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CHAPTER XXXVII. – HOW HEREWARD LOST SWORD BRAIN-BITER
“On account of which,” says the chronicler, “many troubles came to Hereward: because Torfrida was most wise, and of great counsel in need. For afterwards, as he himself confessed, things went not so well with him as they did in her time.”
And the first thing that went ill was this. He was riding through the Bruneswald, and behind him Geri, Wenoch, and Matelgar, these three. And there met him in an open glade a knight, the biggest man he had ever seen, on the biggest horse, and five knights behind him. He was an Englishman, and not a Frenchman, by his dress; and Hereward spoke courteously enough to him. But who he was, and what his business was in the Bruneswald, Hereward thought that he had a right to ask.
“Tell me who thou art, who askest, before I tell thee who I am who am asked, riding here on common land,” quoth the knight, surlily enough.
“I am Hereward, without whose leave no man has ridden the Bruneswald for many a day.”
“And I am Letwold the Englishman, who rides whither he will in merry England, without care for any Frenchman upon earth.”
“Frenchman? Why callest thou me Frenchman, man? I am Hereward.”
“Then thou art, if tales be true, as French as Ivo Taillebois. I hear that thou hast left thy true lady, like a fool and a churl, and goest to London, or Winchester, or the nether pit,—I care not which,—to make thy peace with the Mamzer.”
The man was a surly brute: but what he said was so true, that Hereward’s wrath arose. He had promised Torfrida many a time, never to quarrel with an Englishman, but to endure all things. Now, out of very spite to Torfrida’s counsel, because it was Torfrida’s, and he had promised to obey it, he took up the quarrel.
“If I am a fool and a churl, thou art a greater fool, to provoke thine own death; and a greater—”
“Spare your breath,” said the big man, “and let me try Hereward, as I have many another.”
Whereon they dropped their lance-points, and rode at each other like two mad bulls. And, by the contagion of folly common in the middle age, at each other rode Hereward’s three knights and Letwold’s five. The two leaders found themselves both rolling on the ground; jumped up, drew their swords, and hewed away at each other. Geri unhorsed his man at the first charge, and left him stunned. Then he turned on another, and did the same by him. Wenoch and Matelgar each upset their man. The fifth of Letwold’s knights threw up his lance-point, not liking his new company. Geri and the other two rode in on the two chiefs, who were fighting hard, each under shield.
“Stand back!” roared Hereward, “and give the knight fair play! When did any one of us want a man to help him? Kill or die single, has been our rule, and shall be.”
They threw up their lance-points, and stood round to see that great fight. Letwold’s knight rode in among them, and stood likewise; and friend and foe looked on, as they might at a pair of game-cocks.
Hereward had, to his own surprise and that of his fellows, met his match. The sparks flew, the iron clanged; but so heavy were the stranger’s strokes, that Hereward reeled again and again. So sure was the guard of his shield, that Hereward could not wound him, hit where he would. At last he dealt a furious blow on the stranger’s head.
“If that does not bring your master down!” quoth Geri. “By—, Brain-biter is gone!”
It was too true. Sword Brain-biter’s end was come. The Ogre’s magic blade had snapt off short by the handle.
“Your master is a true Englishman, by the hardness of his brains,” quoth Wenoch, as the stranger, reeling for a moment, lifted up his head, and stared at Hereward in the face, doubtful what to do.
“Will you yield, or fight on?” cried he.
“Yield?” shouted Hereward, rushing upon him, as a mastiff might on a lion, and striking at his helm, though shorter than him by a head and shoulders, such swift and terrible blows with the broken hilt, as staggered the tall stranger.
“What are you at, forgetting what you have at your side?” roared Geri.
Hereward sprang back. He had, as was his custom, a second sword on his right thigh.
“I forget everything now,” said he to himself angrily.
And that was too true. But he drew the second sword, and sprang at his man once more.
The stranger tried, according to the chronicler, who probably had it from one of the three by-standers, a blow which has cost many a brave man his life. He struck right down on Hereward’s head. Hereward raised his shield, warding the stroke, and threw in that coup de jarret, which there is no guarding, after the downright blow has been given. The stranger dropped upon his wounded knee.
“Yield,” cried Hereward in his turn.
“That is not my fashion.” And the stranger fought on, upon his stumps, like Witherington in Chevy Chase.
