Now the abbot coming to our council, as if he were one of us, said to us in private, that he was willing enough to do us right, according to the best of his ability, but that he, nevertheless, was bound to proceed in due course of law; nor could he, without the judgment of a court, disseise his free men of their lands or rents, which they had held for many years, were it justly or unjustly. If he should do this, he said, he should fall into the King's mercy by the assize of the realm. Therefore, the burgesses, taking counsel together, offered to the convent a rent of one hundred shillings for the sake of peace; and that they should hold their tenements as they had been wont to do. But we, on the other hand, were by no means willing to grant this, rather desiring to put that plaint in respite, hoping, perhaps, in the time of another abbot, to recover all, or change the place of the fair; and so the affair was deferred for many years.
When the abbot had returned from Germany, the burgesses offered him sixty marks, and sued for his confirmation of the liberties of the town, under the same form of words as Anselm, and Ording, and Hugh had confirmed them; all which the abbot graciously accorded. Notwithstanding our murmuring and grumbling, a charter was accordingly made to them in the terms of his promise; and because it would have been a shame and confusion to him if he had not been able to fulfil his promise, we were not willing to contradict him, or provoke him to anger.
The burgesses, indeed, from the period when they had the charter of Abbot Samson and the convent, became more confident that they, at least in the time of Abbot Samson, would not lose their tenements or their franchises; so that never afterwards, as they did before, were they willing to pay or offer the before-named rent of one hundred shillings. At length, however, the abbot giving attention to this matter, discoursed with the burgesses hereupon, saying that unless they made their peace with the convent, he should forbid their erecting their booths at the fair of St. Edmund.
They, on the other hand, answered that they were willing to give every year a silken cope, or some other ornament, to the value of one hundred shillings, as they had before promised to do; but nevertheless, upon this condition, that they were to be for ever quit of the tithes of their profits, which the sacrist sharply demanded of them. The abbot and the sacrist both refused this, and therefore the plaint was again put in respite.
In point of fact, we have from that time to the present lost those hundred shillings, according to the old saying, "He that will not when he may, when he will he shall have nay."
CHAPTER X
troubles within
THE cellarers quickly succeeded each other, and every one of them at the year's end became involved in a great debt. There were given to the cellarer, in aid, twenty pounds out of Mildenhall, but this did not suffice. After that, fifty pounds were assigned to the cellarer each year from the same manor; and yet the cellarer used to say that this was not enough. The abbot, therefore, being anxious to provide for his security from loss and comfort, as well as for our own, knowing that in all our wants we must have recourse to him as to the father of the monastery, associated with the cellarer a certain clerk of his own table, by name Ranulf, so that he might assist him both as a witness and companion in the expenses and receipts. And lo! many of us speak many things, murmurings thicken, falsehoods are invented, scandals are interwoven with scandals, nor is there a corner in the house which does not resound with venomous hissing.
One says to another, "What is this that is done? Who ever saw the like? There never was such an insult offered to the convent before. Behold! the abbot has set a clerk over a monk; see, he has made a clerk a master and keeper over the cellarer, as if he could do no good without him. The abbot thinks but lightly of his monks; he suspects his monks; he consults clerks; he loves clerks. 'How is the gold become dim! How is the fine gold changed!'" Also one friend says to another, "We are become a reproach to our neighbours. All of us monks are either reckoned faithless or improvident; the clerk is believed, the monk is not. The abbot had rather trust the clerk than the monk. Now is this clerk a whit more faithful or wise than a monk would be?"
And again, one friend would say to another, "Are not the cellarer and sub-cellarer, or can they not be, as faithful as the sacrist or the chamberlain? The consequence is, that this abbot or his successor will put a clerk along with the sacrist, a clerk with the chamberlain, a clerk with the sub-sacrists to collect the offerings at the shrine, and so on with all the officials, wherefore we shall be a laughing-stock and derision to the whole people."