Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln / A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England

King John came in one day, but the bishop, who could sit up for his food, neither rose nor sat to greet him. The king said that he and his friends would do all they could for him. Then he sent out the courtiers and sat long and talked much and blandly;   but Hugh answered very little, but shortly asked him to see to his and other bishops’ wills and commended Lincoln to his protection; but he despaired of John and would not waste his beautiful words upon him. After the king, the archbishop came several times, and promised also to do what he could for him. The last time he came he hinted that Hugh must not forget to ask pardon from any he had unjustly hurt or provoked by word or deed. No answer from the bed! Then he became a little more explicit and said that he, Hugh’s spiritual father and primate, had often been most bitterly provoked, and that really his forgiveness was most indispensible. The reply he got was more bracing than grateful. Archbishops rarely hear such naked verities. “It is quite true, and I see it well when I ponder all the hidden things of our conscience, that I have often provoked you to angers. But I do not find a single reason for repenting of it; but I know this, that I must grieve that I did not do it oftener and harder. But if my life should have to be passed longer with you I most firmly determine, under the eyes of all-seeing God, to do it much oftener than before. I can remember how, to comply with you, I have often and often been coward enough to keep back things which I ought to have spoken out to you, and which you would not well have brooked to hear, and so by my own fault I have avoided offence to you rather than to the Father which is in Heaven. On this count, therefore, it is that I have not only transgressed against God heavily and unbishoply, but against your fatherhood or primacy. And I humbly ask pardon for this.” Exit the archbishop!

Now his faithful Boswell gives elaborate details of Hugh’s long dying, not knowing that his work would speak to a generation which measures a man’s favour with God by the oily slipperiness with which he shuffles off his clay coil. It was a case of hard dying, redoubled paroxysms, fierce fever, and bloody flux, and dreadful details. He would wear his sackcloth, and rarely change it, though it caked into knots which chafed him fiercely. But, though the rule allowed, he would not go soft to his end, however much his friends might entreat him to put off the rasping hair. “No, no, God forbid that I should. This raiment does not scrape, but soothe; does not hurt, but help,” he answered sternly. He gave exact details of how he was to be laid on ashes on the bare earth at the last with no extra sackcloth. No bishops or abbots being at hand to commend him at the end, the monks of Westminster were to send seven or eight of their number and the Dean of St. Paul’s a good number of singing clerks. His body was to be washed with the greatest care, to fit it for being taken to the holy chapel of the Baptist at Lincoln, and laid out by three named persons and no others. When it reached Lincoln it was to be arrayed in the plain vestments of his consecration, which he had kept for this. One little light gold ring, with a cheap water sapphire in it, he selected from all that had been given him. He had worn it for functions, and would bear it in death, and have nothing about him else to tempt folk to sacrilege. The hearers understood, foolishly, from this that he knew his body would be translated after its first sepulture, and for this reason he had   it cased in lead and solid stone that no one should seize or even see his ornaments when he was moved. “You will place me,” he said, “before the altar of my aforesaid patron, the Lord’s forerunner, where there seems fitting room near some wall, in such wise that the tomb shall not inconveniently block the floor, as we see in many churches, and cause incomers to trip or fall.” Then he had his beard and nails trimmed for death. Some of his ejaculations in his agonies are preserved. “O kind God, grant us rest. O good Lord and true God, give us rest at last.” When they tried to cheer him by saying that the paroxysm was over he said, “How really blessed are those to whom even the last judgment day will bring unshaken rest.” They told him his judgment day would be the day when he laid by the burden of the flesh. But he would not have it. “The day when I die will not be a judgment day, but a day of grace and mercy,” he said. He astonished his physicians by the robust way in which he would move, and his manly voice bated nothing of its old power, though he spoke a little submissively. The last lection he heard was the story of Lazarus and Martha, and when they reached the words, “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died,” he bade them stop there. The funeral took up the tale where the reader left off, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”

They reminded him that he had not confessed any miscarriages of justice of which he had been guilty through private love or hate. He answered boldly, “I never remember that I knowingly wrested the truth in a judicial sentence either from hate or love,   no, nor from hope or fear of any person or thing whatsoever. If I have gone awry in judgments it was a fault either of my own ignorance or assuredly of my assistants.”

The leeches hoped much from meat, and, though the Order forbade it, his obedience was transferred to Canterbury. His friends posted off and got not only a permit, but a straight order enjoining this diet upon him. He said that neither for taste nor for medicine could he be prevailed upon to eat flesh. “But to avoid offending so many reverend men, and, too, lest, even in the state of death, we should fail to follow in the footsteps of Him who became obedient even unto death, let flesh be given to us. Now at the last we will freely eat it, sauced with brotherly love.” When he was asked what he would like he said that he had read that the sick fathers had been given pig’s trotters. But he made small headway with these unseasonable viands or with the poor “little birds” they next gave him. On the 16th of November, at sunset, the monks and clerks arrived. Hugh had strength to lay his hand upon Adam’s head and bless him and the rest. They said to him, “Pray the Lord to provide a profitable pastor for your church,” but their voices were dim in his ears, and only when they had asked it thrice he said, “God grant it!” The third election brought in great Grosseteste.

