[27] Sir James Mackintosh.
[28] The White Ship.
[29] Torture-chamber.
[30] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
[31] The scutage, or escutcheon-tax, was so called because it was due from all persons who possessed a knight's fee, or an estate which would maintain a man-at-arms, provided he failed to present himself at the stated time with his écu, escutcheon, or shield (Latin, scutum) upon his arm.
[32] On being told that he must die, Becket replied, "I resign myself to death; but I forbid you, in the name of the Almighty God, to injure any of those round me, whether monk or layman, great or small."
[33] Gerald de Barry, commonly known as Giraldus Cambrensis (or Gerald the Welshman), was the grandson of a Norman and a Welshwoman, and was born in Wales. He was present in Ireland during the time of many of the events about to be related.
[34] His words are: "King Edward the Confessor commanded the church at Westminster to be dedicated on Innocents' Day. He was buried on the day of the Epiphany, in the said church, which he first in England had erected after that kind of style, which almost all attempt to rival, at enormous expense."
[35] See Hudson Turner's "Domestic Architecture."
[36] It was a common belief among the people of this superstitious age that the Jews were guilty of the practice of sorcery.