THE TRAITOROUS MONKS OF PETERBOROUGH
But the Lord of Brunn could not be everywhere. While he was gaining
great victories on the southern side of the Fen Country, the Normans
were gaining strength in the north, and were receiving the aid of
cowards and traitors. Brand, the uncle of Lord Hereward, and the good
Lord Abbat of Peterborough, who had ever laboured to keep his convent
true to their own saints and to their own country, was now lying by the
side of the abbats, his predecessors, under the stone-flooring of the
abbey-church; and with him had died all the English spirit of the
place. The monks began to murmur, for that they were called upon to
contribute to the sustenance of the Saxon fighting men that had been
left to guard their house; and for that they had been called upon to
send some small matter of gold and silver for the use of the brave
Saxons that were maintaining the liberties of England in the Camp of
Refuge. Having, by their own representations and entreaties, brought
about the removal of nearly every bowman and billman that Hereward had
left behind him, these monks next began to turn up their eyes, and say
that they had no armed strength wherewith to withstand the Normans, and
that therefore it were better to make terms with Ivo Taille-Bois, and
cease all connection and correspondence with the Lord of Brunn and that
faction. But happily even at Peterborough, when the good Abbat Brand
was dead, not all the monks were traitorous. Some of them made haste to
inform their late abbat’s nephew, and the hope and stay of England, of
what was passing; and the Lord Hereward made haste to apply some remedy
to this foul disorder.
Great had been the wrath excited among the Normans by that last great
act of Abbat Brand’s life—the Saxon knighthood of Lord Hereward. Duke
William had sworn by the splendour of God that the abbat should rue the
day on which he had given his benediction to the sword of a rebel; but
a greater than kings had saved good Brand from this kingly fury. When
he knew that he was dead, William named as his successor that terrible
Norman, the Abbat Torauld[172] of Fescamp, who always wore a coat of
mail under his rochet, and who wielded the sword and battle-axe much
oftener or much more willingly than he carried the crosier.[173] This
terrible Torauld had been wont to govern his monks even in foreign
parts as captains govern their turbulent soldiery; and whenever any
opposition was offered to him, it was his custom to cry, “Come hither,
my men-at-arms!” and upon men-at-arms he always depended for the
enforcing of his ecclesiastical discipline. Where he ruled there were
few penances except such as were inflicted with his own hand; for he
was a very choleric man, and would smite his monks and novices over
their fleshiest parts with the flat of his heavy sword, and tweak their
noses with his sharp steel gloves, and strike them over their shaven
crowns with his batoon. Terrible as a man, and still more terrible as
an abbat, was this same Torauld of Fescamp! Monks crossed themselves,
and said _Libera nos_, whenever his name was mentioned. Now Duke
William told this terrible Torauld that as Peterborough was so near to
the turbulent Fen Country, and so little removed from the Camp of
Refuge, it was a place well suited to an abbat who was so good a
soldier, and that a soldier rather than an abbat was wanted to preside
over that abbey. And Torauld was farther told, by Ivo Taille-Bois, who
was roaring, like a bear bereft of her cub, for the loss of the
manor-house at Spalding, that on arriving at Peterborough he must take
good care to disinter the Abbat Brand, and throw his body upon the dung
heap; that he must well scourge the monks for their past contumacy, and
make a quick clutch at such treasure as might yet remain within the
house, seeing that the Norman troops were greatly distressed by reason
of their poverty, and that, notably, he, the Vicomte of Spalding, had
not a denier.[174]
“_Factum est_,” said Torauld, “consider all this as done.”
And in order that it might be done the more easily, Ivo Taille-Bois
superadded one hundred and forty men to those that the fighting abbat
brought with him, thus making Torauld’s whole force consist of one
hundred and sixty well-armed Frenchmen. At the head of this little
army, with sword girded round his middle and with battle-axe tied to
his saddle-bow, the monk of Fescamp began his march from Stamford Town.
As soon as the disloyal monks heard that he was coming, they drove away
by main force the very few Saxon soldiers that remained about the
house, and began to prepare sackcloth and ashes for themselves, and a
sumptuous feast for the Abbat Torauld, hoping thereby to conciliate
him, and make him forget the bold doings of my Lord Abbat Brand.
