Cloister life in the days of Coeur de Lion
Spence-Jones, H. D. M. (Henry Donald Maurice), 1836-1917
J) ean - & of Meai^ L'fc. LIBRAR' I }}^Jia^S**™~<K- *^>\ ** ' vi>e>x«— <x*-^ /v , Cro rc^- ^— • \Ar«-ata_4 ^*— • CLOISTER LIFE IN THE DAYS OF CCEUR DE LION. BY THE VERY REV. H. D. M. SPENCE D.D. DEAN OF GLOUCESTER AUTHOR OF "DREAMLAND IN HISTORY," KTC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HERBERT RAILTON AND A. QUINTON LONDON ISBISTER & COMPANY LIMITED 15 & 16 TAV1STOCK STREET CO VENT GARDEN 1892 LONDON : PRINTED BY J. S. VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD, TO 'Ffctom, Queen airti These little Studies of a half -forgotten Life, which , z'w its day, helped to make the England she rules over- free and great and strong, are, with her gracious permission, dedicated. CONTENTS. LINCOLN. CHAPTER PAGE I. AN IDEAL MONK 3 II. THE MONK AND THE KING 17 III. THE DEATH OF HUGH OF LINCOLN . . . .27 BURY ST. EDMUNDS. I. EDMUND, KING AND MARTYR 33 II. THE BUILDING OF THE ABBEY — A NOTABLE BROTHER 44 III. THE GREAT ABBOT AND HIS BIOGRAPHER . . .57 IV. THE SHRINE OF ST. EDMUND AND WHAT IT CONTAINED 70 TEWKESBURY. I. ON THE ROAD TO TEWKESBURY ... .82 II. THE BUILDERS OF THE ABBEY . . .go b x CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE III. THE ABBEY AND ITS  129 EVESHAM. THE VANISHED ABBEY 140 OSRIC, KING OF NORTHUMBRIA. THE FINDING OF A LOST KING 164 LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE. A LONELY ISLAND OF PRAYER ^ BY HERBERT RAILTON AND A. QUINTON. PAGE WEST FRONT OF LINCOLN CATHEDRAL .... Frontispiece STATUE OF KING STEPHEN 4 THE CHOIR, LINCOLN CATHEDRAL  DEATH OF ST. EDMUND . 39 SEAL OF THE ABBEY OF ST. EDMUNDSBURY . ... 40 BUTTRESS AND ARCHES, ABBOT'S BRIDGE, BURY ST. EDMUNDS . 45 RUINS OF CENTRAL TOWER, BURY ST. EDMUNDS .... 49 THE ABBEY GATE, BURY ST. EDMUNDS . -53 THE ABBOT'S BRIDGE, BURY ST. EDMUNDS . . 58 NORMAN GATE, BURY ST. EDMUNDS . . -59 THE WESTERN FRONT, BURY ST. EDMUNDS 61 A FRAGMENT IN THE ABBEY GARDEN, BURY ST. EDMUNDS . . 64 SEAL OF ABBOT SAMSON 67 THE SHRINE OF ST. EDMUND 71 GATEWAY, BURY ST. EDMUNDS . . 75 OLD HOUSES, TEWKESBURY .... . .84 THE BELL HOTEL, "ABEL FLETCHER'S HOUSE," TEWKESBURY . 85 WEST FRONT, TEWKESBURY ABBEY .... -93 THE BEAR INN AND LONG BRIDGE, TEWKESBURY . . 98 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE HIGH STREET, TEWKESBURY .101 SHRINE AND LOCULUS OF HUGH LE DESPENSER, TEWKESBURY ABBEY 107 THE CROSS, TEWKESBURY. . . . ...  BRIEN, TEWKESBURY ABBEY . . . .131 THE TRINITY CHAPEL, TEWKESBURY ABBEY 133 THE "WARWICK" CHAUNTRY, TEWKESBURY ABBEY. _. . . 135 THE BELL  GOD'S ACRE OF THE VANISHED  ST. HILDA'S ABBEY, WHITBY . 171 KING OSRIC'S TOMB FROM THE ALTAR STEPS, GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL 175 KING  185 MONASTERY OF LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE 187 THE HOUSE OR " CELL" OF A FATHER OF LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE 194 THE CLOISTERS, LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE 197 {Erratum — Cut on page 9, for " Angel Choir " read " Choir."] CHAPTER I. AN IDEAL MONK. IT was in the days of Cceur de Lion and his great father, the Angevin Henry II., and his predecessor King Stephen, that the monastic orders did their noblest work among us. It was a rough and cruel age, an age of great crimes and of great repentances. Never, perhaps, has a more crushing disaster overtaken a whole people than when the Norman Conquest over- whelmed the great and wealthy Anglo-Saxon race — when the entire island, its fertile lands, its towns, its treasure, its people, rich and poor, became the spoil of the conquerors. A few hundred Normans became suddenly rich and powerful; many thousand Saxons were plunged into poverty, misery, servitude. Long years passed before peace and prosperity were restored to hapless, conquered England. It is true that, after several generations, conquerors and conquered were mingled together and produced a nation the like of which the world had never seen before — a nation which gradually LINCOLN. grew in strength and power, in ability and endurance, grew into the mighty English race of to-day. But the early years of the making of this great people were, indeed, years of cruel trial and awful suffering. The reigns of Stephen, Henry II., Cceur de Lion, and John, were years of untold misery for thousands. The great repentance on the part of some of the con- querors helped materially to produce that wonderful array of homes of peace — monas- teries, nunneries, stately ab- beys, wonderful cathedrals — a mighty array of homes, many gone, some picturesque ruins, not a few with us still, devoted to the service of God and the help of the suffering and the down - trodden — an array of stately buildings and sacred societies such as the world had never seen before and will probably never see again.