Chapter VIII: The Later Years of Richard (1)

1194–1199.

The political history of England during the four years which followed Richard’s departure over sea is simply the history of the administration of Hubert Walter. Richard never again interfered in the concerns of his island realm, save for the purpose of obtaining money from it; and even the method whereby the money was to be raised he left, like all other details of administration, wholly to the justiciar’s discretion. Hubert in fact, as justiciar and archbishop, wielded during these years a power even more absolute than that which William of Longchamp had wielded during the king’s absence on crusade. But Richard’s second experiment in governing England by deputy succeeded far otherwise than the first. It was, indeed, attended with far less risk; for the king himself was never really out of reach, and could at any moment have returned to take up the reins of government in person, had there been any need to do so. Moreover, the man whom he now left as viceroy had far other qualifications for the office than William of Longchamp.

Hubert Walter had been trained under the greatest constitutional lawyer and most successful administrator of the age, Ralf de Glanville. He was nephew to Ralf’s wife,[1695] and had been a clerk or chaplain in Ralf’s household until 1186, when he was appointed dean of York.[1696] A few months later he was one of five persons nominated by the York chapter in answer to a royal mandate for election to the vacant see.[1697] King Henry, however, refused all five, and Hubert remained dean of York for three years longer. He seems to have held, besides his deanery, an office at court, either as protonotary or as vice-chancellor under Geoffrey; for during the last few months of Henry’s life he is found in Maine attending upon the king, and apparently charged with the keeping of the royal seal.[1698] Consecrated to Salisbury by Archbishop Baldwin on October 22, 1189,[1699] he immediately afterwards set out with him for Palestine; there he won universal esteem by the zeal and ability with which he exerted himself to relieve the wants of the poorer crusaders;[1700] on Baldwin’s death Hubert virtually succeeded to his place as the chief spiritual authority in the host;[1701] and after Richard’s arrival he made himself no less useful as the king’s best adviser and most trusty diplomatic agent in Palestine.[1702] It was Hubert who headed in Richard’s stead the first body of pilgrims whom the Turks admitted to visit the Holy Sepulchre;[1703] and it seems to have been he, too, who led back the English host from Palestine to Europe after Richard’s departure. He hastened as early as possible to visit the king in his captivity;[1704] and Richard lost no time in sending him to England to be made archbishop, and to help the justiciars in collecting the ransom.[1705] They had refused the help of William of Longchamp, but they could not reject that of Hubert; for they knew that, as a contemporary historian says, “the king had no one so like-minded with himself, whose fidelity, prudence and honesty he had proved in so many changes of fortune.”[1706] Hubert was one of the commissioners appointed to have the custody of the ransom;[1707] and there can be little doubt that the scheme by which it was raised was in part at least devised by his financial genius, and carried into execution by his energy and skill--qualities which he displayed no less effectively in dealing with the revolt which was finally quelled by the return of Richard himself.

[1695] Hubert’s mother and Ralf’s wife were sisters; cf. the
Glanville family history in Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. vi.
pt. i., p. 380, and the foundation-charter of Arklow, given by
Hubert’s brother Theobald, _ib._ pt. ii. p. 1128. Hubert and
his brothers seem to have been brought up by their aunt and her
husband; Hubert, when dean of York, founded a Premonstratensian
house at West Dereham “pro salute aniniæ meæ, et patris, et
matris meæ, et domini Ranulphi de Glanvillâ, et dominæ Bertriæ
uxoris ipsius, qui nos nutrierunt.” _Ib._ vol. vi. pt. ii. p.
899.

[1696] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. 360. Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 310.

[1697] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 352.

[1698] See Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. p. xli. note 1.

[1699] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 71.

[1700] _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 134–137. _Gesta Ric._
(Stubbs), p. 145.

[1701] R. Diceto as above, p. 88. The Patriarch Heraclius
had become discredited in the eyes of all the right-minded
crusaders by his share in the divorce and remarriage of Queen
Isabel, which broke Baldwin’s heart.

[1702] Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 29 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 378).

[1703] _Ibid._ _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 437, 438.

[1704] Will. Newb. as above, c. 33 (p. 388). Cf. Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 209.

[1705] Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 33 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 388). Cf.
Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 516, 517.

[1706] Will. Newb. as above.

[1707] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 212.

