=Source.=--Florence of Worcester, _Chronicon_, ed. Thorpe, vol. ii., p.
16.
A disgraceful dispute arose between the monks of Glastonbury and abbot
Thurstan, unworthy of the name of abbot, a man of no tact, whom king
William had preferred to the said place from the monastery of Caen.
Among his other acts of stupidity he attempted to compel the monks
to forsake the Gregorian chant, which he despised, and to learn and
sing the chant of one William of Fécamp. When they took this ill, for
they had now grown old in the use of this chant and in the rest of
the ecclesiastical offices according to the practice of the church of
Rome, suddenly with a band of armed men he rushed one day into the
chapter-house, the monks suspecting nothing, pursued them as they fled
in terror into the church as far as the altar, and there the armed men,
piercing with darts and arrows the crosses and images and shrines of
the saints, even slew one of the monks with a spear, as he clung to
the holy altar, while another fell at the altar’s edge, pierced with
arrows, and the rest, driven by necessity, defended themselves with
benches and candlesticks, and though sorely wounded, drove the knights
back beyond the choir; in the result two of the monks were killed
and fourteen wounded, and some of the knights also were wounded. The
matter was brought to judgment, and since the greatest blame rested
on the abbot, the king removed him and sent him back to his monastery
in Normandy. Many of the monks, however, were dispersed by the king’s
command among bishoprics and abbeys, to be kept under guard. After the
king’s death, the same abbot again purchased his abbey from the king’s
son king William for 500_l._ of silver, and after wandering for some
years among the possessions of the church, wretchedly ended his life
far from the monastery itself, as he justly deserved.