"
"Impious! Who can do that, save the Holy Father?" said Thorold.
"You had best get your bishop to look to them, then, for they are carrying
blind beggars and mad girls by the dozen to be cured at the man's tomb,
that is all. Their fellows in the cell at Spalding went about to take a
girl that had fits off one of my manors, to cure her; but that I stopped
with a good horse-whip."
"And rightly."
"And gave the monks a piece of my mind, and drove them clean out of their
cell home to Crowland."
What a piece of Ivo's mind on this occasion might be, let Ingulf describe.
"Against our monastery and all the people of Crowland he was, by the
instigation of the Devil, raised to such an extreme pitch of fury, that he
would follow their animals in the marshes with his dogs, drive them to a
great distance down in the lakes, mutilate some in the tails, others in
the ears, while often, by breaking the backs and legs of the beasts of
burden, he rendered them utterly useless. Against our cell also (at
Spalding) and our brethren, his neighbors, the prior and monks, who dwelt
all day within his presence, he rages with tyrannical and frantic fury,
lamed their oxen and horses, daily impounded their sheep and poultry,
striking down, killing, and slaying their swine and pigs; while at the
same time the servants of the prior were oppressed in the Earl's court
with insupportable exactions, were often assaulted in the highways with
swords and staves, and sometimes killed.
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