Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 28.djvu/145

 Hubert keeping peace between England and Scotland for many years.

In 1196 Hubert's troubles began. At Mid-Lent the London craftsmen, dissatisfied with the mode in which the local taxation was assessed by the civic rulers, were on the verge of a rising, which the justiciar strove to prevent by the arrest of their leader, William FitzOsbert [q.v.] William took sanctuary in the church of St. Mary-at-Bow; Hubert caused the church to be fired, and William, thus driven out, was seized, tried, condemned, and hanged with some of his followers. The rest submitted at once; but the common people persisted in honouring William as a martyr; the clergy were horrified at the firing of a church by an archbishop; and Hubert's own chapter, with whom he had long been at feud, were doubly furious, because the church belonged to them, and gloated over the sacrilege as a crowning charge in the indictment which they were preparing to bring against him at Rome. At the same moment Richard insulted his justiciar by sending over the abbot of Caen with authority to examine the accounts of all the royal officers in England. Though the abbot's death put an end to this project, and was followed by a half-apology from the king, Hubert threw up the justiciarship in disgust; he was, however, easily induced to withdraw his resignation. In 1197 he issued an assize of measures, which seems never to have been enforced, and was afterwards (1203) set aside by the justices. In June he went to Normandy; there he negotiated for Richard a pacification of his quarrel with the Archbishop of Rouen, a treaty of alliance with Flanders, and a truce with Philip of France. Shortly after his return (November) Richard sent over a demand for either three hundred knights to serve for twelve months against Philip, or money enough to hire three hundred mercenaries for the same period. Hubert called the bishops and barons to a council at Oxford, 7 Dec., and there proposed that they should furnish among themselves the required knights; the bishops of Lincoln and Salisbury opposed the scheme on constitutional grounds, and their opposition brought it to nought (Magna Vita S. Hugonis, pp.249-50; i.549;, iv. 40). The justiciar was next called away to the Welsh marches, where he settled a dispute about the succession in South Wales, and fortified the border castles for the king. In 'the spring (1198) he ventured upon another great administrative experiment. He levied a tax of five shillings per carucate on all the arable land, save that held by serjeanty, or belonging to the parish churches; he decreed that the carucate, hitherto a variable quantity, should henceforth consist of one hundred acres, and to ascertain the number of these new carucates he ordered a survey to be made by means of an inquest taken by two royal commissioners in conjunction with the sheriff of each county, and certain chosen knights, on the sworn presentment of the local landowners or their stewards, and of duly elected representatives, free and villein, of every township and hundred in the shire. This application of the principle of representation to the assessment of taxation on real property was a marked step in the direction of constitutional self-government. But while the commission was in progress its originator was tottering to his fall. Innocent III was no sooner pope (January 1198) than he renewed the old decrees against the tenure of secular office by priests, and especially urged the dismissal of the Archbishop of Canterbury from the justiciarship, which Hubert thereupon resigned; in September he joined the king in Normandy; there he apparently remained till after Richard's death (April 1199), when John sent him home to form with William Marshal and the new justiciar, Geoffrey FitzPeter, a council of regency, whose energetic action kept England at peace till John's own arrival. On 27 May Hubert crowned the new king, after making the famous speech in which the old English theory of election to the crown was publicly enunciated for the last time (, Chron. Maj. ii. 454-5). Next day he set papal prohibitions, constitutional precedents, and the warnings of an old colleague all alike at defiance by undertaking the office of chancellor; unquestionably for the country's good, as he was the only person who could act as a check upon John. He crowned the king and queen together at Westminster, 8 Oct. 1200; he was present at the Scottish king's homage to John at Lincoln, 22 Nov., and at the burial of St. Hugh two days later: he crowned John and Isabel again at Canterbury on Easter day 1201. In December John summoned him to Normandy, and thence sent him to France on a diplomatic mission, which failed, but through no fault of Hubert's; and next year the archbishop returned home, `that, as matters beyond sea were now almost desperate, he might at least keep England in peace,' in which he succeeded well enough while John was out of the way. In the spring of 1203 he went with some other prelates on another hopeless mission to Philip; at Christmas he entertained John at Canterbury. It may have been in the following year, when king and minister were brought into closer and more frequent contact than usual by the