For the wound was fatal. The earl, like Richard in after days, made light of it at first.[688] Retiring, it would seem, through Fordham, along the Thetford road, he reached Mildenhall in Suffolk, and there he remained, to die. The monks of his own foundation believed, and perhaps with truth, that when face to face with death, he displayed heartfelt penitence, prayed earnestly that his sins might he forgiven, and made such atonement to God and man as his last moments could afford. But there was none to give him the absolution he craved; indeed, after the action which the Church had taken the year before, it is doubtful if any one but the pope could absolve so great a sinner.[689]
In the mean time the Abbot of Ramsey heard the startling news, and saw that his chance had come. The earl might be willing to save his soul at the cost of restoring the abbey. To Mildenhall he flew in all haste, but only to find that the earl had already lost consciousness. There awaited him, however, the fruit of his oppressor's tardy repentance in the form of instructions from the earl to his son to surrender Ramsey Abbey. Armed with these, the abbot departed as speedily as he had come.[690]
The tragic end of the great earl must have filled the thoughts of men with a strange awe and horror. That one who had rivalled, but a year ago, the king himself in power, should meet an inglorious death at the hands of a wretched churl, that he who had defied the thunders of the Church should fall as if by a bolt from heaven, were facts which, in the highly wrought state of the minds of men at the time, were indeed signs and wonders.[691] But even more tragic than his death was the fate which awaited his corpse. Unshriven, he had passed away laden with the curses of the Church. His soul was lost for ever; and his body no man might bury.[692] As the earl was drawing his last breath there came upon the scene some Knights Templar, who flung over him the garb of their order so that he might at least die with the red cross upon his breast.[693] Then, proud in the privileges of their order, they carried the remains to London, to their "Old Temple" in Holborn. There the earl's corpse was enclosed in a leaden coffin, which was hung, say some, on a gnarled fruit tree, that it might not contaminate the earth, or was hurled, according to others, into a pit without the churchyard.[694] So it remained, for nearly twenty years, exposed to the gibes of the Londoners, the earl's "deadly foes." But with the characteristic faithfulness of a monastic house to its founder, the monks of Walden clung to the hope that the ban of the Church might yet be removed, and the bones of the great earl be suffered to rest among them. According to their chronicle, Prior William, who had obtained his post from Geoffrey's hands, rested not till he had wrung his absolution from Pope Alexander III.[695] (1159-1181). But the Ramsey Chronicle, which appears to be a virtually contemporary record, assigns the eventual removal of the ban to Geoffrey's son and namesake, and to the atonement which he made to Ramsey Abbey on his father's behalf.[696] The latter story is most precise, but both may well be true. For, although the Ramsey chronicler would more especially insist on the fact that St. Benedict had to be appeased before the earl could be absolved, the absolution itself would be given not by the abbot, but by the pope. The grant to Ramsey would be merely a condition of the absolution itself being granted. The nature of the grant is known to us not only from the chronicle, but also from the primate's charter confirming this final settlement.[697] As this confirmation is dated at Windsor, April 6, 1163, we thus, roughly, obtain the date of the earl's Christian burial.[698]
The Prior of Walden had gained his end, and he now hastened to the Temple to claim his patron's remains. But his hopes were cruelly frustrated at the very moment of success. Just as the body of the then earl (1163) was destined to be coveted at his death (1166) by two rival houses, so now the remains of his father were a prize which the indignant Templars would never thus surrender. Warned of the prior's coming, they instantly seized the coffin, and buried it at once in their new graveyard, where, around the nameless resting-place of the great champion of anarchy, there was destined to rise, in later days, the home of English law.[699]
[616] Chronicle of Abingdon, ii. 178, 179. Assigned to "probably about the Christmas of 1135" (p. 542).
[617] See p. 143. They are Earl Geoffrey, Robert de Ver, William of Ypres, Adam "de Belnaio," and Richard de Luci. The sixth, "Mainfeninus Brito," we have seen attesting Stephen's first charter to Geoffrey in 1140 (p. 52). Another charter, perhaps, may also be assigned to this period, namely, that of Stephen (at Oxford) to St. Frideswide's, of which the original is now preserved in the Bodleian Library. For this, as for the preceding charter, the date suggested is 1135 (Calendar of Charters and Rolls), but the names of William of Ypres and Richard de Luci prove that this date is too early. These names, with that of Robert de Ver, are common to both charters, and if Richard de Luci's earliest attestation is in the summer of 1140, it is quite possible that this charter should be assigned to the siege of 1142.
[618] Rog. Wend., ii. 233; Mat. Paris (Hist. Angl.), i. 270; Hen. Hunt., p. 276.
[619] No clue to this date, important though it is for our story, is afforded by any of the ordinary chroniclers. The London Chronicle, however, preserved in the Liber de Antiquis Legibus (fol. 35), carefully dates it "post festum Sancti Michaelis."
[620] Mon. Ang., iv. 142; Mat. Paris (Hist. Angl.), i. 270, 271; William of Newburgh, cap. xi.; Gesta Stephani, pp. 103, 104; Hen. Hunt., p. 276.
[621] See p. 47.