A Legend of Reading Abbey

, we all proceeded thitherward, amidst the rejoicings and blessings of all the people. Right glad were they all for the destruction of Sir Ingelric's stronghold! Had it been the fitting sea

rom the doing of good." And our good vassals of the township, and the franklins of Reading and the vicinage, were all there in their holiday clothes, and our near-dwelling serfs in their cleanest sheep-skin jackets, shouting and throwing up their caps; our abbey bells ringing out lustily and merrily the while. Needs not to say that we sang our best in the choir at that Te Deum, or that the feast which was ready by the hour of noon was sumptuous and mirthful. Nor was the joy less that evening in the castle at Cave

first brought home, but in a brief space of time they were plump and ruddy with health. The little maiden was then in her sixth year; the little lord, as hath been said, only in his tenth. T

he rest of the plate we restored to the lawful owners thereof when we could discover them, which, sooth to say, did not happen on every occasion. Of the money which was not thought to be our own we did make two portions, and gave one to the poor and sent the other to King Stephen, who ever needed more

stern parts, and was there confined in a solitary and very strong house of religion that stood on the sea-shore. Of the other prisone

princely boy Henry remained in Bristowe Castle, or about that fair western country by the shores of the broad Severn, or on the banks of the Avon; but some of her partisans had made themselves formidable at Sarum; and to check the incursions of these the king turned the nunnery at Wilton into a castle, driving out the chaste sisterhood and girding their once quiet abode with bulwarks and battlements. But while he was upon this ill-judged work the great Robert, Earl of Gloucester, on the first of the kalends of July, fell suddenly upon his encamped army, and by surprise and superiority of force did gain a great victory over King Stephen. The king with his brother the bishop fled with shame, and the earl's men took the king's people and his plate and money-chest, and other things. Among the men of name that were taken at Wilton was William Martell, the great favourite and sewer to the king, who was sent to Wallingford Castle, that terrible stronghold of Brian Fitzcount, which few men could mention without turning pale. Thus sundry more years passed with variable successes, and every year heaped on each side fresh calamities, to the great ruin of the whole land. And still both parties brought over their hungry bands of adventurer

I ween the Ladie Alfgiva had a great care taken of him when she saw how sad he was, and how fast wasting. But neither cook nor leach, neither generous wine nor comfortable words, could restore strength, or infuse hope, or induce a composure and tranquillity of mind, or keep poor John any long season among us. His heart seemed broken within him; and there was a flush on his wasted cheek, and then a terrible coughing. So at last my whilome companion being able

his same year of woe; and that great partisan of the countess, Robert Marmion, was slain in a fierce fight at Coventry; and Geoffrey Mandeville, Earl of Essex, was slain at Burwell; and Ernulphus, Earl Mandeville's son, was taken after his father's death and banished the land. There seemed no end to these slayings and banishings

ness upon the tower; as was noted by all the brotherhood, who did please to say that it was a good omen, portending that I should rise high in office, and be an ornament and shining light to the house: and truly since then I have passed through offices of trust and honour, and my name hath been made known unto some of our order in foreign parts, and I am now by the grace of our ladie sub-prior of this royal abbey of Reading. Also is it to be noted that in this important year we, the monks of Reading, were enabled to keep our great fair in the Falbury, on the day of St. Lawrence and the three days next following, according to the particular charter of privilege granted by our founder Henricus Primus, who commanded in the aforesaid charter that no people should be hindered or troubled either in their

death was now upon him, and the great earl died soon after the departure of Henry Fitz-empress, and was buried at Bristowe in the choir of the church of St. James, which he had founded. And no long while after the departure of her son and the death of her valorous half-brother, the countess, to the great trouble of her husband, quitted England and went into Anjou; and King Stephen, surprising and vanquishing his enemy the Earl of Chester, who had gotten possession of Lincoln town, did triumphantly enter into that town and abide there, which no king durst do before him, for that certain wizards had prophesied evil luck to any king that went into Lincoln town. Being thus within Lincoln, and somewhat elated with the smiles of capricious fortune, King Stephen summoned the great barons and magnates of the land unto him, and at the solemnization of the Nativity of our Lord, he wore the regal crown upon his head, or, as others have it, he was re-crowned and consecrated anew in the mother church at Lincoln; and having the crown of England, to all seeming, firmly fixed on his brow, he caused the magnates all to swear allegiance to his son Prince Eustace as his lawful successor in the realm. No great man gainsayed the king, but all present made a great show of loyalty and affection as well to the son as to the father. Many there were of them who had no truth or steadiness in their hearts; but Sir Alain, our good Lord of Caversham, was there, and likewise the young

the pope. For it must ever be acknowledged that the triple crown of Rome is more than the crown of England, and that the head of the holy Roman Apostolic and Catholic church hath a power supreme in spiritualities over all the kings of Christendom. Nevertheless did King Stephen in an ill hour give a doom of exile against the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, for that he had attended at the bidding of the pope, but without consent of the king, a great council of the church in the city of Rheims, in France. Instead of submitting to this sentence, the archbishop went and put himself under the protection of Hugh Bigod, the powerful Earl of Norfolk, who was of the Angevin faction, and then put forth a sentence of interdict against King Stephen, and all that part of the kingdom which obeyed the usurper. In the west country, and in some parts of the east and north, the priests shut up their churches and refused to perform any of the offices of religion. Good men went between the king and the primate, and after two years a reconciliation was brought about, Stephen agreeing to be the most bountiful king and the best friend of the church that the church had ever yet known in this land. Yet when Archbishop Theobald was called upon to recognise and anoint Prince Eustace as heir to the throne, he refused to do it, saying that he was forbidden by our lord the pope, and that Stephen, being a usurper, could not, like a legitimate sovereign, transmit his crown to his posterity. The king, unto whom the archbishop had taken the oath of allegiance, waxed wroth, and threatened the archbishop with a punishment sharper than banishment; but, wh

country, to keep in check the Angevin party to the westward; and whenever he was not engaged in these duties of war, the young Lord Arthur came to his home. The winter season allowed him the longest repose, and thus it befel that the Ladie Alfgiva and that little maiden which I and Philip, the lay-brother, did first convey to Caversham, became sad instead of gay at the advance of spring. But Alice was no longer the little maiden that could lie perdue in a basket, and there had already been many discourses and conjectures as to the day when she and the young Lord Arthur would be made one by holy church; for the great love that had been between them from the days of their childhood was known

re came a secret emissary to offer him one of the greatest earldoms in England, and one of the richest and noblest damsels in Anjou as a bride for his son. Sir Alain bound the emissary with cords, like a felon spy, and sent him and his papers and credential signets unto King Stephen. No mind was ruffled in Caversham Castle upon this occurrence except the tender mind of Alice, who bethought her that she was but a poor portionless maiden, the daughter of a proscribed man whose estates had long been confiscated and held by the king; but Arthur saw and soon chased away thes

d it was not long after that I became sub-sacrist in our abbey

hen's great grief, the good Queen Maud,