"Now there is a public report of you, and I grieve to say it, that you neither keep faithful to the marriage bed of your own wife, nor do you guard untouched the privileges of churches, especially in providing and choosing their rulers. Yes, it is said, and a huge piece of villainy it is, that moved by money or favour, you are used to promote some to the rule of souls. If this is true, then without any doubt, peace cannot be granted to you by God." When he had given this careful and timely admonition and instruction, the king excused himself on some points, on others asked earnestly for the bishop's intercession, and was sent off with a blessing. The bishop then went in gladness to his pike. Richard's opinion was that "if all the other bishops were like him, no king or prince would dare to rear his neck against them." Such salutary treatment now-a-days is the sole perquisite of the very poor. The higher up men get on the social scale, the less they need such honest dealing, it now appears. But Hugh was not quite out of the toils. The king's counsellors suggested that he should carry back letters to the barons demanding aid and succour, letters which it was known would be well weighted by the authority of the postman, and would ensure their bearer continuance of the royal favour. The king's servants informed the bishop of this move, and his clerkly friends pointed out the great advantage to himself of this service. He answered: "That be far from me. It jumps neither with my intention nor my office. It is not my part to become the carrier of letters royal. It is not my part to co-operate in the least degree in exactions of this sort. Do not you know that this mighty man begs as it were with a drawn sword? Particularly this power (of the Crown), under guise of asking, really forces. Our English first attract with their gentle greetings, and then they force men with harshest compulsion to pay not what is voluntary but just what they choose to exact. They often compel unwilling folk to do what they know was once done spontaneously, either by this generation or the last. I have no cause to be mixed up in such dealings. These may please an earthly king at one's neighbour's expense, but afterwards they move the indignation of Almighty God." He asked the counsellors to arrange that this burden should not be laid upon him with its consequent refusal, conflict, and disfavour. Richard heard the tale and sent a message, "God bless you, but get away home, and do not come here to-morrow as we said, but pray for us to the Lord without ceasing," which message was most grateful to the bishop, and he soon set his face north. His exultant chaplains felt sure that all would turn out well, for on the steps of the chapel, when their hearts were all pit-a-pat, they had heard the chorus prose of St. Austin being chaunted, "Hail, noble prelate of Christ, most lovely flower," a lucky omen! And again when they reached chapel doors they heard the bishops