* Men, many of them noble by birth, rich and powerful, over- whelmed by the sight of the great misery around them, devoted themselves and their lives to relieving, as best they could, the misery of their * In Stephen's reign of nineteen years 115 monasteries were built, and 113 were added to these during the reign of Henry II., making a total of 228 monas- teries built in these two reigns. From the West front of Wells Cathedral. ' AN IDEAL MONK. 5 neighbours, to lifting this burden of the unspeakable woe they had brought on the land they had conquered. The monastic orders in these reigns attained, perhaps, their loftiest ideal, and did right noble work in their generation. They were not faultless by any means, but many of the monks well deserved the title of Saint. I will try and reproduce some scenes from the life of one of these true great ones, which may be taken as a fair speci- men of the views and aspirations of not a few among the vast army of devoted "religious" who lived in these times — the days of the birth-throes of our English people. Far away from England, among the mountains of Savoy — in that country now so well known among the seekers after a lost health, in the neighbourhood of pleasant, sunny Aix- les-Bains — about the middle of the twelfth century, lived a boy of a noble race, who from early days had been brought up by men who dwelt in monasteries. A chance visit to the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse, in company with the prior of the house in which he was living, determined the young Hugh of Avalon's future career. The weird beauty of the situation of the lonely house of St. Bruno and his companions, the towering rocks which overhung the group of cells, the far-reaching sombre pine-forests with their melan- choly and ceaseless music, which surrounded the little valley of prayer, the remoteness from all human habitations, the stern grave life lived by the solitaries devoted to God, inspired the young seeker after righteousness and truth with a passionate longing to share in what he felt was a beautiful life. After a lengthened novitiate the young noble took the final vows of a Carthusian monk, and in the course of along and stormy career this early love never grew cold, never faded. The rule of St. Bruno was ascetic even to painful severity ; meat was forbidden, and only the plainest and coarsest food 6 LINCOLN. sanctioned ; each brother of the order lived alone, never meeting his companions save in the chapel or on rare occa- sions. His bed-furniture was a rough blanket, a pillow, and a skin ; his dress a horsehair shirt covered outside with linen worn night and day, with the white cloak of the order — in early times a, sheepskin. This life of solitary meditation and prayer might go on for the professed brother for years. It might cease at any moment, as he was bound by vows of obe- dience never to be questioned. At the bidding of his " gene- ral " he was liable to be sent on the most distant and perilous mission, for these men owned neither country nor race ; all men were their brethren. As we have said, the eleventh and twelfth centuries were especially an age of cruelty and misrule, of greedy con- querors and hapless conquered — an age in which helpless, defenceless multitudes lived under the rule of merciless masters, generally indifferent to suffering, when law was the feeblest and most untrustworthy stay of right.* In this stern, pitiless age, the monasteries — very numerous in England — and their inhabitants were the only power that could be relied on to exercise any real check upon these cruel and oppressive forces. By the mouth of the monk, in this age of violence and conquest, spoke the voice of the helpless, defenceless people, and their voice, thus uttered, compelled a hearing. It was with these " homes of prayer " that a man who in good earnest meant to serve God and to help his down-trodden neighbour associated himself, or, in other words, "any high effort in those days to be thorough and religious took the shape of monastic discipline and rule." A peculiar but an effective training for a great mind with a noble ideal was the life of such a monastery as the * Compare Dean Church, "Anselm," chap. ii. — viii., &c. AN IDEAL MONK. 7 Grande Chartreuse in the twelfth century.