PRIOR HUGH
It did not require much talent to see that the first requisite of the
foundation was a little money, and consequently we find ten white pounds
paid from the Exchequer to the Charterhouse brethren, and a note in the
Great Life to say that the king was pleased with Hugh's modesty, and
granted him what he asked for. Next there was a meeting of all who had a
stake of any kind in the place, who would be obliged to be removed lest
their noise and movement should break the deep calm of the community. It
was put to each to choose whether he would like a place in any royal
manor, with cottage and land equal to those they gave up, or else to be
entirely free from serfdom, and to go where they chose. It is noteworthy
that some chose one alternative, some the other, not finding villeinage
intolerable. Next came the question of compensation for houses, crops,
and improvements, that the transfer might be made without injustice but
with joy on both sides. Here Henry boggled a little. "In truth, my
lord," said the prior, "unless every one of them is paid to the last
doight for every single thing the place cannot be given to us." So the
king was forced to do a little traffic, which he considered to be a dead
loss, and acquired some very old cottages with rotten rafters and
cracked walls at a handsome price. The salesmen liked this new business;
it filled their pockets, and they blessed the new influence. This good
merchant had traded so as to gain both justice and mercy, but he tackled
the king once more, with twinkling eye. "Well, my lord king, you see I
am new and poor, yet I have enriched you in your own land with a number
of houses." The king smiled. "I did not covet riches of this nature.
They have made me almost a beggar, and I cannot tell of what good such
goods may be." Hugh wanted this very answer. "Of course, of course," he
rejoined, "I see you do not reck much of your purchase. It would befit
your greatness if these dwellings were handed over to me, for I have
nowhere to lay my head." The king opened his eyes and stared at his
petitioner. "Thou wouldst be a fine landlord. Dost thou think we cannot
build thee a new house? What on earth shouldest thou do with these?" "It
does not befit royal generosity to ask questions about trifles. This is
my first petition to thee, and why, when it is so small, should I be
kept waiting about it?" The king merrily answered, "Hear the fellow!
Almost using violence too, in a strange land. What would he do if he
used force, when he gets so much out of us by words? Lest we should be
served worse by him, he must have it so." The cat was soon out of the
bag. Each house was presented back to the man who had sold it, either to
sell or to remove as he chose, lest in any way Jerusalem should be
built with blood.
Then the building began, but no more; for the ten white pounds did not
go far, and the workmen angrily and abusively asked for wages. A
deputation went off to Henry, who was collecting troops and dismissing
them, ordering, codifying, defending, enlarging and strengthening his
heterogeneous empire. Now he was on one side of the sea, now on the
other. He promised succour, and the brethren brought back--promises. The
work stopped, and the Prior endured in grim silence. Another embassage
is sent, and again the lean wallets return still flabby. Then the
brethren began to turn their anger against the Prior. He was slothful
and neglectful for not approaching the king in person (although the man
was abroad and busy). Brother Gerard, a white-haired gentleman, "very
successful in speaking to the great and to princes," fell upon his
superior for glozing with a hard-hearted king and not telling him
instantly to complete the buildings under pain of a Carthusian stampede.
Not only was the Order wronged, but themselves were made fools of, who
had stuck so long there without being able even to finish their mere
dolls' houses. Brother Gerard himself would be delighted to din
something into the King's ears in the presence of his prior. To this all
the brethren said "Aye." Hugh gratefully accepted their counsel, and
added, "All the same, Brother Gerard, you will have to see to it that
you are as modest as you are free in your discourse. It may well be,
that in order to be able to know us well, that sagaciously clever and
inscrutable minded prince pretends not to hear us, just to prove our
mettle. Doubtless he knows that it belongs to that perfection which we
profess to fulfil, that lesson of our Lord which tells us, 'In your
patience ye shall possess your souls,' and that too of most blessed
Paul, 'In all things let us shew forth ourselves as the ministers of
God, in much patience.' But much patience is assured in this, if much
longsuffering bears with much gentleness much that opposes and thwarts.
For patience without longsuffering will not be much, but short; and
without gentleness will merely not exist." So said, Hugh Gerard and old
Ainard (a man of immense age and curious story) set out to the king.
