| [254] | See [Note], page [410]; and Appendix, [Note K]. |
| [255] | He went in Aug., 1072. |
| [256] | This, as has been shown, occurred before the invasion of Scotland. |
| [257] | See Appendix for account of Cnut’s crossing the ice under the guidance of Brithmer (as given in Lib. Elien.) [Note N]. |
| [258] | The writer very ingeniously brings a religieux from the minster founded by Harold to reconcile Hereward to a submission to the Conqueror; he was not a monk however. Waltham was not then an Abbey. Harold rebuilt a church there, established a College of secular Canons, with a Dean at their head, and brought over from the continent a learned man, named Adelhard, as a lecturer in this college. (Here is an indication that Harold was a man of progress.) Now of course an appeal from one attached to Harold’s minster at Waltham would be as forcible as any that could be conceived, and especially when it was attended by the assurance that Harold’s dead body lay within the precincts of the church. Waltham was erected into an Abbey in the reign of Henry II. and it is notable that the body of Edward the First was buried by the side of that of Harold, in 1307—(though it was afterwards translated to Westminster Abbey); “the king with whom England fell might greet his first true successor in the king with whom she rose again.”—(Freeman.) The devastations of other centuries have swept away all traces of the tomb of Harold from Waltham—as they have also every vestige of the tomb of Waltheof or of Hereward at Crowland—or even the shrine of Ætheldreda at Ely. |
| [259] | We learn from William of Malmesbury that it very early acquired considerable riches:—“Quantitatem possessionum antiquarum ex hoc conice, quod licet plura dempta, plura usurpata, is, qui modo rem regit, mille et. cccctas. libras marsupio suo quotannis annumeret.”—Gesta Pont. Ang., lib. IV., § 184. |
| [260] | “Ramesiensis abbatiæ fuit edificator Sanctus Oswaldus, Eboracensis Archiepiscopus, cooperate Egelwine quodam Orientalium Anglorum comite.”—Gesta Pont. Ang. lib. IV. § 181. |
| [261] | See Warner’s History of Thorney Abbey, p. 17. |
| [262] | We can hardly agree with Mr. Warner when he says (on p. 12), “That any human being lived on so dreary a spot, at least till the 7th century, is highly improbable,” for we believe that the Kelts occupied the fen islands, and perhaps the hunting folks who peopled our land before the Kelts came did the same. Thorney may have been “a paradise” at other periods than in William of Malmesbury’s time. |
| [263] | It may really have been begun by Paeda, king of Mercia, in 650, was called Medehamstede and was dedicated to St. Peter on its completion by Wolfhere in 656. |