In the days of the same king ... there were many portents in the sun, the moon and the stars; the sea, too, often overflowed the shore and drowned men and beasts, and swept away many towns and houses; in the county of Berkshire, before his death, blood flowed from a well for three weeks; the devil also showed himself to many Normans in horrible shape in the woods, and spoke with them touching the king and Ranulf (Flambard) and certain other persons. And no wonder, for in their time almost all legal justice was silenced, and in causes before the courts money alone swayed the powers that were. In truth at that time many obeyed the king’s will rather than justice, and Ranulf, contrary to ecclesiastical law and the rule of his order (for he was a priest), took from the king at farm first abbeys, and then bishoprics, the prelates whereof were lately dead, and paid to him yearly therefrom large sums of money. His ingenuity and shrewdness were so active and in a short time became so useful, that the king appointed him justiciar and collector of the whole realm. In the enjoyment of such wide powers, everywhere throughout England he exacted fines from the rich and wealthy, despoiling them of their possessions and lands; and incessantly burdened the poor with heavy and unjust taxes, and in many ways, both before he received his bishopric and after, oppressed great and small alike, and that too, until the king’s death. THE CHARACTER OF THE REIGN OF WILLIAM RUFUS. =Source.=--_The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, ed. Thorpe, vol. i., p. 364. (Rolls Series.) He was very strong and stern over his land and his men and towards all his neighbours, and much to be feared; and through evil men’s counsels, that were ever comfortable to him, and through his own covetousness, he was ever tormenting this people with an army and unjust taxes, whereby in his days all right fell, and all unright in the sight of God and of the world uprose. God’s churches he brought down; and the bishoprics and the abbeys whereof the heads passed away in his days either he sold them all for money, or held them in his own hand and let them to farm, because he would be the heir of every man, ordained and lay; and so on the day that he died, he had in his own hand the archbishopric of Canterbury and the bishopric of Winchester and the bishopric of Salisbury, and eleven abbacies, all let to farm. And though I take long to tell it, all that was hateful to God and oppressive to men, it was all customary in this land in his times, and therefore he was hateful to well-nigh all his people and loathed of God, as his end bore witness, for he perished in the midst of his unrighteousness, without repentance and any atonement. THE FOUNDATION OF THE CISTERCIAN ORDER BY STEPHEN HARDING. =Source.=--William of Malmesbury, _De gestis regum Anglorum_, ed. Stubbs, vol. ii., p. 380. (Rolls Series.)