With all my comradely thought for Cedric, I could but smile as I thought of the task that now confronted him. I knew well that he had certain cherished plans with regard to these articles whereby he hoped to gain for the commons some of the privileges and immunities which he regarded as the natural rights of freeborn men. Often and often he had declaimed to me of these things, and with such eloquence and conviction as well nigh made me a convert to his party—if that could be called a party which had no leaders and no program and scarce a voice save his own. The commons knew no other way of protest against the wrongs they suffered than such violent and fruitless revolts as that of the churls of De Lancey Manor, with mayhap the killing of a tyrannous noble and the later hunting down and hanging of the leaders of the mob. Cedric had for years maintained that their natural rights should be assured to them by charter and not left to the caprice of some careless or greedy overlord. But the Abbot of Moberley was allied by blood and by early training to powerful Norman families; and ’twas likely that he had but little sympathy with any such ideas. Handsome, learned and eloquent, he was accustomed to win his way among rough and heavy-handed lords and barons and the little better schooled officials of the royal courts by the skill and grace of his address, and yet more, if all rumors were true, by a readiness to shift his allegiance to any cause in accordance with circumstance and his own prevailing interest. In truth, he had been bred for the law as much as for the Church; and his great services to his order, which had been amply rewarded with power and place, were those performed in court or council rather than in church or monastery. At this very time, Lord Geoffrey of Carleton, Cedric and I had reason to suspect the Abbot of secret communications with the Archbishop, who was still nominally of the King’s party, and who would perhaps have much to do with the final shaping of our articles if ever we should force the King to consent to their sealing. ’Twas evident that the rights of churchmen would not be overlooked in the final treaty; and, although this too had our approval, we were the more determined that those of other estates should also be well guarded.