did not long hold her place at court.  She died early and was carried to Godstowe nunnery, to which rich gifts were sent by her friends and by the king himself.  A few years later Hugh of Lincoln found her shrine before the high altar decked with gold and silken hangings, and the saintly bishop had the last finery of Rosamond swept from the holy place, till nothing remained but a stone with the two words graven on it, “Tumba Rosamundae.”

But behind Henry’s darkest and sternest moods lay a nature quick in passionate emotion, singularly sensitive to affection, tender, full of generous impulse, clinging to those he loved with yearning fidelity and long patience.  The story of St. Hugh shows the unlimited influence won over him by a character of singular holiness.  Henry had brought Hugh from Burgundy, and set him over a newly-founded Cistercian priory at Witham.  The little settlement was in sore straits, and the impatient monks railed passionately at the king, who had abandoned them in their necessities.  It was just after the rebellion, and Henry, hard pressed by anxiety, was in his harshest and most bitter temper.  “Have patience,” said Hugh, “for the king is wise beyond measure and wholly inscrutable; it may be that he delays to grant our request that he may try us.”  But brother Girard was not to be soothed, and in a fresh appeal to the king his vehemence broke out in a torrent of reproaches and abuse.  Henry listened unmoved till the monk ceased from sheer lack of words.  There was dead silence for a time, while Prior Hugh bent down his head in distress, and the king watched him under his eyelids.  At last, taking no more notice of the monk than if he never existed, Henry turned to Hugh, “What are you thinking of, good man?” he said.  “Are you preparing to go away and leave our kingdom?” Hugh answered humbly and gently, “I do not despair of you so far, my lord; rather I have great sorrow for the troubles and labours which hinder the care for your soul.  You are busy now, but some day, when the Lord helps, we will finish the good work begun.”  At this the king’s self-control broke down; his tears burst forth as he fell on Hugh’s neck, and cried with an oath, “By the salvation of my soul, while you have the breath of life you shall not depart from my kingdom!  With you I wilt hold wise counsel, and with you I will take heed for my soul!” From that time there was none in the kingdom whom Henry loved and trusted as he did the Prior of Witham, and to the end of his life he constantly sought in all matters the advice of one who gave him scant flattery and much sharp reproof.  The coarse-fibred, hard-worked man of affairs looked with superstitious reverence on one who lived so near to God that even in sleep his lips still moved in prayer.  Such a man as Hugh could succeed where Thomas of Canterbury had failed.  He excommunicated without notice to the king a chief forester who had interfered with the liberties of the Lincoln clergy, and bluntly refused