They were all received like angels, with honour, polite speeches,
excuses, instant promises, but neither cash nor certain credit. Then
Gerard fumed and forgot the advice of his superior, and broke out into a
furious declaration that he was off and quit of England, and would go
back to his Alpine rocks, and not conflict with a man who thought it
lost labour to be saved. "Let him keep the riches he loves so well. He
will soon lose them, and leave them to some ungrateful heir or other.
Christ ought not to share in them; no, nor any good Christian." These,
and harsher words, too, were Gerard's coaxes. Poor Hugh used often, in
after life, to remember them with horror. He got red and confused. He
told his brother to speak gentlier, to eschew such terms, or even to
hold his tongue: but Gerard (of holy life, grey head, and gentle blood)
scolded on without bridle. Henry listened in a brown study. Neither by
look, nor word, did he appear hit. He let the monk rate, kept silence
and self control, and when the man had talked himself out, and an
awkward silence reigned, he glanced at Hugh's confused and downcast
face. "Well, good man," he said, "and what are you thinking about within
yourself? You are not preparing to go off too, and leave our kingdom to
us, are you?" The answer came humbly and gently, but with perfect
manliness. "I do not despair of you so far, my lord. I am rather sorry
for all your hindrances and business, which block the salutary studies
of your soul. You are busy, and when God helps, we shall get on well
with these health-giving projects." Henry felt the spell at once; flung
his arms round Hugh, and said with an oath, "By my soul's salvation,
while I live and breathe, thou shalt never depart from my kingdom. With
thee I will share my life's plans, and the needful studies of my soul."
The money was found at once, and a royal hint given. The demon blood of
the Angevins, which frightened most men, and kept Henry in loneliness,
had no terrors for Hugh; and Henry could hardly express the pleasure he
felt in a rare friendship which began here. He loved and honoured no
other man so much, for he had found a man who sympathised with him
without slavishness, and whose good opinion was worth having. This close
friendship, combined with physical likeness, made it generally believed
that Hugh was Henry's own son. Hugh did not always agree with the king,
and if he felt strongly that any course was bad for king and kingdom
would say so roundly in direct words of reproof, but withal so
reasonably and sweetly that he made "the rhinoceros harrow the valleys"
after him, as his biographer quaintly puts it, glancing at Job. The
counsel was not limited to celestial themes. Hugh checked his temper,
softened his sentences, and got him to do good turns to churches and
religious places. He unloosed the king's rather tight fist, and made him
a good almsgiver. One offence Hugh was instant in rebuking--the habit of
keeping bishoprics and abbacies vacant. He used also to point out that
unworthy bishops were the grand cause of mischiefs in God's people,
which mischiefs they cherished, caused to wax and grow great. Those who
dared to promote or favour such were laying up great punishments against
the Doomsday. "What is the need, most wise prince, of bringing dreadful
death on so many souls just to get the empty favour of some person, and
the loss of so many folk redeemed by Christ's death? You invoke God's
anger, and you heap up tortures for yourself hereafter." Hugh was for
free canonical election, with no more royal interference than was
required to prevent jobbery and quicken responsibility.
The two friends visited each other often, and the troubles of Henry's
last years were softened for him by his ghostly friend. It is quite
possible that Hugh's hand may be traced in the resignation of Geoffrey
Plantagenet, the king's dear illegitimate son, who was (while a mere
deacon) bishop-elect of Lincoln from 1173 to 1181. From the age of
twenty to twenty-eight he enjoyed the revenues of that great see without
consecration. The Pope objected to his birth and his youth. Both
obstacles could have been surmounted, but Geoffrey resigns his claims in
the Epiphany of the latter year, and gets a chancellorship with five
hundred marks in England and the same in Normandy. His case is a bold
instance of "that divorce of salary from duty" which even in those times
was thoroughly understood.
