In the early Norman times we have little else than accounts of knightly debauchery. Here are two of them, anything but edifying, but both remarkably characteristic of a victorious and dominant race of soldiers. The first is taken from the Life of Hereward.[225] “The new Lord of Brunne (a Norman baron) was surrounded by his knights, who were scattered about helpless from the extent of their potations, and reclining on the laps of their women. In the midst of them stood a jongleur or minstrel, alternately singing and exciting their mirth with coarse and brutal jests.” It is, says the writer, a first rough sketch of a part of mediæval manners which we shall find more fully developed at a later period. The same author says that in the reign of Stephen “we find the amusements of the hall varied with the torture of captured enemies.” The other account referred to is taken from the Chronicles of St. Edmundsbury, and relates to a time (A.D. 1194) when the monastery was under the rule of a good and sober abbot, Sampson by name. A tournament was held near St. Edmund, after which eighty young men with their followers, sons of noblemen, were invited to dine with the abbot; “but,” says the chronicle, “after dinner, the abbot retiring to his chamber, they all arose and began to carol and sing, sending into the town for wine, drinking and then screeching, depriving the abbot and convent of their sleep, and doing everything in scorn of the abbot, and spending the day, until the evening, in this manner,[226] and refused to desist even when the abbot commanded them. But when the evening was come, they broke open the gates of the town and went forth bodily. The abbot indeed solemnly excommunicated them, yet not without first consulting Hubert, at that time Justiciar,[227] and many of them came promising amendment and seeking absolution.”[228] As an amusing contrast to this example of knightly misconduct and ecclesiastical reproof, we propose to describe a similar breach of the peace committed by the lower classes, taken from the same chronicles, and the reader will see the difference in the mode of dealing with the rich and the poor in those days, as well as in the influence exercised by the Church over the two classes of society. “On the morrow of the Nativity of our Lord, there took place in the churchyard meetings, wrestlings, and matches between the servants of the abbot and the burgesses of the town, and from words it came to blows, and from cuffs to wounds and to shedding of blood. The rioters were obliged to do penance by stripping themselves altogether naked except their drawers, to prostrate themselves before the door of the church; and when the abbot saw more than a hundred men lying down naked he wept. They were then sharply whipped and absolved.”[229]