But before that uncanonical abbat and his men-at-arms could get half
way to Peterborough,[175] the Lord Hereward, who had been duly apprised
of all these late proceedings and intentions, arrived at the abbey with
Elfric his sword-bearer, and about three-score fighting men; and before
the monks could make fast their gates he was within the house. There be
some who do say that the entrance was not got without a fight, and that
some of my Lord Hereward’s people set fire to a part of the monastery;
but I ween there was no fighting or beating of monks until Torauld,
that very stern man, got possession of the house, and that there was no
fire until a time long after the visit of the Saxons, when the monks of
Peterborough, being disorderly and drunken, set fire to the house
themselves by accident. The Lord of Brunn made straight for the house
which King Etheldred of happy memory had built for the Lord Abbats. A
building it was very large and stately; all the rooms of common
habitation were built above-stairs, and underneath were very fair
vaults, and goodly cellars for sundry uses; and the great hall above
was a magnificent room, having at the upper end, in the wall, very high
above the floor, three stately thrones, whereon were seated the
effigies of the three royal founders, carved curiously in wood, and
painted and gilt.[176] In this hall stood Hereward and his merry men.
Little did the monks wot of this visit. They thought the Lord of Brunn
was many a league off, fighting in the fens; and when he came among
them like one dropped from the clouds, and they saw in his honest,
plain-speaking face that he was angered, the traitors began to blush,
and some of them to turn pale; and when this first perturbation was
over, they began to welcome him in the very words of a speech they had
prepared for the welcoming of Torauld. But Hereward soon cut their
speech short, and asked the prior of the house what was become of the
twenty men he had left there for the protection of the house. The prior
said that the men had behaved in a riotous manner, eating and drinking
all the day long, and had deserted and run away because they had been
reproved.
“It likes me not to call a priest a liar, but this is false!” said the
Lord of Brunn; “thou and thy French faction have driven away those
honest men; and here be some of them to speak for themselves, and to
tell thee, oh prior, how busy thou hast been ever since the death of my
good uncle (peace to his soul!) in preparing to make terms with the
French—in preparing to welcome the shaven cut-throat that is now
a-coming to rule over this house!”
The men stood forward, and the loyal part of the monks (alas! that they
were so few) stood forward also, and told the traitors to their faces
all that they had been doing. The prior and the chamberlain, the
refectorarius and the rest of the officials, then began to excuse
themselves on the plea of their weakness, and on the plea of the great
danger in which they stood.
“You confess, then,” said Hereward, “that you cannot of yourselves
defend this house and its shrines?”
“Of a surety we confess it,” said the prior; “nor is this house to be
held against the Normans even with a garrison of armed men.
Peterborough is not Ely, good my lord! _There_ Saxon monks may hold
their own; but _here_ it cannot be done.”
“So ho!” quoth Hereward, “this is where I would have thee! and
therefore, oh prior, since thou canst not keep thy gilded crosses and
silver vessels, thy chalices and pateras, thy drapery and rich church
hangings, and as all these things and all other the property of this
house will fall into the hands of the Norman thieves if they are not
removed, I will and must carry them all off to Ely, where thou allowest
they will be in safe Saxon keeping.”
“Wouldst thou despoil the temple of the Lord? Wouldst thou rob the
shrines of Saxon saints?” said the sacrist.
“My Lord of Brunn, thou darest not do the deed,” said the prior.
“It is not for thee, false monk! to set the limits to my daring, when
my conscience sanctions that which I am doing, and when the cause of my
country urges it to be done,” said Hereward.
“I will excommunicate thee as a sacrilegious robber,” said the prior.
“Archbishop Stigand, the true primate of England, will excommunicate
thee as a traitor to his country and traitor to his church,” quoth the
Lord of Brunn. “But I have little time to waste in words. Come, my
merry men, be stirring! pack up all the plate, and all the hangings,
and everything that we can carry with us.”
“They shall not have the keys,” said the chamberlain or treasurer of
the house.
“We have them already,” quoth Elfric, who had been led to the
chamberlain’s cell by one of the true Saxon monks. “We have the keys
already, and so have we the engraven seals of silver gilt. The sigillum
of so good a man as Abbat Brand shall never be used by so bad a man as
Torauld. See! here it is, my lord!” And so saying Elfric handed the
good massive seal to his master, who kissed it as though it had been a
relic, and then put it in his bosom.
“This is sacrilege! This is the worst of thefts,” roared the prior.
“This is done in the teeth of the law, and in outrage of the gospel.
Sinful young man, knowest thou not the old Saxon law which saith,
Sevenfold are the gifts of the Holy Spirit to the church, and seven are
the degrees of ecclesiastical states and holy orders, and seven times
should God’s servants praise God daily in church, and it is very
rightly incumbent on all God’s friends that they love and venerate
God’s church, and in grith and frith[177] hold God’s servants; and let
him who injures them, by word or work, earnestly make reparation with a
sevenfold bot, if he will merit God’s mercy, because holiness, and
orders, and God’s hallowed houses, are, for awe of God, ever to be
earnestly venerated?”
“I know that good Saxon law,” said Hereward, “and bow my head in
reverence to it! I earnestly venerate this hallowed house and all
houses that be hallowed, and all the shrines that belong to them. I do
not rob, but only remove to safe keeping what others would rob; and,
for any mischief that may be done to the goods of this house by such
removal, I will myself make bot, not seven but seventy-fold, whenever
England shall be free, and Harold restored to his throne.”