* "The governing thought was that the life there was a warfare, and the monastery was a camp or barrack ; there was continued drill and exercise, fixed times, appointed tasks, hard fare, stern punishment ; watchfulness was to be incessant, obedience prompt and absolute, no man was to have a will of his own, •no man was to murmur." In such a life as this the young Savoyard noble spent twenty happy years — years so happy that in after time, when he had become one of the earth's great ones, when he had a palace for his home instead of a naked cell, and wore rich clothing in place of the rough haircloth and sheep's- wool cloak, he would come back to a solitary English " Char- treuse" as to a retreat of perfect enjoyment. " When the cares of the great world fell heavily upon the great monk- statesman, Hugh would often come to his little Carthusian cellf for rest of mind and body, and on coming there would pitch away his grand dress and jump into his sheepskin as we moderns put on our shooting- jackets." For twenty years Brother Hugh, the Carthusian, was a monk of the great house built in the solitudes of the Savoy Alps. Far and wide his name was whispered abroad as the most gifted monk of the famous order. His life had proved for him the most admirable discipline. The unswerving obedience had taught him how best to rule and influence others ; the rigid discipline, the hard fare, the stern gray life had taught him to set its true value upon luxury and magnificence ; very poor and tawdry seemed to him the prizes of the world which men spend their existence in striving after. His keen and powerful intellect grew with * Church's " Anselm," chap. iii. t Froude's " A Bishop of the Twelfth Century " (" Short Studies on Great Subjects "). 8 LINCOLN. years as he performed his solitary duties at the Chartreuse, varied with the public tasks allotted him by his superiors. The traditionary cell of Brother Hugh is still shown at the Grande Chartreuse ; it is marked with the letter F in the ancient Gothic cloister, and bears the motto — " 23eati qut esuuunt et stttunt justttiam quoniam t'pst saturabuntur." The learned Carthusian who describes the cell remarks that the original monastery was built of wood, and was destroyed by fire, but that scarcely any change or modification has taken place in the arrangement and details of the holy house and its cells since Hugh's time. It is virtually the same quaint little dwelling, provided with the same rough and scanty furniture, containing, too, the same divisions, and situated in the same position in the cloister. The view from the narrow cell garden, still called his, is the picture, literally unchanged, which represented Hugh's world during his many years of monk-life at the Grande Chartreuse. The solitary who occupies *' Hugh's cell" still looks out on the gloomy mountain, clothed with tier upon tier of pines, whose dark plumy foliage changes but little in colour with the varying seasons. Above the mighty pine forest, the huge, gray rock-wall of the Grand Som, rising up abruptly three thousand feet, leaves only a narrow strip of blue sky above to light up the sombre melancholy of the Carthusian landscape. This grave and lonely prospect ever before the monk's eyes was part of a stern and special education, but it was a training which has done its work in the world's story, and it resulted in a life which it is wiser simply to record, and perhaps to wonder at with an ungrudging admiration, than to criticise. Hugh was almost in middle life when a wonderful and unexpected opening for a new, strange service presented itself to him — a new service which brought him into close contact Angel Choir. AN IDEAL MONK. u with two of the most famous kings in our many-coloured English story. The dealings of Hugh the Carthusian monk with Henry II. the great Plantagenet king, with Richard the Lion- hearted, and later with John Lackland, tell us something of the strong influence for good exercised over these mighty, irresponsible mediaeval monarchs by a loving and sym- pathising Christian monk, whose education had taught him never to be afraid of the mightiest, whose training in a great and solemn monastery had made him "capable of the highest things, content — as living before Him with whom there is neither high nor low — to minister to the humblest."* And the story of these dealings of the monk Hugh in the latter half of his noble life with these kings possesses another and a very different charm ; it lifts up for a moment the veil which hangs over these memorable royal lives — the veil of years, the veil of many traditions of glory as of shame — and we are brought absolutely face to face for a brief moment with Henry Plantagenet,f the greatest and most powerful monarch of the age ; face to face with Richard the Lion-hearted, the bravest champion in Christendom, the hero of our boyish memories ; face to face with John Lack- land, the perjured, the murderer, the abhorred and detested John, who sleeps, however, as he prayed to sleep, in holy company in the gorgeous shrine at Worcester. * Church, " Anselm," chap. xiv. t " Seven centuries off, thou wilt see King Henry II. visibly there, in all his glory, in some high presence-chamber, a vivid, noble-looking man, with grizzled beard, in glittering uncertain costume, with earls round him, and bishops and dignitaries, in the like." ..." Cceur de Lion, not a theatrical popinjay, with greaves and steel cap on, but a man living upon victuals. Thou brave Richard! ... he loved a man, and knew