Viscounts, Canterbury Archbishops, Cellarers, Sochemanni ;—and leaves many a solecism extinguished.

'One

On the whole, however, it is and remains sore work. 'time, during my chaplaincy, I ventured to say to him: "Domine, "I heard thee, this night after matins, wakeful, and sighing 'deeply, valde suspirantem, contrary to the usual wont." He an'swered: "No wonder. Thou, son Jocelin, sharest in my good 'things, in food and drink, in riding and such like; but thou lit'tle thinkest concerning the management of House and Family, 'the various and arduous businesses of the Pastoral Care, which ' harass me, and make my soul to sigh and be anxious." Whereto 'I, lifting up my hands to Heaven: "From such anxiety, Omni'potent Merciful Lord deliver me!"-I have heard the Abbot 6 say, If he had been as he was before he became a Monk, and 'could have anywhere got five or six marcs of income,' some three pound ten of yearly revenue, 'whereby to support himself in the schools, he would never have been Monk nor Abbot. 'Another time he said with an oath, If he had known what a 'business it was to govern the Abbey, he would rather have been 'Almoner, how much rather Keeper of the Books, than Abbot and Lord. That latter office he said he had always longed for, 'beyond any other. Quis talia crederet,' concludes Jocelin, 'Who 6 can believe such things?"

Three pound ten, and a life of Literature, especially of quiet Literature, without copyright, or world-celebrity of literarygazettes, yes, thou brave Abbot Samson, for thyself it had been better, easier, perhaps also nobler! But then, for thy disobedient Monks, unjust Viscounts; for a Domain of St. Edmund overgrown with Solecisms, human and other, it had not been so well. Nay neither could thy Literature, never so quiet, have been easy. Literature, when noble, is not easy; but only when ignoble. Literature too is a quarrel, and internecine duel, with the whole World of Darkness that lies without one and within one-rather a hard fight at times, even with the three pound ten secure. Thou, there where thou art, wrestle and duel along, cheerfully to the end; and make no remarks !

"

CHAPTER XIII.

IN PARLIAMENT.

Or Abbot Samson's public business we say little, though that also was great. He had to judge the people as Justice Errant, to decide in weighty arbitrations and public controversies; to equip his milites, send them duly in war-time to the King;strive every way that the Commonweal, in his quarter of it, take no damage.

Once, in the confused days of Lackland's usurpation, while Coeur-de-Lion was away, our brave Abbot took helmet himself, having first excommunicated all that should favour Lackland ; and led his men in person to the siege of Windleshora, what we now call Windsor; where Lackland had entrenched himself, the centre of infinite confusions; some Reform Bill, then as now, being greatly needed. There did Abbot Samson 'fight the battle of reform,'-with other ammunition, one hopes, than tremendous cheering' and such like! For these things he was called 'the magnanimous Abbot.'

He also attended duly in his place in Parliament de arduis regni; attended especially, as in arduissimo, when 'the news reached London that King Richard was a captive in Germany.' Here'while all the barons sat to consult,' and many of them looked blank enough, 'the Abbot started forth, prosiliit coram om'nibus, in his place in Parliament, and said, that he was ready to go and seek his Lord the King, either clandestinely by subterfuge (in tapinagio), or by any other method; and search till he ' found him, and got certain notice of him; he for one! By which word,' says Jocelin, 'he acquired great praise for himself,'-unfeigned commendation from the Able Editors of that age.

6

6

By which word;—and also by which deed: for the Abbot ac

6

tually went with rich gifts to the King in Germany;'* Usurper Lackland being first rooted out from Windsor, and the King's peace somewhat settled.

As to these 'rich gifts,' however, we have to note one thing. In all England, as appeared to the Collective Wisdom, there was not like to be treasure enough for ransoming King Richard; in which extremity certain Lords of the Treasury, Justiciarii ad Scaccarium, suggested that St. Edmund's Shrine, covered with thick gold was still untouched. Could not it, in this extremity, be peeled off, at least in part; under condition, of course, of its being replaced, when times mended? The Abbot, starting plumb up, se erigens, answered: "Know ye for certain, that I will in no wise do this thing; nor is there any man who could force me to consent thereto. But I will open the doors of the Church: Let him that likes enter; let him that dares come forward!" Emphatic words, which created a sensation round the woolsack. For the Justiciaries of the Scaccarium answered, 'with oaths, each for himself: "I won't come forward, for my 'share; nor will I, nor I! The distant and absent who offended 'him, Saint Edmund has been known to punish fearfully; much 'more will he those close by, who lay violent hands on his coat, 'and would strip it off!" These things being said, the Shrine was not meddled with, nor any ransom levied for it.'†

For Lords of the Treasury have in all times their impassable limits, be it by 'force of public opinion' or otherwise; and in those days a Heavenly Awe overshadowed and encompassed, as it still ought and must, all earthly Business whatsoever.