Hubert entered upon his vice-royalty--for it was nothing less--under more favourable conditions than William of Longchamp. He came to it not as an upstart stranger, but as an Englishman already of high personal and official standing, thoroughly familiar and thoroughly in sympathy with the people whom he had to govern, intimately acquainted with the principles and the details of the system which he was called upon to administer; his qualifications were well known, and they were universally acknowledged. Moreover, there was now no one capable of heading any serious opposition to his authority, at least in secular affairs. William of Longchamp was still chancellor; but like the royal master to whose side he clave for the rest of his life, he had left England for ever. From John there was also nothing to fear. His intended trial never took place, for he threw himself at Richard’s feet at the first opportunity, and was personally forgiven; but the king was wise enough to leave untouched the sentence of forfeiture passed by the justiciar, and to keep his brother at his own side, a dependent upon his royal bounty, for nearly twelve months;[1708] and then he restored to him nothing but the counties of Mortain and Gloucester and the honour of Eye, but without their castles, giving him in compensation for the latter and for his other estates a yearly pension of eight thousand pounds Angevin.[1709] Even John’s capacities for mischief-making were so far paralyzed by this arrangement that he seems to have made no further attempt to meddle in English politics so long as Richard lived. The one man in whom Hubert saw, or fancied he saw, a possible rival on personal and ecclesiastical grounds, he swept roughly out of his path. The two primates had already quarrelled over the privileges of their respective sees, and nothing but the king’s presence had availed to keep peace between them.[1710] The northern one had been at feud with his own chapter ever since his appointment, and they were now prosecuting an appeal against him at Rome. In June 1194, backed, it can hardly be doubted, by Hubert’s influence, they obtained from the Pope a sentence which practically condemned Geoffrey without trial;[1711] and before these tidings reached England in September, a committee of royal justices, sent by Hubert to deal with the case in its temporal aspect, had already punished Geoffrey’s refusal to acknowledge their jurisdiction by confiscating all his archiepiscopal estates except Ripon.[1712] He went over sea and appealed to the king, but in vain;[1713] and for the next five years there was again but one primate in the land. One northern bishop, however, was still ready to defy Hubert as he had defied William of Longchamp and his own metropolitan. When the newly appointed sheriff of Northumberland, Hugh Bardulf, sought to enter upon his office shortly after Richard’s departure, he found that Hugh of Durham had already made a fresh bargain with the king, whereby he was to retain the county on a payment of two thousand marks. He tried, however, as before, to evade the necessity of payment, and was in consequence forcibly disseized by Richard’s orders.[1714] Still he was unwilling to give up the game; and in the spring of 1195 he made another attempt to regain the territorial influence in the north which Geoffrey’s fall seemed to have placed again within his reach. The story went in Yorkshire that he actually succeeded in once more obtaining from Richard--of course on Richard’s usual terms--a commission as co-justiciar with Hubert.[1715] Such a commission can hardly have been given otherwise than in mockery; yet the aged bishop, untaught by all his experience of the king’s shifty ways, once again set out from York, where he had just been excommunicating some of Geoffrey’s partizans,[1716] to publish his supposed triumph in London. Sickness, however, overtook him on the way; from Doncaster he was compelled to turn back to his old refuge at Howden, and there on March 3 he died.[1717] His palatinate was of course taken into the custody of the royal justiciars.[1718] A fortnight later Celestine III. sent to Archbishop Hubert a commission as legate for all England;[1719] and thenceforth he was undisputed ruler alike in Church and state.

[1708] Cf. Rog. Howden as above, pp. 252 and 286, and also R.
Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 64.

[1709] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 286.

[1710] _Ib._ pp. 246, 247, 250; vol. iv. pref. pp. lix, lx.

[1711] _Ib._ vol. iii. pp. 272, 273, 278–286; vol. iv. pref.
pp. lxii, lxiv.

[1712] _Ib._ vol. iii. pp. 261, 262; vol. iv. pref pp. lxi,
lxii.

[1713] Richard in November ordered his restoration, but the
order was not carried out; the brothers went on quarrelling,
and next year Richard again declared the archiepiscopal estates
forfeited, and this time finally. _Ib._ vol. iii. pp. 273, 287;
vol. iv. pref. pp. lxiv, lxix.

[1714] _Ib._ vol. iii. pp. 260, 261; cf. p. 249.

[1715] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp. 438,
439).

[1716] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 284.

[1717] _Ibid._ Will. Newb. as above (p. 439).

[1718] Rog. Howden as above, p. 285.

[1719] Dated March 18 [1195]. _Ib._ pp. 290–293. R. Diceto
(Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 125–127.

Like most of the higher clergy of Henry’s later years, Hubert was distinctly more of a statesman than a churchman. His pontificate left no mark on the English Church; as primate, his chief occupation was to quarrel with his chapter. No scruples such as had moved Archbishop Thomas to resign the chancellorship, or had made even Bishop Roger of Salisbury seek a papal dispensation before he would venture to undertake a lay office,[1720] held back Hubert Walter from uniting in his own person the justiciarship and the primacy of all England. He was, however, a statesman of the best school of the time, steeped in the traditions of constitutional and administrative reform which had grown up during Henry’s later years under the inspiration of the king himself and the direction of Ralf de Glanville. The task of developing their policy, therefore, could not have fallen to more competent hands; and as Richard was totally destitute of his father’s business capacities, it was well that Hubert was left to fulfil it according to his own judgement and on his own sole responsibility for nearly four years.

[1720] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 408 (Hardy, p. 637).

