Athwart these singular notions of excellence, Hubert’s good common-sense was perpetually gleaming, like the lightning across a dark moor. Whatever else this man was, he was no slave of Rome. It was supported by him, and probably at his instigation, that King John had sent his lofty message to the Pope, that—
“No Italian priest
Should tithe or toll in his dominions.”
It was when the administration lay in his hands that Parliament refused to comply with the demands of the Pope till it was seen what other kingdoms would do: and no Papal aggressions were successful in England so long as Hubert was in power. To reverse the famous phrase of Lord Denbigh, Hubert was “a Catholic, if you please; but an Englishman first.”
Truer Englishman, at once loyalist and patriot, never man was than he—well described by one of the English people as “that most faithful and noble Hubert, who so often saved England from the ravages of the foreigner, and restored England to herself.” He stood by the Throne, bearing aloft the banner of England, in three especially dark and perilous days, when no man stood there but himself. To him alone, under Providence, we owe it that England did not become a vassal province of France. Most amply was his fidelity put to the test; most unspotted it emerged from the ordeal: most heavy was the debt of gratitude owed alike by England and her King.
That debt was paid, in a sense, to the uttermost farthing. In what manner of coin it was discharged, we are about to see.
Note 1. Patent Roll, 4 Henry Third; dated York, June 15 1220.
Note 2. “In the octave of Holy Trinity” (May 25—June 1), at Alnwick.—Roberts’ Extracts from Fines Rolls, 1225.
Note 3. This terrible fact has been strangely ignored by many modern historians.—Rot. Exit., Michs., 25-6 Henry Third.
Note 4. A drug which deadens the sensibilities—of the vivisector—by rendering the victim incapable of sound or motion, but not affecting the nerves of sensation in the least.