THE BISHOP ELECT AND CONSECRATE
Hugh knew well enough what the Chartreuse Chapter would say if the
English meant to have him, and so he began his preparations at once.
Other men fussed about fine copes, chasubles, and mitres, and dogged the
clerical tailors, or pottered about in goldsmiths' shops to get a grand
equipment of goblets. To him the approaching dignity was like a black
cloud to a sailor, or a forest of charging lances to the soldier under
arms. He fell hard to prayer and repentance, to meditation upon the
spiritual needs of his new duties, lest he should have holy oil on his
head and a dry and dirty conscience. He gave no time to the _menu_ of
the banquet, to the delicacies, the authorities, and the
lacquey-smoothed amenities of the new life. He was racked with misery at
the bare imagination of the fruitless trouble of palace business
exchanged for the fruitful quiet of his cell. He feared that psalms
would give way to tussles, holy reading to cackle, inward meditation to
ugly shadows, inward purity to outer nothingness. His words to the
brethren took a higher and a humbler tone, which surprised them, for
even they were used to see bishoprics looked upon as plums, and sought
with every device of dodgery. Yet here was a man who could keep his soul
unhurt and cure the hurts of others, yet whose cry was, "In my house is
neither bread nor clothing; make me not a ruler of the people." St.
Augustine's fierce words upon the Good Shepherd and the hireling were in
his mind. "The soul's lawful husband is God. Whoso seeks aught but God
from God is no chaste bride of God. See, brothers, if the wife loves her
husband because he is rich she is not chaste. She loves, not her
husband, but her husband's gold. For if she loves her husband she loves
him bare, she loves him beggared." So Hugh prepared his soul as for a
bridal with the coming bridegroom.
When the inevitable command came, more than three months after his first
election, he meekly set out for his duties at "the mount of the Lord,
not Lebanon,{3} but Lincoln." He was white in dress, white in face, but
radiant white within. He sat a horse without trappings, but with a roll
of fleece and clothes, his day and night gear. Around him pricked his
clergy upon their gold-buttoned saddles. They tried various devices to
get his bundle away to carry it upon their own cruppers, but neither
jest nor earnest could unstrap that homely pack. The truth was that he
would not allow himself to change his old simple habits one jot, lest he
should develop the carnal mind. So they drew across Salisbury Plain and
on to Marlborough. Here was the Court and a great throng, and this
public disgrace of the pack was too much for the Lincoln exquisites.
They cut the straps of the objectionable bundle and impounded it. From
Marlborough the cavalcade rode into London, and Hugh was consecrated on
Sunday, September 21 (Feast of St. Matthew, the converted capitalist),
1186. King Henry was in fine feather, and, forgetting his rather near
habits, produced some fine gold plate, a large service of silver, a
substantial set of pots and pans, and a good sum of ready money to meet
the expenses of the festive occasion. Without some such help a penniless
Carthusian could hardly have climbed up that Lebanon at all, unless by
the sore scandal of a suit to the Lincoln Jewry. This handsome present
was made at Marlborough. William de Northalle was consecrated Bishop of
Worcester on the same day, of whom nothing else transpires than that he
died not long after, and is supposed to have been an old and toothless
bishop promoted for his ready fees. The place of consecration was
Westminster Abbey, in its præ-Edwardian state, and so no longer extant.
Hugh would undoubtedly sleep in the house in which he afterwards died.
This lay at the back of Staple Inn, where the new bursar, whom the king
had given him, bestowed the royal pots and crocks. Consecration like
necessity brings strange bedfellows, and plain, cheap-habited Hugh, by
gaudily trimmed William in his jewelled mitre, must have raised a few
smiles that Sunday morning.
Hugh's delays had ended with his prior's order, and he saw nothing now
to stay his journey northwards. With him rode Gilbert de Glanville,
Bishop of Rochester, a _malleus monachorum_, a great hammerer of monks,
and perhaps told off for the duty of enthroning the new bishop to
silence those who had a distaste for all monkery. Herbert le Poor, late
rival candidate for the See, also pranced alongside with all the
importance of a great functionary, whose archidiaconal duty it was to
enthrone all bishops of the Province of Canterbury. For this duty he
used to have the bishop's horse and trappings and much besides; but
alas! the new man slept at St. Catherine's Priory on Michaelmas Eve and
walked upon his bare toes to the cracked cathedral next morning. When he
was fairly and ceremonially seated the archdeacon held out his practised
palm for the customary fee (archdeacons are still fee-extracting
creatures). He was astonished to hear the radical retort, "What I gave
for my mitre" (it was a very cheap one) "that and no more will I give
for my throne." Both Herbert and with him Simon Magus fell backward
breathless at this blow.{4} But Hugh had a short way of demolishing his
enemies, and the archdeacon appears hereafter as his stout follower
knocked, no doubt, into a friend. All who were present at this ceremony
had their penances remitted for thirteen days. Two other incidents are
recorded of this time. One is that the bursar asked how many small
fallow deer from the bishop's park should be killed for the inauguration
feast. "Let three hundred be taken, and if you find more wanted do not
stickle to add to this number." In this answer the reader must not see
the witless, bad arithmetic of a vegetarian unskilled in catering, but a
fine determination, first to feed all the poor folk of his metropolis
with the monopolies of princes; and secondly, to sever himself wholly
and dramatically from the accursed oppression of the game and forest
laws. When Hugh told the story at Court it served as a merry jest, often
broken, no doubt, against game (but not soul) preserving prelates, but,
as the sequel shows, there was method in it. The other incident is that
in the convent after Matins, on the morning of his enthronement, he
slept and heard a voice which comforted his doubtful heart, too fearful
lest this step should not be for the people's health or his own. "Thou
hast entered for the waxing of thy people, for the waxing of salvation
to be taken with thy Christ."
