English clergyman and statesman. He became Bishop of Salisbury (1189), and accompanied Richard I on the Third Crusade (11903). Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1193, he played key roles in raising the ransom to secure Richard's release from captivity, and in containing the rebellion of the king's brother, John. At the end of 1193, he became justiciar of England, and was responsible for all the business of government until his resignation in 1198. On John's accession (1199), he became chancellor, and was consulted on important matters of state. He was the first English statesman to tax revenue for secular purposes.
Hubert Walter (died July 13, 1205), chief justiciar of England and archbishop of Canterbury, was a relative of Ranulf de Glanvill, the great justiciar of Henry II, and rose under the eye of his kinsman to an important position in the Curia Regis.
Early assignments
In 1184 and in 1185 he appears as a baron of the exchequer. He received no clerical promotion from Henry II, but Richard I appointed him bishop of Salisbury, and by Richard's command he went with the third crusade to the Holy Land.
He led the English army back to England after Richard's departure from Palestine;
Justiciar
He was very successful in the government of the kingdom, and after Richard's last visit he was practically the ruler of England. To pay for Richard's ransom, he had already been compelled to tax personal property, the first instance of such taxation for secular purposes.
His chief measures are contained in his instruction to the itinerant justices of 1194 and 1198, in his ordinance of 1195 for the conservation of the peace, and in his scheme of 1198 for the assessment of the carucage.
In 1195 Hubert issued an ordinance by which four knights were to be appointed in every hundred to act as guardians of the peace, and from this humble beginning eventually was evolved the office of justice of the peace. In 1198, to satisfy the king's demand for money, Hubert demanded a carucage or plough-tax of five shillings on every plough-land (carucate) under cultivation.
Besides these important constitutional changes Hubert negotiated a peace with Scotland in 1195, and in 1197 another with the Welsh. But Richard had grown dissatisfied with him, for the carucage had not been a success, and Hubert had failed to overcome the resistance of the Great Council when its members refused to equip a force of knights to serve abroad.
In 1196 a popular uprising in London led by William Fitz Osbern was quickly suppressed by Hubert.
End of Justiciarship
In 1198 Hubert, who had inherited from his predecessors in the primacy a fierce quarrel with the Canterbury monks, gave these enemies an opportunity of complaining to the pope, for in arresting the London demagogue William Fitz Osbern, he had committed an act of sacrilege in Bow Church, which belonged to the monks. The pope asked Richard to free Hubert from all secular duties, and he did so, thus making the demand an excuse for dismissing Hubert from the justiciarship.
On May 27, 1199 Hubert crowned King John, making a speech in which the old theory of election by the people was enunciated for the last time. In 1201 he went on a diplomatic mission to Philip Augustus of France, and in 1202 he returned to England to keep the kingdom in peace while John was losing his continental possessions. Hubert was an ingenious, original and industrious public servant, but he was grasping and perhaps dishonest.
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