And how fared it with the guilty prior and the traitorous monks of Ely? Did they profit by their great treason? Were peace and joy their lot when the blood of their countrymen had been poured out like water? Did they and their house thrive after all that torture and horror in the Camp? Not so! not so! Those who deal in treachery reap treachery for their reward; and all men hate and scorn even the traitors who have most served them. Before the butchery in the Camp was well over, a great band of Normans ran to the abbey and took forcible possession of it, and beat and reviled the monks because they did not bring forth the money and the bread and wine which they had not to give; and these rude soldiers lodged themselves in the house, and turned all the monks into the barns and outhouses—all but a few, who remonstrated and resisted, and who where therefore thrown into that noxious prison underground into which they had cast Elfric the night before. And on the morrow of the fight in the Camp, the Norman Duke[243] himself went up to the abbey with all his great chiefs, saying that he would pay his devotions at the shrine of St. Etheldreda, albeit she was but a Saxon saint. And William did go into the church, and kneel at the shrine of the saint. Yea, he did more than this, for he laid his offering upon the shrine. But what was the princely offering of this great prince who ruled on both sides of the sea?—It was just one single mark of gold,[244] and that a mark which had been in the hands of the Jews and clipped! And when he had made this splendid donation, he called the monks together in the hall, and told them that they must pay unto him a thousand marks of gold as the price of his pardon for the long rebellion they had been in. And when the chapfallen chamberlain said, and said truly, that there was no money in the house, a sneering Norman knight told him that there were Jews at Norwich, and that the monks must get money by pledging their lands and by giving bonds to the Israelites. The good Abbat Thurstan, being still sick in his bed, escaped the sight of much of this woe: but when the prior knelt at the foot of Duke William, and said that he trusted he would be merciful to the ruined house, and continue him as the head of it, and sanction his election by the brotherhood as lord abbat, the Duke swore his great oath, “By the splendour of God’s face,” that he was not so minded; and that Abbat Thurstan should be abbat still, inasmuch as he was a man of noble birth and of a noble heart. Sundry great Saxon lords, who had long since made their peace with the Norman, had spoken well for the high-born Thurstan; but that which decided the mind of Duke William was the reflection that, if so true and stout a man as Thurstan promised him his allegiance, he would prove true to his promise at whatsoever crisis; while no faith or trust could be put in the promises and vows of such a man as the prior. And thus Thurstan[245] was told on his