And this Father Torpietro of happy memory had also been enabled by the liberality of our first lord abbat to bring from the city of Pisa in Italie a right good limner, who painted such saints and Virgins upon gilded panels as had not before been seen in England, and who was now painting the chapel of our Ladie with rare and inappreciable art, as men who have eyes and understanding may see at this day. All the learned and periti do affirm that for limning and gilding our chapel of the Ladie doth excel whatever is seen in the churches of Westminster and Winchester in the south, or in the churches of York and Durham in the north, or in the churches of Wells and Exeter in the west, or in Ely and Lincoln in the east. [I speak not of the miracles performed by our relics: they are known to the world, and be at least as great as those performed by our Ladie of Walsingham.] Albeit our walls of stone and flint were not all finished in the inner part, our house was girded and guarded by ramparts of royal charters and papal bulls. Two charters had we from our founder, and one from King Stephen, confirmatory of those two. And great were the immunities and privileges contained in these charters. No scutage had we to pay; no stallage, no tolls, no tribute; no customs in fair or market, no tithing penny or two-penny, no amercements or fines or forfeitures of any kind! Our mills were free, and our fisheries and our woods and parks. No officer of the king was to exercise any right in the woods and chases of the lord abbat, albeit they were within the limits of the forests royal; but the lord abbat and the monks and their servitors were to hold and for ever enjoy the same powers and liberties in their woods and chases as the king had in his. Hence was the House of Reading ever well stocked with the succulent meat of the buck. Too long were it to tell all that our founder Henricus did for us. At the beginning of his reign, he abolished the ancient power of abbats to make knights; yet, in order to distinguish our house, he did, by a particular clause in our charter of foundation, give unto the lord abbat of Reading and to his successors for ever, authority to make knights, whether clerks or laymen, provided only that the ceremony should be performed by the abbat in his clerical habit and capacity, and not as a layman, and that he should be careful to advance none but men of manly age and discreet judgment. Of all the royal and mitred abbeys in the land ours was chiefest after Glastonbury and St. Albans; and assuredly we have some honours and privileges which those two more ancient houses have not. I, who have taken up the pen in mine old age to record upon enduring parchment some of the passages I witnessed in my youth and ripe manhood, would not out of any unseemly vanity perpetuate my name and condition; I would lie, unnamed, among the humblest of this brotherhood who have lived or will live without praise, and have died or will die without