There is a story, one might almost say the usual story, of the storm at
sea. The king with a fleet is between Normandy and England, when a
midnight storm of super-Virgilian boisterousness burst upon them. After
the manner of Erasmus' shipwreck, every one prays, groans, and invokes
both he and she saints. The king himself audibly says, "Oh, if only my
Charterhouse Hugh were awake and instant at his secret prayers, or if
even he were engaged with the brethren in the solemn watch of the divine
offices, God would not so long forget me." Then, with a deep groan, he
prayed, "God, whom the William Prior serves in truth, by his
intervention and merits, take kindly pity upon us, who for our sins are
justly set in so sore a strait." Needless to say the storm ceased at
once, and Henry felt that he was indeed upon the right tack, both
nautically and spiritually. Whatever view we take of this tale (storms
being frequent, and fervent prayers of the righteous availing much), the
historic peep into King Henry's mind is worth our notice. The simplicity
and self-abasement of his ejaculation shew a more religious mind than
some would allow to him.
Anyhow, the prior was hard at work. He soon transformed the "weeps" into
stone. He built the two houses, the friary for the lay brethren and the
monastery for the monks. He prayed, read, meditated and preached. His
body slept, but his heart woke, and he repeated "Amens" innumerable in
his holy dreams. On feast days, when the brethren dined together, he
ate with them, and then he had the meal sauced with reading. If he ate
alone, he had a book by his trencher of dry bread rarely garnished with
relishes. A water pot served him for both flagon and tureen. He allowed
himself one little human enjoyment. A small bird called a burnet made
friends with him and lived in his cell, ate from his fingers and his
trencher, and only left him at the breeding season, after which it
brought its fledged family back with it. This little friend lived for
three years with the prior, and to his great grief came no more in the
fourth. The learned have exhausted their arts to discover what a burnet
can be, and have given up the chase. Some would have him to be a
barnacle goose, others a dab-chick or coot--none of which can fairly be
classed as _aviculæ_ small birds. Burnet is brown or red brown, and
rather bright at that. We have it in Chaucer's "Romaunt of the Rose"
[4756]:
"For also welle wole love be sette
Under ragges as rich rochette,
And else as wel be amourettes
In mournyng blak, as bright burnettes."
Consequently if the reader likes to guess (in default of knowledge) he
might do worse than think of the Robin Redbreast as a likely candidate.
He is called in Celtic Broindeag, is a small, friendly, crumb-eating,
and burnet bird, and behaves much as these ancient legends describe. The
name burnet still survives in Somerset.
Not only the burnet bird felt the fascination of the prior, but monks
drew towards Witham and men of letters also. Men of the world would
come to be taught the vanity of their wisdom; clergy whose dry times
afflicted them found a rich meal of Witham doctrine well worth the spare
diet of the place. The prior by no means courted his public, and the
Order itself was not opened at every knuckle tap. Even those who were
admitted did not always find quite what they wanted. We read of one man,
a Prior of Bath, who left the Charterhouse because he "thought it better
to save many souls than one," and returned to what we should call parish
work. Alexander of Lewes, a regular Canon, well versed in the
_quadrivium_ (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy), found the
solitude intolerable to his objective wits. He was not convinced of the
higher spirituality of co-operative hermitages. He found it too heavy to
believe that there was no Christendom outside the Charterhouse plot, and
no way of salvation except for a handful of mannikins. Alexander, with
stinging and satiric terms, left in a huff, followed by acrimonious
epithets from his late brethren. He became a monk at Reading, and filled
a larger part upon a more spacious stage, and yet would have most gladly
returned; but the strait cell was shut to him relentlessly and for ever.
Andrew, erst sacristan of Muchelney, was another who left the Order for
his first love, but his dislike of the life was less cogently put. It
was not exactly that the prior could not brook opposition: but he hated
a man who did not know his own mind, and nothing would induce him to
allow an inmate who eddied about.
The Charterhouse now had ecclesiastical independence. The bishop's power
ended outside its pale. Bruton Convent could tithe the land no more,
nor feed their swine or cattle there, nor cut fuel, instead of which
the rectory of South Petherton, and its four daughter chapelries, was
handed over to this bereaved convent. This was in April, 1181. This
transaction was some gain to the game-loving king, for the Withamites
ate neither pork nor beef, and so the stags had freer space and more
fodder.
