Alike in himself and in his antecedents Hugh of Puiset was the very antithesis to William of Longchamp. William had nothing of the stately presence and winning aspect which distinguished the bishop of Durham; on the contrary, he laboured under personal disadvantages which should have entitled him to sympathy, but which one of his political opponents was heartless enough to caricature, after his fall, in order to make him an object of vulgar contempt and disgust. His stature was diminutive, his countenance swarthy and ill-favoured, his figure mis-shapen, and he was moreover very lame.[1403] His origin was as lowly as his person. His father was a certain Hugh of Longchamp who in 1156 received from the king a grant of lands in Herefordshire,[1404] and about the time of the barons’ revolt was fermor of the honour of Conches in Normandy.[1405] His grandfather was said to have been a French serf who had fled from the justice of his lord and found a refuge in the Norman village whence his descendants took their name.[1406] In Henry’s latter years Hugh of Longchamp was deep in debt and disgrace,[1407] and his six sons had to make their way in the world as best they could under the shadow of the king’s displeasure.[1408] William, whose physical infirmities must have shut him out from every career save that of a clerk, first appears under the patronage of Geoffrey the chancellor, as his official in one of his many pieces of Church preferment, the archdeaconry of Rouen.[1409] The king, however, remonstrated strongly with his son on the danger of associating with a man whom he declared to be “a traitor, like his father and mother before him.”[1410] The end of his remonstrances was that, shortly before the last outbreak, William fled from Geoffrey to Richard, and, according to one account, became the chief instigator of Richard’s rebellion.[1411] However this may be, it is certain that Richard, while still merely duke of Aquitaine, employed William as his chancellor,[1412] and that he was not only so well satisfied with his services as to retain him in the same capacity after his accession to the crown, but had formed such a high opinion of his statesmanship and his fidelity as to make him his chief political adviser and confidant. Richard, like his father, was constant in his friendships, and very unwilling to discard those to whom he had once become really attached; his trust in William remained unshaken to the end of his life, and in some respects it was not misplaced. William seems to have been thoroughly loyal to his master, and his energy and industry were as unquestionable as his loyalty. As Richard’s most intimate companion, confidential secretary, and political adviser in foreign affairs, William was in his right place; but he was by no means equally well fitted to be Richard’s representative in the supreme government and administration of England. He had the primary disqualification of being a total stranger to the land, its people and its ways.