“Dreams!” said the prior—“thy King Harold lies six feet deep in
Waltham clay!”
“Unmannered priest, thou liest in thy throat for saying so! King Harold
is alive, is safe in some foreign land, and at his own good time will
be back to claim his own. But come he back or come he not back, the
Normans shall not have the spoil of this house. They have spoiled too
many hallowed houses already! Look at Saint Alban’s! look at Saint
Edmund’s-bury! and at York and Durham and Lindisfarn, and all other
places, and tell me how they have respected Saxon saints and the
property consecrate of our monasteries!”
“Leave that to us,” said the chamberlain.
“I tell thee again I will leave nought for the Normans!” quoth Lord
Hereward. And while he was speaking, his merry men all, aided and
assisted by the honest monks, who revered the memory of Abbat Brand,
were packing; and before the prior could finish a _maledicite_ which he
began, all the gold and silver, all the linen and silks and embroidered
hangings, and all the effigies of the Saxon saints, and all the
silver-gilded plates from their shrines, were carefully made up into
divers parcels, for facility of carriage, and the relics of the saints
were packed up in coffers. Ywere, an un-Saxon monk of the house, had
succeeded in concealing the testaments, mass-hackles, cantel-copes, and
such other small things, which he afterwards laid at the feet of the
French abbat; but Hereward’s people had gotten all the things of great
value: they had climbed up to the holy rood, and had taken away the
diadem from our Lord’s head, all of pure gold, and had seized the
bracket that was underneath his feet, which was all of red-gold: they
had climbed up the campanile, or belfry, and had brought down a table
that was hid there, all gold and silver; they had seized two shrines of
gold and nine reliquaries of silver, and fifteen large crucifixes of
gold and of silver; and, altogether, they had so many treasures in
money, in raiment and in books, as no man could tell another.
The prior now snivelled and said, “Lord Hereward, my Lord of Brunn,
wilt thou then leave us nothing to attract pilgrims to our shrines?
Thou mightest as well carry off the house and the church, as carry
these things away with thee!”
“Our house will be discredited and we shall starve!” said the sacrist.
“Lord of Brunn, leave us at least the bones of our saints!”
“Once more,” said Hereward, “once more and for the last time I tell ye
all that I will leave to the Norman spoilers and oppressors nought that
I can carry. If I could carry away the house and the church and the
altars, by Saint Ovin and his cross, by Saint Withburga and her blessed
and ever-flowing well, I would do it!—but only to bring them back
again when this storm shall be passed, and when every true Saxon shall
get his own.”
Then turning to Elfric, Hereward said, “Where is the sacrist’s register
of all these effects and properties?”
Elfric handed a very long scroll of parchment to his lord. This
parchment had been placed in the hands of Elfric by the sub-sacrist,
one of the honest party, and the parchment contained, in good Saxon
writing, a list of the treasures, even as they had been left on the day
of the death of the good Abbat Brand.
“Now write me at the bottom of this scroll a receipt and declaration,”
said the Lord of Brunn to the sub-sacrist. “Say that I, Hereward the
Saxon, have taken away with me into the Isle of Ely, and unto that
hallowed house of the true Saxon Abbat Lord Thurstan, all the things
above enumerated. Say that I have removed them only in order to save
them from the thievish hands of the Normans, or only to prevent their
being turned against ourselves—say that I swear by all my hopes of
life eternal to do my best to restore them uninjured so soon as the
Normans are driven out of England; and say that I will make bot for
every loss and for every injury. Mortal man can do no more than this.”
The sub-sacrist, maugre the threats and maledictions of his superior
the sacrist, and of the prior and refectorarius, and all the upper
officials, quickly engrossed on the parchment all that the Lord of
Brunn wanted; and Hereward, being himself a scholar and penman, signed
it with his name. Next he called for signatures of witnesses. Girolamo
of Salerno wrote a _sic subscribitur_, and wrote his signature, and
Elfric, who had improved as much in learning as in the art of war, did
the same. Some others made the sign of the cross opposite to their
names that were written for them; but upon the whole it was a good
receipt, and solemn and well witnessed. The Lord of Brunn handed the
parchment to the prior, bidding him to take care of it, and show it to
his new abbat Torauld as soon as that Frenchman should arrive with his
one hundred and sixty men-at-arms; but the prior cast the parchment
upon the ground, saying that the house was impiously spoiled—that
nothing would ever be gotten back again—that nothing was left in the
house but woe, nakedness, and tribulation.
