CHAPTER XLI.
HOW EARL WALTHEOF WAS MADE A SAINT.
A few months after, there sat in Abbot Thorold's lodgings in Peterborough
a select company of Normans, talking over affairs of state after their
supper.
"Well, earls and gentlemen," said the Abbot, as he sipped his wine, "the
cause of our good king, which is happily the cause of Holy Church, goes
well, I think. We have much to be thankful for when we review the events
of the past year. We have finished the rebels; Roger de Breteuil is safe
in prison, Ralph Guader unsafe in Brittany, and Waltheof more than unsafe
in--the place to which traitors descend. We have not a manor left which is
not in loyal Norman hands; we have not an English monk left who has not
been scourged and starved into holy obedience; not an English saint for
whom any man cares a jot, since Guerin de Lire preached down St. Adhelm,
the admirable primate disposed of St. Alphege's martyrdom, and some other
wise man--I am ashamed to say that I forget who--proved that St. Edmund of
Suffolk was merely a barbarian knight, who was killed fighting with Danes
only a little more heathen than himself. We have had great labors and
great sufferings since we landed in this barbarous isle upon our holy
errand ten years since; but, under the shadow of the gonfalon of St.
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