Then he walked to the tomb of the glorious king. "Thou knowest," he said in Saxon, "how reluctantly I undertook this burden. Only to thee can I resign the charge of those thou didst entrust to my care. Receive thou my staff; give it to whomsoever thou mayest choose." Thus speaking, he struck his staff into the stone tomb, and behold it sank in and stood erect, so that they who stood by could not move it neither to the right nor the left. Word was sent to Lanfranc, who had remained with the council in St. Catherine’s Chapel, and he indignantly sent Gundulph, Bishop of Rochester, to put an end to this foolish story and carry the staff away. But Gundulph was powerless to move it, and on his evidence Lanfranc himself came with the king. Still every effort was in vain, and at last Lanfranc commanded Wulstan to take back the staff. "My Lord and king," entreated the Bishop, "I pray thee give now thy decision." And the staff yielded itself into his hands. So the king and the Archbishop, frightened at what they had seen, ran up to Wulstan, begging his forgiveness, and he, having learned from the Lord to be meek and humble of heart, threw himself in his turn upon his knees. I need not tell you that this is but a legend, and between legend and history there is a great gulf fixed. But it is through legends that we often learn the beliefs and ideas held by the mass of the people, and this story is one of many which explains how the tomb of Edward became a holy shrine. William of Normandy was not buried in the Abbey; he did not even die in the country it had been his great ambition to conquer and possess. For in making war against the king of France, he set fire to the town of Nantes, and his horse, treading on a red ember, plunged violently, throwing him to the ground, with such injury to himself that he never recovered, but breathed his last in a monastery at Rouen. A hard ruler, indeed, he had been, yet Master Wace, whom "himself looked on him and somewhile dwelt in his herd," bids us remember that he was "mild to good men that loved God, and made such good peace in the land that a man might travel over the kingdom with his bosom full of gold unhurt, and no man durst stay another man." "Wa, la wa! May God Almighty have mild-heartedness on his soul, and give him forgiveness of his sins. And may men after their goodness choose the good in him withal fleeing from the evil, as they go on their way that leadeth to God’s kingdom." Such are the kindly words in which Master Wace ends his "Chronicle of the Conquest." *CHAPTER IV* *THROUGH SEVEN REIGNS*