The new bishop lived at his manor at Stowe (of which part of the moat
and a farmhouse are now to be seen by the curious), a place parked and
ponded deliciously. Almost as soon as he was installed a new swan came
upon the waters, huge and flat-beaked, with yellow fleshings to his
mandibles. This large wild bird dwarfed the tame swans into geese by
comparison, and no doubt tame swans and geese were small things in those
days compared to our selected fatlings. This bird drove off and killed
the other swans, all but one female, with whom he companied but did not
breed. The servants easily caught him and brought him to the bishop's
room as a wonder. The beast-loving man, instead of sending him to the
spit, offered him some bread, which he ate, and immediately struck up an
enthusiastic friendship with his master, caring nothing for any throngs
about him. After a time he would nestle his long neck far up into the
bishop's wide sleeve, toying with him and asking him for things with
pretty little clatterings. The bird seemed to know some days before he
was due that he was coming, for it flapped about the lake and made
cries. It would leave the water and stalk through the house walking wide
in the legs. It would neither notice nor brook any other man, but rather
seemed jealous, and would hiss and flap away the rest of the company. If
the bishop slept or watched, the swan would keep dogs and other animals
at bay. With true spiritual instinct it would peck hard at the calves of
chaplains. If the bishop was abed no one was allowed near him without a
most distressing scene, and there was no cajoling this zealous watchman.
When the bishop went away the bird would retire to the middle of its
pool, and merely condescend to take rations from the steward; but if its
friend returned it would have none of servants. Even two years' interval
made no difference to the faithful swan. It prophetically proclaimed his
unexpected arrival. When the carts and forerunners arrived (with the
household stuffs) the swan would push boldly in among the crowd and cry
aloud with delight when at last it caught the sound of its master's
voice, and it would go with him through the cloister to his room,
upstairs and all, and could not be got out without force. Hugh fed it
with fingers of bread he sliced with his own hand. This went on for
nearly all Hugh's episcopate. But in his last Easter the swan seemed ill
and sullen, and kept to his pond. After some chase they caught him in
the sedge, and brought him in, the picture of unhappiness, with drooping
head and trailing wing, before the bishop. The poor bird was to lose its
friend six months after, and seemed to resent the cruel severance of
coming death, though it was itself to live for many a day after its
master had gone home to his rest. There, floating conspicuous on the
lake, it reminded orphaned hearts of their innocent, kind, and pure
friend who had lived patiently and fearlessly, and taken death with a
song--the new song of the Redeemed.
The first act of the new bishop was naturally to enlist captains for the
severe campaign, and he ran his keen eye over England and beyond it for
wise, learned, and godly men who could help a stranger. He wrote a
touchingly humble letter to Archbishop Baldwin to help him to find
worthy right-hand men, "for you are bred among them, you have long been
a leader, and you know them 'inside and under the skin,' as the saying
goes." Baldwin, an Exeter labourer by birth, by turns a schoolmaster,
archdeacon, Cistercian abbot, Bishop of Worcester, and primate--a
silent, dark, strong man, gentle, studious, and unworldly--was delighted
at the request. He sent off Robert of Bedford, an ardent reformer and
brilliant scholar, and Roger Roldeston, another distinguished scholar,
who afterwards was Dean of Lincoln. These, like Aaron and Hur, upheld
the lawgiver's hands, and they, with others of a like kidney, soon
changed the face of affairs. Robert died early, but Roger was made
Archdeacon of Leicester, confessor, and at the end executor to the
bishop. After gathering captains the next thing was an eight-fold lash
for abuses--decrees (1) against bribes; (2) against vicars who would not
sing Mass save for extra pay; (3) against swaggering archdeacons who
suspended churches, and persons beyond their beat. These gentlemen, in
the absence of a bishop, seem to have grown into popes at the least. (4)
Mass not to be laid as a penance upon any non-priestly person. This was
a nimble way by which confessors fined penitents to their own profit.
(5) Annual and other customary masses to be said without temporal gain.
(6) Priestly administration only to be undertaken by those who are
proved to be duly ordained by the archbishop or one of his suffragans:
forged orders being plentiful. (7) Incumbents to be tonsured, and clergy
to wear "the crown" instead of love-locks. (8) Clergy not to sue clergy
in ecclesiastical cases before civil justices, Erastian knaves being
active, even then.
Next year brought a much more fighting foe, Godfrey the chief forestar.
