Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/137

 Remigius began to build the cathedral in 1075, which was altered and amplified so remarkably about 100 years later by Hugh of Lincoln.

HUGH OF LINCOLN

"Hugh of Lincoln" is a title which, like Cerberus in Sheridan's play, indicates "three gentlemen at once," and it will perhaps prevent confusion if I briefly distinguish the three.

The first and greatest is the Burgundian, usually called from his birthplace on the frontier of Savoy "Hugh of Avalon." He went to a good school in Grenoble, and, as a youth, joined the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse, where he rose to be procurator or bursar. In 1175, at the request of Henry II. who had, with difficulty, obtained the consent of the Archbishop of Grenoble, he came to England to become the first prior of the king's new monastery at Witham in Somerset, the first Carthusian house in England. In 1186, much against his will, he was, by the king's decree, elected Bishop of Lincoln, and took up his residence at Stow, where he at once set to work to master the English tongue. His rule of life was ascetic, and he made a practice of going every year in harvest time to live as a simple monk at Witham. He was a strong man, with high ideals, upright, unselfish and charitable, no believer in the miracles of the day, and so free from prejudice that he always protected the hated Jews, who wept sincere tears at his funeral. He was active in his huge diocese, and was a maker of history, for, besides extending and beautifying the cathedral of Remigius, he eventually became so powerful that he joined the Archbishops in excommunicating their Sovereign, and in 1197 he successfully opposed King Richard I. and his "Justiciar," who was the great Archbishop Hubert Walter. Walter, when Bishop of Salisbury, had accompanied Richard to the crusade, where he was the king's chief agent in negotiating with Saladin. He headed the first party of pilgrims whom the Turks admitted to the Holy Sepulchre, led back the English host from Palestine in the king's absence to Sicily, whence he went to visit Richard in captivity, and repaired to England to raise the £100,000 demanded for his ransom. He was made by the king's command Archbishop of Canterbury, crowned the king a second time in 1194 at Winchester, and as "Justiciar" had the task of finding