The justiciar’s first act after his sovereign’s departure was to despatch the judges itinerant upon their annual visitation-tour with a commission[1721] which struck the key-note of his future policy. It was the note which had been struck by Henry II. in the Assizes of Clarendon and Northampton; but the new commission shewed a great advance in the developement of the principles which those measures embodied. The jurisdiction of the justices is defined with greater fulness and extended over a much wider sphere. The “pleas of the Crown” with which they are empowered to deal include, besides those formerly recognized under this head, such various matters as the number and condition of churches in the king’s gift,[1722] escheats, wardships and marriages;[1723] forgers[1724] and defaulters;[1725] the harbouring of malefactors;[1726] the arrears of the ransom;[1727] the use of false measures;[1728] the debts of the murdered Jews; the fines due from their slayers,[1729] from the adherents of John, and from his debtors, as well as from his own forfeited property;[1730] the disposal of the chattels of dead usurers, and also of crusaders who had died before setting out on their pilgrimage;[1731] and the taking of recognitions under the Great Assize concerning land worth not more than five pounds a year.[1732] In all these proceedings the chief object evidently was to procure money for the royal treasury; a tallage which the judges were also directed to assess upon all cities, towns and royal demesnes[1733] being deemed insufficient to supply its needs. The details of this multifarious business are however of less historical importance than the method employed for its transaction. Every item of it was to be dealt with on the presentment of what may now be called the “grand jury”--the jury of sworn recognitors in every shire, whose functions, hitherto confined to the presentment of criminals, were thus extended to all branches of judicial work. This growth in the importance of the jury was marked by the introduction of a new ordinance for its constitution. The Assizes of Clarendon and Northampton simply ordered that the jury should consist of twelve lawful men of every hundred and four of every township, without specifying how they were to be selected. Most probably they were nominated by the sheriff.[1734] The recognitors employed in the civil process known as the Great Assize, however, were from the first appointed in a special manner prescribed in the Assize itself. Four knights of the shire were summoned by the sheriff, and these four elected the twelve recognitors.[1735] By the “Form of proceeding in the pleas of the Crown” delivered to the justices-errant in 1194, this method of election was applied to the jury of presentment in all cases, with a modification which removed the choice yet one step further from the mere nomination of the sheriff. Four knights were first to be chosen out of the whole shire; these were to elect two out of every hundred or wapentake, and these two were to choose ten others, who with them constituted the legal twelve.[1736] Whether or not the choice of the first four was actually, as seems most probable, transferred from the sheriff to the body of the freeholders assembled in the county-court,[1737] still this enactment shews a distinct advance in the principles of election and representation, as opposed to that of mere nomination by a royal officer. Another step in the same direction was the appointment of three knights and a clerk to be “elected in every shire to keep the pleas of the Crown.”[1738] This was the origin of the office afterwards known as that of coroner. It had the effect of depriving the sheriff of a considerable part of his judicial functions; and his importance was at the same time yet further limited by an order that no sheriff should act as justiciar in his own shire, nor in any shire which he had held at any time since the king’s first crowning.[1739] The difficulty of checking the abuse of power in the hands of the sheriffs, which Henry had been unable to overcome, had certainly not been lessened by Richard’s way of distributing the sheriffdoms in his earlier years. It had indeed become so serious that in this very year either the new justiciar, or possibly the king himself, proposed an inquisition similar to that made by Henry in 1170, into the administration of all servants of the Crown, whether justices, sheriffs, constables, or foresters, since the beginning of the reign. When the king was gone, however, it seems to have been felt that such an undertaking would add too heavily to the labours of the judges-errant; and the inquiry was accordingly postponed for an indefinite time by the archbishop’s orders.[1740]

[1721] “Forma qualiter procedendum est in placitis Coronæ
Regis.” Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 262–267; Stubbs,
_Select Charters_, pp. 259–263.

[1722] _Forma procedendi_, c. 4 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p.
259).

[1723] _Ib._ cc. 3, 5, 6, 23 (pp. 259, 260, 261).

[1724] _Ib._ c. 8 (p. 260).

[1725] _Ib._ c. 19 (as above).

[1726] _Ib._ c. 7 (as above).

[1727] _Ib._ c. 10 (as above).

[1728] _Ib._ c. 16 (as above). Richard had at the beginning of
his reign caused all weights and measures to be reduced to one
standard; Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p. 351.

[1729] _Forma proced._, c. 9 (as above).

[1730] _Ib._ cc. 11–14 (as above).

[1731] _Ib._ cc. 15, 17 (as above).

[1732] _Ib._ c. 18 (as above).

[1733] _Ib._ c. 22 (p. 261).

[1734] Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. pp. xcvi, xcvii.

[1735] R. Glanville, _De Legg. Angl._, l. xiii. c. 3.

[1736] _Forma proced._, introductory chap., Stubbs, _Select
Charters_, p. 259; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 262.

[1737] Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, as above, pp. xcvii–xcix.

[1738] _Forma proced._, c. 20 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p.
260).

[1739] _Ib._ c. 21 (as above).

[1740] _Ib._ c. 25 (p. 263).

The principle of co-operation between the government and the people for maintaining order and peace, which underlies all Henry’s reforming measures, and of which the new regulations for election of the grand jury are a further recognition, was again enunciated yet more distinctly in the following year. An edict was published requiring every man above the age of fifteen years to take an oath that he would do all that in him lay for the preservation of the king’s peace; that he would neither be a thief or robber, nor a receiver or accomplice of such persons, but would do his utmost to denounce and deliver them to the sheriff, would join to the uttermost of his power in the pursuit of malefactors when hue and cry was raised against them, and would deliver up to the sheriff all persons who should have failed to perform their share in this duty.[1741] The obligation binding upon every member of the state to lend his aid for the punishment of offences against its peace had been declared, in words which are almost echoed in this edict, as long ago as the reign of Cnut.[1742] The difficulty of enforcing it caused by the disorganized condition of society which had grown up during the civil war was probably the reason which led Henry, in framing his Assizes of Clarendon and Northampton, at once to define it more narrowly and to lay the responsibility of its execution upon a smaller body of men specially appointed for the purpose in every shire. The completeness of organization which the system introduced by these Assizes had now attained, however, gave scope for a wider application of the principle through one of those revivals of older custom in which the enduring character of our ancient national institutions and their capacity for adaptation to the most diverse conditions of national life are so often and so strikingly displayed. The edict of 1195 forms a link between the usage of Cnut’s day and that of modern times. It directed that the oath should be taken before knights assigned for the purpose in every shire; out of the office thus created there seems to have grown that of conservators of the peace; and this again developed in the fourteenth century into that of justices of the peace, which has retained an unbroken existence down to our own age.[1743]

[1741] _Edictum Regium._ Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp.
299, 300; Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 264.

