Great was the chagrin and rage manifested by Vigneau, Count de Montfort, and the Normans generally, at this unexpected rebuff; and increased cruelties and indignities were heaped upon the hapless and degraded Saxons who had accepted the yoke of villeinage. Indeed, the lives of these Saxons were of no account whatever; and the honour of the Saxon women was at the mercy of besotted and degraded Norman troopers. Very few indeed were there amongst the Saxons who had not grievous cause to cherish the most deadly hatred against these ruthless oppressors and usurpers, the Normans.
It was too much to expect that, amid the general confiscation, the monastery should continue to be governed by myself, and that monks of Saxon origin should minister to the poor and the sick, and have control of our endowments. So, as I had expected, one fateful day, my office was taken from me and bestowed upon a Norman Father, who, with a number of monks, had followed at the heels of the conquerors, and were as greedy for the emoluments of the Church, as their brethren-in-arms were for the possessions of the Saxon laymen. So one Father Vigneau, who was a brother of Baron Vigneau, became our Abbot, and degradation and much oppression was meted out to us Saxons, with the object of driving us forth to other shelter, or to become mendicant friars or mere hedge priests. Some of my subordinates went forth, like Abraham, to seek a country. Some cast in their lot with their outlawed countrymen, and, I am sorry to say, not unfrequently became as great adepts at the wielding of carnal weapons as they were at saying Mass or burying the dead. But I had so many ties, and such affection for my flock, that I resolved to stay and bear the heavy yoke; counting it no small honour to be found worthy to suffer like my Master.
I was also greatly fortified in this my resolve by the friendship and help which I received at the hands of Alice De Montfort, who proved to be a real friend, not only to myself, but to all who were in suffering and distress.
Our new Abbot, I found, had not been trained to the service of the Church, but had been, at one time, a soldier by profession. Latterly he had taken to the Church, as I suspect because he found the sacred calling less arduous, and could be made to serve his inordinate desire for idleness and good living. His god was indeed his belly, and his life loose and irregular to great excess. He was a man of florid countenance, and much too pursy for a man whose first duty was to crucify the flesh. His garments, also, ill became a man in the sacred office he had assumed. He was an exceedingly vain man, and loved to adorn his person, and affect the airs and swaggering gait of a young gallant. By his side he constantly dangled a sword, and under his monk's robes he usually wore a coat of link-mail—which, I suspected, arose from a cowardly fear of assassination; for, despite his swaggering deportment, I ever found him to be an arrant coward, and, like every coward, relentless and cruel, loving to oppress and to insult those whose position made it easy for him so to do.
Amongst the monks who came with him I found not one truly holy and devoted man. Most of them were so ignorant as to be totally unable to read the sacred books in the Latin tongue. These men, like their superior, lived loose, irregular lives; habitually neglecting prayers, fasting, and abstinence from carnal indulgences. Indeed, of most of them, if it had not been for their dress they could not have been distinguished from the riotous and disorderly soldiery.
Our new Abbot and his brother, Baron Vigneau, were spending the night together, indulging in one of those nightly carousals which were a disgrace and a crying scandal to our ancient and holy monastery, which had earned itself a good repute by the piety and learning of the brotherhood, and by the wise and charitable administration of the princely revenues which appertained to it. Never had it been known, in times past, that any palmer, or wandering minstrel, had been turned away from its hospitable doors, unhoused and unfed; and any distressed or suffering peasant was sure to have sympathy in trouble, and relief in want. But since the advent of the Normans, its revenues were dissipated by rioting and drunkenness, chambering and wantonness, and in entertaining Norman riff-raff and debauching Saxons, who were willing to sell themselves for the gluttonous eating and drinking to which they were treated. In vain it was for us Saxons to preach virtue and chastity to the poor peasantry, whose cattle, implements of husbandry, and homes, had been destroyed, and who could not till the ground, knowing that they would be despoiled of their harvest. The poor were at best half starved, and subjected to most gross and cruel treatment.
To-night, however, more than ordinarily weighty matters were being discussed over their wine by the brothers.
"What progress, then, have you made in the matter?" said the Abbot.
"Well, I have, by a most determined effort, forced the Count, much against his will, to name a day for the fulfilment of his promise. But the jade, his daughter, takes high ground, and I fancy to get her nose to the grindstone will be no easy task."
"I suppose it is the old excuse the vixen makes?"