But further, in the council of London ... all priests and monks of England had been prohibited from marriage, and this prohibition, during Anselm’s exile, had been violated by many, who still retained or at least took back their wives. The king, refusing to allow this sin to go unpunished, ordered his ministers to implead the offenders and take fines from them to expiate their sin. But since many of them were found innocent of this offence, the money demanded for the king’s use amounted to a smaller sum than the collectors could have desired. Therefore they changed their plan, the innocent were involved with the guilty in a universal charge, and all parish churches were put in the king’s debt and every one ordered to be redeemed by the parson who served God therein. It was pitiful to behold. When the fury of this exaction was at its height, and some men, who either had nothing to give, or, in detestation of the outrageous measure, refused to give on such a ground, and were contemptuously robbed, imprisoned and tortured, the king chanced to come to London; there nearly two hundred priests assembled, it is said, robed in their albs and priestly stoles, and with naked feet approached the king on his way to the palace. But, as it happened, his thoughts were much occupied, and he was entirely unmoved to pity by their prayers, or at any rate deemed them unworthy of the honour of an answer, as if they were men destitute of all religion, and ordered them to be driven at once out of his sight. Their confusion thus worse confounded, they approached the queen and begged her to intercede; but though, it is said, she was moved by pity to tears, she was held back by fear from intervening. THE BATTLE OF TENCHEBRAI (1106). =Source.=--Eadmer, _Historia Novorum in Anglia_, ed. Rule, p. 184. (Rolls Series.) Meanwhile the king conquered Normandy in battle, and forthwith notified the fact to Anselm by the following letter: