courtiers over the Church. There were many other theologians besides Hugh of Lincoln among the king's friends--Baldwin, afterwards archbishop; Foliot, one of the chief scholars of his time; Richard of Ilchester, as learned in theology as capable in administration; John of Oxford, lawyer and theologian; Peter of Blois, ready for all kinds of services that might be asked, and as skilled in theology as in rhetoric. Henry was never known to choose an unworthy friend; laymen could only grumble that he was accustomed to take advice of bishops and abbots rather than that of knights even about military matters. But theology was not the main preoccupation of the court. Henry, inquisitive in all things, learned in most, formed the centre of a group of distinguished men which, for varied intellectual activity, had no rival save at the university of Paris. There was not a court in Christendom in the affairs of which the king was not concerned, and a crowd of travellers was for ever coming and going. English chroniclers grew inquisitive about revolutions in Norway, the state of parties in Germany, the geography of Spain. They copied despatches and treaties. They asked endless questions of every traveller as to what was passing abroad, and noted down records which have since become authorities for the histories of foreign states. Political and historical questions were eagerly debated. Gerald of Wales and Glanville, as they rode together, would discuss why the Normans had so fallen away in valour that now even when helped by the English they were less able to resist the French than formerly when they stood alone. The philosophic Glanville might suggest that the French at that time had been weakened by previous wars, but Gerald, true to the feudal instincts of a baron of the Norman-Welsh border, spoke of the happy days before dukes had been made into kings, who oppressed the Norman nobles by their overbearing violence, and the English by their insular tyranny; "For there is nothing which so stirs the heart of man as the joy of liberty, and there is nothing which so weakens it as the oppression of slavery," said Gerald, who had himself felt the king's hand heavy on him.