Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 07.djvu/327

 church, and with lists and sticks drove him and his two servants back to the castle, where they rgaced him in stricter confinement. The ishop of Salisbury, however, came in haste to Devizes and blule the men take Hubert back to the church. They refused, saying that they would rather see their prisoner hanged than be hanged themselves, and he thereupon excommunicated them. Then he and the Bishop of London went to the king and compelled him to restore Hubert to the chllrch. In anger at this, Henry bade the sheriff of Wiltshire blockade the church and starve him out. On 30 Oct. Richard Siward and Gilbert Basset, who were wanting the lands of the Bishop of Winchester and of other evil counsellors, rode up to the church, carried him off either willing (Ann. Dunst. iii. 138) or unwilling (, iv. 76) to Aust, where they took ship and so crossed to the castle of Richard Marshall at Chepstow. There Hubert stayed, and when Earl Richard went to Ireland in the following year he took charge of his household and castles.

In 1234 Archbishop Edmund succeeded in overthrowing the Bishop of Winchester, and shortly afterwards brought about a reconciliation between the king and Hubert, who expressed his thankfulness to God in a prayer which has been recorded by the chronicler (, iii. 291), Hubert’s outlawry was annulled as unjust and unlawful, his honours and earldom were restored, and he was in made one of the king’s counsellors. His marriage of his daughter Margaret to Richard of Clare, the young Earl of Gloucester, brought him into some trouble in 1236, for the earl was as yet a minor and in the king's wardship, and the marriage had been celebrated without the royal license. Hubert, however, protested that the match was not of his making, and promised to pay the king some money, so the matter passed by for the time. His name is among the witnesses to the confirmation of the charter granted in this year. In a kind of general pacification of the feuds of the nobles brought about by the legate Otho in 1237, Hubert was reconciled to his old enemy the Bishop of Winchester and others of the same party. When, in the next year, the king was threatened hy a general insurrection of the nobles, headed by the Earl of Cornwall, Hilbert was the only one who upheld him. Of him the barons now had little fear, for they knew that he had vowed never to bear arms again. His old age tempted Henry to persecute him once more. In 1239 the king revived a great many of the old charges against him, for he considered that if Hilbert died while the case was still pending all his goods would be at his mercy. The charges were read in the presence of the king, and perhaps by the king himself; they ended with a ridiculous story of an attempt on the king’s life. Hubert reminded Henry that he had never been a traitor to him or his father. ‘Had I wished to betray you,’ he said, ‘you would never have obtained the kingdom.' He committed the task of drawing up his defence to Laurence, a clerk of St. Albans, who had been his faithful friend in all his troubles and had acted as his steward during his imprisonment. The hearing of the case was fixed for 30 Aug. Laurence did his work so well that, in spite of the efforts of the king and the pleaders of the royal court, the earl’s innocence was thoroughly established. (For the charges and Laurence's defence see, vi. 63-74, Addit.) In order, however, to satisfy the king judgement was given that he should surrender four castles. ‘The earl,’ we are told, 'whose long-tried faithfulness had so often saved England for the English, bore all the king`s ungrateful persecution and all his unworthy insults, nay even all the assaults of fortune with calm patience’ (, iii. 620). Before long he made his peace with Henry and recovered his castles (Ann. de Theok. i. 112). He died ‘full of days' at Banstead on 12 May 1243, and was buried in the house of the Black Friars in London, a convent he had enriched with many gifts, and above all with that of his noble palace, standing not far from Westminster. This palace was bought of the Black Friars by Walter Gray, archbishop of York, and so bore the name of York Place until it became the king’s and was culled Whitehall (, Fasti Eboracenses, 291). Hubert had two sons: John, who inherited his estates, but probably not his title, and Hubert. His daughter lilerguret, who married Richard, earl of Gloucester, died before her father. He is said (, Barontage) to have had a second daughter. His elder son John, knighted in 1229, could scarcely, as has been supposed, have been the child of his last wife, married in 1221. This wife, Margaret, daughter of William the Lion, outlived him and married Gilbert Marshall. 