There was a Forest Assize only three years back, and a great outbreak of
game preserving, dog licensing, bow confiscating, fines, imprisonment
and slaughter, new rights for old tyrants, boys of twelve and clergy to
be sworn to the hunting peace, mangling of mastiffs, banishment of
tanners and parchmenters from woodlands--and if this was within the law,
what could not be done without the law by these far away and favoured
gamekeepers? The country groaned. Robbers and wolves could easily
demolish those whom the foresters did not choose to protect, and the
forest men went through the land like a scourge. Some flagrant injustice
to one of Hugh's men brought down an excommunication upon Godfrey, who
sent off to the king in fury and astonishment; and Henry was in a fine
fit of anger at the news, for the Conqueror long ago had forbidden
unauthorised anathemas against his men. Certain courtiers, thinking to
put Hugh in the way of obliging the king, suggested that a vacant
prebend at Lincoln should be given to one of themselves. The king sent a
letter to that effect, which he did with some curiosity, suggesting this
tit for tat. The messengers jingled through Oxford from Woodstock and
found the bishop at Dorchester touring round his weedy diocese, who
addressed the expectant prebendary and his friends with these words:
"Benefices are not for courtiers but for ecclesiastics. Their holders
should not minister to the palace, revenue, or treasury, but as
Scripture teachers to the altar. The lord king has wherewith to reward
those who serve him in his business, wherewith to recompense soldiers'
work in temporals with temporals. It is good for him to allow the
soldiers of the highest King to enjoy what is set aside for their future
necessities and not to agree to deprive them of their due stipends."
With these words he unhesitatingly sent the courtiers empty and packing.
The fat was in the fire, and the angry courtiers took care that the
chimney should draw. A man galloped off to say "Come to the king at
once," and when the bishop was nearing Rosamond's bower, the king and
his nobles rode off to the park, and sat down in a ring. The bishop
followed at once. No one replied to his salute, or took the least notice
of him. He laid hands upon a great officer next the king and moved him
and sat down, in the circle of black looks. Then the king called for a
needle. He had hurt one of his left fingers, and he sewed a stall upon
it. The bishop was practised in silence, and was not put out by it. At
last he said gently, "You are very like your relatives in Falaise."
Henry threw himself back and laughed in a healthy roar. The courtiers
who understood the sarcasm were aghast at its audacity. They could not
but smile, but waited for the king, who, when he had had his laugh out,
explained the allusion to the Conqueror's leather dressing and gloving
lineage. "All the same, my good man, you must say why you chose, without
our leave, to put our chief forester under the ban, why moreover you so
flouted our little request that you neither came in person to explain
your repulse nor sent a polite message by our messengers." Hugh answered
simply that he knew the king had taken great trouble about his election,
so it was his business to keep the king from spiritual dangers, to
coerce the oppressor and to dismiss the covetous nonsuited. It would be
useless and stupid to come to court for either matter, for the king's
discretion was prompt to notice proper action and quick to approve the
right. Hugh was irresistible. The king embraced him, asked for his
prayers, gave the forester to his mercy. Godfrey and his accomplices
were all publicly flogged and absolved, and the enemy, as usual, became
his faithful friend and supporter. The courtiers ceased to act like
kites and never troubled him again. On the contrary, some of them helped
him so heartily that, if they had not been tied by the court, he would
have loved to have beneficed them in the diocese. But non-residence was
one of the scandals of the age and Hugh was inflexible in this matter.
Salary and service at the altar were never to be parted. Even the Rector
of the University of Paris, who once said how much he would like to be
associated with Lincoln by accepting a canonry, heard that this would
also be a great pleasure to the bishop, "if only you are willing to
reside there, and if, too, your morals will keep pace with your
learning." The gentleman was stricter in scholarship than in life, but
no one had ever taken the liberty to tell him of it, and he is said to
have taken the hint. Herein Hugh was quite consistent. He would not take
any amount of _quadrivium_ as a substitute for honest living, and next
after honest living he valued a peaceable, meek, conformist spirit,
which was not always agape for division and the sowing of discords. He
took some pains to compose quarrels elsewhere, as for instance, between
Archbishop Baldwin and the monks of Canterbury. The archbishop wished to
found a house of secular canons at Hackington in honour of SS. Stephen
and Thomas of Canterbury. The monks were furious; the quarrel grew. Hugh
thought and advised, when asked, that the question of division
outweighed the use of the new church, and that it would be better to
stop at the onset than to have to give up the finished work. But,
objected Baldwin, holy Thomas himself wanted to build this church. "Let
it suffice that you are like the martyr in proposing the same. Hear my
simplicity and go no further." He preached union with constant fervour,
and used to say that the knowledge that his spiritual sons were all at
his back made him fear neither king nor any mortal, "neither do I lose
the inward freedom from care, which is the earnest of, and the practice
for, the eternal calm. Nor do my masters (so he called his canons) break
and destroy a quiet that knows no dissent, for they think me gentle and
mild. I am really tarter and more stinging than pepper, so that even
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 £5 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
mediæval Hebrew.