ess, two sticks thrown upon one
another,--he stops in the midst of whatever sin he may be committing,
and in some form, by word or gesture, expresses his "devotion."

Of this type was Hubert's religion. His notion of spirituality was to
grasp the pix with one hand, and to hold the crucifix in the other. He
kept a nicely-balanced account at the Bank of Heaven, in which--this is
historical--the heaviest deposit was the fact that he had many years
before saved a large crucifix from the flames. The idea that this
action was not most pious and meritorious would have been in Hubert's
eyes rank heresy. Yet he might have known better. The Psalter lay open
to him, which, had he been acquainted with no other syllable of
revelation, should alone have given him a very different conception of
spiritual religion.

Athwart these singular notions of excellence, Hubert's good common-sense
was perpetually gleaming, like the lightning across a dark moor.
Whatever else this man was, he was no slave of Rome. It was supported
by him, and probably at his instigation, that King John had sent his
lofty message to the Pope, that--

"No Italian priest
Should tithe or toll in his dominions."

It was when the administration lay in his hands that Parliament refused
to comply with the demands of the Pope till it was seen what other
kingdoms would do: and no Papal aggressions were successful in England
so long as Hubert was in power. To reverse the famous phrase of Lord
Denbigh, Hubert was "a Catholic, if you please; but an Englishman
first."

Truer Englishman, at once loyalist and patriot, never man was than he--
well described by one of the English people as "that most faithful and
noble Hubert, who so often saved England from the ravages of the
foreigner, and restored England to herself." He stood by the Throne,
bearing aloft the banner of England, in three especially dark and
perilous days, when no man stood there but himself. To him alone, under
Providence, we owe it that England did not become a vassal province of
France. Most amply was his fidelity put to the test; most unspotted it
emerged from the ordeal: most heavy was the debt of gratitude owed alike
by England and her King.

That debt was paid, in a sense, to the uttermost farthing. In what
manner of coin it was discharged, we are about to see.

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Note 1. Patent Roll, 4 Henry Third; dated York