Hereward, mad with the sight of blood, struck at him four or five times. The stranger’s shield was so quick that he could not hit him, even on his knee. He held his hand, and drew back, looking at his new rival.
“What the murrain are we two fighting about?” said he at last.
“I know not; neither care,” said the other, with a grim chuckle. “But if any man will fight me, him I fight, ever since I had beard to my chin.”
“Thou art the best man that ever I faced.”
“That is like enough.”
“What wilt thou take, if I give thee thy life?”
“My way on which I was going. For I turn back for no man alive on land.”
“Then thou hast not had enough of me?”
“Not by another hour.”
“Thou must be born of fiend, and not of man.”
“Very like. It is a wise son knows his own father.”
Hereward burst out laughing.
“Would to heaven I had had thee for my man this three years since.”
“Perhaps I would not have been thy man.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have been my own man ever since I was born, and am well content with myself for my master.”
“Shall I bind up thy leg?” asked Hereward, having no more to say, and not wishing to kill the man.
“No. It will grow again, like a crab’s claw.”
“Thou art a fiend.” And Hereward turned away, sulky, and half afraid.
“Very like. No man knows what a devil he is, till he tries.”
“What dost mean?” and Hereward turned angrily back.
“Fiends we are all, till God’s grace comes.”
“Little grace has come to thee yet, by thy ungracious tongue.”
“Rough to men, may be gracious to women.”
“What hast thou to do with women’?” asked Hereward, fiercely.
“I have a wife, and I love her.”
“Thou art not like to get back to her to-day.”
“I fear not, with this paltry scratch. I had looked for a cut from thee, would have saved me all fighting henceforth.”
“What dost mean?” asked Hereward, with an oath.
“That my wife is in heaven, and I would needs follow her.”
Hereward got on his horse, and rode away. Never could he find out who that Sir Letwold was, or how he came into the Bruneswald. All he knew was, that he never had had such a fight since he wore beard; and that he had lost sword Brainbiter: from which his evil conscience augured that his luck had turned, and that he should lose many things beside.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. – HOW HEREWARD CAME IN TO THE KING
After these things Hereward summoned all his men, and set before them the hopelessness of any further resistance, and the promises of amnesty, lands, and honors which William had offered him, and persuaded them—and indeed he had good arguments enough and to spare—that they should go and make their peace with the King.
They were so accustomed to look up to his determination, that when it gave way theirs gave way likewise. They were so accustomed to trust his wisdom, that most of them yielded at once to his arguments. That the band should break up, all agreed. A few of the more suspicious, or more desperate, said that they could never trust the Norman; that Hereward himself had warned them again and again of his treachery. That he was now going to do himself what he had laughed at Gospatrick and the rest for doing; what had brought ruin on Edwin and Morcar; what he had again and again prophesied would bring ruin on Waltheof himself ere all was over.
But Hereward was deaf to their arguments. He had said as little to them as he could about Alftruda, for very shame; but he was utterly besotted on her. For her sake, he had determined to run his head blindly into the very snare of which he had warned others. And he had seared—so he fancied—his conscience. It was Torfrida’s fault now, not his. If she left him,—if she herself freed him of her own will,—why, he was free, and there was no more to be said about it.
And Hereward (says the chronicler) took Gwenoch, Geri, and Matelgar, and rode south to the King.
Where were the two young Siwards? It is not said. Probably they, and a few desperadoes, followed the fashion of so many English in those sad days,—when, as sings the Norse scald,
“Cold heart and bloody hand
Now rule English land,”—
and took ship for Constantinople, and enlisted in the Varanger guard, and died full of years and honors, leaving fair-haired children behind them, to become Varangers in their turn.
Be that as it may, Hereward rode south. But when he had gotten a long way upon the road, a fancy (says the chronicler) came over him. He was not going in pomp and glory enough. It seemed mean for the once great Hereward to sneak into Winchester with three knights. Perhaps it seemed not over safe for the once great Hereward to travel with only three knights. So he went back all the way to camp, and took (says the chronicler) “forty most famous knights, all big and tall of stature, and splendid,—if from nothing else, from their looks and their harness alone.”
So Hereward and those forty knights rode down from Peterborough, along the Roman road. For the Roman roads were then, and for centuries after, the only roads in this land; and our forefathers looked on them as the work of gods and giants, and called them after the names of their old gods and heroes,—Irmen Street, Watling Street, and so forth.