one when he saw him!" . .. " John Lackland, a blustering, dissipated, human figure, with a kind of black- guard quality air, in cramoisy velvet, with much plumage and fringing amid numerous other human figures of the like, riding abroad with hawks, talking noisy nonsense; ... a shabby Lackland as he was ! "— Carlyle, "Past and Present: The Ancient Monk," chap. i. 1 2 LINCOLN. This brilliant chapter in the monk's story came about as follows. It was about the year of our Lord 1 174 that Henry II., after the strange scenes of submission he had gone through in the matter of the murder of Thomas a Becket, determined to introduce the Carthusian order into England. It was noble on the part of the great Angevin king to desire to strengthen a mighty institution like that of the monastic orders, with whom he had waged a life-and-death contest and had been signally worsted. But the Plantagenet recognised the almost limitless influence of these orders, and, like a true patriot statesman, desired to invigorate and make more perfect a power which might so materially aid the future progress of the people he loved so well. The first settlement of the Carthusians at Witham, near Frome, was attended with grave dissensions between the monks and the tenants of the monks' lands. The stranger Car- thusians, disheartened with their difficulties, were preparing to return to their native Savoy mountains, when Hugh, whose splendid devotion and great abilities were recognised in the order, was directed to take charge of the new English com- munity as their prior. It was sorely against his will that he left his cell in his beloved Grande Chartreuse ; but with the true monk obedience was the first, the paramount considera- tion. By the good management of the new prior and the help of the king, who recognised his ability and unbending integrity, the differences were soon arranged, the fame of Witham Priory rapidly grew. It became a favourite place of pilgrimage. The monks were even said to work miracles. The wise prior, however, thought little of these, considering that the only miracle which a monk could really work, and which was worth speaking about, was holiness of life. His biographer, his faithful friend and companion, Brother Adam, subsequently Abbot of Eynsham, relates how at this period of his life he (Adam) observed how the Prior Hugh worked many AN IDEAL MONK. 13 miracles, but he paid no heed to them, and so he lived for eleven more years a quiet, simple, earnest life, governing his little community, training himself unconsciously for higher and more difficult work. One day Prior Hugh received a royal command from Eynsham, near royal Woodstock, to attend a great council. King Henry II. told him the canons of Lincoln had chosen him, and that he, the king, fully approved the choice, to be bishop of the great see of Remigius ; the late bishop, Walter de Coutances, had been promoted to the archiepis- copal see of Rouen. Very unwillingly and interposing many questions before his acceptance, Hugh the monk became Hugh the bishop. He was then more than fifty years old ; thirty-two or thirty-three years of training in the stern ascetic school of unquestioning obedience and ceaseless work had well fitted him for the great part he was now to play in public life. Brother Adam, in his account of this part of the historic life of the monk-bishop, tells us comparatively little of the stirring public events which made the period of Hugh's epis- copate so memorable. Most of our readers are well acquainted with the charming romance of " Ivanhoe," perhaps the most widely read of the writings of the great Scottish novelist and poet; the period described in the story of "Ivanhoe" cor- responded to that in which Hugh was bishop of Lincoln. The grand crusade, the absence from England of Richard Coeur de Lion, the captivity and return of the Lion-hearted, the plots and treachery of Prince John — of all these stirring events the monk Hugh was a spectator ; nay, more, he was a prominent actor in not a few of them.* Brother Adam tells * See Froude, "A Bishop of the Twelfth Century," drawn from the " Magna Vita S. Hugonis Episcopi Lincolnensis," edited by Rev. J. F. Dimock. Mr. Froude speaks of this biography of " Brother Adam " as containing the most vivid picture which has come down to us of England as it then was, and of the first Plantagenet kings. The " Magna Vita S. Hugonis" was first printed in the 14 LINCOLN. us little"] of these ; church questions, the ecclesiastical dis- putes in which Hugh took a part, curious details of his beloved master's life, traits of his lovable character — these are the things which Adam delights to tell us of; they are what concerned him, and he thought they would interest his readers — dwellers for the most part in lonely cloisters — much more than recitals of State policy, more than the sorrows and joys, more than the