He was discovered, some three years later, living the life of a penitent in the secluded monastery of Bec, a small establishment founded by his countryman Herluin, but which afterwards became famous through having supplied Canterbury with three archbishops. After a time, Lanfranc became the prior of Bec, and was as much sought as a religious teacher as he had hitherto been as a lawyer. In his newly-awakened zeal, Lanfranc took it upon him to denounce the intended marriage of the Duke of Normandy with Matilda of Flanders; the Pope having threatened excommunication, as the couple were within the prohibited degrees of relationship. One fine day, the quiet monks of Bec, working in their garden amongst their cabbages and onions, were surprised by the advent of a gay company of knights in holiday attire, surrounding an ecclesiastic who rode pompously upon a fine white mule. The excitement increased to boiling point when the visitor was found to be the duke's chaplain Herfast, whom we have already introduced to the reader as holding the Bishopric of Elmham in 1075, and that his retinue was composed of nobles high in favour at the court; and the much-impressed monks hastened to tell their prior of the honour shown him. But the prior was giving audience to a beggar, and made the duke's emissaries wait till his conference was leisurely concluded. He understood perfectly well that William wished to bribe him, by this display of favour, into giving his assent to the wedding, and he had a mind to assert his independence. Herfast was as ignorant as he was pompous, and the accomplished prior took every opportunity of exposing his guest's ignorance, even placing in his hands an abcdarium, or spelling-book, to the great amusement of the spectators and the huge wrath of Herfast, who rode back to his royal master with a fine tale of the insolence of the Lombard upstart. William was so incensed, that he fell into a paroxysm of rage, ordered Lanfranc out of the country, and sent a band of soldiers to burn one of the granges of the monastery to the ground, as a practical witness to his anger at the way in which his courtiers had been treated. Imagine the consternation amongst the monks of Bec. Lanfranc, however, was equal to the occasion. William had ordered him to quit the country. But the brethren of Bec were poor, and there were no parliamentary trains in those dark ages to carry passengers from one end of a country to the other for a penny a mile. They must travel in the saddle or on foot. Churchmen, for the most part, patronised mules of considerable size and high breeding, and journeyed in no small state. But the only animal the stables of Bec could boast was a sorry steed, angular of joint and far from sound. None the less the prior mounted it, and set off for Rouen, where he had been bidden to appear before the duke ere he quitted the country.