Great had been the wrath excited among the Normans by that last great act of Abbat Brand’s life—the Saxon knighthood of Lord Hereward. Duke William had sworn by the splendour of God that the abbat should rue the day on which he had given his benediction to the sword of a rebel; but a greater than kings had saved good Brand from this kingly fury. When he knew that he was dead, William named as his successor that terrible Norman, the Abbat Torauld[172] of Fescamp, who always wore a coat of mail under his rochet, and who wielded the sword and battle-axe much oftener or much more willingly than he carried the crosier.[173] This terrible Torauld had been wont to govern his monks even in foreign parts as captains govern their turbulent soldiery; and whenever any opposition was offered to him, it was his custom to cry, “Come hither, my men-at-arms!” and upon men-at-arms he always depended for the enforcing of his ecclesiastical discipline. Where he ruled there were few penances except such as were inflicted with his own hand; for he was a very choleric man, and would smite his monks and novices over their fleshiest parts with the flat of his heavy sword, and tweak their noses with his sharp steel gloves, and strike them over their shaven crowns with his batoon. Terrible as a man, and still more terrible as an abbat, was this same Torauld of Fescamp! Monks crossed themselves, and said _Libera nos_, whenever his name was mentioned. Now Duke William told this terrible Torauld that as Peterborough was so near to the turbulent Fen Country, and so little removed from the Camp of Refuge, it was a place well suited to an abbat who was so good a soldier, and that a soldier rather than an abbat was wanted to preside over that abbey. And Torauld was farther told, by Ivo Taille-Bois, who was roaring, like a bear bereft of her cub, for the loss of the manor-house at Spalding, that on arriving at Peterborough he must take good care to disinter the Abbat Brand, and throw his body upon the dung heap; that he must well scourge the monks for their past contumacy, and make a quick clutch at such treasure as might yet remain within the house, seeing that the Norman troops were greatly distressed by reason of their poverty, and that, notably, he, the Vicomte of Spalding, had not a denier.[174] “_Factum est_,” said Torauld, “consider all this as done.”