For the wound was fatal. The earl, like Richard in after days, made light of it at first.[688] Retiring, it would seem, through Fordham, along the Thetford road, he reached Mildenhall in Suffolk, and there he remained, to die. The monks of his own foundation believed, and perhaps with truth, that when face to face with death, he displayed heartfelt penitence, prayed earnestly that his sins might he forgiven, and made such atonement to God and man as his last moments could afford. But there was none to give him the absolution he craved; indeed, after the action which the Church had taken the year before, it is doubtful if any one but the pope could absolve so great a sinner.[689] In the mean time the Abbot of Ramsey heard the startling news, and saw that his chance had come. The earl might be willing to save his soul at the cost of restoring the abbey. To Mildenhall he flew in all haste, but only to find that the earl had already lost consciousness. There awaited him, however, the fruit of his oppressor's tardy repentance in the form of instructions from the earl to his son to surrender Ramsey Abbey. Armed with these, the abbot departed as speedily as he had come.[690] The tragic end of the great earl must have filled the thoughts of men with a strange awe and horror. That one who had rivalled, but a year ago, the king himself in power, should meet an inglorious death at the hands of a wretched churl, that he who had defied the thunders of the Church should fall as if by a bolt from heaven, were facts which, in the highly wrought state of the minds of men at the time, were indeed signs and wonders.[691] But even more tragic than his death was the fate which awaited his corpse. Unshriven, he had passed away laden with the curses of the Church. His soul was lost for ever; and his body no man might bury.[692] As the earl was drawing his last breath there came upon the scene some Knights Templar, who flung over him the garb of their order so that he might at least die with the red cross upon his breast.[693] Then, proud in the privileges of their order, they carried the remains to London, to their "Old Temple" in Holborn. There the earl's corpse was enclosed in a leaden coffin, which was hung, say some, on a gnarled fruit tree, that it might not contaminate the earth, or was hurled, according to others, into a pit without the churchyard.[694] So it remained, for nearly twenty years, exposed to the gibes of the Londoners, the earl's "deadly foes." But with the characteristic faithfulness of a monastic house to its founder, the monks of Walden clung to the hope that the ban of the Church might yet be removed, and the bones of the great earl be suffered to rest among them. According to their chronicle, Prior William, who had obtained his post from Geoffrey's hands, rested not till he had wrung his absolution from Pope Alexander III.[695] (1159-1181). But the _Ramsey Chronicle_, which