“Oh prior!” said Hereward, and he smiled as he said it—“oh untrue and
un-Saxon prior! the savoury odours that come upwards from thy kitchen
tell me that there is something more than this. By saint Ovin! it is
not Torauld of Fescamp and his men-at-arms that shall eat this thy
feast! Elfric, see those viands served up in the refectory, and we will
eat them all, be they cooked or uncooked, done or underdone.”
“My Lord,” responded Elfric, “the roast meats be done to a turn, the
boiled meats and the stewed meats, and fowl and fish be all ready. The
cook of this house of Peterborough, being no caterer for Normans, but a
Saxon true, and one that hath owed his promotion to thine uncle, of
happy memory, the Abbat Brand, hath seen to all these things, and hath
advanced the good dinner by an hour or twain.”
“Then for love of mine uncle’s nephew, let him dish up as quickly as
may be! Elfric, what say thy scouts? Where be the Frenchmen now?”
“Good ten miles off, my lord; so do not over-hurry the meal.”
“Prior, sacrist, chamberlain, traitors all!” said Lord Hereward, “will
ye do penance with us in eating of this feast which ye had prepared for
Norman stomachs?”
“The wrath of the Lord will overtake thee for this ribaldry! Oh,
Hereward of Brunn, we will not break bread with thee, nor sit at the
table with such as thou art.”
“Then stay here where ye are, and munch your dry bread to the odour of
our roast meats,” said the young Lord of Brunn.
And so, leaving the false monks under guard of some of his merry men,
Hereward with the true monks went straight to the refectory and fared
sumptuously; and then, like the bounteous lord that he was, he made all
his followers, of whatsoever degree, eat, drink, and be merry; and so
heartily did these true Saxons eat and drink, that of that same feast
they left nothing behind them for Torauld of Fescamp and his hungry
Normans. And when it was time to get gone, and they could drink no
more, Elfric and sub-sacrist went down to the cellars and set every
cask running, to the end that there should not be a drop of wine or a
drop of ale or a drop of mead to cool the throats of the disappointed
Frenchmen.
Then the Lord of Brunn and his merry men all took their departure from
the abbey of Peterborough, taking with them the chalices and pateras,
the crosses and candelabra, the shrine-plates and the reliquaries, the
diadems and the tables, the linens, the silks, and hangings, and
everything that was worth taking, and everything that Torauld of
Fescamp and his men-at-arms most wanted to find and seize. And thus did
the great house of Peterborough cease to be called the rich and begin
to be called miserably poor, _de aurea erat pauperrima_.[178]
Judge ye the wrath of that terrible false French abbat when he came to
the house at Peterborough, and heard and likewise saw all that had been
done! First he pulled at his own hair, and next he snatched at the
prior’s head and tore his hair away by handfuls. He would not believe
one jot of the tale that was told him about Hereward’s forcible entry
and seizures; he would believe nothing but that they were all in league
with the rebels and robbers of the fens, even as they had been when
Abbat Brand blessed the sword of Hereward and made him knight, and took
into his house a garrison of armed Saxons. The more they protested and
vowed, the more he disbelieved them; and this first conference between
these untrue Saxon monks and their choleric Norman abbat ended in
Torauld’s shouting, “Come hither, my men-at-arms, and fustigate these
liars!” And while the men-at-arms beat the commoner monks and the
lay-brothers of the house, Torauld himself tweaked the noses of the
superiors with his gauntleted hand, and drawing his heavy sword, he
applied the flat of it to the prior, the sacrist, the chamberlain, the
refectorarius, and all the rest of the officials, beating them all even
as he used to belabour his monks and novices in Normandie. But the true
English members of the house did not share in this pain and
humiliation, for the sub-sacrist and every one of them that was a good
Saxon had gone off with Lord Hereward more than an hour before. When he
grew tired of this his first hard lesson in ecclesiastical discipline,
Torauld caused the prior and the sacrist and every monk that had stayed
behind, to be thrown into the dungeon of the house, and there he kept
them two days and two nights without food and drink.
Some few of the new Lord Abbat of Peterborough’s men-at-arms thought,
that instead of fustigating the English monks, they ought to have
followed Hereward and the English soldiers, and have made an effort to
recover the good things they had carried off; but Torauld, who was bold
only where there was no chance of resistance, would not venture a
pursuit after an alert and most daring enemy into a difficult country;
and so he swore to his people that the Saxon robbers must have been
gone, not one, but more than three hours before his arrival; that
instead of counting sixty men, they were six hundred strong at the very
least. Whether they were sixty or six hundred, none of the men-at-arms
who knew anything concerning the fenny country were at all eager for
the pursuit, albeit they all imagined that the treasure which Lord
Hereward had carried off with him from the abbey was great enough to
pay for a king’s ransom.
Thus the new Norman Abbat and his unpriestly and ungodly men entered
upon possession of the ancient abbey of Peterborough: but feast that
day was there none.