And then, like true Englishmen, our own forefathers showed their respect for the said divine works, not by copying them, but by picking them to pieces to pave every man his own court-yard. Be it so. The neglect of new roads, the destruction of the old ones, was a natural evil consequence of local self-government. A cheap price, perhaps, after all, to pay for that power of local self-government which has kept England free unto this day.
Be that as it may, down the Roman road Hereward went; past Alconbury Hill, of the old posting days; past Wimpole Park, then deep forest; past Hatfield, then deep forest likewise; and so to St. Alban’s. And there they lodged in the minster; for the monks thereof were good English, and sang masses daily for King Harold’s soul. And the next day they went south, by ways which are not so clear.
Just outside St. Alban’s—Verulamium of the Romans (the ruins whereof were believed to be full of ghosts, demons, and magic treasures)—they turned, at St. Stephen’s, to the left, off the Roman road to London; and by another Roman road struck into the vast forest which ringed London round from northeast to southwest. Following the upper waters of the Colne, which ran through the woods on their left, they came to Watford, and then turned probably to Rickmansworth. No longer on the Roman paved ways, they followed horse-tracks, between the forest and the rich marsh-meadows of the Colne, as far as Denham, and then struck into a Roman road again at the north end of Langley Park. From thence, over heathy commons,—for that western part of Buckinghamshire, its soil being light and some gravel, was little cultivated then, and hardly all cultivated now,—they held on straight by Langley town into the Vale of Thames.
Little they dreamed, as they rode down by Ditton Green, off the heathy commons, past the poor, scattered farms, on to the vast rushy meadows, while upon them was the dull weight of disappointment, shame, all but despair; their race enslaved, their country a prey to strangers, and all its future, like their own, a lurid blank,—little they dreamed of what that vale would be within eight hundred years,—the eye of England, and it may be of the world; a spot which owns more wealth and peace, more art and civilization, more beauty and more virtue, it may be, than any of God’s gardens which make fair this earth. Windsor, on its crowned steep, was to them but a new hunting palace of the old miracle-monger Edward, who had just ruined England. Runnymede, a mile below them down the broad stream, was but a horse-fen fringed with water-lilies, where the men of Wessex had met of old to counsel, and to bring the country to this pass. And as they crossed, by ford or ferry-boat, the shallows of old Windsor, whither they had been tending all along, and struck into the moorlands of Wessex itself, they were as men going into an unknown wilderness: behind them ruin, and before them unknown danger.
On through Windsor Forest, Edward the Saint’s old hunting-ground; its bottoms choked with beech and oak, and birch and alder scrub; its upper lands vast flats of level heath; along the great trackway which runs along the lower side of Chobham Camp, some quarter of a mile broad, every rut and trackway as fresh at this day as when the ancient Briton, finding that his neighbor’s essedum—chariot, or rather cart—had worn the ruts too deep, struck out a fresh wandering line for himself across the dreary heath.
Over the Blackwater by Sandhurst, and along the flats of Hartford Bridge, where the old furze-grown ruts show the track-way to this day. Down into the clayland forests of the Andredsweald, and up out of them again at Basing, on to the clean crisp chalk turf; to strike at Popham Lane the Roman road from Silchester, and hold it over the high downs, till they saw far below them the royal city of Winchester.
Itchen, silver as they looked on her from above, but when they came down to her, so clear that none could see where water ended and where air began, hurried through the city in many a stream. Beyond it rose the “White Camp,”’ the “Venta Belgarum,” the circular earthwork of white chalk on the high down. Within the city rose the ancient minster church, built by Ethelwold,—ancient even then,—where slept the ancient kings; Kennulf, Egbert, and Ethelwulf the Saxons; and by them the Danes, Canute the Great, and Hardicanute his son, and Norman Emma his wife, and Ethelred’s before him; and the great Earl Godwin, who seemed to Hereward to have died, not twenty, but two hundred years ago;—and it may be an old Saxon hall upon the little isle whither Edgar had bidden bring the heads of all the wolves in Wessex, where afterwards the bishops built Wolvesey Palace. But nearer to them, on the down which sloped up to the west, stood an uglier thing, which they saw with curses deep and loud,—the keep of the new Norman castle by the west gate.
Hereward halted his knights upon the down outside the northern gate. Then he rode forward himself. The gate was open wide; but he did not care to go in.