[1742] “And we will that every man above xii years make oath
that he will neither be a thief nor cognizant of theft.” Cnut,
Secular Dooms, c. 21, Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 74.

[1743] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 263; _Constit. Hist._,
vol. i. p. 507; pref. to Rog. Howden, vol. iv. pp. c, ci.

The same year was marked by the only important ecclesiastical act of Hubert’s pontificate. Having received in the spring his commission as legate, he made use of it to hold a visitation of the northern province--now, by Geoffrey’s absence and Hugh of Puiset’s death, deprived of both its chief pastors--and a council in York minster at which fifteen canons were passed[1744] to remedy the general relaxation of Church discipline which had been growing ever since Thomas’s flight. At the close of the year Hubert was again at York, upon a different errand: the negotiation of a fresh treaty with Scotland, on the basis of a marriage between the Scot king’s eldest daughter and Richard’s nephew Otto of Saxony.[1745] The marriage never took place, but the alliance of which it was to be the pledge lasted throughout Richard’s reign; and it is a noteworthy proof at once of the growth of friendly relations between the two countries, and of the success of Hubert’s recent ordinance for the preservation of peace and order in England, that in the following year a similar edict, evidently modelled upon the English one, was issued in Scotland by William the Lion.[1746]

[1744] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 293–298. Cf. R.
Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 146–148, and Will. Newb., l. v.
c. 12 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 442).

[1745] William the Lion had been sick almost to death, and
having no son, had proposed to leave his crown to his eldest
daughter, under the protection of Richard, whose nephew he
wished her to marry. The opposition of his barons, and the
restoration of his own health, caused him to drop the scheme of
bequest (Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 298, 299). That of
the marriage however was still pursued, and accepted by Hubert
in Richard’s name, on somewhat singular conditions: Lothian, as
the bride’s dowry, was to be given over to Richard’s custody,
while Northumberland and the county of Carlisle were to be
settled upon Otto and made over to the keeping of the king of
Scots. The negotiation, however, dragged on for a year, and
was again checked by the hope of an heir to the Scottish crown
(_ib._ p. 308); and the fulfilment of this hope in August 1198
led to its abandonment. _Ib._ vol. iv. p. 54.

[1746] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 33. He says William
issued his proclamation “de bono sumens exemplum.”

Neither the renewal of order in the Church, nor the securing of the external tranquillity of the realm by alliance with its neighbour-states, nor the organization of justice and police within its own borders, was however the most laborious part of Hubert’s task. One thing only was required of him by his royal master; but that was precisely the one thing which cost him the most trouble to obtain. From a country which must, as it seems, have been almost drained of its financial resources over and over again during the last ten years, he was perpetually called upon to extract supplies of money such as had never been furnished before to any English king. That he contrived to meet Richard’s ceaseless demands year after year without either plunging the nation into helpless misery or provoking it to open revolt, is the strongest proof not only of his financial genius and tact, but also of the increase in material prosperity and national contentment which had been fostered by Henry’s rule, and of the success of Hubert’s own efforts in carrying out the policy which Henry had begun. By Michaelmas 1194 it seems that the whole of the complicated accounts for the ransom, including the carucage imposed in the spring, were closed.[1747] In the same year the country had borne the additional burthen of a tallage upon the towns. This, however, added to the sums raised by sales of office during the king’s visit and to the proceeds of the judges’ visitation, failed to satisfy the wants of Richard. He therefore resorted to two other methods of raising money, both apparently of his own devising, and both harmonizing very ill with the constitutional policy of his justiciar. Save during the disorderly reign of Stephen, the practice of tournaments had been hitherto unknown in England. Both Henry I. and Henry II. were too serious and practical-minded to encourage vain shews of any kind, far less to countenance the reckless waste of energy and the useless risk of life and limb which these entertainments involved, which had moved Pope after Pope to denounce them as perilous alike to body and soul,[1748] and, in spite of a characteristic protest from Thomas Becket, to exclude those who were slain in them from the privileges of Christian burial.[1749] The Church had indeed been unable to check this obnoxious practice in Gaul; backed, however, by the authority of the Crown, she had as yet succeeded in keeping it out of England. But in 1194 a fresh prohibition, issued by Pope Celestine in the previous year,[1750] was met by Richard with a direct defiance. On August 20 he issued a license for the holding of tournaments in England, on condition that every man who took part in them should pay to the Crown a specified sum, varying according to his rank. Five places were appointed where tournaments might be held, and no one was allowed to enter the lists until he had paid for his license.[1751] The collection of this new item of revenue was evidently looked upon as an important matter, for it was intrusted to the justiciar’s brother Theobald Walter.[1752] Whatever may have been Hubert’s share in this measure, he was clearly in no way responsible for the other and yet more desperate expedient to which Richard, almost at the same time, resorted for the replenishment of his treasury. On pretext of a quarrel with his chancellor, he took away the seal from him, ordered another to be made, and declared all acts passed under the old one to be null and void, till they should have been brought to him for confirmation:[1753] in other words, till they should have been paid for a second time.

