was as pure as continence and
virginity, and would be blessed as high. He lived as he taught always,
but here he seemed beyond himself. His buildings at Witham, enumerated
in the Great Life, and not even planned before his time, are the major
and minor churches, the cells for monks, the cloisters, the brothers'
little houses, and the guest chambers. The lay kitchen was a poor
building of brushwood and thatch, six or seven paces from the guest
house, the blaze of which, when it caught fire, could be seen from the
glass windows of the west end of the lay church. The wooden cells of
the brothers lay round this in a ring. The guest house roof was of
shingles. This kitchen fire took place at the last visit of the bishop
while he was at the "night lauds." He gave over the office when it broke
out, signed the cross several times, and prayed before the altar, while
the young men fought the flame. He had already often ordered a stone
kitchen to be built in its place, and so no real harm was done, for the
fire did not spread. The only question which arises is whether the
present guest house is far enough west to square with this story. No
mention is made of the fish ponds, but they are likely enough to have
been prepared in his time, for the rule, which never allowed meat, did
allow fish on festivals. Hugh had no notion of starving other people,
but used to make them "eat well and drink well to serve God well." He
condemned an asceticism run mad, and called it vanity and superstition
for people to eschew flesh when they had no such commandment, and
substitute for it foreign vegetables, condiments for fat, and expensive
fishes. He liked dry bread himself, and the drier the tastier, but he
did all he could to spare others. Consequently, we may credit him with
the fish ponds.

His work at Lincoln was on a much larger scale and happily much of it is
still there, a goodly material for wonder, praise and squabbling. It was
imposed upon him, for he found the Norman building more or less in
ruins. This building consisted of a long nave, with a west front, now
standing; and a choir, which ended something east of the present
faldstool in a bow. At the east end of the nave was a tower, and to the
north and south of this tower were two short transepts, or porches. The
tower was either not very high or else was shortened, and perhaps
recapped to make it safe after the earthquake, for the comparatively
small damage which it did when it fell up