So he rode into the gateway, and smote upon that gate with his lance-but. But the porter saw the knights upon the down, and was afraid to come out; for he feared treason.
Then Hereward smote a second time; but the porter did not come out.
Then he took the lance by the shaft, and smote a third time. And he smote so hard, that the lance-but flew to flinders against Winchester Gate.
And at that started out two knights, who had come down from the castle, seeing the meinie on the down, and asked,—
“Who art thou who knockest here so bold?”
“Who I am any man can see by those splinters, if he knows what men are left in England this day.”
The knights looked at the broken wood, and then at each other. Who could the man be who could beat an ash stave to flinders at a single blow?
“You are young, and do not know me; and no shame to you. Go and tell William the King, that Hereward is come to put his hands between the King’s, and be the King’s man henceforth.”
“You are Hereward?” asked one, half awed, half disbelieving at Hereward’s short stature.
“You are—I know not who. Pick up those splinters, and take them to King William; and say, ‘The man who broke that lance against the gate is here to make his peace with thee,’ and he will know who I am.”
And so cowed were these two knights with Hereward’s royal voice, and royal eye, and royal strength, that they went simply, and did what he bade them.
And when King William saw the splinters, he was as joyful as man could be, and said,—
“Send him to me, and tell him, Bright shines the sun to me that lights Hereward into Winchester.”
“But, Lord King, he has with him a meinie of full forty knights.”
“So much the better. I shall have the more valiant Englishmen to help my valiant French.”
So Hereward rode round, outside the walls, to William’s new entrenched palace, outside the west gate, by the castle.
And then Hereward went in, and knelt before the Norman, and put his hands between William’s hands, and swore to be his man.
“I have kept my word,” said he, “which I sent to thee at Rouen seven years agone. Thou art King of all England; and I am the last man to say so.”
“And since thou hast said it, I am King indeed. Come with me, and dine; and to-morrow I will see thy knights.”
And William walked out of the hall leaning on Hereward’s shoulder, at which all the Normans gnashed their teeth with envy.
“And for my knights, Lord King? Thine and mine will mix, for a while yet, like oil and water; and I fear lest there be murder done between them.”
“Likely enough.”
So the knights were bestowed in a “vill” near by; “and the next day the venerable king himself went forth to see those knights, and caused them to stand, and march before him, both with arms, and without. With whom being much delighted, he praised them, congratulating them on their beauty and stature, and saying that they must all be knights of fame in war.” After which Hereward sent them all home except two; and waited till he should marry Alftruda, and get back his heritage.
“And when that happens,” said William, “why should we not have two weddings, beausire, as well as one? I hear that you have in Crowland a fair daughter, and marriageable.”
Hereward bowed.
“And I have found a husband for her suitable to her years, and who may conduce to your peace and serenity.”
Hereward bit his lip. To refuse was impossible in those days. But—
“I trust that your Grace has found a knight of higher lineage than him, whom, after so many honors, you honored with the hand of my niece.”
William laughed. It was not his interest to quarrel with Hereward. “Aha! Ivo, the wood-cutter’s son. I ask your pardon for that, Sir Hereward. Had you been my man then, as you are now, it might have been different.”
“If a king ask my pardon, I can only ask his in return.”
“You must be friends with Taillebois. He is a brave knight, and a wise warrior.”
“None ever doubted that.”
“And to cover any little blots in his escutcheon, I have made him an earl, as I may make you some day.”
“Your Majesty, like a true king, knows how to reward. Who is this knight whom you have chosen for my lass?”
“Sir Hugh of Evermue, a neighbor of yours, and a man of blood and breeding.”
“I know him, and his lineage; and it is very well. I humbly thank your Majesty.”
“Can I be the same man?” said Hereward to himself, bitterly.
And he was not the same man. He was besotted on Alftruda, and humbled himself accordingly.
CHAPTER XXXIX. – HOW TORFRIDA CONFESSED THAT SHE HAD BEEN INSPIRED BY THE DEVIL
After a few days, there came down a priest to Crowland, and talked with Torfrida, in Archbishop Lanfranc’s name.