[1747] See Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. pp.
lxxxii–lxxxiv and notes.

[1748] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp. 422, 423).

[1749] Ep. xxiv., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. p. 36.

[1750] Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 56.

[1751] Writ in Rymer, as above, p. 65, and in Stubbs, _R.
Diceto_, vol. ii., app. to pref. pp. lxxx, lxxxi; this latter
copy is dated August 22. Cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p.
268, Will. Newb., l. v. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp. 422, 423),
and R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 120.

[1752] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 268.

[1753] _Ib._ p. 267. Cf. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 93. Rog.
Howden’s very confused account of the seals is made clear by
Bishop Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 506 note.

In the following spring a fit of characteristic Angevin penitence--fervent and absorbing while it lasted, but passing away all too soon--moved the king to make some amends for his extortions as well as for his other sins; he began to replace the church-plate which had been given up for his ransom;[1754] no fresh tax was imposed till late in the year, and then it was only a scutage of the usual amount--twenty shillings on the knight’s fee--for the war in Normandy.[1755] Next year, however, the king’s mood again changed. He was now resolved to carry into effect, with or without Hubert’s assent, the inquiry into the financial administration which Hubert had postponed in 1194. For this purpose he sent over to England Robert, abbot of S. Stephen’s at Caen, who, notwithstanding his monastic profession, had acquired great experience as a clerk of the Norman exchequer, and seems to have there enjoyed a high reputation for knowledge and skill in all matters of finance.[1756] The abbot, accompanied by the bishop-elect of Durham, Philip of Poitiers,[1757] reached London in Lent 1196, and demanded Hubert’s co-operation in fulfilling the royal orders. The justiciar, though displeased and hurt, had no choice but to comply, and an order was issued in the king’s name bidding all sheriffs and officers of the Crown be ready to give an account of their stewardship in London on a certain day--apparently the day of the usual Exchequer-meeting in Easter-week.[1758] Before Easter came, the abbot of Caen himself was gone to his last account; he was seized with illness while dining with Archbishop Hubert on Passion Sunday, and five days later he died.[1759] The intended inquisition never took place; but the mere proposal to conduct it thus through the medium of a stranger from over sea was a direct slight offered to the justiciar by the king;[1760] and it coincided with a disturbance which warned Hubert of a possible danger to his authority from another quarter.

[1754] Rog. Howden as above, p. 290. Cf. _Itin. Reg. Ric._
(Stubbs), pp. 449, 450.

[1755] See Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. pp. 637, 638. That it
was imposed late in the year seems implied by so much of it not
being accounted for till the next year; see Stubbs, pref. to
Rog. Howden, vol. iv. p. lxxxviii and note 3.

[1756] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 19 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 464). Cf.
Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 5.

[1757] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 5. He seems to imply
that Philip shared in the abbot’s commission; but he evidently
made no attempt to act upon it after Robert’s death.

[1758] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 19 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 465).

[1759] Rog. Howden as above. “Nec cum eis quos evocaverat post
Pascha positurus, sed ante Pascha rationem superno Judici de
propriis actibus redditurus.” Will. Newb. as above.

[1760] On April 15, four days after the abbot’s death, Richard
wrote a sort of apology to the justiciar. See Stubbs, _R.
Diceto_, vol. ii. app. to pref. pp. lxxix, lxxx.

Strive as he might to equalize the burthens of taxation, he could not prevent them from pressing upon the poorer classes with a severity which grew at last well-nigh intolerable. The grievance was felt most keenly in London. The substitution of the “commune” for the older shire-organization of London in 1191 was a step towards municipal unity, and thus indirectly towards local independence and self-government; but it had done nothing for the poorer class of citizens. It had placed the entire control of civic administration, including the regulation of trade and the assessment of taxes, in the hands of a governing body consisting of a mayor and aldermen, one of whom presided over each of the wards into which the whole city was divided, the head of them all being the mayor.[1761] This corporation was the representative of the merchant-gild, which had thus absorbed into itself all the powers and privileges of the earlier ruling class of territorial magnates, in addition to its own. As might be expected, the rule of this newly-established oligarchy over the mass of its unenfranchized fellow-citizens was at least as oppressive as that of the sheriffs and “barons of the city” which had preceded it; and it was less willingly borne, owing to the jealousy which always existed between the craftsmen and the merchant-gild. As the taxes grew more burthensome year by year, a suspicion began to spread that they were purposely assessed in such a manner as to spare the well-filled pockets of the assessors, and wring an unfair proportion of the required total from the hard-earned savings of the poor.[1762] Whether the injustice was intentional or not, the grievance seems to have been a real one; and it soon found a spokesman and a champion. William Fitz-Osbert--“William with the Long Beard,” as he was commonly called--was by birth a member of the ruling class in the city.[1763] He seems to have shared with a goldsmith named Geoffrey the leadership of a band of London citizens who in 1190 formed part of the crusading fleet, and did good service, not indeed, so far as we know, in Holy Land, but like their brethren forty-three years earlier, in helping to drive the Moors out of Portugal.[1764] Since his return, whether fired by genuine zeal for the cause of the oppressed, or, as some of his contemporaries thought, moved by the hope of acquiring power and influence which he found unattainable by other means,[1765] he had severed himself from his natural associates in the city to become the preacher and leader of another sort of crusade, for the deliverance of the poorer classes from the tyranny of their wealthy rulers. At every meeting of the governing body he withstood his fellow-aldermen to the face, remonstrating continually against their corrupt fiscal administration. They could not silence and dared not expel him, for they knew that his whispers were stirring up the craftsmen; and although the rumour that he had more than fifty thousand sworn followers at his back must have been an exaggeration, yet there could be no doubt of the existence of a conspiracy sufficiently formidable to excuse, if not to justify, the terror of the civic rulers.[1766] When after a visit to Normandy William began openly to boast of the king’s favour and support, the justiciar thought it time to interfere. He called the citizens together, endeavoured to allay their discontent by reasonings and remonstrances, and persuaded them to give hostages for their good behaviour.[1767] William however set his authority at defiance. Day after day, in the streets and open spaces of the city, and at last even in S. Paul’s itself,[1768] this bold preacher with the tall stately form, singular aspect and eloquent tongue gathered round him a crowd of eager listeners to whom he proclaimed himself as the “king and saviour of the poor.” One of his audience afterwards reported to a writer of the time his exposition of a text from Isaiah: “With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of the Saviour.”[1769] “I,” said William, “am the saviour of the poor. Ye poor who have felt the heavy hand of the rich, ye shall draw from my wells the water of wholesome doctrine, and that with joy, for the time of your visitation is at hand. For I will divide the waters from the waters. The people are the waters; and I will divide the humble and faithful people from the proud and perfidious people. I will divide the elect from the reprobate, as light from darkness.”[1770]