The company then withdrew for compline, and as they ended the xci. Psalm, “I will deliver him and bring him to honour,” he was laid upon the oratory floor on the ashes, for he had given the sign; and while they chaunted Nunc Dimittis with   a quiet face he breathed out his gallant soul, passing, as he had hoped, at Martinmas-tide “from God’s camp to His palace, from His hope to His sight,” in the time of that saint whom he greatly admired and closely resembled.

They washed his white, brave body, sang over it, watched it all night in St. Mary’s Church, ringed it with candles, sang solemn Masses over it, embalmed it with odours, and buried the bowels near the altar in a leaden vessel. All London flocked, priests with crosses and candles, people weeping silently and aloud, every man triumphant if he could even touch the bier. Then they carried him in the wind and the rain, with lads on horseback holding torches (which never all went out at once), back to his own children. They started on Saturday30 for Hertford, and by twilight next day they had reached Biggleswade on the Ivell, where he had a house, wherein the company slept. The mourning crowds actually blocked the way to the church. The bier was left in the church that Sunday night.

By Monday they got to Buckden, and on the Tuesday they had got as far as Stamford, but the crowds were so great here that hardly could they fight their way through till the very dead of the night. The body, of course, was taken into the church; and a pious cobbler prayed to die, and lo! die he did, having only just time for confession, shrift, and his will; and way was made for him in death, though he could not get near the bier in life. The story recalled to Adam’s mind a saying of his late master when people mourned too immoderately   for the dead—“What are you about? What are you about? By Saint Nut” (that was his innocent oath), “by Saint Nut, it would indeed be a great misfortune for us if we were never allowed to die.” He would praise the miraculous raising of the dead, but he thought that sometimes a miraculous granting of death is still more to be admired. At Stamford they bought horn lanterns instead of wax torches, for these last guttered so in the weather that the riders got wax all over their hands and clothes. Then they made for Ancaster, and on Thursday they came to Lincoln. Here were assembled all the great men of the realm, who came out to meet the bier. The kings of England and Scotland, the archbishops, bishops, abbots, and barons were all there. No man so great but he thought himself happy to help carry that bier up the hill. Shoulders were relieved by countless hands, these by other hands. The greatest men struggled for this honour. The rains had filled the streets with mud above the ankles, sometimes up to men’s knees. All the bells of the town tolled and every church sang hymns and spiritual songs. Those who could not touch the bier tossed coins upon the hearse which held the body. Even the Jews came out and wept and did what service they could.

The body was taken to a bye place off the cathedral31 and dressed as he had ordered—with ring, gloves, staff, and the plain robes. They wiped the balsam from his face, and found it first white, but then the cheeks grew pink. The cathedral was   blocked with crowds, each man bearing a candle. They came in streams to kiss his hands and feet and to offer gold and silver, and more than forty marks were given that day. John of Leicester laid a distich at his feet, much admired then, but “bald as his crown” to our ears:

“Staff to the bishops, to the monks a measure true,Counsel for schools, kings’ hammer—such behold was Hugh!”

The next day at the funeral his cheap vestments were torn in pieces by the relic-hunting, which it must be confessed he had done nothing to check; and he was buried near the wall not far from the altar of St. John Baptist, and, as seemed more suitable for the crowds who came there, on the northern side of the building itself.32

This tremendous funeral long lived in men’s memory, and there is a far prettier verse about it than the old distich of John—

“A’ the bells o’ merrie LincolnWithout men’s hands were rung,And a’ the books o’ merrie LincolnWere read without man’s tongue;And ne’er was such a burialSin’ Adam’s days begun.”

Passing by the shower of gold rings, necklaces, and bezants which were given at his shrine, it is certain that the coals of enthusiasm were blown by the report of miracles, never for very long together kept at bay by mediæval writers. While wishing to avoid the affirmatio falsi and to give no heed to lying fables, we must not risk being guilty of a suppressio   veri. The miracles at the tomb come in such convenient numbers that their weight, though it possibly made the guardians of the shrine, yet breaks the tottering faith of the candid reader. But some are more robust, and for them there is a lively total which makes Giraldus’s lament for the fewness of miracles in his day seem rather ungrateful. “Four quinsies”—well, strong emotion will do much for quinsies. “One slow oozing”—the disease being doubtful, we need not dispute the remedy. “Three paralytics”—in the name of Lourdes, let them pass. “Three withered, two dumb, two hunchbacks, one boy dead”—here we falter. “One jaundice case” sounds likelier; “one barren woman” need not detain us. “Four dropsies, four blind, and nine lunatics”—and now we know the worst of it. It would have been a great deal easier to accept the whole in a venture (or forlorn hope) of faith if Hugh had witnessed and some one else performed these miracles, for he had a scrupulously veracious mind. He was so afraid of even the shadow of a lie that he used to attemper what he said with words of caution whenever he repeated what he had done or heard: “that is only as far as I recollect.” He would not clap his seal to any letter which contained any questionable statement. “We remember to have cited you elsewhere,” a common legal phrase, would damn a document if he did not remember, literally and personally, to have done so. His influence, too, can be discerned in the candid Adam, whose honest tale often furnishes us with an antidote to his impossible surmises. But veracity, unfortunately, is not highly infectious, and it is a little difficult not   to believe that the high and serene virtues of the great man gone were promptly exploited for the small men left. One miracle there seems no reason to doubt. John, in an almost maudlin fit of emotional repentance, made peace at the funeral with his Cistercian enemies and founded them a home at Beaulieu in the New Forest. Indeed, these were the true miracles which recommended Hugh to the English people, so that they regarded him as a saint indeed, and clamoured for him to be called one formally—the miracles wrought upon character, the callous made charitable, liars truthful, and the lechers chaste; the miracles of justice, of weak right made strong against proud might, and poor honesty made proof against rich rascality; the miracle of England made the sweeter and the handsomer for this humble and heavenly stranger.

