He had sworn upon the relics of saints before now, and had broken his oath; but this time King William was true to the vow he made, for great and manifold were the advantages he reaped from the submission of the Lord of Brunn. It needs not to say that the great Saxon warrior who had ever been true to his saints and a scrupulous observer of his word, was more than faithful to every part of his engagement. After he had been to London city to pay homage to the king which it was the will of Heaven to place over the country, he returned to his good house at Brunn, and hung his sword and battle-axe upon the wall, never to take them down again unless England should be invaded by the Scots or Danes. King William, who went over into France to force his undutiful son Robert to forego his plots and rebellions, and to take vengeance on the French king (in both of which things he in the end succeeded), would with a glad heart have carried Hereward, the cunning captain, the great soldier, with him; and to tempt him into that service he made offer of lofty titles and commands, and of many hides of land in the upland country; but Hereward loved not to fight except for his own country and countrymen, and against those who had wronged him and oppressed them; and instead of clutching greedily at the king’s offers, as many English lords had done, he preferred keeping his own in his own native parts, and ever remained plain Lord of Brunn. Ivo Taille-Bois returned to the manor-house at Spalding with his wife and children; and albeit his brow was sometimes darkened by the recollections of the wedding at Ey, and the defeat and surrender in the marsh, and the hard life he had led as a prisoner in the fens, he lived on the whole, in very good fellowship with his neighbour and cousin of Brunn. Ivo never more harrowed the good Saxon monks of Spalding, who were left for a long time to their own peaceful and happy government. As for the traitorous monks of Crowland Abbey, who had brought back the Normans, they fared after the same manner as the false monks at Ely and the ungrateful monks at Peterborough; they were condemned by the Saxons, harassed and plundered by the Normans they had served, and fustigated by a sharp iracund abbat from France; and thus they did penance for many years, and until most of them were dead, when their cells were occupied by truer men, and the abbey of Crowland began again to be the revered place it had been in former times.