He appears not to have had educational advantages. He deplores this in a letter of much dignified modesty. He had occasion to correspond with the University of Oxford. The Oxford authorities seem to have been in need of some stone from a quarry of the abbey, and had addressed a polite request to him. He "returns thanks to the University for considering him in the number of those learned persons who had been members of that learned body," but speaks of himself as one who had not the least pretences to that character. He styles himself a man of no erudition; laments that the fates had denied him the advantages of instruction in his youth, and states that he is still anxious to become a member of the University, and apply himself to that course of study which would suit his capacity, now become dull and feeble by length of years. He was evidently a patron of learned men. Leonard Cox, Master of the Reading School, which, thanks to Henry VII., had been established in St. Lawrence's Hospice rescued from Abbot Thorne, dedicates his "Art of Rhetorick," 1539, to this last of the abbots. He seems also to have been a good administrator, and an active magistrate, and we read of him as taking his place at the Bench at "Okingham," on 11th July, 1534, as one of the Justices of the Peace for the county. More than this he was a religious man. He took care that the Bible was read daily in the abbey. Dr. London, one of the commissionaries for dissolving the Monastery and Friary, reports to his superior, Lord Cromwell:-- "They have a gudde lecture in scripture daily redde in the chapter house, both in Inglishe and Latin, to the which is gudde resort, and the abbot is at it himself." When the commissioners arrived, he does not seem to have opposed them, or held back anything. Dr. London at first reports favourably:-- "I have requested of my lord abbot the relics of his house, which he seledeted unto me with gudde will. I have taken an inventory of them, and have locked them up beside the high altar, and have the key in my keeping, and they be ready at your lordship's commandment." Abbot Hugh made no resistance, and it might have been supposed the abbey would have escaped at least as well as the Friary; the Grayfriars having nothing to lose, were simply turned out into the street with a scanty pension, and their church given to the town for a town hall. How was it, then, that such a cruel fate overtook the principal monks here, for two others died with Hugh Faringdon on the same charge of high treason? Stowe says it was for denying the King's supremacy. "The Act of Suppression passed in May, 1539, and in November following he was drawn, hanged, and quartered with two of his monks. The same day the Abbot of Glastonbury was executed, and shortly after the Abbot of Colchester."