And this is true not only of the dogmatic parties; solitary monks and ambitious priests, hard-headed critical exegetes,' allegorists, mystics, all found something congenial in his writings.
These were hard-headed men of affairs - men who would not lightly embark on joyous ventures, or seek for an ideal San Grail; nor were the popes, doomed to the Babylonian captivity for seventy long years at Avignon, able to call down the spark from on high which should consume all earthly ambitions in one great act of sacrifice.
These three "Farmer's Letters" - a fourth was advertised but apparently was never published - were forcible presentations of the pro-British claim,, written in a plain, hard-headed style; their authorship was long in question, but it is certain that Seabury claimed them in England in 1783 when he was seeking episcopal consecration.
Yet their combination of high values and hard-headed realism created the greatest instrument in history for the avoidance of war.
It was during the siege of Arca that Peter Bartholomew, to whom the vision of the Holy Lance had first appeared, was subjected, with no definite result, to the ordeal of fire - the hard-headed Normans doubting the genuine character of any Provencal vision, the more when, as in this case, it turned to the political advantage of the Provencals.