[1761] In the _Liber de Antiquis Legibus_ (a chronicle of the
mayors and sheriffs of London, compiled in 1274, and edited
by Mr. Stapleton for the Camden Soc.), p. 1, the first mayor,
Henry Fitz-Aylwine, is said to have been appointed “anno gratie
Mº centesimo lxxxviii, anno primo regni Regis Ricardi;” and
the document known as Fitz-Aylwine’s Assize (_ib._ p. 206)
purports to have been issued “Anno Domini Mº Cº lxxxix,
scilicet primo anno regni illustris Regis Ricardi, existente
tunc Henrico filio Aylewini Maiore, qui fuit primus Maiorum
Londoniarum.” On this however Bishop Stubbs remarks: “It is
improbable that London had a recognized mayor before 1191,
in which year the communa was established ... and there is
I believe no mention of such an official in a record until
some three years later.” Introd. to _Annales Londonienses_
(“Chronicles of Ed. I. and Ed. II.”), p. xxxi.

[1762] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 5. Mat. Paris, _Chron.
Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p. 418. Will. Newb., l. v. c. 20
(Howlett, vol. ii. p. 466).

[1763] “Willelmus cum Barbâ,” Rog. Howden as above, pp. 5,
6; “agnomen habens a barbâ prolixâ,” Will. Newb. (as above);
“cognomento cum-Barbâ,” “dictus Barbatus vel Barba,” Mat.
Paris (as above), pp. 418, 419. Will. Newb. thinks he wore the
unusual appendage simply to make himself conspicuous; Mat.
Paris explains “cujus genus avitum ob indignationem Normannorum
radere barbam contempsit,” on which see Freeman, _Norm. Conq._,
vol. v. p. 900.

[1764] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 116–118.

[1765] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 5, 6, and Mat. Paris,
_Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. pp. 418, 419, represent the
former view; Will. Newb., l. v. c. 20 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp.
467, 468), and R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 143, the latter.

[1766] Will. Newb. as above (p. 468).

[1767] _Ib._ (pp. 468, 469).

[1768] R. Diceto as above.

[1769] “Of salvation,” A. V.; “de fontibus Salvatoris,” Vulg.
Is. xii. 3.

[1770] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 20 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 469).

Powerless to deal with these assemblies within the city, Hubert determined at least to check the spread of such teaching as this, and issued orders that any citizen of the lower class found outside the walls should be arrested as an enemy to king and kingdom. Some chapmen from London were accordingly arrested at Mid-Lent at Stamford fair.[1771] A day or two afterwards--the justiciar’s fears being perhaps quickened by the arrival of the abbot of Caen, which William might easily interpret as the effect of his own remonstrances with the king--an attempt was made to call William himself to account for his seditious proceedings. The bearer of the summons found him surrounded by such a formidable array of followers that he dared not execute his commission, and a forcible arrest was decided on. Guided by two citizens who undertook to catch him at unawares, a party of armed men was sent to seize him;[1772] one of the guides was felled with a blow of a hatchet by William himself, the other was slain by his friends; William, with a few adherents, took sanctuary in the church of S. Mary-at-Bow. The justiciar, after surrounding the church with soldiers, ordered it to be set on fire,[1773] and William, driven out by the smoke and the flames, was stabbed on the threshold by the son of the man whom he had killed an hour before.[1774] The wound however was not immediately fatal; the soldiers seized him and carried him to the Tower for trial before the justiciars, who at once condemned him to death; he was stripped, tied to a horse’s tail, thus dragged through the city, and hanged with eight of his adherents.[1775] The rest of the malcontents were so overawed by this spectacle that they at once made complete submission.[1776] The justiciar had triumphed; but his triumph was dearly bought at the cost of what little still remained to him of personal popularity and ecclesiastical repute. The common people persisted in reverencing William Longbeard as a martyr;[1777] the clergy were horrified at the sacrilege involved in the violation of the right of sanctuary and the firing of a church, a sacrilege all the more unpardonable because committed by an archbishop; while his own chapter seized upon it as the crowning charge in the already long indictment which they were preparing against their primate.[1778] Thus overwhelmed with obloquy on all sides, Hubert in disgust for a moment threw up the justiciarship, but resumed it as soon as he was once more assured of Richard’s confidence.[1779] For two more years he toiled on at his thankless task. The budget of 1196 was made up by the safe expedient of another scutage.[1780] Next year the sole legislative act ventured upon by the justiciar was an attempt to enforce uniformity of weights and measures throughout the kingdom by means of an Assize,[1781] whose provisions however turned out to be so impracticable that, like a similar ordinance issued earlier in the reign, it seems to have remained inoperative, and six years later was abolished altogether.[1782] In the autumn Hubert went over to Normandy, where he was occupied for some weeks in diplomatic business for the king.[1783] A month after his return the crisis came.