marriages and deaths of kings and princes, more than war, though the war was for the possession of Jerusalem and the Holy Places. I daresay he was right. Men and women do not change much, and Walter Scott is read by thousands, while Hume and even Froude can only count their students by hundreds. So we must be grateful for gossip-loving Adam's memoirs, especially when our bio- grapher takes us in the course of his narrative, as now and again he does, into the august presence of the Plan- tagenet kings, Henry II., Cceur de Lion, and shifty John. His hero-master Hugh — I call him advisedly "hero," for a more heroic soul than that of Hugh of Avalon never dwelt in a frail and delicate body — was evidently a trusted friend and counsellor of two at least of these famous monarchs. Not long after the monk's elevation it happened that at Lincoln a rich prebendal stall fell vacant. King Henry II. wanted it for one of his courtiers, and wrote his views on the matter to Bishop Hugh, thinking he had only to express his wish to obtain the stall for his friend. Hugh at once wrote back to the king, " that these stalls were for priests, not for courtiers." The king was very angry, and peremptorily sent for Hugh. Henry II. was then residing at his favourite palace of Wood- stock, and the Carthusian bishop was at Dorchester, a place in that day in the far-reaching diocese of distant Lincoln. seventeenth century ; editor, Dora le Vasseur ; and again was edited by Dom le Couteulx. For this study of mine, I have also used and quoted from the recently written exhaustive and scholarly "Vie de S. Hugues," par un Religieux de la Grande Chartreuse (Montreuil, 1890). AN IDEAL MONK. 15 Hugh was introduced into the presence of Henry as he sat, with his courtiers round him, under a tree. The king before whom the monk-bishop stood, whose power he was quietly defying, was no ordinary man. He was not only one of the wisest, but was perhaps the most powerful prince in Christendom. He was absolute sovereign of England, and across the seas his dominions embraced almost the half of what is now known as France. He was closely connected by marriage and relationship with the emperor and the kings of France and Arragon. He was the head of the house of the Norman kings of Sicily, and was heir of the Christian king of Jerusalem. His glory and power were acknowledged not only throughout the western but also in the eastern world. But Hugh the monk looked on the face of his mighty sovereign, who ever since he had come to England had been his friend, unabashed. It seemed but a trifling favour that the king asked from him, but Hugh felt that to grant it would be an injury to a far greater king than Henry Plantagenet. " The bishop approached — no one rose or spoke. He saluted the king ; there was no answer. Then Hugh drew near ; gently pushing aside an earl who was sitting at Henry's side, he took his place. Silence still continued. At last Henry, looking up, called for a needle and thread. He had hurt a finger of his left hand ; it was wrapped with a strip of linen, the end was loose, and the king began to sew. The bishop watched him through a few stitches, and then with the utmost composure said to him, ' Quam similis es modo cognatis tuis de Falesia.' — * Your Majesty reminds me now of your cousins of Falaise.' Henry at once saw the allu- sion and, the chronicler tells us, was convulsed with laughter. Then turning to his court, ' Do you see what this facetious visitor means ? He is referring to my ancestress, the mother of the Conqueror, Arietta, the Tanner of Falaise's daughter. 1 6 LINCOLN. Falaise, you know, is famous for its leather work. He says when I was stitching the linen round my finger I was showing my descent.' " Then turning to the monk-bishop he asked him how he could treat his king with such scant courtesy as to refuse him the small favour in the matter of the stall at Lincoln. ' I know myself,' answered Hugh gravely, * to be indebted to your Highness for my late promotion, but I considered your Highness' s soul would be in danger if I was found wanting in the discharge of my duties, so I resisted an improper attempt on your part to appropriate a stall in my cathedral.' " * Henry was too wise a man not to know the bishop was right. He had had many other experiences too of Hugh, so when the first flush of anger at being crossed in his will had faded away, he recognised what a source of strength to throne and altar was such a fearless, honest man. The king asked no more for the disputed stall. * "Vie de S. Hugues ;" also Froude. CHAPTER II. THE MONK AND THE KING. HUGH'S friend, King Henry II., died two years after the scene at Woodstock just related. Coeur de Lion succeeded. The old friendship with the father was continued to the son, whom he probably had often seen and talked with in Henry II.'s lifetime. Our monk-bishop seems to have loved dearly the " Lion-Heart," forgiving and making allowances for the many mistakes and faults of the great crusader, and only seeing his splendid qualities and his generous chivalry. During the fifteen years of his episcopate, A.D. 1185 — 1 200, we catch sight of our " ideal monk" playing continu- ally the part of a true statesman in the stormy days of King Richard, standing perpetually between the high-handed op- pressor and the oppressed ; we see him always the same fear- less, simple figure, restlessly working for others, as much at home at the court of the warrior king of England, surrounded by his mailed barons and captains, as in the sad precincts of a leper hospital, or among his rough workmen who were building for him his stately cathedral on the hill of Lincoln, or alone on the marshes with wild birds, over which he ac- quired a strange influence. It would almost seem as though, like King Solomon in the Arabian story, he possessed the D THE MONK AND THE KING. 19 language of birds, and could talk with them and tell them his kind, sweet thoughts. In most of the ancient as well as in the more modern paintings and sculptures in which St. Hugh is represented, a large white swan is introduced close to the figure of the saint. The story of the friendship of St. Hugh and this wild creature is interesting. Shortly after his acceptance of the see of Lincoln, he saw in a Lincolnshire mere an enor- mous white swan, which was strangely attracted to this friend of dumb creatures. The wild white swan attached himself to the bishop, and was with difficulty ever after separated from his master. His biographer tells us how the swan constantly watched over Hugh while he slept, and would allow no one to disturb him. This peculiar power which he exercised over wild birds and animals, it has been noticed, was possessed by other practical, holy men. St. Cuthbert, the favourite saint of the North, whose bones rest in that grand minster which looks down at Durham on the Wear, and St. Guthlac, the holy solitary, whose noble monument we still wonder at when we gaze at the beautiful ruin of Crowland, both possessed this influence over wild birds and untamed creatures. With the sick and dying he was singularly winning and tender. "Pardon, blessed Jesus," exclaims his chaplain Adam, " pardon the unhappy soul of him who tells the story. When I saw my master (Bishop Hugh) touch those livid faces ; when I saw him kiss the sightless eyes, or eyeless sockets, I shuddered with disgust. But Hugh said to me that these afflicted ones were flowers of Paradise, pearls in the coronet of the eternal King waiting for the coming of their Lord who in His own time would change their forlorn bodies into the likeness of His own glory." He would visit these poor scarred lepers, wash their cruel sores with his own hands, kiss them, pray with them, comfort them. 20 LINCOLN. He had a remarkable love too for the last sad rites with which our holy religion lays the dead to rest, often taking out of the hands of his priests and chaplains the solemn beautiful service over the corpse. On one of these occasions we read how, when he was at Rouen with King Richard, he was summoned to the royal table. " The king," he said in reply to the court messen- ger, " must not wait for me. He had better dine without me than that I should leave my Master's work undone." He found time in his busy, happy life to share in the work of church building — a work which in the ages when the Plan- tagenets ruled attained an excellence never attained before, and perhaps never to be reached again. Hugh found the Norman cathedral of Remigius at Lincoln half in ruins, the result of the earthquake of the year 1 185. He busied him- self, with the zeal he ever threw into the work which lay before him, to raise money and prepare designs for a noble minster. The choir and eastern transept of the present matchless cathedral were completed in Hugh's lifetime, and a beautiful tradition is still with us which tells how the monk-bishop not only assisted in the planning of the wondrous pile, but now and again worked with his own hands among the masons and carpenters as they fashioned the stones and carved the beams of the great church. We have already spoken of his love for Cceur de Lion. It was in the year 1197 that a serious rupture took place between the king and the bishop. Richard commanded that a contingent of men-at-arms from the see of Lincoln should be sent to help him in one of his perpetual foreign wars. Hugh resisted, and said the liberties of the see which he had sworn to defend forbade any subsidies of men and money being levied for foreign service. Other bishops yielded the point and provided the subsidies, but Hugh stoutly resisted, defying even the royal threat of confiscation. The impetuous THE MONK AND THE KING. 23 Richard was deeply incensed. Hugh determined to see him ; he left England, and found Cceur de Lion at Roche d' Andeli, hearing mass in the church. The interview between the angry sovereign and the fearless monk was a curious one. " Richard was sitting in a great chair at the opening into the choir ; on either side of him were the bishops of Durham and Ely. Hugh came near and bowed to the sovereign. Richard frowned and turned away. * Kiss me, my lord king,' said the bishop : the kiss was the usual greeting between the sovereign and the spiritual peer. The king turned away still more pointedly. ' Kiss me, my lord,' said the monk again, grasping Cceur de Lion by the vest, and shaking him. Angrily Richard replied, ' Non meruisti.'