at peace with him.' On
the other hand it says of others, 'The world shall fight with him,
against the unwise,' and again the holy man saith of the Lord, 'Who hath
hardened himself against Him and hath prospered?'

"Now there is a public report of you, and I grieve to say it, that you
neither keep faithful to the marriage bed of your own wife, nor do you
guard untouched the privileges of churches, especially in providing and
choosing their rulers. Yes, it is said, and a huge piece of villainy it
is, that moved by money or favour, you are used to promote some to the
rule of souls. If this is true, then without any doubt, peace cannot be
granted to you by God." When he had given this careful and timely
admonition and instruction, the king excused himself on some points, on
others asked earnestly for the bishop's intercession, and was sent off
with a blessing. The bishop then went in gladness to his pike. Richard's
opinion was that "if all the other bishops were like him, no king or
prince would dare to rear his neck against them." Such salutary
treatment now-a-days is the sole perquisite of the very poor. The higher
up men get on the social scale, the less they need such honest dealing,
it now appears.

But Hugh was not quite out of the toils. The king's counsellors
suggested that he should carry back letters to the barons demanding aid
and succour, letters which it was known would be well weighted by the
authority of the postman, and would ensure their bearer continuance of
the royal favour. The king's servants informed the bishop of this move,
and his clerkly friends pointed out the great advantage to himself of
this service. He answered: "That be far from me. It jumps neither with
my intention nor my office. It is not my part to become the carrier of
letters royal. It is not my part to co-operate in the least degree in
exactions of this sort. Do not you know that this mighty man begs as it
were with a drawn sword? Particularly this power (of the Crown), under
guise of asking, really forces. Our English first attract with their
gentle greetings, and then they force men with harshest compulsion to
pay not what is voluntary but just what they choose to exact. They often
compel unwilling folk to do what they know was once done spontaneously,
either by this generation or the last. I have no cause to be mixed up in
such dealings. These may please an earthly king at one's neighbour's
expense, but afterwards they move the indi