Gorgeous tapestry might be seen floating in the wind from the various broken down compartments. The walls had mostly fallen inwards, and the waters had rushed into the court, and escaped through the broken and other confined masses on the other side. A more complete specimen of ruin could not be seen: valuable pieces of furniture, panels, and legs of tables, were floated out of the ruins upon the moat, and these were strictly preserved, as relics, and carried to the various religious houses, as mementoes of the once flourishing palace of the Bishops of Norwich, the first and the last in the ancient town of Ipswich. What a wretched sight did that palace now afford: but how much more calamitous might it have been, had the festive hour not been so suddenly interrupted by the entrance of St. Ivan. It was better that the palace should fall down than that souls should perish therein. The site of the palace--the spot of the Hermit's cell--the stream of the Holy Wells, are still to be seen, though now the square plot of ground is an orchard belonging to the owner of Holy Wells, and the stream which then flowed in a direct line to the river is now diverted, and forms magnificent fish ponds. Tradition still preserves the name of the Hermit: and the monks of St. Peter, after his decease, though they had been jealous of his sanctity, raised a cross to his memory, at the Holy Wells, which went by the name of St. Ivan's Cross, and became a place of pilgrimage for saints and sinners, for two hundred years afterwards. Throughout the records of that day, nothing is discoverable but the jarring complaints of the Prior of St. Peter's and his brethren, at the influence of the hermit of the Holy Wells, who would not submit to observe any of the rites and ceremonies of the Church of Rome, without a restitution of his lands, hereditaments, and rights in Wykes Ufford and Whitton, which belonged to his ancestors, and descended from them to himself. It is recorded that he sued the Bishops of Norwich in the ecclesiastical court of Canterbury, for their usurpation of one moiety of that property which belonged to him and his heirs, the whole of which had been seized by the church. Law was the most expensive thing to be had in England in that day, as it is in this. A flaw is to be picked in almost every man's title to his estate, through which lawyers gain an entrance to the property--and there they fed and fatten. Formerly Judges were elected from ecclesiastical bodies, and their amanuenses, generally clergymen, called clerks--they retain the name to this day: but better for them and all men, they are not the judges of the land.