- * Thou hast not deserved it.' ' I have deserved it,' said Hugh, still grasping the royal dress. Had he shown the slightest fear, probably the ' Lion-Heart ' would have ordered him into captivity ; but who could resist such marvellous audacity ? The royal kiss was given. Bishop Hugh passed up to the altar, and became at once absorbed in the service, King Richard curiously watching him. After the mass the two old friends were reconciled, the bishop gaining, strange to say, his point." The king's words were remembered in after days, when he had left for ever the scenes of his glories and troubles : "If all bishops were like my lord of Lincoln, not a prince among us could lift his head against them."* The two friends — seemingly so unlike — never met again in this world. Hugh had returned to England, but soon started again for the Continent to try once more to influence King Richard, who, being in sore need of money, persisted in making unjust demands on England. But before he reached Angers Sir Gilbert de Lacy met him with the sad news of the restless prince's death. He had received a mortal wound from an arrow at the siege of Chalus. * "Vie de S. Hugues," livre ii. ch. vii. Froude. 24 LINCOLN. Hugh arrived at Fontevraud on Palm Sunday, just in time to look on the coffin of his loved " Lion-Heart."* Monument to Henry II. and Richard 1. and their Queens. Formerly at Fontevraud. (By permission of Mr. J. C. Wall.) * The body of Richard was laid by the side of his father, Henry II., in the Abbey of Fontevraud. The "lion-heart" was bequeathed to the Canons of Rouen, who enshrined it in " silver and gold" and placed it in their cathedral. This precious relic was discovered in 1838 (July 31), in a cavity formed in the lateral wall of the choir. It was enclosed within two leaden boxes, the interior one lined with a very thin plate of silver, on which were engraved : — * HIC ; JACET; COR ; RICAR Dl ; REGIS; ANGLORUM THE MONK AND THE KING. 25 The story of Adam, the chaplain, takes us next into the presence chamber of John Lackland, now king of England. But we miss the old playful, fearless love which existed between the last two sovereigns, Henry and Richard, and our monk. Hugh knew John too well, and we only now see the stern, grave ascetic. John Lackland, in some points of his character, resembled the French king, Louis XL ; when his dark heart was plotting some selfish crime, a dread of the unseen, a certain fearful foreboding of judgment, would come over him. The evil prince believed and trembled, but still went on quietly arranging for and then committing the deadly sin. When dying he was asked where he wished his body to be laid. The king replied, that he committed his body and soul to the care of God and St. Wulfstan, the saint-bishop of Wor- cester. His wish was carefully complied with, and the splendid tomb of the Plantagenet, though the choir of Worcester -has been reconstructed since the interment of King John, is still hard by the resting-place of the saint in whose protection he trusted at the last, and to whose care he committed his body. One of John's first thoughts after his brother Cceur de Lion's death was to secure the friendship of the monk-bishop Hugh, with whose pure and beautiful character Prince John was well acquainted. The new king sent for Hugh, who at once obeyed the summons. They met at Chinon, and travelled together to Fontevraud. King John would pray with Hugh at the graves of Henry and Richard. There the fearless Carthusian told John what his life should now be, dwelling on the awful responsibility of a sove- reign. The king was deeply moved, and made many fair promises for the future. The heart was much shrunken, and "had the appearance of a reddish- coloured leaf, dry and bent round at the ends." It was wrapped in a sort of taffety of a greenish colour. It now reposes beneath a stately tomb with an effigy of the king resting on it, on the south side of the choir of Rouen Cathedral. — ("The Tombs of the Kings of England? By J . Charles Wall . 1891.) 