Nay, next year, there came to the same spot four-and-twenty young men, sons of Nobles, for another passage of arms; who, having completed the same, all rode into St. Edmundsbury to lodge for the night. Here is modesty! Our Lord Abbot, being instructed of it, ordered the Gates to be closed; the whole party shut in. The morrow was the Vigil of the Apostles Peter and Paul; no outgate on the morrow. Giving their promise not to depart without permission, those four-and-twenty young bloods dieted all that day (_manducaverunt_) with the Lord Abbot, waiting for trial on the morrow. 'But after dinner,'--mark it, posterity!--'the Lord Abbot retiring into his _Thalamus,_ they all started up, and began caroling and singing (_carolare et cantare_); sending into the Town for wine; drinking, and afterwards howling (_ululantes_);--totally depriving the Abbot and Convent of their afternoon's nap; doing all this in derision of the Lord Abbot, and spending in such fashion the whole day till evening, nor would they desist at the Lord Abbot's order! Night coming on, they broke the bolts of the Town-Gates, and went off by violence!' Was the like ever heard of? The roysterous young dogs; caroling, howling, breaking the Lord Abbot's sleep,--after that sinful chivalry cock-fight of theirs! They too are a feature of distant centuries, as of near ones. St. Edmund on the edge of your horizon, or whatever else there, young scamps, in the dandy state, whether cased in iron or in whalebone, begin to caper and carol on the green Earth! Our Lord Abbot excommunicated most of them; and they gradually came in for repentance. Excommunication is a great recipe with our Lord Abbot; the prevailing purifier in those ages. Thus when the Townsfolk and Monks-menials quarreled once at the Christmas Mysteries in St. Edmund's Churchyard, and 'from words it came to cuffs, and from cuffs to cuttings and the effusion of blood,'--our Lord Abbot excommunicates sixty of the rioters, with bell, book and candle (_accensis candelis_), at one stroke. Whereupon they all come suppliant, indeed nearly naked, 'nothing on but their breeches, _omnino nudi praeter femoralia,_ and prostrate themselves at the Church-door.' Figure that!