But nevertheless the monks' poverty was almost ludicrous. Hugh wanted
even a complete and accurate copy of the scriptures, which he used to
say were the solitary's delight and riches in peace, his darts and arms
in war, his food in famine and his medicine in sickness. Henry asked why
his scribes did not make copies. The answer was that there was no
parchment. "How much money do you want?" asked the king. "One silver
mark," was the ungrasping request. Henry laughed and ordered ten marks
to be counted out and promised a complete "divine library" besides. The
Winchester monks had just completed a lovely copy (still in existence).
King Henry heard from a student of this fine work and promptly sent for
the prior. With fair words and fine promises he asked for the Bible. The
embarrassed monk could not well say no, and the book was soon in Hugh's
hands. This Prior Robert shortly after visited Witham and politely hoped
the copy was satisfactory. If not, a better one could be made, for great
pains had been taken by St. Swithun's brethren to make this one
agreeably to their own use and custom. Hugh was astonished. "And so the
king has beguiled your Church thus of your needful labour? Believe me,
my very dear brother, the Library shall be restored to you instantly.
And I beg most earnestly through you that your whole fraternity will
deign to grant pardon to our humility because we have ignorantly been
the occasion of this loss of their codex." The prior was in a fright, as
well he might be, at the shadow of the king's wrath. He assured Hugh
that his monks were all delighted at the incident. "To make their
delight continue, we must all keep quiet about the honest restoration of
your precious work. If you do not agree to take it back secretly, I
shall restore it to him who sent it hither; but if you only carry it off
with you, we shall give him no inkling of the matter." So the Winchester
monks got back their Bible, and Witham got the said Prior Robert as one
of its pupils instead, fairly captured by the electric personality of
the Carthusian.
Though Hugh's influence was very great, we must not quite suppose that
the king became an ideal character even under his direction. There is an
interregnum not only in Lincoln but in Exeter Diocese between Bishop
Bartholomew and John the Chaunter, 1184-1186; one in Worcester between
the translation of Baldwin and William de Northale, 1184-1186; and a bad
one in York after the death of Roger, 1181, before King Richard
appointed his half-brother Geoffrey aforementioned, who was not
consecrated until August, 1191. But Hugh's chief work at Witham was in
his building, his spiritual and intellectual influence upon the men he
came to know, in the direction of personal and social holiness: and,
above all, he was mastering the ways and works of England so
sympathetically that he was able to take a place afterwards as no longer
a Burgundian but a thorough son of the nation and the church. One
instance may be given of his teaching and its wholesome outlook. He
lived in an age of miracles, when these things were demanded with an
insatiable appetite and supplied in a competitive plenty which seems
equally inexhaustible, almost as bewildering to our age as our deep
thirst for bad sermons and quack medicines will be to generations which
have outgrown our superstitions. St. Hugh had drunk so deeply and
utterly and with all his mind of the gravity and the humility which was
traditional from the holy authors of the Carthusian Order, that "there
was nothing he seemed to wonder at or to wish to copy less than the
marvels of miracles. Still, when these were read or known in connection
with holy men, he would speak of them gently and very highly respect
them. He would speak of them, I say, as commending of those who showed
them forth, and giving proof to those who marvelled at such things, for
to him the great miracle of the saints was their sanctity, and this by
itself was enough for guidance. The heartfelt sense of his Creator,
which never failed him, and the overwhelming and fathomless number of
His mighty works, were for him the one and all-pervading miracle." If we
remember that Adam, his biographer, wrote these words not for us, but
for his miracle-mongering contemporaries, they will seem very strong
indeed. He goes on to say that all the same, whether Hugh knew it or
not, God worked many miracles through him, as none of his intimates
could doubt, and we could rather have wished that he had left the
saint's opinion intact, for it breathes a lofty atmosphere of bright
piety, and is above the controversies of our lower plane.
