographer, who is shocked at his perjury to the prior, would no doubt have absolved him if he had married the la.s.s against his canonic vows. Another thinks him most edifyingly liberal in his interpretation of duty. Is there any need to forestall Doomsday in these matters? The poor fellow was in both a fix and a fright. Alas! that duties should ever clas.h.!.+ His own view is given with his own decisiveness. "No! I never had a scruple at all about it. I have always felt great delight of mind when I recall the deed which started me upon so great an undertaking." The brothers of the Charterhouse gladly took him in, the year being about 1160, and his age about twenty, let us say; hardly an age anyhow which would fit him for dealing with pert minxes and escaping the witcheries of the beauty which still makes beautiful old hexameters.

CHAPTER II

BROTHER HUGH

"Ye might write th' doin's iv all th' convents iv th' wurruld on the back of a postage stamp, an' have room to spare," says Mr. Dooley; and we rather expect some hiatus in our history here. Goodbye to beef, b.u.t.ter, and good red wheat; white corn, sad vegetables, cold water, sackcloth take their place, with fasts on bread and water, and festivals mitigated by fish. Goodbye to pillows and bolsters and linen s.h.i.+rts.

Welcome horse-hair vests, sacking sheets, and the "bitter bite of the flea,"--sad entertainment for gentlemen! Instead of wise and merry talk, wherein he excelled, solitary confinement in a wooden cell (the brethren now foist off a stone one upon credulous tourists) with willing slavery to stern Prior Basil. The long days of prayer and meditation, the nights short with psalmody, every spare five minutes filled with reading, copying, gardening and the recitation of offices. All these the novice took with gusto, safe hidden from the flash of emerald eyes and the witchery of hypergeometrical noses. But temptation is not to be kept out by the diet of Adam and of Esau, by locked doors, spades, and inkpots.

The key had hardly turned upon the poor refugee when he found he had locked in his enemies with him. His austerities redoubled, but as he says he "only beat the air" until He who watches over Israel without slumber or sleep laid His hand upon him and fed him with a hidden manna, so fine and so plentiful that the pleasures of life seemed paltry after the first taste of it. After this experience our Hugh used to be conscious always of a Voice and a Hand, giving him cheer and strength, although the strong appet.i.tes of his large nature troubled him to the last. Here Hugh devoured books, too, until the time floated by him all too fleetly.

His great affectionate heart poured itself out upon wild birds and squirrels which came in from the beech and pine woods, and learned to feed from his platter and his fingers. It is difficult to read with patience that his prior, fearing lest he should enjoy these innocent loves too much, and they would "hinder his devotion," banished these pretty dears from the dreary cell. But in charity let us suppose that the prior more than supplied their place, for Hugh was told off to tend a weak old monk, to sing him the offices, and to nurse the invalid. This G.o.dly old man, at once his schoolmaster and his patient, sounded him whether he wished to be ordained priest. When he learned that, as far as lay in Hugh he desired nothing more, he was greatly shocked, and reduced his nurse-pupil to tears by scolding him for presumption; but he presently raised him from his knees and prophesied that he would soon be a priest and some day a bishop. Hugh was soon after this ordained priest, and was distinguished for the great fervour of his behaviour in celebrating the Ma.s.s "as if he handled a visible Lord Saviour"--a touching devoutness which never left him, and which contrasted strikingly with the perfunctory, careless or bored ways of other priests. He injured his health by over-abstinence, one effect of which was to cause him to grow fat, Nature thus revenging herself by fortifying his frame against such ill-treatment.

