"The blind
received their sight, the deaf their hearing, the lame their power of
walking, and the dumb their power of speech; while each day troops
innumerable of other sick persons were arriving by every road, as to the
very fountain of their safety, ... and by the offerings of the pilgrims
who came flocking in from every part, the revenues of the monastery were
increased in no small degree."
Only one wicked Norman monk of St. Alban's, Audwin by name, dared to
dispute the sanctity of the martyr, calling him a wicked traitor who had
met with his deserts. In vain did Abbot Joffrid, himself a Norman from St.
Evroult, expostulate with the inconvenient blasphemer. He launched out
into invective beyond measure; till on the spot, in presence of the said
father, he was seized with such a stomach-ache, that he went home to St.
Alban's, and died in a few days; after which all went well with Crowland,
and the Norman monks who worked the English martyr to get money out of the
English whom they had enslaved.
And yet,--so strangely mingled for good and evil are the works of
men,--that lying brotherhood of Crowland set up, in those very days, for
pure love of learning and of teaching learning, a little school of letters
in a poor town hard by, which became, under their auspices, the University
of Cambridge.
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