Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE . SUCCURSAL CELL. The Abbat of Oowland's letter, read aloud and slowly by the cheerful fire, had no note of gladness in it. It began " Woe to the Church! woe to the servants of God! woe to all of the Saxon race ! " and it ended with, "Woe ! woe! woe! " It related how all the prelates of English birth were being expelled by foreign priests, some from France and some from Italy; how nearly every Saxon abbat had been deprived, and nearly every religious house seized by men-at-arms and given over to strange shavelings from Normandie, from Anjou, from Picardie, from Maine, from Gasconie, and numberless other parts,1 and how these alien monks, who could not speak the tongue which Englishmen spoke, were occupying every pulpit and confessional, and consigning the people to perdition because they spoke no French, and preferred their old masters and teachers to their new ones, put over them by violence and the sword ! Jealousies and factions continued to rage among the Saxon lords and among those that claimed kindred with the national dynasties ; sloth and gluttony, and the dullness of the brain they produce, rendered of no 1 There was a general ejection of the Saxon Abbots and Priors— save some few like the Abbot of Evesham who made submiBiion. avail the might of the Saxon arm, and the courage of the Saxon heart. Hence a dies iriz, a day of God's wrath. Aldred,1 the archbishop of York, had died of very grief and anguish of mind: Stigand,2 the English and the true archbishop of Canterbury, after wandering in the Danelagh and in Scotland, and flying for his life from many places, had gone in helpless condition to the Camp of Refuge in the Isle of Ely : Edgar Etheling, that royal boy, had been deserted by the Danes, who had crossed the seas in many ships to aid him...