In the talk time after Nones, the brothers had much to hear about the storms which raged outside their walls. It is rather hard for us nowadays to see things through Charterhouse spectacles. There is our lord the Pope, Alexander III., slow and yet persistent, wrestling hard with the terrible Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who is often marching away to seiges of Milan, reducing strong rogues and deeply wronging the church (whose forged doc.u.ments are all purely genuine). Then what a hubbub there is in the church! Monstrous anti-popes, one of whom, Victor, dies, and a satanic bishop Henry of Liege consecrates another, Pascal, and the dismal schism continues. Then our lord Alexander returns to Rome, and the Emperor slaughters the Romans and beseiges their city and enthrones Pascal. There are big imperial plans afoot, unions of East and West, which end in talk: but Sennacherib Frederick is defeated by a divine and opportune pestilence. Then Pascal dies, and the schism flickers, the Emperor crawls to kiss the foot of St. Peter, and finally, in 1179, Alexander reigns again in Rome for a s.p.a.ce. Meantime, Louis VII., a pious Crusader, and dutiful son of the Regulars, plays a long, and mostly a losing, game of buffets with Henry of Anjou, lord of Normandy, Maine, Touraine, Poitou, Aquitaine and Gascony, and leader of much else besides, King also of England, and conqueror of Ireland--a terrible man, who had dared to aspire to hang priestly murderers. He has forced some awful Const.i.tutions of Clarendon upon a groaning church, or a church which ought to groan and does not much, but rather talks of the laws and usage of England being with the king. But the n.o.ble Thomas has withstood him, and is banished and beggared and his kith and kin with him. The holy man is harboured by our good Cistercian brothers of Pontigny, where he makes hay and reaps and see visions. He is hounded thence. These things ignite wars, and thereout come conferences. Thomas will not compromise, and even Louis fretfully docks his alimony and sends him dish in hand to beg; but he, great soul, is instant in excommunication, whereafter come renewed brawls, fresh (depraved) articles. Even the king's son is crowned by Roger of York, "an execration, not a consecration." At last (woeful day!) Thomas goes home still cursing, and gets his sacred head split open, and thus wins the day, and has immense glory and sympathy, which tames the fierce anti-anarchist king. He, too, kneels to our lord Alexander, and swears to go crusading in three years'

time, meanwhile paying Templars to do it for him. All this comes out in driblets after Nones, and brings us to 1171 A.D., brother Hugh being aged about one and thirty. When the old monk died Hugh was given another old man to wait upon--Peter, the Archbishop of Tarentaise, who came there often for retreat and study. This renowned old man had been a friend of St. Bernard, and was a great stickler and miracle worker for Alexander III., and he was a delegate to make peace between Henry and Louis, when he died in 1174. Hugh found his quotations, compiled any _catena_ he wished to make, retrieved saintly instances, washed his feet, walked with him, and sat with him on a seat between two large fir trees, which seat "miraculously grew no higher, as the trees grew." In this manner Hugh knew and was known of the outside world, for Archbishop Peter was a man of large following and acquaintance.

And now Hugh is made, wincingly, the procurator or bursar of the Grande Chartreuse, after he has spent eight years there, and is plunged in a sea of worldly business. The prior makes good use of his tact, business capacity, and honourable nature. He had thought and read to some purpose, for he ruled the lay brothers with diligence, and instructed the monks with great care, stirring up the sluggish and bitting the heady into restfulness. He did his worldly work vigorously, and turned it swiftly to spiritual gain. He had strong wine of doctrine for the chapter-house, milk for the auditorium. The secular people, if they were rich, he taught not to trust in riches; if they were poor, he refreshed them with such rations as the Order allowed. If he had nothing else, he always had a kind and cheery word to give. Among the travellers must have been many n.o.ble postmen, who carried letters in their hands and messages in their heads from Henry to Humbert of Maurienne, who held the keys of all the Alpine roads to Italy and Germany and whose infant daughter was betrothed to the boy John Lackland with dowries disputable, whereat Henry junior rebels, and makes uncommon mischief. The procurator was keen and accurate in his work. He never mislaid the books, forgot, fumbled, or made a "loiter," _morantia_, as they called it, when the office halted or was unpunctual. The lay brethren did not have to cough at any trips in his reading, which was their quaint way of rebuking mistakes.

Henry II. was reconciled in 1172 and his crusade was to begin in 1175; but during these years his dominions were in constant flame. Scotland and France harried him. His sons leagued against him. His n.o.bles rose.