26 LINCOLN. " See," said the prince, " what I always wear next my heart," showing to the monk-bishop a curious gem set in gold. " This stone was given to one of my royal ancestors, who was told by the donor it would ever protect the Plantagenet who wore it from evil and harm." " Ah," said Hugh, " you must trust in something more mighty than in a magic stone ; there is a living, precious Stone —our dear Lord Jesus; trust in Him." In the porch of Fontevraud Abbey — where the father and brother against whom John had sinned so deeply were sleeping their last sleep — there was a famous sculptured representation of the Last Judgment, one of those terrible and beautiful realistic designs over which the mediaeval artist loved to spend half a lifetime. In one corner of the judgment scene, on the left hand, was depicted a group of sad condemned souls, each wearing a crown and holding a sceptre. " Keep," said the stern Carthusian, " this awful picture, prince, ever before your eyes, remembering what a sad destiny is reserved for the hapless souls of kings who were called in life to rule over others, and yet were unable to rule their own evil passions. In eternity these will become slaves to demons." "Nay," said John, taking Hugh's hand and leading him across the abbey porch ; " see there that group of crowned redeemed ones robed in white on the Judge's right hand ; I mean to follow the example of those righteous princes. It is in their blessed company I shall be found on the Judgment Day." Alas, Hugh's sad estimate of King John was the true one ; and when the wise monitor was removed, as he soon was, from earthly courts and earthly kings the story of John Lackland's life proved the saddest and the most evil which the historian of the kings of England has had to record. CHAPTER III. THE DEATH OF HUGH OF LINCOLN. THE scene with John at the graves of Fontevraud took place not long before the close of Hugh's busy, noble life. The monk-bishop was prostrated by sudden weakness. He was scarcely an old man, and might well have looked forward still to years of splendid usefulness, but death came quickly. Hugh had paid, in the year following Richard's death, a last visit to his beloved Grande Chartreuse, and in his old haunts seemingly was as strong as ever, but on his way home his strength failed. Resting at his London house in the old Temple, he felt the end was come. Had not the great church- man, the patriot statesman, the loving monk, left his life's hopes and dreams buried in the royal tomb at Fontevraud ? Hugh was willing to live on, it seems, and to work on as long as his Master pleased, but the joy of living was quenched, the sunny hopefulness of existence seems to have been darkened for ever when Richard Cceur de Lion died. He lay for some time in great suffering quietly fading away. Among his notable visitors was King John, whom he cared little for ; the wicked prince ever had a reluctant and lingering attachment to the loyal, devoted friend of his dead father and brother. Hugh knew that for him the end 28 LINCOLN. was at hand, and with calm cheerfulness prepared for it. There was little to do. His whole life had been a preparation for the other and grander state of being. Fear of death had no place in his heart. " We should be indeed unhappy," * he was heard to say, " if we were not allowed to die at all." He told his friends the exact spot in his great minster church where he wished to be buried, and so waited quietly for death. In those long-drawn-out, weary last days in the old Temple, he was several times heard whispering to the divine Master he had loved for so many work-filled years, "My God, the fight has surely lasted long enough. Thy dear will be done, but it will be a great boon to me if Thou wilt put an end to this struggle." In Archbishop Lanfranc's monastic regulations, which generally represent the rule of the great houses in England and on the Continent in the best days of monk-life, elaborate and minute rules are laid down about the treatment of the dying. When the brother entered into his agony, a haircloth was spread on the floor of the cell, ashes were sprinkled over it, a cross was made on the ashes, and on this the dying brother was laid. " The whole convent was summoned by sharp, repeated blows on a board. All who heard it — unless service in the church was going on — were to gather near and repeat the Penitential Psalms, and so, in the presence of the house, amid the low muttered whispers of prayer and psalm, in sackcloth and ashes, the monk of God died." So, writes Dean Church, died Anselm, and that master- builder, Gundulf of Rochester; so passed away Bruno, the founder of the Carthusian order, and unnumbered other known and unknown saints and holy men, whose names we believe are written in the Book of God. Hugh well remembered this strange custom, and when very weak — the fever which consumed him ever increasing — * "Magna Vita," livre v. ch. xix. "Vie de S. Hugues," livre iv. ch. vii. THE DEATH OF HUGH OF LINCOLN. 29 The Death of St. Bruno, Founder of the Order and Builder of La Grande Chartreuse. 