Richard was made prisoner as he was returning from the crusade, and his brother John raised a revolt against him. The king committed his interests to Hubert Walter, bishop of Salisbury. Hubert, as dean of York, had been one of Geoffrey's enemies; he was made bishop by Richard, and accompanied him to Acre, where, we are told, he was equally distinguished as a warrior, a commander, and a pastor. Archbishop Baldwin having died at Acre in 1190, the suffragan bishops and the monks of Christ Church, in obedience to the king's will, elected Hubert to the archbishopric in 1193, and shortly afterwards Richard appointed him chief justiciar. A relation of Ralf Glanville, the famous justiciar of Henry II., Hubert had been brought up in a good school for statesmanship, and he did credit to his training. He excommunicated John, took his castles, and ensured his fall by raising the money for the king's ransom. On Richard's return Hubert placed the crown on his head at his second coronation at Winchester, and the king obtained the legatine commission for him. When Richard again left England, Hubert virtually became viceroy of the kingdom. He triumphed over his old enemy, Geoffrey, sent judges to York to decide the dispute between him and his chapter, allowed them to seize the estates of the see, and upheld the cause of the canons, who obtained a papal judgment against their archbishop. Geoffrey left England, and remained abroad for the next five years. During his absence Hubert visited York both as legate and as justiciar.
[Sidenote: Bishop Hugh of Lincoln opposes an unconstitutional tax, 1198.]
More honourable to Hubert than this almost personal triumph is his administrative work. Of this it will be sufficient to say here, that he had constantly to find large sums of money for the king; that he did so as far as possible by constitutional methods; that in doing so he accustomed the people to make elections and act by representatives; and that he preserved internal order and developed the constructive work of Henry II. Richard's demands for money were heavy, and though Becket had once opposed Henry on a fiscal question, no constitutional resistance had ever yet been made to a tax proposed by the Crown. Now, however, the nation was to receive from the Church its first lesson in the principle that taxes should only be imposed with the consent of those who have to pay them. At an assembly held at Oxford in 1198 the archbishop, on the king's behalf, proposed to the barons and bishops that they should maintain three hundred knights for a year to serve across the sea. Then Hugh of Lincoln answered, that though he had come to England as a stranger, he would maintain the rights of his church, and that though it was bound to do military service within the kingdom, the king could not claim such service beyond the sea, and that he would not contribute to a foreign war. Herbert of Salisbury also spoke to the same effect. Their answers naturally appealed to the interests of the lay barons, and the demand was refused, greatly to the king's annoyance.