In the various disputes between monks and bishops, which were a standing dish in most dioceses, he took an unbiassed line. In the long fight waged by Archbishop Baldwin first and then by Hubert Walter with the monks of Canterbury, which began in 1186, and was not over until Hugh was dead, he rather favoured the side of the monastery. Yet we find him speaking _multa aspera_, many stinging things to their spokesman, and recommending, as the monk said, prostration before the archbishop. His words to the archbishop have been already quoted. With Carlyle's Abbot Sampson and the Bishop of Ely he was appointed by Innocent to hush the long brawl. The Pope, tired and angry, wrote (September, 1199) to the commissioners to compel the archbishop, even with ecclesiastical censures. They reply rather sharply to his holiness that he is hasty and obscure; and so the matter dragged on. Then in 1195 the inevitable Geoffrey Plantagenet, the bastard, Archbishop of York, before mentioned, has a lively dispute with his canons. Hugh is ordered by the Pope to suspend him, but would rather be suspended (by the neck) himself. Geoffrey certainly was a little extreme, even for those days--a Broad Churchman indeed. He despises the Sacraments, said the canons, he hunts, hawks, fights, does not ordain, dedicate, or hold synods, but chases the canons with armed men and robs them; but Hugh, though he cannot defend the man, seems to know better of him, and at any rate will not be a mere marionette of Rome. Geoffrey, indeed, came out nobly in the struggles with king John in later story, as a defender of the people. Then there is the dispute between the Bishop of Coventry, another striking bishop, who brought stout fellows against the saucy monks. He had bought their monastery for three hundred marks of the king, and when they would not budge, he chased them away with beating and maiming, sacked their house, burnt their charters, and so on. Hugh was against this too vigorous gentleman, who was clearly indefensible; but it was by no means because he was blindly prejudiced in favour of monks, for he seems to have supported the Bishop of Rochester against his monks. These disputes of astonishing detail, are very important in the history of the church, as by their means the Papal Empire grew to a great height of power; and however little the bishops' methods commend themselves, the monasteries, which became rebel castles in every diocese, were very subversive of discipline, and their warfare equally worldly.