of Edward the Confessor; but King Harold, on ascending the throne, had shown him many favours, and had given him the means of being still more generous. This last of our Saxon kings had begun his reign with great popularity, being accessible, affable, and courteous to all men, and displaying a great regard for piety and justice. In the Confessor’s time, under the title of earl, he had ruled as a sovereign[58] in Norfolk and Suffolk and part of Cambridge, and he was a native of East Anglia. He had been open-handed and open-hearted. From all these reasons the people of this part of England were singularly devoted to his cause, and so thoroughly devoted to his person that they would not for a very long time believe that he had perished in the battle of Hastings; their hope and belief being that he had only been wounded, and would soon re-appear among them to lead them against the Norman. When Duke William had been crowned in Westminster Abbey, and when his constantly reinforced and increasing armies had spread over the country, many of the great Saxon heads of religious houses, even like the Abbat of Crowland, had sent in their submission, and had obtained the king’s peace, in the vain hope that thus they would be allowed to retain their places and dignities, and preserve their brethren from persecution, and the foundations over which they presided from the hands of foreign spoilers and intruders. Not so Thurstan, my Lord Abbat of Ely. He would not forget the many obligations he owed, and the friendship and fealty he had sworn to the generous, lion-hearted Harold; and while the lands of other prelates and abbats lay open everywhere to the fierce Norman cavalry, and their hinds and serfs, their armed retainers and tenants, and all the people dwelling near them, were without heart or hope, and impressed with the belief that the Normans were invincible, Thurstan, from the window of the hall, or from the top of the abbey tower, looked across a wide expanse of country which nature had made defensible; and he knew that he was backed by a stout-hearted and devoted people, who would choke up the rivers with the dead bodies of the Normans, and with their own corpses, ere they would allow the invaders to reach the abbey of Ely and the shrine of Saint Etheldreda. Hence Thurstan had been emboldened to give shelter to such English lords, and such persecuted Saxons of whatsoever degree, as fled from the oppression of the conquerors to the isle of Ely. Thanes dispossessed of their lands, bishops deprived of their mitres, abbots driven from their monasteries to make room for foreigners, all flocked hither; and whether they brought much money or rich jewels with them, or whether they brought nothing at all, they all met with a hospitable reception: so large and English was the heart of Abbat Thurstan. When it was seen that William was breaking all the old and free Saxon institutions, and the mild and equitable laws of Edward