appears to be a virtually contemporary record, assigns the eventual removal of the ban to Geoffrey's son and namesake, and to the atonement which he made to Ramsey Abbey on his father's behalf.[696] The latter story is most precise, but both may well be true. For, although the Ramsey chronicler would more especially insist on the fact that St. Benedict had to be appeased before the earl could be absolved, the absolution itself would be given not by the abbot, but by the pope. The grant to Ramsey would be merely a condition of the absolution itself being granted. The nature of the grant is known to us not only from the chronicle, but also from the primate's charter confirming this final settlement.[697] As this confirmation is dated at Windsor, April 6, 1163, we thus, roughly, obtain the date of the earl's Christian burial.[698] The Prior of Walden had gained his end, and he now hastened to the Temple to claim his patron's remains. But his hopes were cruelly frustrated at the very moment of success. Just as the body of the then earl (1163) was destined to be coveted at his death (1166) by two rival houses, so now the remains of his father were a prize which the indignant Templars would never thus surrender. Warned of the prior's coming, they instantly seized the coffin, and buried it at once in their new graveyard, where, around the nameless resting-place of the great champion of anarchy, there was destined to rise, in later days, the home of English law.[699] [616] _Chronicle of Abingdon_, ii. 178, 179. Assigned to "probably about the Christmas of 1135" (p. 542). [617] See p. 143. They are Earl Geoffrey, Robert de Ver, William of Ypres, Adam "de Belnaio," and Richard de Luci. The sixth, "Mainfeninus Brito," we have seen attesting Stephen's first charter to Geoffrey in 1140 (p. 52). Another charter, perhaps, may also be assigned to this period, namely, that of Stephen (at Oxford) to St. Frideswide's, of which the original is now preserved in the Bodleian Library. For this, as for the preceding charter, the date suggested is 1135 (_Calendar of Charters and Rolls_), but the names of William of Ypres and Richard de Luci prove that this date is too early. These names, with that of Robert de Ver, are common to both charters, and if Richard de Luci's earliest attestation is in the summer of 1140, it is quite possible that this charter should be assigned to the siege of 1142. [618] _Rog. Wend._, ii. 233; _Mat. Paris_ (_Hist. Angl._), i. 270; _Hen. Hunt._, p. 276. [619] No clue to this date, important though it is for our story, is afforded by any of the ordinary chroniclers. The London Chronicle, however, preserved in the _Liber de Antiquis Legibus_ (fol. 35), carefully dates it "post festum Sancti Michaelis." [620] _Mon. Ang._, iv. 142; _Mat. Paris_ (_Hist. Angl._), i. 270, 271; _William of Newburgh_, cap. xi.; _Gesta Stephani_, pp. 103, 104; _Hen. Hunt._, p. 276. [621] See p. 47.