Whether Lanfranc sent him, or merely (as is probable) Alftruda, he could not have come in a more fit name. Torfrida knew (with all the world) how Lanfranc had arranged William the Norman’s uncanonical marriage, with the Pope, by help of Archdeacon Hildebrand (afterwards Pope himself); and had changed his mind deftly to William’s side when he saw that William might be useful to Holy Church, and could enslave, if duly managed, not only the nation of England to himself, but the clergy of England to Rome. All this Torfrida, and the world, knew. And therefore she answered:—
“Lanfranc? I can hardly credit you: for I hear that he is a good man, though hard. But he has settled a queen’s marriage suit; so he may very well settle mine.”
After which they talked together; and she answered him, the priest said, so wisely and well, that he never had met with a woman of so clear a brain, or of so stout a heart.
At last, being puzzled to get that which he wanted, he touched on the matter of her marriage with Hereward.
She wished it, he said, dissolved. She wished herself to enter religion.
Archbishop Lanfranc would be most happy to sanction so holy a desire, but there were objections. She was a married woman; and her husband had not given his consent.
“Let him give it, then.”
“There were still objections. He had nothing to bring against her, which could justify the dissolution of the holy bond: unless—”
“Unless I bring some myself?”
“There have been rumors—I say not how true—of magic and sorcery!—”
Torfrida leaped up from her seat, and laughed such a laugh, that the priest said in after years, it rung through his head as if it had arisen out of the pit of the lost.
“So that is what you want, Churchman! Then you shall have it. Bring me pen and ink. I need not to confess to you. You shall read my confession when it is done. I am a better scribe, mind you, than any clerk between here and Paris.”
She seized the pen and ink, and wrote; not fiercely, as the priest expected, but slowly and carefully. Then she gave it the priest to read.
“Will that do, Churchman? Will that free my soul, and that of your French Archbishop?”
And the priest read to himself.
How Torfrida of St. Omer, born at Aries in Provence, confest that from her youth up she had been given to the practice of diabolic arts, and had at divers times and places used the same, both alone and with Richilda, late Countess of Hainault. How, wickedly, wantonly, and instinct with a malignant spirit, she had compassed, by charms and spells, to win the love of Hereward. How she had ever since kept in bondage him, and others whom she had not loved with the same carnal love, but only desired to make them useful to her own desire of power and glory, by the same magical arts; for which she now humbly begged pardon of Holy Church, and of all Christian folk; and, penetrated with compunction, desired only that she might retire into the convent of Crowland. She asserted the marriage which she had so unlawfully compassed to be null and void; and prayed to be released therefrom, as a burden to her conscience and soul, that she might spend the rest of her life in penitence for her many enormous sins. She submitted herself to the judgment of Holy Church, only begging that this her free confession might be counted in her favor and that she might not be put to death, as she deserved, nor sent into perpetual imprisonment; because her mother-in-law according to the flesh, the Countess Godiva, being old and infirm, had daily need of her; and she wished to serve her menially as long as she lived. After which, she put herself utterly upon the judgment of the Church. And meanwhile, she desired and prayed that she might be allowed to remain at large in the said monastery of Crowland, not leaving the precincts thereof, without special leave given by the Abbot and prioress in one case between her and them reserved; to wear garments of hair-cloth; to fast all the year on bread and water; and to be disciplined with rods or otherwise, at such times as the prioress should command, and to such degree as her body, softened with carnal luxury, could reasonably endure. And beyond—that, being dead to the world, God might have mercy on her soul.
And she meant what she said. The madness of remorse and disappointment, so common in the wild middle age, had come over her; and with it the twin madness of self-torture.
The priest read, and trembled; not for Torfrida: but for himself, lest she should enchant him after all.
“She must have been an awful sinner,” said he to the monks when he got safe out of the room; “comparable only to the witch of Endor, or the woman Jezebel, of whom St. John writes in the Revelations.”
“I do not know how you Frenchmen measure folks, when you see them; but to our mind she is,—for goodness, humility, and patience comparable only to an angel of God,” said Abbot Ulfketyl.
“You Englishmen will have to change your minds on many points, if you mean to stay here.”
“We shall not change them, and we shall stay here,” quoth the Abbot.
“How? You will not get Sweyn and his Danes to help you a second time.”
“No, we shall all die, and give you your wills, and you will not have the heart to cast our bones into the fens?”
“Not unless you intend to work miracles, and set up for saints, like your Alphege Edmund.”
“Heaven forbid that we should compare ourselves with them! Only let us alone till we die.”
“If you let us alone, and do not turn traitor meanwhile.”
Abbot Ulfketyl bit his lip, and kept down the rising fiend.
