treated almost as an equal, and whom they came, with a train of secular clerks and lay followers, to visit and consult on matters of Church or state or of their own personal interests. If the king himself chanced to pass that way, it was matter of course that he should lodge in the monastery. William’s vivid portraits of all the three Norman kings were doubtless drawn, if not from the observation of his own eyes, at any rate from that of his friend Abbot Godfrey; his portrait of Henry I. was in all likelihood painted from life as the king paid his devotions before S. Ealdhelm’s shrine or feasted at the abbot’s table in the refectory, or--quite as probably--as William, in his turn, sat in the royal hall discussing some literary question with his friend and patron, the king’s son Earl Robert of Gloucester, if not actually with the king himself. The hospitality of the abbey was repaid by that which greeted its brethren wherever they went, on business for their house or for themselves. The monk went in and out of castle or town, court or camp, as a privileged person. Such a man as William, indeed, might be sure of a welcome anywhere; and William, indefatigable as a student, was almost equally so as a traveller. The little sketches of town and country which illustrate his survey of the dioceses of England in the _Gesta Pontificum_ must have been made on the spot. He had seen the marvels of Glastonbury;[221] he had probably taken down the legend of S. Eadmund of East-Anglia on the very site of the martyrdom;[222] he had seen with his own eyes the Roman walls of Carlisle, and heard with his own ears the rough Yorkshire speech, of which, puzzling as it was to a southerner, he yet learned enough to catch from some northern gleeman the echo of Northumbria’s last heroic lay, the lay of Waltheof at the gate of York;[223] he had, we cannot doubt, wandered with delight up that vale of Severn which he paints in such glowing colours, and been drawn to write the life of S. Wulfstan by a sight of his church and his tomb at Worcester. His own cell at Malmesbury was the garner in which treasures new and old, of every kind, gathered from one end of England to the other, were stored up to be sifted and set in order at leisure amid that perfect tranquillity, that absolute security from outward disturbance and worldly care, which to the modern student is but a hopeless dream. [221] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. ii. c. 91 (Hamilton, pp. 196–198); _Gesta Reg._, l. i. c. 20 (Hardy, pp. 32–34); _Antiq. Glaston._, _passim_. [222] _Gesta Pontif._, l. ii. c. 74 (Hamilton, pp. 152–155); _Gesta Reg._, l. ii. c. 213 (Hardy, p. 366). [223] _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 253 (Hardy, p. 427).