pious Edgar (may all his sins be forgiven for the good he did the church!) conferred on the abbey of Ely the village of Dereham, with all its demesnes and appendages, and with the church wherein the body of the virgin Saint Withburga was preserved and venerated by the people of Dereham[223] and by all the good Saxon people round about. Now the Lord Abbat on that day, having the grant of Dereham and all that appertained to it, could not feel otherwise than very desirous of getting possession of the body of the saint in order to translate it to Ely and there place it by the side of the body and shrine of the blessed Etheldreda. The saintly virgin sisters had been separated in their lives and ought to be united in death; Ely Abbey could offer a more noble shrine than the small dependent church at Dereham; it was proper too, and likewise was it profitable, that the pilgrims and devotees to their four female saints of East Anglia should always come to Ely instead of going sundry times a-year to Dereham, as had been the custom, and that all the four shrines should be under one roof, and the contents of the shrine-boxes poured into one common treasury. All this had been laid before the king, and the pious Edgar, who never meant that others should keep what he had bestowed upon his beloved house of Ely, had given his royal licence for the translation of the body of Saint Withburga to the abbey. But the Lord Abbat, being a prudent and cautelous man, and taking counsel of his brother the bishop of Winchester and of other wise and peace loving men, came to this wise conclusion:—That, inasmuch as it was not likely that the people of Dereham and that vicinage would part with so valuable a treasure without resistance, if the intended translation should be made publicly known to them, it would be expedient and commendable, and accordant with the peaceable character of monks, to steal away the body privately, and to admit none but a few of the most active and prudent of the cloister-monks of Ely into the secret beforehand. Accordingly no notice was given to the hinds and in-dwellers at Dereham, nor was there any mention made of the great matter outside of the Aula Magna of Ely Abbey; and on the day appointed the Lord Abbat and some of the most active and prudent of the monks, attended by the sturdiest loaf-eaters of the abbey all well armed, and after hearing mass in the abbey church, set out on their journey to steal the body of the saint; and on their arrival at Dereham they were received with great respect by the inhabitants, who thought that they had come simply to take possession of the place in virtue of the king’s charter and donation, and who suspected no further design. The Lord Abbat, as lord and proprietor and chief, temporal as well as spiritual, held a court for the administration of justice in the manner usual with bishops and abbats, and according to the wise and good laws of our Saxon kings. And after