“And now,” said the priest, “deliver me over Torfrida the younger, daughter of Hereward and this woman, that I may take her to the King, who has found a fit husband for her.”
“You will hardly get her.”
“Not get her?”
“Not without her mother’s consent. The lass cares for naught but her.”
“Pish! that sorceress? Send for the girl.”
Abbot Ulfketyl, forced in his own abbey, great and august lord though he was, to obey any upstart of a Norman priest who came backed by the King and Lanfranc, sent for the lass.
The young outlaw came in,—hawk on fist, and its hood off, for it was a pet,—short, sturdy, upright, brown-haired, blue-eyed, ill-dressed, with hard hands and sun-burnt face, but with the hawk-eye of her father and her mother, and the hawks among which she was bred. She looked the priest over from head to foot, till he was abashed.
“A Frenchman!” said she, and she said no more.
The priest looked at her eyes, and then at the hawk’s eyes. They were disagreeably like each other. He told his errand as courteously as he could, for he was not a bad-hearted man for a Norman priest.
The lass laughed him to scorn. The King’s commands? She never saw a king in the greenwood, and cared for none. There was no king in England now, since Sweyn Ulfsson sailed back to Denmark. Who was this Norman William, to sell a free English lass like a colt or a cow? The priest might go back to the slaves of Wessex, and command them if he could; but in the fens, men were free, and lasses too.
The priest was piously shocked and indignant; and began to argue.
She played with her hawk, instead of listening, and then was marching out of the room.
“Your mother,” said he, “is a sorceress.”
“You are a knave, or set on by knaves. You lie, and you know you lie.” And she turned away again.
“She has confessed it.”
“You have driven her mad between you, till she will confess anything. I presume you threatened to burn her, as some of you did awhile back.” And the young lady made use of words equally strong and true.
The priest was not accustomed to the direct language of the greenwood, and indignant on his own account, threatened, and finally offered to use, force. Whereon there looked up into his face such a demon (so he said) as he never had seen or dreamed of, and said:
“If you lay a finger on me, I will brittle you like any deer.” And therewith pulled out a saying-knife, about half as long again as the said priest’s hand, being very sharp, so he deposed, down the whole length of one edge, and likewise down his little finger’s length of the other.
Not being versed in the terms of English venery, he asked Abbot Ulfketyl what brittling of a deer might mean; and being informed that it was that operation on the carcass of a stag which his countrymen called eventrer, and Highland gillies now “gralloching,” he subsided, and thought it best to go and consult the young lady’s mother.
She, to his astonishment, submitted at once and utterly. The King, and he whom she had called her husband, were very gracious. It was all well. She would have preferred, and the Lady Godiva too, after their experience of the world and the flesh, to have devoted her daughter to Heaven in the minster there. But she was unworthy. Who was she, to train a bride for Him who died on Cross? She accepted this as part of her penance, with thankfulness and humility. She had heard that Sir Hugh of Evermue was a gentleman of ancient birth and good prowess, and she thanked the King for his choice. Let the priest tell her daughter that she commanded her to go with him to Winchester. She did not wish to see her. She was stained with many crimes, and unworthy to approach a pure maiden. Besides, it would only cause misery and tears. She was trying to die to the world and to the flesh; and she did not wish to reawaken their power within her. Yes. It was very well. “Let the lass go with him.”
“Thou art indeed a true penitent,” said the priest, his human heart softening him.
“Thou art very much mistaken,” said she, and turned away.
The girl, when she heard her mother’s command, wept, shrieked, and went. At least she was going to her father. And from wholesome fear of that same saying-knife, the priest left her in peace all the way to Winchester.
After which, Abbot Ulfketyl went into his lodgings, and burst, like a noble old nobleman as he was, into bitter tears of rage and shame.
But Torfrida’s eyes were as dry as her own sackcloth.
The priest took the letter back to Winchester, and showed it—it may be to Archbishop Lanfranc. But what he said, this chronicler would not dare to say. For he was a very wise man, and a very stanch and strong pillar of the Holy Roman Church. Meanwhile, he was man enough not to require that anything should be added to Torfrida’s penance; and that was enough to prove him a man in those days,—at least for a churchman,—as it proved Archbishop or St. Ailred to be, a few years after, in the case of the nun of Watton, to be read in Gale’s “Scriptores Anglicaniae.” Then he showed the letter to Alftruda.
