“I always heard he was an easy man, and so he suffers his apprentices to sleep in working hours? But it is he for whom we were searching, and if thou wilt go forth and find him for me, thou mayest earn a silver penny.”
Hugh had some little difficulty in discovering Elyas, who had climbed a scaffolding to examine the work close at hand. He hurried down when he had heard Hugh’s report, saying that it was doubtless the bishop, and bidding the boy follow him.
The three bishops who succeeded each other in the see of Exeter, Quivil, Bitton, and Stapledon, have each left their mark upon the Cathedral. Quivil’s share was the most important; it was he who by the insertion of large windows formed the transepts, and to whom we owe the beautiful and unbroken line of vaulting. Bitton was only fifteen years at Exeter, but he carried on the designs of his predecessor with enthusiastic loyalty, and completed the eastern end of the choir. It was this on which he constantly desired to consult Gervase.
“The work goes on well,” he said cheerfully, rubbing his hands. “You have caught the true spirit. We shall never see our glorious Church finished, goodman, yet it is something to feel that we shall have left behind us something towards it. Quam dilecta tabernacula tua, Domine virtutum! I like the lightness of that stonework, and mine eye is never weary of following the noble lines of vaulting. Only I shall not rest until something has been designed to unite it with the pillars. There is a blank look which offends me.”
“I see it, too, my lord. Is it not the very place for a richly carved surs (corbel)?”
“Ay, that is it, that is it! A corbel which should spring from the pillar, and follow the line of the arch. We must reflect on this, Master Gervase, and they shall be of finest cutting, and each varying from the other. But we may not think of this yet awhile, for truly there is enough on hand to call for all thy skill and industry. How fair it looks, with the winter sunshine striking on the fair stonework! Non nobis, Domine!”
One or two of the canons had by this time closed up, and began to speak of what had been done.
“When the western end is brought to equal the eastern,” said one of them, William Pontington by name, “there will be no church in our land more fair. What will the king say?”
“The king is not in the best of humours with his clergy,” said the chaunter or precentor, a little dried-up man, with a sour face. “What think you, my lord, of the archbishop’s mandate?”
The good bishop looked uneasy. Winchilsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, was a turbulent and ambitious prelate, and the king, though sincerely religious, was forced to be ever on the watch against encroachments made by Pope Boniface, and supported by the archbishop, which threatened the royal supremacy. The strongest attempt of all had just been put forth in a bull from the pope, “forbidding the clergy to grant to laymen any part of the revenues of their benefices without the permission of the Holy See.” Now as the kings of England had ever the right of taxing the clergy with the rest of their subjects, as the possessions of the Church were enormous, and papal taxation of the whole kingdom far exceeded the taxation by the State, so that in a few years the pope is said to have received money from England equal to nine millions of our present money, Edward promptly resisted this fresh and unheard-of claim. He did so by a simple and effectual counter-stroke. It was announced at Westminster that whatever complaint was brought to the court by the archbishops, bishops, or clergy, “no justice should be done them,” and this withdrawal of State protection speedily led the clergy to offer their submission to the king, in spite of the anger of pope and archbishop.