t from his horse to the ground, which was very muddy. He dug both
hands into the dirt. "Now I have got the land," he said, "and yet I do
remit the poor little woman her ox," and then he flung the mud away, and
lifting his eyes added, "I do not want the land down here; I want
heaven. This woman had only two to work for her. Death has taken the
better one and are we to take the other? Perish such avarice! Why, in
the throes of such wretchedness, she ought to have comfort much rather
than further trouble." Another time he remitted L5 due from a knight's
son, at his father's death, saying it was unjust and mischievous that he
should lose his money because he had lost his father too. "He shall not
have double misfortune at any rate at our hands." Even in the twelfth
century piety and business sometimes clashed.

Hugh had not been enthroned a year, when Christendom was aghast and
alarmed at the news from the East. Saladin with eighty thousand men had
met the armies of the Cross at Tiberias (or Hittin), had slaughtered
them around the Holy Rood itself, in the Saviour's own country, had
beheaded all the knights of the Temple and the Hospital who would not
betray the faith. Jerusalem had fallen, and Mahomet was lord of the holy
fields. "The rejoicing in hell was as great as the grief when Christ
harrowed it," men said. The news came in terrible bursts; not a country
but lost its great ones. Hugh Beauchamp is killed, Roger Mowbray taken.
The Pope, Urban III., has died of grief. The Crusade has begun to be
preached. Gregory VIII. has offered great indulgences to true penitents
and believers who will up and at the Saracens. He bade men fear lest
Christians lose what land they have left. Fasting three days a week has
been ordered. Prince Richard has the cross (and is one, to his father).
Berter of Orleans sings a Jeremiad. Gilbert Foliot (foe to St. Thomas)
is dead. Peace has been made between France of the red cross and England
of the white, and Flanders of the green. King Henry has ordered a tax of
a tenth, under pain of cursing, to be collected before the clergy in the
parishes from all stay-at-homes. Our Hugh is not among the bishops
present at this Le Mans proclamation. The kingdom is overrun, in
patches, with tithe collectors. Awful letters come from Christian
remnants, but still there is no crusade; France and England are at war.
The new Pope is dead. Now old Frederick Barbarossa is really off to
Armenia. Prayers and psalms fo