* Jocelini Chronica, pp. 39, 40.

6*

† Ibid., p. 71

CHAPTER XIV.

HENRY OF ESSEX.

Or St. Edmund's fearful avengements have they not the remarkablest instance still before their eyes? He that will go to Reading Monastery may find there, now tonsured into a mournful penitent Monk, the once proud Henry Earl of Essex; and discern how St. Edmund punishes terribly, yet with mercy! This Narrative is too significant to be omitted as a document of the Time. Our Lord Abbot, once on a visit at Reading, heard the particulars from Henry's own mouth; and thereupon charged ɔne of his monks to write it down;-as accordingly the Monk has done, in ambitious rhetorical Latin; inserting the same, as episode, among Jocelin's garrulous leaves. Read it here; with ancient yet with modern eyes.

Henry Earl of Essex, standard-bearer of England, had high places and emoluments; had a haughty high soul, yet with various flaws, or rather with one many-branched flaw and crack, running through the texture of it. For example, did he not treat Gilbert de Cereville in the most shocking manner? He cast Gilbert into prison; and, with chains and slow torments, wore the life out of him there. And Gilbert's crime was understood to be only that of innocent Joseph: the Lady Essex was a Potiphar's Wife, and had accused poor Gilbert! Other cracks, and branches of that widespread flaw in the Standard-bearer's soul we could point out: but indeed the main stem and trunk of all is too visible in this, That he had no right reverence for the Heavenly in Man,-that far from showing due reverence to St. Edmund, he did not even shew him common justice. While others in the Eastern Counties were adorning and enlarging with rich gifts St. Edmund's resting-place, which had become a

city of refuge for many things, this Earl of Essex flatly defrauded him, by violence or quirk of law, of five shillings yearly, and converted said sum to his own poor uses! Nay, in another case of litigation, the unjust Standard-bearer, for his own profit, asserting that the cause belonged not to St. Edmund's Court, but to his in Lailand Hundred, 'involved us in travellings and innu'merable expenses, vexing the servants of St. Edmund for a long 'tract of time.' In short, he is without reverence for the Heavenly, this Standard-bearer; reveres only the Earthly, Goldcoined; and has a most morbid lamentable flaw in the texture of him. It cannot come to good.

Accordingly, the same flaw, or St.-Vitus' tic, manifests itself ere long in another way. In the year 1157, he went with his Standard to attend King Henry, our blessed Sovereign (whom we saw afterwards at Waltham), in his War with the Welsh. A somewhat disastrous War; in which while King Henry and his force were struggling to retreat Parthian-like, endless clouds of exasperated Welshmen hemming them in, and now we had come to the 'difficult pass of Coleshill,' and as it were to the nick of destruction, Henry Earl of Essex shrieks out on a sudden (blinded doubtless by his inner flaw, or 'evil genius' as some name it), That King Henry is killed, That all is lost, and flings down his Standard to shift for itself there! And, certainly enough, all had been lost, had all men been as he;-had not brave men, without such miserable jerking tic-douloureux in the souls of them, come dashing up, with blazing swords and looks, and asserted That nothing was lost yet, that all must be regained yet. In this manner King Henry and his force got safely retreated, Parthian-like, from the pass of Coleshill and the Welsh War.* But, once home again, Earl Robert de Montfort, a kinsman of this Standard-bearer's, rises up in the King's Assemb'y to declare openly that such a man is unfit for bearing English Standards, being in fact either a special traitor, or something almost worse, a coward namely, or universal traitor. Wager of Battle in consequence; solemn Duel, by the King's appointment, in a certain Island of the Thames-stream at Reading, apud Radingas, short way from the Abbey there.' Kings,

* See Lyttelton's Henry II., ii. 384.