He fought hard battles, did humble penances at St. Thomas' tomb, and came out victorious, over his political and ecclesiastical opponents too, and began again the ordering of his unruly realms. What a rough and tumble world the Chronicles reveal as we turn them over! There is a crusade in Asia Minor in 1176. Manuel Commenus relates his success and failure. There are heretics in Toulouse who are Puritans, half Quaker and half Arian, condemned by a Council of Lombers, 1176. Next year Henry seems to have begun his penance, which was commuted from a crusade into three religious foundations, and rather shabbily he did it. Some people try to put Newstead in Selwood in the list, but this was founded in 1174; and Le Liget has been mentioned, a Charterhouse in Touraine founded in 1178. The most probable explanation is this. Henry tried to do the penance (a) by buying out the Secular Canons of Waltham at a price determined by Archbishop Richard. He replaced these by Canons Regular under Walter de Cant. He then endowed them handsomely and had papal authority for this. (b) He found this so expensive that he tried to do the other two more cheaply. A scandal had arisen in Amesbury. He expelled the incontinent nuns, and brought over from Font Evroult a colony of more devout ladies in their room. The chroniclers show that this evasion was severely commented upon, and we may conclude that Le Liget was a tardy subst.i.tute--a cheap strip of forest land granted to an order which was celebrated for its dislike of covetousness, and whose rules required manual labour and a desert (and so valueless) land. Le Liget, be it noticed, is founded after the peace of Venice has given more power to the Papal elbow. The Lateran Council is also a little threatening towards King Henry in March, 1179, particularly on the question of the ferocity of mercenaries. Young Philip Augustus is also evidently succeeding his waning father, and generally speaking it is better to be conciliatory and to admit that the Amesbury plan was perhaps insufficient. At any rate, it is well to found another house: Carthusians of course, for they are holy, popular, and inexpensive.

Henry, who was generous enough for lepers, hospitals, and active workers, did not usually care very much for contemplative orders, though his mother, the Empress Matilda, affected the Cistercians and founded the De Voto Monastery near Calais, and he inherited something from her.

These considerations may have first prompted and then fortified Henry's very slow and reluctant steps in the work of founding Witham, in substance and not in shadow. It is also quite possible that he had not entirely given up the notion of going on a crusade after all.

The first attempt was little more than a sketch. 5,497 acres were marked off for the new house, in a wet corner of Selwood forest. But the land was not transferred from William FitzJohn and the villeins were not evicted or otherwise disposed of. The place was worse than a desert, for it contained possessors not dispossessed. The poor monks, few and unprepared, who came over at their own expense, probably expecting a roof and a welcome, found their mud flat was inhabited by indignant Somersetae, whose ways, manners, language, and food were unknown to them.

The welcome still customarily given in these parts to strangers was warmer than usual. The foreign English, even if their lands were not pegged out for Charterhouses, were persuaded that the brethren were landsharks of the most omnivorous type. The poor prior quailed, despaired, and hastily bolted, leaving an old and an angry monkish comrade to face the situation with a small company of lay brothers.

Another prior arrived, and to the vexation of the king shuffled off his maltreated coil in a very short time. After spending Christmas (1179-80) in Nottingham, the king crossed into Normandy with young Henry before Easter, meaning to avenge the wrongs Philip Augustus did to his relatives. Here most probably it was that a n.o.ble of the region of Maurienne (come no doubt upon business of the impending war), chatted with him about the Charterhouse. He paid a warm tribute to Hugh in words of this kind, "My lord king, there is only one sure way of getting free from these straits. There is in the Charterhouse a certain monk, of high birth but far higher moral vigour. His name is Hugh of Avalon. He carries on him all the grace of the virtues; but besides, every one who knows him takes to him and likes him, so that all who see him find their hearts fairly caught. Those who are privileged to hear him talk are delighted to find his speech divinely or angelically inspired. If the new plantation of this most holy order in your lands should deserve to have this man to dress and rule it, you will see it go joyfully forward straight away towards fruiting in every grace. Moreover, as I am certain, the whole English Church will be very greatly beautified by the radiance of his most pure religion and most religious purity. But his people will not easily let him go from their house, and he will never go to live elsewhere unless it be under compulsion and against his will, so your legation must be strong and strenuous: you must struggle to compa.s.s the matter even with urgent prayers until you get this man and him only.

Then for the future your mind will be released from the anxieties of this care, and this lofty religion will make a n.o.ble growth to your excellency's renown. You will discover in this one man, with the whole circle of the other virtues, whatever mortal yet has shown of longsuffering, sweetness, magnanimity, and meekness. No one will dislike him for a neighbour or house-mate; no one will avoid him as a foreigner.

No one will hold him other than a fellow politically, socially, and by blood, for he regards the whole race of men as part and parcel of himself, and he takes all men and comforts them in the arms and lap of his unique charity." The king was delighted with this sketch, and sent off post haste Reginald, Bishop of Bath (in whose diocese Witham lay), and an influential emba.s.sage to secure the treasure, if it could be done.

