"]) they took, as
they had promised, to Picot the Viscount at Cambridge. He weighed the
money; and finding it an ounce short, accused them of cheating the King,
and sentenced them to pay 300 marks more. After which the royal
commissioners came, plundered the abbey of all that was left, and took
away likewise "a great mass of gold and silver found in Wentworth,
wherewith the brethren meant to repair the altar vessels"; and also a
"notable cope which Archbishop Stigand gave, which the church hath wanted
to this day."
Thurstan, the traitor Abbot, died in a few months. Egelwin, the Bishop of
Durham, was taken in the abbey. He was a bishop, and they dared not kill
him. But he was a patriot, and must have no mercy. They accused him of
stealing the treasures of Durham, which he had brought to Ely for the
service of his country; and shut him up in Abingdon. A few months after,
the brave man was found starved and dead, "whether of his own will or
enforced"; and so ended another patriot prelate. But we do not read that
the Normans gave back the treasure to Durham. And so, yielding an immense
mass of booty, and many a fair woman, as the Norman's prey, ended the Camp
of Refuge, and the glory of the Isle of Ely.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
HOW HEREWARD WENT TO THE GREENWOOD.
And now is Hereward to the greenwood gone, to be a bold outlaw; and not
only an outlaw himself, but the father of all outlaws, who held those
forests for two hundred years, from the fens to the Scottish border.
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