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BISHOP HUGH OF WELLS

Nine years after St. Hugh’s death, Hugh the Second, or “Hugh of Wells,” was appointed bishop. He carried out the plans of his namesake, and completed the aisles and transepts and added the nave-chapels at the west end with their circular windows. He added to the episcopal palace begun by St. Hugh, and built that at Buckden—a fine brick building which later became the sole palace. The Bishops of Lincoln had a visitation palace at Lyddington, near Rockingham, in which a singularly beautiful carved wood frieze ran all round the large room. In the “Metrical Life of St. Hugh” we read that what St. Hugh planned, but left unfinished, Hugh of Wells completed.

“Perficietur opus primi sub Hugone secundo.”

LITTLE ST. HUGH

He died in 1235, and is buried in the north choir aisle. His extremely harsh treatment of the Jews leads us to the curiously tragic events in the life of the third Hugh, called the “Little St. Hugh.” He was born in 1246, and only lived nine years. That great man Grosteste, or Grostête, had succeeded Hugh of Wells, and died after an active episcopate of eighteen years, in 1254. His successor, Henry Lexington, had procured leave to extend the cathedral close beyond the Roman city wall in order to build the beautiful presbytery or angel choir for the shrine of Hugh I. He was still engaged on this when the persecution which the Jews had long endured produced such a bitter feeling that they were believed to be capable of kidnapping and crucifying, or by less conspicuous methods, putting to death a Christian boy when they had a chance. Hugh was said to be a chorister who disappeared, and his mother, led by a dream, discovered his body in a well outside the Newport Gate. A Jew called Jopin, or Chopin, but in a French ballad Peitevin, was accused of his murder, and is said to have confessed and to have been put to death with others of his nation with no small barbarity. He has left his memory at Lincoln in the name of “The Jews’ House,” which is given to the Norman building on the steep hill. This story was not uncommon, and told with much detail, as having really happened, in several places; nor is the belief in it yet dead. The boy’s body was given to the canons of the cathedral, who buried him with much solemnity in the south aisle of the choir, and set a small shrine over him, to which folk came to worship, and he received the title of “the Little St. Hugh.”