Imagine the surprise with which such men (including Etienne, Pierre, and the other late companions of the unhappy Wilfred) learned that the monastery had caught fire accidentally in the night, and that so sudden had been the conflagration that none had escaped.
None! No; so far as men could discover. The priory built by Offa of Aescendune was a heap of smoking embers, and monks were there none, neither had any heard aught of the English heir of Aescendune.
The poor English who yet remained in the village were weeping over their lost friends, and the very Norman men-at-arms were hushed in the presence of their sorrow.
The shades of evening fell upon the desolate ruins, but nought had occurred to alleviate the calamity: all seemed to have perished unaided in the suddenness of their destruction--a thing improbable--unheard of--yet so it was.
All seemed over--the English brethren and their guest blotted out from the earth. And none looked more contented than Baron Hugo.
[CHAPTER VIII]. VAE VICTIS.
If the Conqueror had really intended to govern the English justly, like his great predecessor Canute, circumstances over which he had small control were against him; when he committed himself to an unjust war of aggression against an unoffending people, for if Harold had given him offence, England had given none, he entered upon a course of evil in which he could not pause.
Canute was a heathen during his darkest and bloodiest days; when he became a Christian, his worst deeds lay behind him, and the whole course of his reign was a progress from evil to good, the scene brightening each day. This, our Second Chronicle sufficiently illustrates.
But William had no such excuse; he bore a high reputation for piety--as piety was understood in his day, before the invasion of England--he was, says a contemporary author, "a diligent student of Scripture, a devout communicant, and a model to prelates and judges."
But after ambition led him to stain his soul with the blood shed at Senlac, his career was one upon which the clouds gathered more thickly each day; his Norman followers clamoured for their promised rewards, and he yielded to this temptation, and spoiled Englishmen, thane after thane, to satisfy this greed, until the once wealthy lords of the soil were driven to beg their bread, or to work as slaves on the land they had once owned.