[1771] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 6.

[1772] Will. Newb. as above (p. 470).

[1773] _Ibid._ Rog. Howden as above; Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._
(Luard) vol. ii. p. 419. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 143,
makes William himself fire the church, but this seems nonsense,
as he clearly had no intention of dying in it.

[1774] Will. Newb. as above. Cf. Rog. Howden as above.

[1775] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 20 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 471) says
nine. Eight is the number given by Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol.
iv. p. 6. Cf. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 143; Gerv. Cant.
(Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 533, 534; and Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._
(Luard), vol. ii. p. 419. Gervase calls the place of execution
“ad ulmos,” Mat. Paris “ad Ulmetum” [“the Elms in Smithfield”
notes Mr. Luard in the margin]. R. Diceto calls it Tyburn;
the other writers give it no name at all. We are indebted
to Gervase (as above, p. 533) for the date of this affair;
Saturday, April 6--the day before the abbot of Caen fell sick;
see above, p. 344.

[1776] Rog. Howden and R. Diceto, as above.

[1777] See Will. Newb. as above, c. 21 (pp. 471, 472). Mat.
Paris (as above) heartily shared in their opinion.

[1778] Rog. Howden as above, p. 48.

[1779] _Ib._ pp. 12, 13.

[1780] Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. p. lxxxviii and
note 3. Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. pp. 637, 638.

[1781] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 33, 34.

[1782] _Ib._ p. 172. Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 509.

[1783] R. Diceto as above, p. 158. Gerv. Cant. as above, pp.
544, 545. The dates do not exactly agree.

Richard, at the height of his struggle with Philip of France, found himself short not only of money but of men,[1784] at any rate of men whom he could trust. He called upon Hubert to send him over from England either a force of three hundred knights to serve him at their own charges for a year, or a sum which would enable him to enlist the same number of mercenaries for the same period, at the rate of three English shillings a day.[1785] For some reason or other it seems that Hubert, somewhat unwisely, at once decided to ignore the second alternative; in a great council held at Oxford on December 7[1786] he simply proposed, in his own name and that of his colleagues in the government, that the barons of England, among whom the bishops were to be reckoned, should come to the rescue of their distressed sovereign by supplying him with three hundred knights to serve him at their own cost for a year. Hubert himself, in his character of archbishop, declared his readiness to take his share of the burthen; so did the bishop of London, Richard Fitz-Nigel the treasurer. The bishop of Lincoln, Hugh of Avalon, was then asked for his assent. “O ye wise and noble men here present,” said the Burgundian saint, “ye know that I came to this land as a stranger, and from the simplicity of a hermit’s life was raised to the office of a bishop. When therefore my inexperience was called to rule over the church of our Lady, I set myself carefully to learn its customs and privileges, its duties and burthens; and for thirteen years I have not strayed from the path marked out by my predecessors, in preserving the one and fulfilling the other. I know that the church of Lincoln is bound to do the king military service, but only in this land; outside the boundaries of England she owes him no such thing. Wherefore I deem it meeter for me to go back to my native land and my hermit’s cell, rather than, while holding a bishopric here, to bring upon my church the loss of her ancient immunities and the infliction of unwonted burthens.”[1787]

[1784] _Magna Vita S. Hugonis_ (Dimock), p. 248.

[1785] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 40.

[1786] Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 549, and _Mag. Vita
S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 251.

[1787] _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), pp. 249, 250.

