sick-bed that his rule was restored, and that he should be allowed to appoint and have a new set of officials, instead of the prior, the chamberlain, the sacrist and sub-sacrist the cellarer, and all the rest that had been rebellious and traitorous unto him—provided only that he would promise to be at peace with the Normans. And, after Thurstan had been most solemnly assured by some of the Saxon thanes who came to the abbey with the Conqueror, that King Harold, his benefactor, was assuredly dead, and lay buried in Waltham Abbey, and that good terms would be granted to his friend my Lord of Brunn if he would but cease the hopeless contest, Thurstan promised to live in peace and to think no more of resistance: and before Duke William departed from the house of Ely the lord abbat saluted him as King of England, and put his hand into his hand as a token and pledge that he was and would be true and liege man unto him. It cost his Saxon heart a pang which almost made it crack; but having thus pledged himself, nothing upon earth, being earthly, would ever make Thurstan untrue to the Norman. In leaving the abbey, the Conqueror did not remove with him all the Normans. On the contrary, he called up still more knights and men-at-arms, and ordered them all to quarter themselves upon the monks, and be by them entertained with meat, drink, and pay, as well as lodging.[246] The Norman knights and soldiers kept possession of the best parts of the house, respecting only the inner apartments of the restored abbat: the knights suspended their arms and shields in the great hall, where the arms of the Saxon thanes had lately hung, and in the refectory at every meal-time a hungry Norman soldier was seated by the side of every monk. This was a strange and unseemly sight to see in the common hall of so noble and once so religious a house; but it was the will of the Conqueror that it should be so, and the monks had brought down all these mischiefs upon their own heads. From the lands and revenues especially appertaining to Thurstan as lord abbat, the Norman knights were not allowed to take much; but upon those appertaining to the monks in common, they fell without restriction and without remorse, seizing a manor here and a manor there, and getting them converted into heritable property, to their heirs for ever, by grant and fief-charter from Duke William. And while so many broad hides were taken from them for good, the monks were compelled to pledge other lands, and the very revenues of the shrines, in order to pay the imposed fine of a thousand marks, and in order to find meat and drink, and whatsoever else was demanded by their rapacious guests. Sad grew the monks of Ely, and every day thinner. The knights and men-at-arms ever helped themselves first, and very often left their unwilling hosts nothing to eat. The proverb about the glorious feast of the monks of Ely seemed to have become nothing but a proverb, or the mere legend of a state of happiness which had passed