This sharp penance being done, he returned to his prayers before the tomb, which he continued all that day, and all the next night, not even suffering a carpet to be spread beneath him, but kneeling on the hard pavement.
Early in the morning he went round all the altars of the church, and paid his devotions to the bodies of the saints there interred; which having performed, he came back to Becket’s tomb, where he staid till the hour when mass was said in the church, at which he assisted.
During all this time he had taken no kind of food; and, except when he gave his naked body to be whipped, was clad in sackcloth. Before his departure, (that he might fully complete the expiation of his sin, according to the notions of the church of Rome,) he assigned a revenue of forty pounds a year, to keep lights always burning in honour of Becket about his tomb. The next evening he reached London, where he found it necessary to be blooded, and rest some days.[249]
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR.
Mean Temperature 62·00.
[247] Unfortunately it was not discovered that some of the letters, in the inscription referred to, could not be represented by the usual Saxon types, till it was too late to remedy the accident by having them engraven on wood; and hence the inscription is, of necessity, omitted.—Editor.
[248] Gough’s Sepul. Mon. vol. i. p. 39, 40.
[249] Lord Lyttleton.