In order to obtain funds for the building of his towers and the restoration of his church, S. Ives, like Fulbert before him, begged freely of Kings.
It will be understood that his relations with Philippe were not of the kind to encourage him to ask for aid in that quarter. But he sent two monks to Henry I. of England with a letter, in which, after expressing the pious hope that Henry would continue to walk in the footsteps of his father, and recognise that, as the body ought to be subject to the mind, so ought the civil government to be subject to the ecclesiastical, he tells him that he is the servant of the servants of God, and not their master; their protector, and not their lord; and then adds that the bearers of the letter will explain to His Highness the needs of the Church, which he is conjured to satisfy with the same generosity as his parents showed.
It is scarcely surprising that a letter couched in such terms was not productive of alms from the English King who had taken his spouse from a nunnery; nor was an appeal to Matilda in the following year ‘to show that love for the Queen of the Angels which the Queens of the Angles have always so generously displayed’ any more successful. But a third more likely letter knocked, to borrow S. Ives’s own phrase, at the door of Henry’s generous heart with better result. Queen Matilda was charged with the duty of replying to it, and she made many gifts to the Church, among which were several bells, of which S. Ives writes in acknowledgment that ‘they are doubly dear to us, both on account of your piety and of their own sweet melody. Every time that they are put in motion to indicate certain hours, our ears are soothed with such delicious music that your memory is renewed within our hearts.’ He also reminds her, amid many such graceful sayings, that the roof wants mending; and at her death we find that his words bear fruit, for she made many bequests to the Cathedral, and left money to defray the expenses of a lead roof. But it was not only Kings and Queens who fell under the charm of S. Ives and the love of his Church, and it was not only the great who received his thanks. Such phrases as the following occur again and again in the Necrology of Notre-Dame:--‘On Nov. 24th, died Jean, son of Vital, the clever and faithful carpenter of this Church, who always worked with love and zeal at the work of this Church.’ That is but one name among the thousands, who now, with an extraordinary outburst of enthusiasm, came from far and near to build the superb monument of Chartres Cathedral.