But the Lord of Brunn could not be everywhere. While he was gaining great victories on the southern side of the Fen Country, the Normans were gaining strength in the north, and were receiving the aid of cowards and traitors. Brand, the uncle of Lord Hereward, and the good Lord Abbat of Peterborough, who had ever laboured to keep his convent true to their own saints and to their own country, was now lying by the side of the abbats, his predecessors, under the stone-flooring of the abbey-church; and with him had died all the English spirit of the place. The monks began to murmur, for that they were called upon to contribute to the sustenance of the Saxon fighting men that had been left to guard their house; and for that they had been called upon to send some small matter of gold and silver for the use of the brave Saxons that were maintaining the liberties of England in the Camp of Refuge. Having, by their own representations and entreaties, brought about the removal of nearly every bowman and billman that Hereward had left behind him, these monks next began to turn up their eyes, and say that they had no armed strength wherewith to withstand the Normans, and that therefore it were better to make terms with Ivo Taille-Bois, and cease all connection and correspondence with the Lord of Brunn and that faction. But happily even at Peterborough, when the good Abbat Brand was dead, not all the monks were traitorous. Some of them made haste to inform their late abbat’s nephew, and the hope and stay of England, of what was passing; and the Lord Hereward made haste to apply some remedy to this foul disorder.