“Woe to the land, and woe to the good Christian people of it!” said the superior and several of his monks; “it is then to be with us as with the brotherhood of the great and holy abbey of St. Albans! We are to be driven forth empty-handed and brokenhearted, and our places are to be supplied by rapacious foreigners who speak not and understand not the tongue of the English people! Ah woe! was it for this that Saxon saints and martyrs died and bequeathed their bones to our keeping and their miracles to our superintendence; that Saxon kings and queens descended from their thrones to live among us, and die among us, and enrich us, so that we might give a beauty to holiness, a pomp and glory to the worship of heaven, and ample alms, and still more ample employment to the poor? Was it for this the great and good men of our race, our thanes and our earls, bequeathed lands and money to us? Was it to fatten herds of alien monks, who follow in the bloody track of conquest and devastation, and come among us with swords and staves, and clad in mail even like your men-at-arms, that we and our predecessors in this cell have laboured without intermission to drain these bogs and fens, to make roads for the foot of man through this miry wilderness, to cut broad channels to carry off the waste waters to the great deep, to turn quagmires into bounteous corn fields, and meres into green pastures?”[44] While the Saxon monks thus delivered themselves, Ivo and his Normans (or such of them as could understand what was said) ofttimes interrupted them, and spoke in this wise—“King William hath the sanction of his holiness the Pope for all that he hath done or doth. Lanfranc loveth not Saxon priests and monks, and Saxon priests and monks love not the king nor any of the Normans, but are ever privately preaching and prating about Harold and Edgar Etheling, and putting evil designs into the heads of the people. The Saxon saints are no saints: who ever heard their names beyond sea? Their half-pagan kings and nobles have heaped wealth here and elsewhere that generous Norman knights and better bred Norman monks[45] might have the enjoyment of it. The nest is too good for these foul birds: we have better birds to put into it. Let us then turn these Englishers out of doors.”