The time was now coming when Witham had to lose its prior. Geoffrey
(son, not of fair Rosamond, but of Hickenay) had resigned in January,
1182. After sixteen months' hiatus, Walter de Coutances, a courtier, was
elected, ordained, and consecrated, and enthroned December, 1183; but in
fifteen months he was translated to the then central See of Rouen and
the wretched diocese had another fifteen months without a bishop, during
which time (April 15, 1185, on holy Monday) an earthquake cracked the
cathedral from top to bottom.{2}
In May, 1186, an eight-day council was held at Eynsham, and the king
attended each sitting from his palace at Woodstock. Among other business
done was the election, not very free election, to certain bishoprics and
abbeys. Among the people who served or sauntered about the Court were
the canons of Lincoln, great men of affairs, learned, and so wealthy
that their incomes overtopped any bishop's rent-roll, and indeed they
affected rather to despise bishoprics--until one offered. The See of
Lincoln had been vacant (with one short exception) for nearly eighteen
years. It contained ten of the shires of England--Lincoln, Leicester,
Rutland, Northampton, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Bedford, Buckingham,
Oxford, and Hertford. The canons chose three men, all courtiers, all
rich, and all well beneficed, viz., their dean, Richard Fitz Neal, a
bishop's bastard, who had bought himself into the treasurership; Godfrey
de Lucy, one of their number, an extravagant son of Richard the chief
justice; and thirdly another of themselves, Herbert le Poor, Archdeacon
of Canterbury, a young man of better stuff. But the king declared that
this time he would choose not by favour, blood, counsel, prayer, or
price; but considering the dreadful abuses of the neglected diocese he
wished for a really good bishop, and since the canons could not agree he
pressed home to them the Prior of Witham, the best man and the
best-loved one. With shouts of laughter the canons heard the jest and
mentioned his worship, his habit, and his talk, as detestable; but the
king's eye soon changed their note, and after a little foolishness they
all voted for the royal favourite. The king approves, the nobles and
bishops applaud, my lord of Canterbury confirms, and all seems settled.
The canons rode off to Witham to explain the honours they have
condescended to bestow upon its prior. He heard their tale, read their
letters. Then he astonished their complacency by telling them that he
could understand the king's mind in the matter and that of Archbishop
Baldwin, himself a Cistercian; but that they, the canons, had not acted
freely. They ought to choose a ruler whose yoke and ways they could
abide, and, moreover, they ought not to hold their election in the Court
or the pontifical council, but in their own chapter. "And so, to tell
you my small opinion, you must know that I hold all election made in
this way to be absolutely vain and void." He then bade them go home and
ask for God's blessing, and choose solely by the blessing and help of
the Holy Ghost, looking not to king's, bishop's, nor any man's approval.
"That is the only answer to return from my littleness. So go, and God's
good angel be with you." They begged him to reconsider it, to see the
king or the archbishop; but the prior was inflexible, and they left the
Guest House in wonder not unmixed with delight. The king's man was not
the pet boor they had taken him for, but single-eyed, a gentleman, a
clever fellow, and a good churchman. The very men who had cried out that
they had been tricked now elected him soon and with one consent; and off
they post again to Witham.
This time he read the letters first, and then heard their tale and
expressed his wonder that men so wise and mannerly should take such
pains to court an ignoramus and recluse, to undertake such unwonted and
uncongenial cares, but they must be well aware that he was a monk and
under authority. He had to deal not with the primate and chief of the
English Church in this matter, but with his superior overseas, and so
they must either give up the plan altogether or undertake a toilsome
journey to the Charterhouse; for none but his own prior could load his
shoulders with such a burden. In vain they argued. A strong embassy had
to be sent, and sent it was without delay, and the Chartreuse Chapter
made no bones about it, but charged brother Hugh to transfer his
obedience to Canterbury; and thus the burden of this splendid unhappy
See was forced upon the shoulders which were most able to bear the
weight of it.
One would be glad to know what Henry thought of it all, and whether he
liked the tutoring his courtiers got and were about to get. The humour,
shrewdness, tact, and piety combined must have appealed to his
many-sided mind and now saddened heart. He had lost his heir and was
tossed upon stormy seas, so perhaps he had small leisure to spare for
the next act of the drama.
FOOTNOTES:
{2} The king crossed to Normandy the very next day, and it is possible
that this was the date of the sea scene mentioned above.