The asceticism of Anselm met with the usual opposition. One of Queen Matilda’s letters to the Primate contained a strong effort to dissuade him from such a habit. She urged the comfortable advice to Timothy, besides quoting Greek and Roman philosophers. Nor would his views be palatable to many of the clergy, who in this respect fell under the impeachment of the chroniclers, whilst even the high places of the Church were open to animadversion. The story is told of Ralph Flambard, Bishop of Durham, that when lodged in the White Tower he freed himself by stratagem. He provided himself in prison with stores of wine. Among the casks sent in was one which a confederate had filled, not with wine, but with a coil of rope. The gaolers he plied with drink, till overcome by it they left him free to act. Thus did the Bishop make his escape. From incidental notices we gather that strong drink was used in profusion. Thus in the king’s _progresses_, when too often wholesale spoliation marked the action of his retinue, we read of his followers burning provisions, washing their horses’ feet with the ale or mead, pouring the drink on the ground, or otherwise wasting it. The tragedy of the reign was the loss of the ‘Blanche Nef.’ King Henry and his heir, Prince William, embarked at Harfleur for England on the same night in separate vessels. The prince, to make the passage agreeable, took with him a number of the young nobility. All was mirth and joviality. The prince ordered three casks of wine to be given to the ship’s crew. The mariners were in consequence many of them intoxicated when they put out to sea at nightfall. It was the great desire of the prince to overtake his father, who had sailed considerably earlier, and this emulation was one of the causes of the disaster. The vessel, which was sailing dangerously fast, struck upon a rock and began to sink. The prince would, however, have been saved in a boat that was lowered, but, putting back in response to the cries of his half-sister, the boat sunk beneath the load of the numbers who tried to avail themselves of its succour. Of some three hundred passengers aboard the White Ship, only one escaped to tell the mournful tale. The king, it is said, was never after seen to laugh, though he survived the dismal wreck about fifteen years. Personally, he was a man of strictly regular habits. Never was he known to be guilty of any excess in eating or drinking, except that which cost him his life. A surfeit of lampreys is said to have hastened his end; but for this, all history endorses the testimony of the chronicler that he was plain in his diet, rather satisfying the calls of hunger than surfeiting himself by variety of delicacies. He never drank but to allay thirst, execrating the least departure from temperance both in himself and in those about him.