But the man who was being sought had just about then been finding the burden of this flesh so extremely heavy that he was more inclined to run riot in the things that do not belong to our peace than to settle comfortably upon a saint's pedestal or to take up a new and disagreeably dull work. The fatal temptations of forty, being usually unexpected, are apt to upset the innocent more surely than are the storms of youth; and poor Hugh was now so badly tried that the long life of discipline must have seemed fruitless. He just escaped, as he told his too-little reticent biographer, from one nearly fatal bout by crying out, "By Thy pa.s.sion, cross, and life-giving death, deliver me." But neither frequent confession, nor floggings, nor orisons, seemed to bring the clean and quiet heart. He was much comforted by a vision of his old prior Basil, who had some days before migrated to G.o.d. This dear old friend and father stood by him radiant in face and robe, and said with a gentle voice, "Dearest son, how is it with thee? Why this face down on the ground? Rise, and please tell thy friend the exact matter." Hugh answered, "Good father, and my most kind nurser, the law of sin and death in my members troubles me even to the death, and except I have thy wonted help, thy lad will even die." "Yes, I will help thee." The visitor took a razor in his hand and cut out an internal inflamed tumour, flung it far away, blessed his patient, and disappeared, leaving no trace of his surgery in heart or flesh. Hugh told this story in his last illness to Adam, his chaplain, and added that though after this the flesh troubled him, its a.s.saults were easy to scorn and to repress, though always obliging him to walk humbly.

The king's messengers took with them the Bishop of Gren.o.ble and unfolded their errand. The Charterhouse was horrified, and the prior most of all.

He delayed a reply. The first prior refused the request. The votes varied. Bovo, a monk who afterwards succeeded to Witham, declared strongly that it was a divine call, that the holiness of the order might be advertised to the ends of the earth. Hugh was too large a light to keep under their bushel. He seems better fitted to be a bishop than a monk, he said. Hugh was then bidden to speak. He told them that with all the holy advice and examples about him he had never managed to keep his own soul for one day, so how could any wise person think him fit to rule other folk? Could he set up a new house, if he could not even keep the rules of the old one? This is childishness and waste of time. "Let us for the future leave such matters alone, and since the business is hard and urgent do you only occupy yourselves to see that this king's undertaking be frittered no longer away half done, to the peril of souls and the dishonour of the holy order, and so from among you or from your other houses choose a man fit for this work and send him with these men.

Since these are wise, do you too answer them wisely. Grant their desire, not their request. Give them a man not such as they seek under a mistake, but such as they devoutly and discreetly demand. It is not right that men should be heard unadvisedly who mistake the man of their request and who do not really want to be mistaken in the man's qualifications. So, in a word, do not grant their request, but cheer them by bettering it." The prior and Hugh were of one decision. The former declared point blank that he would not say go, and finally he turned to the Carthusian Bishop of Gren.o.ble, "our bishop, father, and brother in one," and bade him decide. The bishop accepted the responsibility, reminded them of the grief which arose when St. Benedict sent forth St. Maur to Western Gaul, and exhorted Hugh that the Son of G.o.d had left the deepest recess of His Deity to be manifest for the salvation of many. "You too must pilgrimage for a little time from your dearest, breaking for a while the silence of the quiet you have loved."

After much interruption from Hugh, the sentence was given. They all kissed him and sent him away forthwith. The king received him with much graciousness and ordered him to be carried honourably to Witham, and the wretched remnant in the mud flat received him as an angel of G.o.d. Well they might do so, for they seemed to have pa.s.sed a melancholy winter in twig huts, now called "weeps," in a little paled enclosure, not only without the requisites of their order, but with barely bread to their teeth. There was no monastery, not even a plan of one. William FitzJohn and his clayey serfs scowled upon the s.h.i.+vering interlopers, uncertain what injustice might be done to them and to their fathers' homes, in sacrifices to the ghost of St. Thomas.

Witham is a sort of glorified soup-plate, still bearing traces of its old Selwood Forest origin, for the woodlands ring round it. The infant river Avon creeps through its clayey bottom, and there are remains of the old dams which pent it into fish-ponds. Of the convent nothing remains except a few stumps in a field called "Buildings," unless the stout foundations of a room, S.E. of the church, called the reading-room, mark the guest house, as tradition a.s.serts. Much of the superstructure of this cannot go back beyond the early sixteenth century, but the solid walls, the small size (two cottage area), allow of the fancy that here was the site of many colloquies between our Hugh and Henry Fitz-Empress.{1}