Many
thousands they wore out with hunger.... They were continually levying a
tax from the towns, which they called truserie, and when the wretched
townsfolk had no more to give, then burnt they all the towns, so that well
mightest thou walk a whole day's journey or ever thou shouldest see a man
settled in a town, or its lands tilled....
"Then was corn dear, and flesh, and cheese, and butter, for there was none
in the land. Wretched men starved with hunger. Some lived on alms who had
been once rich. Some fled the country. Never was there more misery, and
never heathens acted worse than these."
For now the sons of the Church's darlings, of the Crusaders whom the Pope
had sent, beneath a gonfalon blessed by him, to destroy the liberties of
England, turned, by a just retribution, upon that very Norman clergy who
had abetted all their iniquities in the name of Rome. "They spared neither
church nor churchyard, but took all that was valuable therein, and then
burned the church and all together. Neither did they spare the lands of
bishops, nor of abbots, nor of priests; but they robbed the monks and
clergy, and every man plundered his neighbor as much as he could. If two
or three men came riding to a town, all the townsfolk fled before them,
and thought that they were robbers.
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