Note 19 — PART II HISTORICAL STUDIES (continued 2)

If, then, I am right in the solution I offer, St Hugh must have taken the narrowest ground, and have acted on behalf of ecclesiastical privilege, and only incidentally even for that, his protest being limited to his own church.19 And, further, it follows that, like St Thomas, he was acting strictly on the defensive. To say that his action affords 'the first clear case of the refusal of a money grant demanded directly by the crown, and a most valuable precedent, for later times',20 is, I submit with all respect, to set it in a quite erroneous light. In 1197, as in 1163, the crown was trying to infringe on well-established rights, and St Hugh like St Thomas, resisted that infringement, so far as his own rights were concerned, just as he would have resisted an attempt of the crown to deprive his see of a Manor, of feudal services, or of goods. The crown might take its pound of flesh, but more than that it should not have; never, through any action of his, should his church be deprived of its prescriptive rights.21