By the octave of the Epiphany, being the thirteenth day of the Wolf-month, or kalends of January, and the day of Saint Kentigern, a Saxon abbat and confessor, the Lord of Brunn was at the Abbey of Peterborough with more than two hundred well-armed Saxons! and on that very night—a night of the happiest omen—was begun his initiation in the old abbey church. First, Hereward confessed himself to the prior, and received absolution. After this he watched all night in the church, fasting and praying. At times a cloister monk prayed in company with him; but for the most part he was left alone in the ghostly silence of the place, where light was there none save the cressets that burned dimly before the effigies of his patron saint. But while he knelt there, Elfric his faithful sword-bearer stood guard outside the door of the church, whiling away the time as best he could, by calling to mind all the legends and godly stories connected with the Peterborough Abbey and its first founders, and _specialiter_ that marvellously pretty miracle which Saint Chad performed in the presence of his recent convert King Wolfere. Which miracle was this, according to the faithful relation of Walter of Whittlesey, a monk of the house: One day, after praying a long while with King Wolfere in his oratory, the weather being warm, Saint Chad put off his vestment and hung it upon a sunbeam, and the sunbeam supported it so that it fell not to the ground; which King Wolfere seeing, put off his gloves and belt, and essayed to hang them also upon the sunbeam, but they presently fell to the ground, whereat King Wolfere was the more confirmed in the faith.[160] In the morning, at the hour of mass Hereward placed his sword upon the high altar; and when mass had been said, and he had confessed himself and been absolved again, the Lord Abbat took the now hallowed sword and put it about Hereward’s neck with a benediction, and communicating the holy mysteries, finished the simple and altogether religious ceremonial: and from thenceforward Hereward remained a lawful soldier and Saxon knight. In the good Saxon times men were never so vain and sinful as to believe that a knight could make knight, or that any lay lord, or even any sovereign prince or king, could give admittance into the confraternity of knights by giving the accolade with strokes of the flat of the sword upon the shoulders and with the tying on of spurs and hauberks, and the girding on the sword, and such like vanities. These things were brought in among us by the Normans; and being brought in, our knights lost their religious character, and ceasing to be the defenders of the church, and the protectors of all that wanted protection, they became unhallowed oppressors, depredators, barefaced robbers, and the scourges of their kind. And it was so at the very first that these Normans did affect to contemn and abhor our old Saxon custom of consecration of a soldier, calling our Saxon knights in derision priest-made knights and