Murmurs from the Monks, meanwhile, cannot fail; ever deeper murmurs, new grudges accumulating. At one time, on slight cause, some drop making the cup run over, they burst into open mutiny: the Cellarer will not obey, prefers arrest on bread-and-water to obeying; the Monks thereupon strike work; refuse to do the regular chanting of the day, at least the younger part of them with loud clamour and uproar refuse :-Abbot Samson has withdrawn to another residence, acting only by messengers the awful report circulates through St. Edmundsbury that the Abbot is in danger of being murdered by the Monks with their knives! How wilt thou appease this, Abbot Samson! Return; for the Monastery seems near catching fire!

Abbot Samson returns; sits in his Talamus, or inner room, hurls out a bolt or two of excommunication: lo, one disobedient Monk sits in limbo, excommunicated, with foot-shackles on him, all day; and three more our Abbot has gyved 'with the lesser sentence, to strike fear into the others'! Let the others think with whom they have to do. The others think; and fear enters into them. On the morrow morning we decide on 'humbling ourselves before the Abbot, by word and gesture, ' in order to mitigate his mind. And so accordingly was done. 'He, on the other side, replying with much humility, yet always alleging his own justice and turning the blame on us, 'when he saw that we were conquered, became himself conquered. And bursting into tears, perfusus lachrymis, he swore ' that he had never grieved so much for anything in the world as for this, first on his own account, and then secondly and chiefly for the public scandal which had gone abroad, that St. 'Edmund's Monks were going to kill their Abbot. And when 'he had narrated how he went away on purpose till his anger 'should cool, repeating this word of the philosopher, "I would 'have taken vengeance on thee, had not I been angry," he arose weeping, and embraced each and all of us with the kiss ' of peace. He wept; we all wept :'1-what a picture! have better, ye remiss Monks, and thank Heaven for such an Abbot; or know at least that ye must and shall obey him.

Be

Worn down in this manner, with incessant toil and tribulation, Abbot Samson had a sore time of it; his grizzled hair

and beard grew daily grayer. Those Jews, in the first four

1 Jocelini Chronica, p. 85.

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years, had visibly emaciated him :' Time, Jews, and the task of Governing, will make a man's beard very gray! 'In twclve years,' says Jocelin, our Lord Abbot had grown wholly white as snow, totus efficitur albus sicut nix.' White atop, like the ✓ granite mountains :—but his clear-beaming eyes still look out, in their stern clearness, in their sorrow and pity; the heart within him remains unconquered.

Nay sometimes there are gleams of hilarity too; little snatches of encouragement granted even to a Governor. 'Once 'my Lord Abbot and I, coming down from London through 'the Forest, I inquired of an old woman whom we came up to, 'Whose wood this was, and of what manor; who the master, 'who the keeper?'-All this I knew very well beforehand, and my Lord Abbot too, Bozzy that I was! But the old woman answered, The wood belonged to the new Abbot of St. Ed'mund's, was of the manor of Harlow, and the keeper of it was one Arnald. How did he behave to the people of the manor? I asked farther. She answered that he used to be a devil 'incarnate, dæmon vivus, an enemy of God, and flayer of the 'peasants' skins,'—skinning them like live eels, as the manner of some is but that now he dreads the new Abbot, knowing him to be a wise and sharp man, and so treats the people • reasonably, tractat homines pacifice.' Whereat the Lord Abbot factus est hilaris,—could not but take a triumphant laugh for himself; and determines to leave that Harlow manor yet unmeddled with, for a while.2

A brave man, strenuously fighting, fails not of a little triumph now and then, to keep him in heart. Everywhere we try at least to give the adversary as good as he brings; and, with swift force or slow watchful manœuvre, extinguish this and the other solecism, leave one solecism less in God's Creation; and so proceed with our battle, not slacken or surrender in it! The Fifty feudal Knights, for example, were of unjust greedy temper, and cheated us, in the Installation-day, of ten knights'-fees; —but they know now whether that has profited them aught, and I Jocelin know. Our Lord Abbot for the moment had to endure it, and say nothing; but he watched his time.

·

Look also how my Lord of Clare, coming to claim his undue debt' in the Court of Witham, with barons and apparatus, gets a Roland for his Oliver! Jocelin shall report: The Earl,

2 Jocelini Chronica. D. 24.

'crowded round (constipatus) with many barons and men-atarms, Earl Alberic and others standing by him, said, "That 'his bailiffs had given him to understand they were wont annually to receive for his behoof, from the Hundred of Rise'bridge and the bailiffs thereof, a sum of five shillings, which sum was now unjustly held back ;" and he alleged farther that 'his predecessors had been infeft, at the Conquest, in the lands ' of Alfric son of Wisgar, who was Lord of that Hundred, as 'may be read in Doomsday Book by all persons.—The Abbot, ' reflecting for a moment, without stirring from his place, made answer: "A wonderful deficit, my Lord Earl, this that thou ' mentionest! King Edward gave to St. Edmund that entire 'Hundred, and confirmed the same with his Charter; nor is 'there any mention there of those five shillings. It will be'hove thee to say, for what service, or on what ground, thou ' exactest those five shillings." Whereupon the Earl, consulting with his followers, replied, That he had to carry the Ban'ner of St. Edmund in war-time, and for this duty the five 'shillings were his. To which the Abbot: “Certainly, it seems inglorious, if so great a man, Earl of Clare no less, receive so small a gift for such a service. To the Abbot of St. Ed'mund's it is no unbearable burden to give five shillings. But Roger Earl Bigot holds himself duly seised, and asserts that 'he by such seisin has the office of carrying St. Edmund's 'Banner; and he did carry it when the Earl of Leicester and 'his Flemings were beaten at Fornham. Then again Thomas 'de Mendham says that the right is his. When you have made ' out with one another, that this right is thine, come then and ' claim the five shillings, and I will promptly pay them!" Whereupon the Earl said, He would speak with Earl Roger his rela'tive; and so the matter cepit dilationem,' and lies undecided to the end of the world. Abbot Samson answers by word or act, in this or the like pregnant manner, having justice on his side, innumerable persons: Pope's Legates, King's Viscounts, Canterbury Archbishops, Cellarers, Sochemanni; and leaves many a solecism extinguished.

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On the whole, however, it is and remains sore work. 'One 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 thy usual wont." 'He answered: "No wonder. Thou, son Jocelin, sharest in

'my good things, in food and drink, in riding and suchlike; but thou little thinkest concerning the management of House • and Family, the various and arduous businesses of the Pas'toral Care, which harass me, and make my soul to sigh and 'be anxious." Whereto I, lifting up my hands to Heaven: From such anxiety, Omnipotent merciful Lord deliver me!" --I have heard the Abbot say, If he had been as he was be'fore 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 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 threepound ten secure. Thou, there where thou art, wrestle and duel along, cheerfully to the end; and make no remarks!

CHAPTER XIII.

IN PARLIAMENT.

OF 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 controversics; 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 Lacklands usurpation, while

Cœur-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 suchlike! 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 omnibus, 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.

By which word;—and also by which deed: for the Abbot actually went 'with rich gifts to the King in Germany;'1 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 nowise 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

1 Jocelini Chronica, pp. 39, 49