The later history need not detain us long. His body was moved, says Thomas Wykes in the Annales Monastici, in the year 1219. Perhaps—and this is a mere guess—the place where his body lay was injured at the time of the battle and capture of Lincoln two years before; and for better protection the coffin was simply placed unopened in that curious position two-thirds into the wall of the apse foundation, where it was found in our day. In 1220 he was canonized by Pope Honorius III., who was then at Viterbo organising a crusade, after a report vouching for the miracles drawn up by the great Archbishop Stephen Langton and John of Fountains, a just and learned man, afterwards Treasurer of England.

Sixty years later, that is to say, in 1280, John   Peckham, the pious friar archbishop, Oliver Sutton, the cloister-building Bishop of Lincoln, and others, among them King Edward I. and his good wife Eleanor, opened the tomb and lifted out the body into a shrine adorned with gold and jewels and placed it upon a marble pedestal in the Angel Choir, either where the modern tomb of Queen Eleanor now stands or just opposite. The head came away and sweated wonder-working oils, and was casketted and placed at the end of the present Burghersh tombs, as a shrine of which the broken pedestal and the knee-worn pavement are still to be seen. The body was placed in a shrine cased with plates of gold and silver, crusted with gems, and at the last protected by a grille of curious wrought iron. A tooth, closed in beryl with silver and gilt, appears as a separate item in the Reformation riflings. The history of both shrines and of the bones they held is a tale by itself, like most true tales ending in mystery. Perhaps, as King Henry VIII. had not much veneration for holy bones, but, like our enlightened age, much preferred gold, silver, and jewels, his destroying angels may have left the relics of Hugh’s forsaken mortality to the lovely cathedral, where his memory, after seven centuries, is still pathetically and tenderly dear.

1

The present Vicar is anxious to turn this place, which has been alternately cottages, a lock-up, and a reading-room, into a lecture hall and parish room; but the inhabitants, unworthy of their historical glories, seem rather disposed to let the old building tumble into road metal, to their great shame and reproach.

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.

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.

7

Plato’s Aristocrat has a son, who is a great timocrat.

8

“South-east of the Great Bar Gate between that and the little Bar Gate in the north-west angle of the Great South Common.”

9

Perhaps for both reasons chosen as the trysting-place.

10

“I will take it, though it were built of iron,” he said; to which Richard replied, “And I will defend it, though it were of butter.”

11

There is no osculatory to be found in the records. This is a slightly later invention, and no one seems to kneel in this picture.

12

Whom some wish to acquit of writing that jovial drinking song,

“I intend to end my days,In a tavern drinking.”

13

“The Lord bless thee and keep thee,” &c. Numbers, vi., 24.

14

If the reader disbelieves this story, let him read Bede upon Luke viii., 30, says the narrator.

15

lxviii. 35. A psalm full of associations of battles long ago: sung against Julian the Apostate, used by Charlemagne, Anthony, Dunstan, and many more.

16

Simon of Pershore, if in 1198: and Robert of Caen, if in 1196, but less likely.

17

The Wycombe Well is probably the Round Basin, near the Roman Villa, but the other I am unable to hear news of.

18

Published by Arber. See chap. xxxvi.

19

Joi.

20

This building itself is of an earlier date.

21

Of the earth.

22

I.e., Saints and Lances.

23

Side chapels.

24

Or of SS. Dennys and Guthlac it may be.

25

It is a pity in that case that the bishop lies under the old “dean’s eye,” and vice versâ.

26

“Modern Painters,” iv. 253.

27

Which alone still survives.

28

Dunstan, Alphege, Lanfranc, Anselm, and others presumably.

29

Roger de Roldeston, William de Blois, and Richard of Kent.

30

November 18, 1200.

31

Possibly on the site where St. Hugh’s chapel now stands in desolation.

32

A boreali ipsius ædis regione, not of the cathedral, but of the new honeycomb apse, please.