Hugh of Lincoln was the universally-acknowledged leader of the English Church in all matters of religion and morals; he had exercised in Henry II.’s later years such an influence over the king as no one, except perhaps Thomas Becket, had ever possessed; the whole Church and nation reverenced him as it had never reverenced any man since the death of S. Anselm. When he took up the position of Thomas and Anselm as a champion of constitutional liberty, the victory was sure. Strangely enough, his action seems to have taken the primate completely by surprise. For a moment Hubert stood speechless; then he turned to Bishop Herbert of Salisbury, and with quivering lips asked what he was minded to do for the king’s assistance. As a son of Richard of Ilchester and a kinsman of the great ministerial house founded by Roger of Salisbury,[1788] Herbert represented the traditions of an old and venerated political school, as Hugh represented those of the best school of ecclesiastics. The statesman’s reply was an echo of the saint’s: “It seems to me that, without grievous wrong to my church, I can neither do nor say aught but what I have heard from my lord of Lincoln.” The justiciar, hurling a torrent of reproaches at Hugh, broke up the assembly, and wrote to the king that his plan had been foiled through Hugh’s opposition.[1789] Richard in a fury ordered the property of the two recalcitrant bishops to be confiscated; in the case of Salisbury this was done, but no Englishman dared lay a finger on anything belonging to the saint of Lincoln, “for they feared his curse like death itself.” In vain did the king reiterate his command, till at last his own officers begged Hugh to put an end to the scandal by making his peace, for their sakes if not for his own; Hugh therefore went to seek Richard in Normandy, and literally forced him into a reconciliation on S. Augustine’s day. Herbert, on the other hand, had to purchase his restoration at a heavy price;[1790] but the king and his justiciar were none the less completely beaten. The death of Rees Ap-Griffith and a dispute between his sons for the succession in South Wales gave Hubert an opportunity of renewing his fading laurels by a brilliant expedition to the Welsh marches, where he succeeded in restoring tranquillity and securing the border-fortresses for the king.[1791] He had however scarcely had time to recover from his political defeat before he was overwhelmed by the bursting of an ecclesiastical storm which had long been hanging over his head. Pope Celestine died on January 8, 1198. On the morrow the cardinals elected as his successor a young deacon named Lothar, who took the name of Innocent III., and began at once to sweep away the abuses of the Roman court and to vindicate the rights of his see against the Roman aristocracy with a promptness and vigour which were an earnest of his whole future career.[1792] The monks of Canterbury lost no time in sending to the new Pope their list of grievances against their primate; and at the head of the list they set a charge which, in the eyes of such a pontiff as Innocent, could admit of no defence. Hubert, said they, had violated the duties and the dignity of his order by becoming the king’s justiciar, acting as a judge in cases of life and death, and so entangling himself in worldly business that he was incapable of paying due attention to the government of the Church. Innocent immediately wrote to the king, charging him, if he valued his soul’s health, not to suffer either the archbishop of Canterbury or any other priest to continue in any secular office; and at the same time he solemnly forbade the acceptance of any such office by any bishop or priest throughout the whole Church. Discredited as Hubert now was in the eyes of all parties, he had no choice but to resign, and this time Richard had no choice but to accept his resignation.[1793]

[1788] On Herbert’s antecedents and connexions see Stubbs,
_Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. p. xci, note 4.

[1789] _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 250. Cf. the brief
account in Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 40.

[1790] _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 251.

[1791] On Rees’s death his two sons quarrelled over the
succession, and Hubert had to go to the “fines Gwalliæ” and
make peace between them. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p.
21. At Christmas he was at Hereford, where he took the castle
into his own hands, turning out its custodians and putting in
new ones, “ad opus regis”; he did the same at Bridgenorth and
Ludlow. _Ib._ p. 35. See also Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
543, Gerald’s letter to Hubert after his victory, and Hubert’s
reply: Gir. Cambr. _De Rebus a se gestis_, l. iii. cc. 5, 6
(Brewer, vol. i. pp. 96–102).

[1792] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 41–44.

[1793] _Ib._ pp. 47, 48.

The last few months of his justiciarship were however occupied with the projection, if not the execution, of a measure of great constitutional importance. Early in the spring he had, in his master’s name, laid upon England a carucage to the amount of five shillings upon every carucate or ploughland. The great increase in the rate of taxation, as compared with that of 1194, was not unjustifiable; for since that year the socage-tenants, on whom the impost fell, had paid no direct taxes at all, while two scutages had been exacted from the tenants-in-chivalry. But a far more important change was made in the assessment of the new impost. Until now, the carucate, like the hide, had been a term of elastic significance. It represented, as the literal meaning of the word implied, the extent of land which could be cultivated by a single plough; and this of course varied in different parts of the country according to the nature of the soil, and the number and strength of the plough-team. In general, however, a hundred acres seem to have been reckoned as the average extent both of the carucate and of the hide. In order to avoid the endless complications and disputes which under the old system had made the assessment of the land-tax a matter of almost more trouble than profit, Hubert Walter adopted this average as a fixed standard, and ordered that henceforth, for purposes of taxation, the word “carucate” should represent a hundred acres. It followed as a necessary consequence that the whole arable land of England must be re-measured. The old customary reckoning of hides, based upon the Domesday survey, would no longer answer its purpose: the venerable rate-book which had been in use for more than a hundred years, partially superseded since 1168 by the Black Book of the Exchequer, was now to be superseded entirely. Hubert therefore issued in the king’s name a commission for what was virtually a new Domesday survey. Into every shire he sent a clerk and a knight, who, together with the sheriff and certain lawful men chosen out of the shire, were, after swearing that they would do the king’s business faithfully, to summon before them the stewards of the barons of the county, the lord or bailiff of every township and the reeve and four lawful men of the same, whether free or villein, and two lawful knights of the hundred; these persons were to declare upon oath what ploughlands there were in every township--how many in demesne, how many in villenage, how many in alms, and who was responsible for these last. The carucates thus ascertained were noted in a roll of which four copies were kept, one by each of the two royal commissioners, one by the sheriff, and the other divided among the stewards of the local barons. The collection of the money was intrusted to two lawful knights and the bailiff of every hundred; these were responsible for it to the sheriff; and the sheriff had to see that it agreed with his roll, and to pay it into the Exchequer. Stern penalties were denounced against witnesses, whether free or villein, who should be detected in trying to deceive the commissioners. No land was to be exempted from the tax, except the free estates belonging to the parish churches, and lands held of the king by serjeanty or special service; even these last, however, were to be included in the survey, and their holders were required to come and prove their excuses at its conclusion, in London at the octave of Pentecost.[1794]

[1794] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 46, 47.